STRUGGLE OR STARVE! - pay, prices, profit

There's no evidence of low paid workers and apprentices doing the Conga in the closes, celebrating in the shopping centres, or throwing street parties in the housing schemes. 
The Westminster government's increasing variety of national minimum wage levels have risen this month, but not so you'd notice. 

Workers aged 21-24 are now guaranteed £6.95-an-hour; those aged 18-20 £5.55 - in both cases a paltry 25p rise. And it gets stingier still: workers aged 16-18 have 'enjoyed' a 13p rise to the giddy heights of £4-an-hour. Worse still, apprentices have been granted an insulting 10p increase to a £3.40 minimum wage. 

Discounted Young Workers

How the hell are people meant to live on such basement level wages? Young workers or apprentices don't encounter sales banners in retail outlets or supermarkets declaring vast, special youth discounts. But that's precisely what the bosses - many of them billionaires - enjoy under the pernicious regime of age wage discrimination in this fabulously rich country. 

And don't go thinking workers over 25 have it cushy. Try living on the Tories' maliciously, deliberately misnamed 'National Living Wage' of £7.20-an-hour. Or indeed the Living Wage Foundation figure - currently £8.25, about to be increased - which builds in several self-imposed caps on what is actually required for a basic but reasonable standard of living. For instance, the Foundation itself admitted that a full three years ago, in 2013, it should actually have been set at £9.08 in Scotland to match living costs. And it's entirely voluntary, left to the whims and fancies of employers, with no power to legally enforce it. 

Profits Plunder Pay

Profits for big business are at record highs. Company chief executives award each other salaries that defy human imagination. On average they earn 183 times as much as their average worker. To keep all the figures bandied about for a real and genuine living wage in perspective, if the government's national minimum wage had kept pace with the rocketing pay levels of these company bosses since it was introduced in 1999, it wouldn't be £7.20, nor the Living Wage Foundation figure of £8.25, nor even the immediate £10 which the Scottish Socialist Party is demanding, but at least £18.99-an-hour, here and now in 2016! 

Wage Stagnation 

Workers' wages are stagnating, and have for over 30 years. Real wages have plunged by 10% since the 2008 financial crisis, brought about by bankers, billionaires and the political choices of their capitalist system. Wages have been consciously slashed to boost profits, with the aid of the legal chains forged to stop unions fighting back for a better share in wages and public services. 
And it's set to get worse for millions of workers' families over the next couple of years, as inflation re-enters the political economy after a period of very low official inflation figures. 

Food banks for Food workers

Even before the Brexit vote, workers' wages were slaughtered by the cost of basics like housing, transport and food. 

An astonishing six million UK families - five million of them with one or more people in jobs - are what the Tories have christened "just managing families". In poverty, working to remain poor, in more honest English. 

As the Resolution Foundation think tank has measured, these families now spend 25% of their incomes on housing - equivalent to a hidden income tax rise of 14p in the £1 compared to their situation in 1995. Transport costs are the highest in Europe. And contrary to the press propaganda, most of us haven't noticed the alleged fall in the price of food the last couple of years! On the contrary, as I recounted in my book Break the Chains, there are cases aplenty of fast food and supermarket staff serving food but having to rely on food banks to stave off hunger on their starvation wages. And as the Food Foundation recently commented, 

"Higher prices force families who are struggling to go for the cheapest calories. Children in the most deprived areas already experience twice the levels of obesity than children in the least deprived."

Before and after Brexit vote 

Now the Brexit vote has triggered a nosedive in the value of sterling, which spells disaster for the cost of living for low and middle-income families.

A lot of economically illiterate dross has been pumped out by some capitalist commentators about the fall in value of sterling against the Euro and US dollar meaning a heyday for British exports. What exports? For decades the dominant finance wing of the capitalists, and their hired politicians, have decimated industry in the likes of Scotland. Instead, they've concentrated on making big bucks through financial speculation and slaughtered wages. 

With wages so low, they shored up demand and sales through a glut of credit for a period, which then crashed in 2008, with workers made to pay twice over: through the £1.3trillion bailout of the banks from public funds, and eight years of austerity cuts since to recover that debt. 

Plunging Pound and Inflation 

The central fact is that the uncertainty post-Brexit Referendum has added to panic on the money markets and amongst manufacturers, with an 18% fall in the value of the £pound since May. Already car manufacturers like Fords, Vauxhalls and Peugeot have passed on price increases in the UK to compensate their profits for the weakened pound. The price of raw materials and goods needed by UK factories have in August grown faster than at any time since 2011. 

The very public spat between suppliers Unilever and retailers Tescos over the price of Marmite, PG Tips and Pot Noodle highlights the looming price rises for food. Prices at the petrol pumps are set to rise this month. Foodstuffs and other daily items are already being priced beyond the reach of the lowest paid, including a million people below the breadline in Scotland. For instance, butter prices have rocketed 75% since May; items like shampoo by 17%. 

All this has led economists at several leading banks to forecast inflation will leap to 3% or 4% in the next year, eating away at the value of workers' wages as they fork out for food, everyday essentials, housing and transport. That's also the view expressed forcibly by the Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney - not noted for his trade unionist or socialist tendencies! 

Pay Cuts - With Worse to Come 

Meanwhile, wages are stagnant, and capitalist employers, governments and local governments are poised to make things even worse by protecting profit margins and implementing austerity cuts through de facto wage cuts. For instance, Deloitte did a recent survey of the chief financial officers of major UK companies, and found 94% of them view cutting costs as the key priority for the next year; in other words, cuts to wages and/or jobs. 

Numerous retail giants - with profits measured in £billions rather than £millions - have won kudos for increasing hourly pay rates, in a very few cases volunteering the Living Wage Foundation rate of £8.25. The same ruthless profiteers have tried to bury the bad news that they've robbed back some or all of that wage concession by slashing premium payments for anti-social hours on Bank Holidays, Sundays, nightshifts or overtime. In several instances, workers are literally worse off each week - but their bosses win extra customers through appearing like 'ethical employers'. 

What Alternatives to the Tories' Atrocities?

Most people won't be fooled by the stomach-churning guff from Theresa May (or Ruth Davidson) about the Tories being "the party of the working class", concerned about "the just managing families". This is the party driving people into starvation, even suicide, with their benefits sanctions regime, and whose anti-Trade Union Bill makes Britain the most repressive anti-worker state in the entire western world.

But what alternatives are on offer from other, anti-Tory parties?

Since our foundation in 1998, the SSP has persistently fought for a living national minimum wage - for all over 16, apprentices included, with equal pay for women - based on a formula that would challenge poverty head on, and automatically upgrade pay with rises in average pay or prices: a minimum calculated as two-thirds male median wages. Since 2014 that has meant we've demanded £10-an-hour, here and now, not in some distant future. 

In September 2014, the TUC - representing nearly seven million organised trade union members - unanimously voted for "a £10 minimum wage for all workers". 

In the last month or so, Labour's socialist Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell (and less volubly Jeremy Corbyn), have echoed that demand of the TUC.

TUC and Labour

But here's the problem. The TUC leadership - and most of the individual affiliated unions - haven't lifted a finger to pursue that aim, two years on, despite the demands of SSP members and other socialists in the unions. It's been left hanging as 'an aspiration', with no timescale fixed for achieving it, no plans laid to agitate and organise a battle for it, with union negotiators lodging pay claims that include a £10 minimum. 

In the case of Corbyn's and McDonnell's Labour, whilst an extremely welcome addition to the clamour for a real living wage, they only ask for £10 by 2020! Provided the Labour leadership advocate that for workers of all ages, it would obviously be better than the Tories' 'promise' of £9 by 2020 - but only for those over 25.

It would also be substantially better than the £8.70-an-hour by 2020 which the SNP committed to in an independent Scotland since the 2014 Referendum campaign. 

But £10 in 2020 would be nothing like the £10 now, today, in 2016, which the SSP and an honorable minority of unions - especially the Bakers' Union - are demanding. It would be drastically devalued four years hence, given the forecasts on inflation already explained. 

Waiting for Westminster?!

We can't just sit back and wait for generous handouts from the Westminster government - increasingly likely to be Tory for at least another parliamentary term, given the shameful civil war against Corbyn by Labour MPs and the Scottish Labour leadership around Kezia Dugdale. 

Workers and socialists need to agitate and organise for £10 now in their unions and on the streets, and bombard local councillors, MSPs and the Scottish government to implement a Scottish living minimum wage of £10 for all without further delay. 

The SSP campaigns for devolution of power to Holyrood over setting the statutory minimum wage. But whilst fighting for that, we should also demand that all Scottish councils and the Scottish government not only gain the kudos of volunteering as Accredited Living Wage Employers, but also insist on them implementing it through contracts and procurement... and set the (voluntary) Living Wage for Scotland at £10 here and now. 

SNP Shortcomings 

The SNP government claims to be 'Stronger for Scotland'. At the recent SNP conference, they made the wholly welcome call for an end to the lower youth rates for the so-called Living Wage. The original Motion, from the SNP Trade Union Group and Chris Stephens MP, only asked for the feeble £7.20 for all ages. A Paisley branch amendment improved that substantially to the Living Wage Foundation's £8.25. But the Motion agreed merely asks the Westminster government to implement this, rather than any concrete proposals on how to archive this within Scotland - even within the confines of devolution - and furthermore puts no timescale on when Westminster should implement it!

Slave Wages at Sea

At the same SNP conference, a lobby of seafarers in the RMT union demanded an end to the scandal in the Northern Isles where a shipping company (Clipper), registered in the notorious Bahamas tax haven, is paying foreign workers a criminal £3.66-an-hour for working the contract they won off the Scottish government. That's the brutal realities behind the headlines, which must be outlawed immediately. 

Join the SSP's Struggles 

The SSP won't relent on our campaign for £10 now, for pay before profit, for a radical redistribution of the wealth produced by the working class in the first place. Join us in battling for a genuine living wage, with no age or gender discrimination, and put the employers, councillors and Scottish government under relentless pressure to outlaw the crucifying poverty pay suffered by about half a million workers in Scotland. 

It's increasingly, literally, a case of the old 1930s socialist slogan: Struggle or Starve! 

SOCIAL PARTNERSHIP: PITFALLS AND TRAPS FOR WORKERS

As the Tories take a claw hammer to workers' rights, and swing their wrecking ball at jobs, wages, tax credits and public services, it's no wonder workers search for a political alternative. 

The cream of the Scottish working class has joined the SSP, the socialist contingent of the 630,000-strong trade union movement. They are rightly attracted by the SSP's track record of solidarity with workers in struggle; unflinching fight for an immediate £10 minimum wage for all at 16; our advocacy of democratic public ownership, and our tireless campaigning for a charter of workers' rights, as a core human right.

But given their near-monopoly of Scottish politics since the Referendum, and the power they wield, thousands of trade unionists and workers see the SNP as an immediate vehicle for their aspirations. 

SNP TUG

The SNP claims that within its overall, phenomenal growth to about 112,000 members, their Trade Union Group (TUG) has rocketed from 800 to 16,000 - at least up until the Corbyn factor, outnumbering the entire membership of Scottish Labour. 

Some have joined the SNP TUG under the false impression that it's an actual union, such is their disenchantment with their own trade union. 

Others purely because they see the SNP as the big vehicle to climb aboard for independence, and tick the box to register as a trade union member. 

Others still, doubtless attracted by the SNP's mood music towards the trade union movement - in technicolour contrast to the savage hostility of the class war launched on the unions by the Tories, and the decades of neglect and abuse of workers' loyalty by Labour.

But what does the SNP actually offer workers? What does their very welcome talk of inclusion of the unions amount to? What does their oft-trumpeted belief in 'Social Partnership' mean in practice?

SNP WHITE PAPER PROPOSALS 

One of the most comprehensive statements of SNP policy on the unions and workers' rights was carried in the November 2013 SNP government White Paper, 'Scotland's Future'. 

It promised, given the powers of independence, to "reverse recent changes introduced at Westminster which reduce key aspects of workers' rights. For example, we will restore a 90-day consultation period on redundancies affecting 100 or more employees." And to abolish the pernicious 'shares for rights' scheme, whereby workers were given a few piddling shares as reward for selling all their rights on redundancy, unfair dismissal, etc.

Very welcome, considering the jailhouse conditions endured under the Tories. But never a single mention from this voluminous SNP document of fully repealing the bulging package of anti-union laws ushered in by Thatcher, retained by Blair and Brown, now being made infinitely more repressive by Cameron's dictatorship. 

NO PLEDGE TO REPEAL

Nor have the SNP pledged repeal before or since the Referendum. For instance, to their full credit, they have argued and voted against the current Tory Trade Union Bill - but still never once promised to repeal the batch of repressive legislation that the Bill is being riveted onto. Even in the scenario of an SNP government with full control over employment law, that implies the retention of at least the majority of the most repressive anti-union laws in the entire western world.

The SNP Trade Union Group is undoubtedly on the left flank of the SNP. It has submitted Motions to the forthcoming SNP conference calling for opposition to the Trade Union Bill, an outright ban on fracking (rather than just a moratorium) and for a public inquiry into blacklisting of trade unionists in Scotland. But even they don't explicitly call for total repeal of the vicious anti-worker laws. 

SNP 'SOCIAL PARTNERSHIP'

The core philosophy of the SNP is 'Social Partnership'. In the White Paper they spelled it out: "working directly with the trade unions, employers' associations, employers and voluntary sector to build a partnership approach to addressing labour market challenges". 

But the fundamental feature of a capitalist society - with private ownership and the profit motive pivotal - is that the interests of workers and capitalist employers do not coincide. They clash, in what at root is a struggle over who gets the bigger share of the wealth produced: workers in their wages, conditions and 'social wage', or owners in profit and shareholders' dividends. 

Any attempt at 'social partnership' within the framework of such a capitalist 'free-market' economy is not a partnership of equals, between two sets of people with common interests, but a partnership of the rider and the horse!

FLAWS REVEALED BY STRIKES 

This philosophy shows its inherent flaws when confronted by the concrete reality of workers being forced to fight back in self-defence and in opposition to attacks on the public services they provide. 

For example, when the SNP and its Trade Union Group were challenged to unequivocally side with the striking Dundee hospital porters and Glasgow Homeless Caseworkers - a challenge laid down by members of Trade Unionists for Independence, not by some opportunist Labour hacks - they writhed, wriggled and declined to declare open solidarity with the strikes. 

The SNP TUG were caught between their instincts as trade unionists and their loyalty to the philosophy of 'social partnership'; mangled up in the clash between workers seeking a fair and justified jobs regrading in both strikes, and the public sector employers involved, who are primarily funded by the SNP government.

CALMAC FERRIES 

The baleful consequences of 'social partnership' between trade unions and employers was even more starkly shown up in the recent CalMac ferries strike. 

When RMT members balloted and went on strike in defence of jobs, pensions and conditions in the face of a Scottish government tendering process likely to result in privatisation, the Scottish Socialist Party didn't hesitate to side with the ferry workers and organise support for them. In contrast, the SNP government tried to deny transferring the service to a private company (Serco) would be privatisation, and the SNP TUG squirmed with embarrassing verbal gymnastics about "recognizing the right to strike" and how the strikers were being met by SNP Ministers, but patently failed to unequivocally support the strike. This earned them the stern rebuke of the RMT - a union affiliated to no political party, after being expelled from Labour when they (temporarily) affiliated to the SSP over ten years ago.

RIDING TWO HORSES

So whilst individual SNP members in the unions will have supported the strikers mentioned above, the SNP as a party - and even its Trade Union Group - were prisoners of their own false belief in the common interests of workers and big employers, or of workers and the dictats of the capitalist European Union's directives on privatisation. 

Instead of defying such forces, the SNP tried to straddle two horses, as they charged off in opposite directions. 

In the case of the ferries strike, they only eventually intervened to concede promises on jobs and pensions after being forced to by the tenacity of an escalating strike which threatened to expose the hollowness of their 'social partnership'.

WORKER DIRECTORS

At its more general level, the SNP 'Social Partnership' model includes very seductive sounding proposals of 'worker directors' on company boards - emulating the various versions practiced by 14 out of 28 EU countries - with the White Paper favouring "employee representation to bolster long term decision-making and improve industrial relations."

Compared with the way unions have been cast out into the industrial Siberian steppes by successive Westminster governments, frozen out of all discussion and decisions, this looks like a warm, welcoming hearth fire.

But it's riddled with pitfalls and potential traps.

ATTRACTIONS 

If elected workers' representatives were given access to discussions on employers' plans, that would be a radical breakthrough compared, for instance, with the ruthless dictatorship of capital - in the form of one man! - on display in 2013 at Grangemouth. 

INEOS owner and boss Jim Ratcliffe held the entire Grangemouth workforce, and indeed the Scottish government and people to ransom, shutting down the biggest plant in the country to enforce his union-smashing plans.

If union reps had access to company secret accounts, that would be a huge advantage in protecting workers and communities from the shenanigans of the profiteers.

GAGGED AND BOUND

But in those other countries with 'worker directors', they are usually gagged from speaking about any company secrets, and frequently bound hand and foot to the majority decisions of the boards of directors they have a token place or two on. 

Close to home, that's the situation with so-called worker directors on NHS area boards. They are entirely compromised in the eyes of trade unionists.

And the example lauded in the SNP's White Paper - as a model of 'Worker Directors' enacting their 'social partnership' - was that of First Group, which has had a 'worker director' on its board since the firm's formation in 1989. 

Where the hell was this 'voice of workers' when RMT members on First Scotrail were compelled to stage strikes against savage attacks on their conditions a few years ago? 

I don't recall meeting him on the picket lines, nor hearing him side with the workers he claims to represent in the media. Nor condemning the revelations at the time that the SNP government had underwritten any losses to First Scotrail as a result of strike action. 

Is that what social partnership - and worker directors - amounts to?! 

NOTHING ORIGINAL 

The SNP's belief in Social Partnership is pleasant mood music to the ears of thousands of workers expelled into the wilderness by employers and governments hell-bent on slashing jobs, wages, conditions and public services. 

But it's anything but original, and a slippery road to setbacks for workers and working class communities, which the likes of the STUC would be wise to heed as they (quite rightly) engage with the SNP government and SNP MPs. 

'OLD' LABOUR'S SOCIAL CONTRACT

Back in the days of the 1974-9 Labour government - 'Old Labour', with a powerful trade union influence and sizeable socialist wing in the party - a previous version of this 'social partnership' notion was practiced. 

Called the Social Contract, it was initially popular amongst layers of the lowest-paid workers, as they gained reasonable pay rises in Phase I of this agreement between the tops of the unions, employers and the Wilson/Callaghan Labour government. 

But it faced its own inevitable doom, because whilst the government had the power to control (that is, suppress) workers' wages, it lacked the power to control prices in a capitalist market economy. 

So workers suffered ferocious pay cuts as inflation ripped through the roof; the (left) trade union architects of this Social Contract became discredited as they tried to stop members striking for compensatory pay increases; workers became bitter and confused; Labour was blamed and defeated; and the inglorious butcher of the working class, Maggie Thatcher, won office by default in 1979. 

SOUTH OF IRELAND

More recently, in the South of Ireland, as working people faced decimation to pay for the horrendous crises not of their making, the tops of the trade union movement entered a succession of 'National Agreements' - based on the same 'social partnership' model. This left workers hamstrung in their attempts to resist austerity measures, with jobs and incomes slaughtered on the altar of protecting profit margins and targets on cuts to public expenditure. 

So in contradiction to the seductive sounding alternative to red-in-tooth-and-claw Toryism, the SNP's 'social partnership' will fail to meet the aspirations of the very workers attracted to it right now. 

DEFY OR DESTROY

Under the hammer blows of cuts to the Scottish budget by Westminster, the SNP faces a harsh choice, a real test of whose side they're on: they'll have to either stand up and defy the Tory cuts, refuse to pass them on, and mobilize a mass rebellion of the Scottish people - to demand back the £billions stolen by Westminster - or they'll end up slashing jobs, wages and public services, whilst trying to devolve the blame to local councils, colleges and Health Boards. They'll have to choose to defy or destroy. 

The Tories' ideological crusade to slash the share of wealth going to workers through austerity and privatisation is irreconcilable with the needs of the working class majority population. 

To compromise with them would be to shatter the hopes of those who rejected them, including the masses of Scots who voted SNP. 

Social partnership is an attempt to paper over the chasm between the interests of the working class and the 1% who possess most of the wealth.

SOCIALIST DEMOCRACY 

Of course in an independent socialist Scotland - as fought for by the SSP - elected, accountable workers' representatives should be the majority on workplace committees to control day-to-day operations and conditions.

The majority on the boards of management of nationalized industries and services, and of local cooperatives, should be made up of working class representatives - elected, subject to recall, and paid the average skilled wage.

But that's on the basis of a society where the core of the economy is under democratic public ownership - a world apart from the present setup, where a handful of billionaires, bankers and hedge fund managers control the majority of the economy. 

A socialist Scotland would usher in genuine 'social partnership', where the workers in each industry or service, alongside the wider community, and elected local and national governments, could collaborate for the betterment of the entire population- not the narrow, selfish profit interests of a handful. 

That's the vision of the SSP; a starkly different picture to the SNP's 'social partnership'.