TORIES ADMIT GUILT - BUT CONTINUE INSECURE WORK CRIMES

When is a radical new package of workers’ rights nothing of the kind? When it’s announced by a besieged Tory government, increasingly bombarded by public anger at the horrendous insecurity of jobs and workplace rights in Britain.

Theresa May is today trumpeting a package of measures that her spin doctors describe as “the most radical upgrade of rights at work in a generation”. Let’s look behind the manufactured headlines.

They plan legislation that insists employers issue a “statement of rights” from the first day of a worker’s employment – including what paid leave they are entitled to for illness, maternity and paternity.

Anything that improves transparency in worker’s rights is welcome. But this is a planet apart from what many have fought for: the demand of full employment rights from day one in a job, as opposed to having to wait full two years before having legal rights on things like unfair dismissal – the same Tory government doubled the qualifying period.

The Tories promise to “close a loophole that allows agency workers to be paid less than permanent staff.” A welcome small step, if it refers to hourly rates of pay, but it still does nothing to combat the short-term, crushingly insecure nature of agency work.

Oliver Twist, Tory-style

The new legislation will give workers “the right to request more predicable hours”.

To ‘request’!? This pre-Christmas promise is about as useful as Charles Dickens’ starving child, Oliver Twist, having the right to utter “Please, Sir, I want more”, only to be walloped over the head with the gruel-serving ladle by his over-fed master!

Already, workers have ‘the right to request’ changes in their working shift patterns – but employers have the right to reject that request, and habitually do so, using the catch-all ‘business needs’ excuse.

Crimes Admitted – Without Solutions

This new legislation is an implicit admission that workers’ lives are wracked by the rampant insecurity caused by zero hours contracts, short hours contracts, agency work and the gig economy. But it falls far short of actually tackling these issues.

For instance, the Tories have reiterated the viewpoint of former Tony Blair aide, Matthew Taylor – whose Review on modern working practices they commissioned – that an outright ban on zero hours contracts “would negatively impact more people than it helped.”

This is all part of their deliberate and malicious conflation and confusion of two entirely different things; flexibility and insecurity.

Workers need flexibility, on the likes of starting and finishing times, to cope with the increasingly complex demands of family life, or juggling a job with a college course, for instance. But that’s not provided by the insecure, low-paid jobs that are increasingly the only employment on offer – part-time, short-term, agency, zero hours or short hours contracts.

Ban Zero Hours Contracts

Deliveroo delivery workers at a solidarity protest. [Photo: Craig Maclean]

Zero hours contracts give all the flexibility to the employers, who have workers at their beck and call, sending them home “unwanted” and unpaid on a regular basis, and denying workers shifts for weeks as a punishment if they have the audacity to turn down one shift. And all the insecurity of income, working patterns, denial of access to credit and mortgages, etc, is the lot of workers on this modern epitome of casual labour.

As a major recent survey of 10,500 retail workers by my own union, Usdaw, confirmed, this insecurity of income and lifestyle is the root cause of a galloping epidemic of mental ill health.

Real Protection – With Real Flexibility

Instead of token gestures about “the right to request more predictable hours” we need real, radical legislation to guarantee every worker the right to a minimum working week of 16 hours, if they want it, as pioneered by my own party, the SSP, and now my own union, Usdaw – and as agreed unanimously as policy at the recent TUC congress.

That would mean outright abolition of zero hours contracts. It would help eradicate the criminal situation where a full one million workers are only in part-time jobs because they can’t get the full-time job they actually want. It would erase the startling fact that – by the Tory government’s own admission – 400,000 workers regularly work 6 hours a week or less. And it would confront the atrocity that sums up the modern curse of underemployment, governments can boast of record levels of employment: but the Office of National Statistics counts anyone working a minimum of one hour a week as being employed!

Unionise and Organise for Guaranteed 16-hour Minimum Week

And legislation guaranteeing a minimum week of 16 hours to all workers who want it would also offer genuine flexibility; as the policy Motion I put forward at the 2018 Usdaw national conference put it, the 16-hour minimum would apply “except where a worker, accompanied by their union representative, requests less hours”. That’s also the wording of the Motion we successfully submitted from Usdaw at the British TUC.

Workers in the burgeoning sector of insecure work, in its various forms, would be wise not to rely on the Tories’ false claims of providing protection. Instead, they need the collective protection of being in a union, and in turn the unions need to get stuck into fighting for implementation of the policies adopted at union and TUC conferences.

This latest Tory announcement amounts to an admission of guilt, but without any real plans to end their crimes against workers.

As ‘the Good Book’ might put it, the sinner hath sinned, but repenteth not!

SCOTTISH GOVERNMENT & COUNCILS: DEFEND UNIONS - DEFY CUTS

Fury at the implications of the Tory Trade Union Bill is already erupting, and pushing politicians in Scotland into very welcome promises not to comply with some of the measures it contains.

Three of the numerous assaults on workers' civil and trade union rights are: removal of the 42-year-old ban on using agency staff to replace strikers; and dictatorial powers for Westminster to over-rule agreements between recognized unions and Scottish public authorities - the Scottish government, councils, NHS Boards, etc - to deduct union fees at source (the 'check off' system), and grant facility time for workplace union reps to deal with members' issues. 

COUNCILS OPPOSE TRADE UNION BILL

The tide of opposition to this - in part expressed through Jeremy Corbyn's astonishing election - plus the organised efforts of trade unionists through the STUC, has led to several councils declaring their opposition to these measures, some pledging not to enact them. 

The new Labour leader of Glasgow City Council, Frank McAveetey, has promised not to implement the attacks on check-off and union facility time, as have Falkirk council, and now the Labour-SNP coalition running Edinburgh council.

The latter passed a Motion, by 44 votes to 11, that includes the clause "Commits not to use agency staff to break or weaken industrial action", and ends with "Our resolve not to cooperate with any attacks on facility time or check off". 

At an STUC forum for trade unionists on fighting the Bill, in late August, the STUC announced plans to call for defiance of these measures by all public bodies in Scotland, rightly denouncing such a dictatorial interference by Westminster. 

They've since written to councils, NHS Boards and the Scottish government calling for this stance, and spoken at a meeting of all SNP MPs this week. 

DEFY LEGAL THREATS

The Scottish government has made the very welcome commitment to retain check off and facility time within employment areas they directly control. 

This welcome step needs to be made into a clear, immovable determination to resist and defy any legal challenges from Westminster, which the Bill outrageously empowers them to throw at councils or Holyrood. Firm defiance, not just verbal condemnation, is the order of the day, given the scale of attacks.

To prove that irony isn't dead - and to underline the need for the unions to link the campaign to defend the right to strike with opposition to austerity cuts - just as Edinburgh city council passed their welcome pledge of resistance to the Tory Bill, it was revealed the same council plans to slash 3,000 council jobs over the next four years. One in six of all workers to go - a devastating escalation of the announcement of 1,200 job losses the council made in January. 

DEFY TORY CUTS TOO!

By way of a reminder that whilst unions must demand defiance of attacks on union rights by all councils and the Scottish government, we also need to take action to force them to defy Tory budget cuts, Edinburgh council's SNP finance convener Alasdair Rankin had this to say: 

"The council has been very clear about the scale of the financial challenge facing us for years. The city's population is growing and demand for council services is higher than ever."

Excuse me, but a rising population and increased demand for services surely argues for MORE services, not fewer? And in the real world, surely every job lost is a service cut?

The SNP councillor then added:

"We need to make very substantial savings... No-one ever said this was going to be easy... Realistically, to make the necessary savings, we have little option but to reduce the number of people who work for the council."

Who says the 'savings' - savage cuts! - are necessary? The Tories. But surely SNP (and Labour) councillors were elected on an anti-Tory ticket? What about the 'option' of doing what the SNP hammered on about during several recent elections, by 'Standing up for Scotland'?

The power of the unions needs to lead massive protests to pound and embolden the same politicians who've begun to pledge opposition to Tory anti-union measures into also standing up to Tory cuts, by refusing to pass them on, setting No Cuts Defiance Budgets at both Scottish government and local council levels. 

They'd win enormous popular support for such a courageous stand against a Tory dictatorship hellbent on wiping out workers' rights so as to obliterate jobs and services.

BETTER TO BREAK BAD LAWS THAN THE BACKS OF WORKERS!

In an ancient ritual harking back to medieval times, the unelected monarch delivers the Queen's Speech on behalf of a Tory government elected by only 24.4 per cent of all eligible voters. And in the case of Scotland, a government supported by a minuscule 10.5 per cent of registered voters! 

But the Queen's Speech is saturated with hellish plans to butcher benefits, wipe out workers' rights and slaughter services - class warfare on the millions by a government of the millionaires with no mandate.

That perfectly captures the undemocratic nature of capitalist rule through Westminster. It truly is Tory dictatorship. And it must be defied by a united mass movement of resistance, or generations to come will suffer the consequences.

NO TORY MANDATE

Osborne could not stop the smirks as anti-union measures announced by unelected monarch 

With callous disregard for the facts, David Cameron declares: "We have a mandate from the British people, a clear manifesto and the instruction to deliver. We will not waste a single moment in getting on with the task".

They plan to forge ahead with a blitzkrieg on workers' rights, human rights, and the incomes of millions already struggling to survive.

Scrapping the Human Rights Act threatens the attempts by tenants to challenge the brutal Bedroom Tax, which of course will continue, with rumours of the bills being increased.

Extending the Right to Buy to housing associations will add another twist to the spiraling housing crisis, as the best public sector stock is sold off and virtually no new social sector homes for affordable rent are built, especially as Westminster slashes funding to local authorities.

Shameless, racist measures designed to whip up division amongst the victims of Tory rule include new immigration laws that amount to 'deport now, appeal later' - which in many cases would mean appealing against deportation after death in the war-torn countries people have fled from.

WORKERS' BENEFITS TARGETED 

The core of the Tories' class warfare is directed at the working class majority population. A blitz on benefits and wipeout of workers' rights.

Of their total £30billion cuts, an additional £12billion butchery of benefits is planned. And even the far-from-socialist Institute of Fiscal Studies has analyzed these plans, concluding that it will especially be the working poor, particularly those with children, who will suffer the most severely.

Reigns over us: Benefits scrounger announces measures to impoverish the rest of us...

They point out that the much-trumpeted benefits cap, being cut from £26,000 to £23,000 for a household, will hammer families with several children and high rents, cutting about 24,000 families' incomes by £3,000 a year. 

But as fewer than 100,000 families across the UK will be impacted, this will only meet about £0.1billion of the Tories' total £12bn target, leaving far greater numbers prey to their assault.

A TORY SLAUGHTER OF THE INNOCENTS

Abolition of housing benefits to jobseekers aged 18-21 may therefore be extended to all those under 25; an outrageous attack on those starting out in life.

As Tax Credits (£30billion a year) and Housing Benefits (£26billion a year) make up more than half of all 'unprotected' public spending, and Disability and Incapacity Benefits a further third of the total, the IFS rightly forecasts that the bulk of the cuts will target these people.

"Of COURSE I care..." 

As they put it, "About 80 per cent of entitlements to benefits go to working age families, and a large majority of these benefits are means-tested, so it will be very difficult to avoid hitting low-income families - especially those with children - hardest." And they add that 75 per cent of benefits go to families in the bottom half of incomes.

Maybe for us that is stating the bleedin' obvious, but it underlines the tsunami of cuts about to hit the working class and poorest, unless we build mass resistance.

Slashing the numbers entitled to Carers' Allowances by 40 per cent; cutting £3.8billion off Tax Credits, by hounding part-time workers with impossible new targets on additional hours of work; slaughtering an estimated 1.3 million public sector jobs by 2019: these are some of the appalling measures leaked out before Her Majesty even got round to announcing the Tory Butchers' plans for the people who never gave them a mandate.

SMASHING THE UNIONS 

Pivotal to this class warfare are plans to virtually abolish trade union rights. The government that won a grand total of 36 per cent of all votes cast, and a mere 24.4 per cent of eligible voters, is imposing rules that demand a 50 per cent turnout and support from at least 40 per cent of all eligible voters before a union can take any form of legal industrial action in defence of jobs, services or workers' rights.

"Cut, cut, cut! More, more more!"

So in a workforce of 200, at least 100 would have to vote, and at least 80 of them vote for the action - an almost impossible set of hurdles designed to stop effective resistance by the organisations that are the first and last line of defence for workers - their unions.

Their manifesto homed in on introducing the 40 per cent threshold first in "those essential services - health, education, fire and transport"; services they regard as far from essential as they slash their funding! But of course they will spread their legal poison to every sector if they get away with it in the 'essential services'.

CONSCRIPTING SCABS

On top of that, the Tory election manifesto made it brutally plain what to expect if workers dare defy their dictatorship, which is the dictatorship of capital, of the rich, in pursuit of profit maximization at terrible human cost. To quote the Tory statement of intent: 

"We will repeal nonsensical restrictions banning employers from hiring agency staff to provide essential cover during strikes."

So they plan to scrap the current ban on use of Agency workers to scab on strikes, so they can conscript desperate and insecure people into further undermining fellow workers' wages, jobs and conditions.

"The plebs haven't caught us ... yet!"

BUILD 20 JUNE DEMO

The Tory dictatorship must not be allowed to walk all over us. A massive campaign of resistance needs to be mounted, in the parliament, in the workplaces, on the streets, in our communities. 

It is therefore extremely good news that the Scottish TUC has called the 'Scotland United Against Austerity' mass demo in Glasgow on Saturday 20 June - an idea the SSP pushed for from the day after the election outcome. We all need to build that into a mammoth show of unity against all forms of cuts and attacks on workers' rights.

BUILD MASS DEFIANCE

And it needs to become the platform to launch an ongoing resistance. 

This to include a concerted demand for powers over the minimum wage to be devolved to Scotland so we can fight for a Scottish £10 minimum wage for all over 16, with equal pay for women. 

A campaign to win devolution of powers over employment laws, so as to repeal the lot and usher in a Charter of Workers' Rights instead. 

A campaign to win power for Holyrood over business taxes - but not so as to reduce taxation of big business, as the SNP wish, but to restore Corporation Tax to its 50 per cent pre-Thatcher level, as demanded by the SSP.

BREAK BAD LAWS

Whilst fighting for such powers to protect the Scottish working class from Tory dictatorship, the STUC and union leaderships also need to square up to the fact that submission to the anti-union laws means accepting literal destitution and starvation for big sections of working class people. The unions literally wouldn't exist if our predecessors had meekly accepted the 'laws of the land', written and imposed by an upper-class minority hell-bent on squeezing the last drop of profit and privilege for themselves out of the sweated labour of the real wealth-creators.

Nobody would light-mindedly hand over union assets - accumulated from workers' union subs - but unless union leaders are prepared to defy these anti-union laws, workers will have no chance. It's better to break bad anti-union laws than allow the Tories and profiteering employers to break the backs of workers.

Join the SSP in defiance of Tory dictatorship. Help build the STUC demo on 20 June. Resolve to resist the slaughter of jobs, services, benefits and workers' rights by a government with no popular mandate to rule and ruin. 

United in determined action we can defeat the Tory dictators.