FOR A MAXIMUM INCOME - initially 10 times the Minimum Wage

UK's richest capitalist, union-busting, fracking Jim Ratcliffe

We may as well live on two entirely different planets here on Earth, given the grotesque and growing gap in wealth and power between the rich and the rest of us.

Just 61 billionaires now own more wealth than the poorest half of the world's population - 3.8 billion people.
The richest 0.1% of the human species - about seven million people - grabbed as much combined wealth as the poorest 3.8 billion since 1980. And the infamous '1%' robbed 27% of the world's newly created wealth over the same period of 1980-2016.
Stinking Rich List 
Closer to home, the Sunday Times' 30th annual Rich List is enough to make you vomit at the nauseating greed on parade by the 1,000 richest people in Britain. You need to be 'worth' a minimum of £115million to gain entrance to this exclusive club. 

Between them, the richest 1,000 now sit atop a Himalayan pile of wealth totalling £724billion. Yes, that's an average of £724million each! 

And amidst this gathering of the stinking rich, Britain's 145 billionaires are greedily clinging onto £480billion - exactly two-thirds of the total. 

Publication of this latest parade of obscene wealth was trumpeted by cries of joy, in the Sunday Times and other capitalist media, that inherited wealth has been replaced by 'self-made entrepreneurs'. Far from being 'self-made', these are people who've crawled to the top by exploiting workers - robbing the unpaid labour of the working class they employ - or speculating on the upper-class casinos known as Stock Markets, hedge funds and banking. 

Jim RATcliffe - 'Worth' £21billion? 
The media odes of joy were especially triggered by the man who climbed to the top of the money mountain, Jim Ratcliffe, 60% owner of petrochemical giant INEOS, the biggest private company in the UK. He's now officially 'worth' £21.05billion... and figures from INEOS insiders suggest he could even possess as much as £27billion.
This creature should be all too familiar to workers in Scotland - especially those at Grangemouth petrochemical plant and oil refinery.

Back in 2010, Ratcliffe moved INEOS headquarters to Switzerland to dodge taxes in Britain. The Grangemouth petrochemical plant made operating profits of £31m in 2011 and £49m in 2012 - as part of global profits exceeding £2bn. Not content with these gargantuan profits, Ratcliffe consciously planned a showdown with the Grangemouth workforce and their powerfully organised trade unions in 2013. 

He demanded cuts to pay, pensions, shift allowances and bonuses that robbed workers of £10-15,000 each. He set out to smash the unions, victimizing the Unite union convener - aided and abetted by the witch-hunt against him by the Blairite UK Labour Party leadership. And he perversely exploited the fact Grangemouth accounts for 85% of Scotland's fuel supplies and 30% of England's to hold a bazooka to the heads of both Westminster and Holyrood, demanding £150m in subsidies for INEOS' profits. 

Grangemouth workers, 2013

Capitalist Dictator 

In an insult to language - 'INEOS' is Greek for 'bright new dawn' - Ratcliffe plunged the Grangemouth workforce and the whole of Scotland into darkness and despair by shutting down the petrochemical plant, putting it into liquidation, when the workers fought to resist his wholesale butchery of their conditions in pursuit of even greater profits. This poisonous cocktail of blackmail and bullying forced the unions to accept devastating cuts to conditions, a 3-year pay freeze, removal of union facilities and a 3-year no-strike agreement. And it wrung £9m in grants off the SNP Scottish government plus £125m loan guarantees from Westminster - to pursue a course of profiteering based largely on the use of the environmentally destructive fracking process.

This whole episode blows to smithereens the alleged fairy tale of the 'self-made man'; the 'rags to riches' tale we're peddled - not only to justify Ratcliffe's obscene personal wealth, but also to dupe us into thinking that, with a bit of graft, anyone can become a millionaire or billionaire. 

Fairy Tale from Hell 

This fairy tale has a monster at its core, a one-man capitalist dictatorship, who not only threatened to wreck 1,350 Grangemouth workers' livelihoods, and those of 2,000 contract workers, but held the elected government to ransom. Successfully! Now he is suing the Scottish government for banning fracking, and issuing legal threats to anti-fracking protestors in England. This truly is the dictatorship of capital, in the form of one multi-billionaire, robbing workers' families, trashing our environment, trampling democracy underfoot, but lauded by the sycophantic capitalist media as a success story.

Even if there were no other 'Jim Ratcliffes' on earth, this one story should be enough to motivate and mobilise for decisive action against the grotesque gap between the rich and the rest of us. But he's not alone. For starters, the other two shareholders in INEOS have joined him in the top 20 in the 2018 Rich List, at joint 16th.

Scotland's Eleven Billionaires 
Among the filthy rich with some residential link to Scotland itself, we now 'enjoy' the company of 11 billionaires - whose combined personal wealth totals £16.2billion. That's over half the entire annual budget of the Scottish government for the entire Scottish population in the hands of 11 billionaires.
And just looking at the top 3 alone, we see their personal wealth INCREASED last year by £920million!
Glenn Gordon and family guzzled a net increase of £202m from their whisky and gin empire.
John and Kiran Shaw made the Gordons look like paupers, with a wealth increase last year of £606m from their pharmaceutical company, making a sickening profit from the treatment of cancer, diabetes and autoimmune diseases.
Sir Ian Wood and family may have observed crises in both the oil and fishing industries in recent times, but managed to scrape together a mere £112m EXTRA in the past twelve months.

Grotesque Wealth Divide 
In the land of a million living below the poverty line, 52% of them working to stay poor, these figures are obscene.
In the state whose workers are enduring wages worth £24-a-week less than in 2008, a full 10% rise in the incomes of the richest 1,000 is an infuriating insult.
In the nation where the equivalent of the entire population of Dundee last year relied on emergency food parcels from food banks to avert hunger; where people on benefits can't exist and are driven to the edge; and where energy-rich Scotland condemns at least a million families to fuel poverty, these displays of wealth are grotesque.

Why does all this matter? When we're told there's not enough money in society to pay an immediate £10-an-hour minimum wage to all workers over 16 (rising to match inflation since that figure was unanimously agreed by the unions 43 long months ago!), it matters. When workers march and strike for equal pay for women, it matters. As we struggle to guarantee a living pension after a lifetime's contribution to society; for investment in free public transport, a modern NHS, top-class education or other services... when the rich government of and for the rich tell us it's unaffordable, don't forget the Rich List!

Maximum Income 
Alongside battling for an immediate £10 minimum wage, and some job and income stability through a legally guaranteed 16-hour minimum working week, we need to popularize the demand for a maximum income, to start to close the yawning gap between the billionaires and the billions, the plundering rich and the rest of us. 

Let's illustrate the advantages of an initial 10:1 ratio between the maximum allowable income and the national minimum wage; the policy which the SSP stands for, and which I proposed and won 58% support for at Usdaw union national conference last month.
If we use the current (miserly) £7.83 minimum wage for those aged over 25, that would make the maximum income £78.30 an hour - hardly penury! Assuming a maximum 35-hour week, it would allow the richest to earn up to £142,502 a year; not exactly making them scream in agony! 

Let the Rich Scream Blue Murder! 

Even looking at the tiny list of the UK's 1,000 richest, the overly-generous 10:1 formula for a maximum income would still permit them to roll around in combined incomes of £142million. How in hell could anyone object to that ceiling on their wealth? What on earth would anyone find to spend £142,000 a year on? And if (or when) the monstrously rich scream blue murder about a maximum income killing off incentive, we should laugh in their faces. Remind them that they have always argued and practised the policy that the best incentive to make the rest of us work is low pay; the whip of poverty to drive people to work. 

This policy of a maximum income initially set at ten times the national minimum wage is a powerful weapon in a necessary war on both poverty and inequality. Allowing the current crop of Rich List residents to possess £142m between them, as we've calculated above, would hand back well over £723billion to the rest of society this year alone. Imagine what that could mean for wages, NHS spending, education, public transport, job creation. 

A Modest Demand 

Of course, socialists don't just want to limit the size of the slice of cake grabbed by the rich minority; we want collective, public ownership of the entire bakery! That way society could democratically plan to meet social and environmental needs, rather than allow capitalist profit-hunting wreak havoc on both people and planet. 

But a 10:1 maximum compared to a legal minimum wage would be a great start. A very modest demand. But compared to the 183:1 gap between top company chief executives and their average workers - not the lowest paid employees, but average! - it's also a revolutionary change. One pioneered by the SSP, but now also adopted by the mass, 430,000-strong Usdaw union after a full debate at our recent national conference. 

Join the Battle! 

Join us in battling for a Charter of Workers' Rights that together could transform the lives of millions, including an immediate £10 minimum wage for all over 16, rising with inflation; a guaranteed minimum 16-hour contract for all workers who want it; and an initial maximum income set at 10 times the minimum wage, to combat inequality and win back some of the stolen wealth which workers create in the first place. 

FOR A SOCIALIST CHARTER OF WORKERS' RIGHTS

Victories for the working class, our unions, our rights at work, are nearly as rare as people of conscience in the Tory Cabinet! 

So it's all the more justified that we celebrate the recent abolition of Employment Tribunal fees, as ruled unanimously by the seven Supreme Court judges. They deprived the Tories and LibDems of a fourth birthday party for the pernicious measure they jointly imposed in July 2013. 

Under mounting pressure from the trade union movement, and growing public fury, the upper-class judges abolished forthwith the fees of £1,200 payable before workers could even get a Tribunal hearing on cases of unfair dismissal, discrimination, or equal pay.

And the £1,600 payable to seek an Employment Appeals Tribunal hearing; to challenge any of the 50% of ET cases that go against workers, or the incredible 78% of all ET cases on discrimination - potentially the most important, involving the biggest compensation - which rule on the side of employers. 

This decision was the result of three years of legal challenges by UNISON, and widespread public support, as expressed in the response to Jeremy Corbyn's promise to  scrap the fees - ending years of criminal negligence by Labour, who merely promised to reduce the fees. 

Build on Employment Tribunals Victory 

This outcome underlines the potential power for progressive change possessed by the organised trade union movement. It answers the doubters and sceptics, who surrender under the battle-cry, "There's nothing we can do".

Now we need to push for far more sweeping changes, actually mobilizing the solidarity in action of workers and their unions, demanding a full-blown Charter of Workers' Rights.   

Not by waiting for some Messiah, but by motivating and mobilizing the millions of workers and their communities; utilizing the unified power of our class against the capitalist class and their political mouthpieces. 

And not just demanding it as a futile propaganda exercise towards the stone-faced Westminster puppets of capitalist rule; we might as well appeal to the stone statue of Churchill as await the Westminster road to workers' rights.

We need to target the far more accessible and susceptible Scottish government, and the 32 Scottish local authorities, with such demands. 

Unite for a Charter of Workers' Rights 

The SSP is more than eager to unite in action with supporters of other parties and none; trade unionists, young people, community groups; anyone willing to demand a Charter of Workers' Rights that could begin to transform the lives of the millions - unashamedly at the expense of the millionaires - both at work, at home and in our communities. 

By no means an exhaustive package, this could include the following:

Full rights at work from day one. 

Not 'equal rights', as demanded by Jeremy Corbyn's For the Many, Not the Few manifesto - which would include equal exclusion from the right to an Employment Tribunal hearing on unfair dismissal for the first 2 years in a job. 
Full rights, from day one, whether part-time, full-time, temporary, agency, etc.

The right to organise, strike and take solidarity action with fellow workers - and on so-called political issues, like privatisation or cuts - without fear of victimisation. 

This would require repeal of all the anti-union, anti-worker laws, introduced by Thatcher's Tories, retained by 13 years of Labour government, made even more repressive by the Tories and their LibDem coalition partners. Not just the welcome, but extremely limited pledge by Corbyn to repeal the 2016 (anti-) Trade Union Act, but all 30-years' worth of repressive laws. 

A guaranteed, well-paid, secure job for all on leaving school or college. 

Scotland's teenage model, Govan shipyard worker's son Connor Newall, told Radio Scotland that if he wasn't blessed with a career with cameras shooting at him he'd be in the army being shot at in wars. That captures the criminal lack of decent jobs, contrary to the vast array of work that needs doing to build a decent society. 

We should demand action - not pious platitudes - from the Scottish government and local councils to create hundreds of thousands of decent jobs, for instance by building social sector houses for rent; expanding education and public transport; investing in an NHS fit for the 21st century; ensuring free, quality social care services; developing a vast new, publicly-owned green energy industry.

A legally-enforced living minimum wage set at two-thirds male median earnings - for all over 16, with equal pay for women. 
Wages have been systematically driven down, to boost profits, and to cut public spending. Wages have stagnated and declined at the worst rate since the Napoleonic Wars. 

We should demand this guaranteed living minimum wage, legally enforced, which would mean over £10-an-hour here and now. Not three years hence in 2020, as promised by Jeremy Corbyn's manifesto; and not just for those over 18, as it says - but for all over 16, as consistently fought for by the SSP for the past 20 years. 

And if Labour or SNP MSPs and councillors are serious about a living wage, demand they here and now declare a voluntary £10 Living Wage for all workers they directly employ, plus issue public contracts only to firms implementing £10 minimum - pending their return in-house. 

Demand back the funding off Westminster and Holyrood to pay a minimum of £10-an-hour to the half-a-million workers employed by central and local government. 

A guaranteed 16-hour contract; ban all zero hours contracts. 
The SSP has pioneered this policy, to cater for those who prefer part-time work, but to banish the curse of casual, insecure contracts. Legally oblige all employers to guarantee a minimum 16 hours-a-week, unless a worker requests lesser hours, accompanied by their union rep. 

Demand the Scottish government and local authorities set the pace by introducing this 16-hour guarantee for their 500,000 workers. 

A guaranteed warm, weather-tight, affordable home for all, built to the highest environmental standards in Europe.
End the scandal of 157,000 families in Scotland languishing on the waiting list. Build 100,000 new social sector homes for rent over the 4-year parliament. Create tens of thousands of well-paid construction jobs and apprenticeships. Combat fuel poverty and pollution by building and renovating to the best standards of insulation and green housing technology in Europe. 

Guarantee a living state pension, with voluntary retirement at 55 for men and women. 

Reverse the creeping abolition of the state pension - the worst as a share of average wages in Europe! Give workers a genuine lifestyle choice between working and retiring on a living pension - based on the national minimum wage - immediately at 60, rapidly moving to 55. This would give concrete content to the "review of pensions" in Corbyn's manifesto. 

Guarantee free public transport for all, through immediate, democratic public ownership.

End the crimes of train fares rising twice the rate of wage increases since 2010; reverse the spread of safety-threatening Driver Only Operations; chaos and cuts on the privatised buses; mounting pollution and spreading social isolation. 

The SSP campaigns for immediate public ownership of our railways - not the gradual, piecemeal, potentially chaotic return to the public sector "as [separate] franchises expire", as Jeremy Corbyn's For the Many manifesto pledges. And for investment in an integrated, fare-free public transport network.

A modern solution to pollution and poverty. 

Demand More, Far More

The significant victory on Employment Tribunal fees should embolden workers to demand more, far more. 

The appeal of Jeremy Corbyn's radical-sounding social and economic policies should encourage us to demand more, far more, than his very modest manifesto policies actually advocate. 

The potential power of organised unions - held back for decades by vicious laws, use of the weapon of fear by employers, and cowardly trade union leaderships - should now be unleashed to reverse the tide of attacks on our rights and livelihoods. 

Join the SSP in demanding a concerted, broad campaign - rooted in the unions and community campaigns - for a far-reaching Charter of Workers' Rights. 

Help to make Scotland a place that puts people before profit; the 5.3 million people before the ten billionaires who own the same £30billion as the entire annual Scottish government budget. 

EMPLOYMENT TRIBUNAL FEES TO BE ABOLISHED: a victory for workers' rights

Victories for workers, their unions and their rights at work are all too rare in recent years. 

The unanimous decision of the seven Supreme Court judges (the top legal institution in the UK) that the government's Employment Tribunal fees are illegal, is a precious rarity. 

It ends the criminal policy - introduced by the Tory/LibDem Coalition four years ago, in July 2013 - which has meant workers being charged up to £1,200 in order to even lodge a challenge to unfair dismissal, discrimination and other injustices at work. 

At least tens of thousands of workers have been denied access to a legal hearing against unscrupulous employers, let alone actual justice. Purely because they can't afford to fork out such huge lump sums, non-refundable if their case fails. 

Bosses Emboldened in Exploitation 

Company bosses have been emboldened in their exploitation of workers, arrogant in the knowledge they're very unlikely to ever face the possibility of a Tribunal hearing - which in the past deterred some of them - because it's a public 'court' which thereby exposes malpractices by employers to the full gaze of the wider public. 

Quite often, employers settled 'out of court' through what's called Compromise Agreements - with compensation packages - rather than face the stench of publicity about how they had mistreated workers. 

In the years since this brutal exclusion of workers from justice was imposed, the number of Employment Tribunal cases has collapsed by at least 70%. 

Union figures suggest pregnant women were the worst affected, unable to challenge discrimination at work because they couldn't afford Tribunal fees.

It's stating the obvious that lower-paid workers were especially hammered by the ET  fees system, which meant coughing up more than a full month's wages for full-time workers on the minimum wage, for instance. 

Collapse in Cases Pursued 

Of course, workers who are not union members faced the impossible fees being payable out of their own pockets. 

For those in trade unions, the sad fact is that all too many union leaders and legal departments ran for cover in many potential Employment Tribunal cases, dodging the costs unless they were absolutely 100% confident of winning, and thereby recouping the costs off the bosses found guilty of injustices. On numerous occasions, if there had been no fees the national unions would have pursued a member's case, but the fees served the purpose for which they were designed by the Tories and LibDems: curbing the willingness of the more weak-willed union leaderships to take up legal challenges on behalf of members.

Reimbursement of £27m! 

What price justice? Well, for starters, the Supreme Court has ruled that those who did scrape together the fees should now be reimbursed - to the tune of £27million! That in itself is a phenomenal victory.

It's a victory for the UNISON trade union which took the legal case against Tribunal fees right up to the Supreme Court. 

It's a victory for those political forces like the SSP who fought against Employment Tribunal fees before and since they were imposed. 

It's a victory for all those trade unionists who have demanded abolition of the fees.

This is not a ruling by some neutral, benign body called the Supreme Court. It's a politically calculated move on the part of one powerful arm of the state, made in a living context. 

It's a victory conceded by the judiciary against the Tory government designed to take the political sting out of this outrageous class-ridden system of employment laws, in the face of massive opposition, as shown by the popular support for Jeremy Corbyn's pledge to abolish the fees. His promise was a refreshing break from the spineless stance of Labour for all the previous period, with their feeble offers to reduce the fees, rather than simply scrap them. 

Demand Justice for Workers Priced Out 

This Supreme Court ruling kicks the door ajar for the unions to charge through and demand more far-reaching concessions on workers' rights. 

In addition to the £27million promised in reimbursements to those who paid the fees over the last 4 years, the unions should demand re-opening of cases of injustice at work where the fees prevented workers (or their unions) from pursuing Employment Tribunal challenges. 

The Supreme Court has ruled the government was in breach of other, older, overarching laws, meant to uphold access to justice. That's surely an opening for the organised trade union movement to challenge the government for breaches of human rights at work?

Scrap the Lot! 

This huge victory on this one, narrow, but important link in the chain of anti-union laws should embolden the unions to escalate the fight to repeal all these class-ridden laws. Anti-union, anti-worker laws designed by Thatcher's Tories in the 1980s, retained by 13 years of Labour governments, and made even more repressive by the subsequent Coalition and Tory governments. It's a resounding answer to all the faint-hearts and weaklings in the trade union movement and politics who say "there's nothing you can do about it". 

It's a platform to launch a serious struggle to challenge, defy and defeat the whole panoply of anti-union laws which currently make capitalist Britain home of the most repressive set of employment laws in the western world - and for a Charter of Workers' Rights which would also help empower workers through their unions to reverse the obscene levels of exploitation and inequality that the anti-union laws have helped employers and their pet governments impose.