INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY: striking for equality

Strathclyde UCU women picket one of the shiny vanity buildings 

As we celebrate International Women's Day, education workers in 74 universities are striking on what they call Four Fights, which includes the demand for an end to a massive average 15% gender pay gap across Higher Education.

I discussed the significance of this action with ROISIN McGOLDRICK, UCU member and regular picket at Strathclyde University.  
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You will be striking around International Women's Day. What do you feel about that? 

I think it's really important for women to participate in industrial action. Especially this year, when Strathclyde university organised a series of events over the whole week.  

They knew when they were doing this that we would be on strike. 

It seems hypocritical of them to organise events about women's confidence, self-esteem and social progression when there is a 19.8% gender pay gap in Strathclyde University.  

What's been the union's response? 

We've tried to raise awareness at every event, that what people are hearing from the platform is sugar coating on a very bitter pill in the 21st century. 

Bosses have declared it a 'socially progressive University'?? 

What issues have you particularly raised awareness of?

The pay gap - which doesn't just affect gender, but also our Black and Minority Ethnic colleagues, and colleagues with disabilities. 

One of the biggest issues for me is precarious contracts. 

The university benefits hugely from the goodwill of staff both on permanent contracts and those who aspire to be on a permanent contract and thus give many, many more hours than they are paid for, with absolutely no job security. 

To the outside world, it looks like University staff are really quite well paid. But if you take that top line and look at hours and hours of work beyond the nominal 35 hours that most people do, that very generous pay starts to look somewhat meagre. 

Could you elaborate on examples and causes of the gender pay gap?

The university promotions structure looks as if it's very systematic and with lots of criteria. 

But it's unique, in that people put themselves forward for promotion. 

It's not that you get promotion because you are doing a job that carries more responsibility. 

And we know that women tend to take on more responsibility and support colleagues, and are less likely to seek rewards for things they would see as simple collegiality. 

It's the system where you have to put yourself forward and that comes from a place "I did", "I led" and so on, that's the pronoun - whereas women tend to see it as "We", as teamwork and doing things in tandem with colleagues.  

There are big contradictions. I work in a department - Social Work and Social Policy -  where we have five women professors, all of whom have been on the picket line at some point. 

Their male counterparts in Social Policy are not participating in this action, despite researching inequality, health policy and social justice. 

Why do you think that's happening?

Partly the career structures at universities. These men have an eye on what's next and wouldn't want to impact on their career prospects. They may have more sophisticated explanations, but I think that's at the heart of it. 

It's a very archaic system of promotions, designed by men, for men. 

For example, the graduation for Humanities and Social Sciences, with 85% of graduates being women. The graduation address talked about engineering, buildings, successful entrepreneurship and business partnerships. 

Despite the fact the vast majority of these young graduates were going to work in public services, education and social work - that is, to educate the engineers and others, and contribute to the wellbeing of the entrepreneurs - their contribution was overlooked, ignored. 

The balance of that has changed slightly in the last two years, because of the volume of protest from the academics. 

Striking for her future 

How does this fight against the gender pay gap tie in with the broader strike, involving both male and female trade unionists? 

Usually when people go on strike it's for one reason. UCU have taken the bold step of combining four issues. 

It's not all about pay, or pensions, but about our overall working conditions.  

And students can see that our working conditions are their learning conditions, which has become their mantra. 

If they have staff who are well rested, well rewarded, well engaged, they'll get a better deal, including pastoral care of students. 

How is the strike going?

It's evident from conversations that people who are not on the picket line are anxious, some embarrassed, some genuinely afraid if being on the pickets will lose jobs or mean they'll be discriminated against. 

Our intention is to show that solidarity with their colleagues gives them the strength to resist such bullying and intimidation. 

It's a really hard thing to do, to take strike action, with significant consequences.

The blatant unfairness of the current position means I won't stand by and say that's OK, because it's not OK.

We are in it to win it! 

STUC CONGRESS: PREPARE WORKERS TO WIN!

The 122nd annual Congress of the STUC assembles in Dundee as the noise surrounding Brexit drowns out the cries of workers for justice, security and equality.

With 39 affiliated trade unions, organising a total of 550,000 union members, the Scottish TUC has the potential to coordinate action around an entirely different vision of society, where the needs of millions in society replace the greed of a few thousand shareholders.

But to fulfil that potential requires a determination to take the vast array of progressive policies agreed by Congress delegates out to the workplaces and onto the streets, consciously engaging and mobilising workers in collective action.

This is not just a socialist pipedream. The theme of the STUC Congress is “Organising and Winning", with absolutely justified celebration of the recent victory by Glasgow's Equal Pay strikers.

This is a salutary example of how, after years of blockage by the Labour council and hesitancy by some of the unions, followed by foot-dragging by the SNP council, a campaign of conscious involvement of the women workers themselves unleashed an unstoppable force.
The magnificent 8,000-strong strike last October, and the heroic solidarity action by male cleansing workers, in bold defiance of anti-union legislation, forced the council into action, at a cost of £500million.

Equal Pay Strike & Teachers’ Victories

Other recent examples of the potential power of workers taking action, once a bit of leadership is given and members imbued with clear goals and events to mobilise around, include the EIS school teachers’ pay victory, and that of Home Care workers in Dundee city council.
Once the EIS had resolved to demand a 10 per cent pay rise, as part-compensation for a 24 per cent loss over 8 years, a systematic plan of school-based meetings empowered EIS members who had reached breaking point with pay cuts, work overload and stunted job prospects.
In turn, the mobilisation of up to 30,000 on their national demo both reflected the determination and added to it, laying the foundations for successive rejections of several ‘final’ offers from COSLA and the Scottish government, winning the concession of over 14 per cent over three years, on the eve of an actual strike ballot.

More recently, sustained campaigning by the joint unions, and then an overwhelming vote for strike action against the SNP-run Dundee city council, has forced them to abandon plans to impose either split shifts or pay cuts of £4,500 (through reduced hours) on home care staff. Another important victory for workers organising themselves for action.

The profoundly simple lessons of these and other struggles need to be applied by the STUC and its affiliates, if we are to avoid the vast variety of progressive policies being passed but then left to gather dust in union offices, or to merely use up digital space on union HQ computers.
That applies to issues immediately arising from Brexit, as well as a broad spectrum of issues in our workplaces, communities and entire society.

We Won't Pay for Brexit!

We are all too familiar with the cynical spin-doctor’s line about it being ‘a good day for bad news’. Brexit has been a good three years for bad news, with the cacophony of squabbles between different wings and factions of the capitalist class and their political parties distracting our attention whilst they slaughter workers’ rights, public services, benefits and jobs.

The STUC will debate Motions demanding defence of the rights and conditions of workers – including migrant workers – in the wake of Brexit. We need to loudly declare ‘We won’t pay for Brexit!’
Other Motions rightly demand that exit from the EU and its pro-privatisation regulations should be an opportunity to abolish contract tendering for the likes of Scotland’s ferries, and for permanent public ownership of our railways – as opposed to the Scottish government's continued preference for leasing the service out to the chaotic Abellio.

As capitalist profiteering – aided and abetted by the excuse of Brexit – leads to growing job losses and closures, we should support the calls for an industrial strategy that would create jobs and vastly enhance housing, transport, retail and energy.
It’s not good enough to rely on Scottish government Task Forces - usually designed to smooth the path of closures and redundancies, as seen at BiFab and Springburn Rail Depot.
All experience shows this requires democratic public ownership of the giants currently bestriding the economy; otherwise we will continue to witness private profit ruling and ruining people.

Public Ownership & Green Jobs

Likewise, public ownership of all energy sectors, including renewables - alongside transport, construction and the banks – is the prerequisite for job-creating measures that simultaneously tackle the life-threatening climate chaos.
A Just Transition to ‘green jobs' – including through a defence industry diversification plan – is at the heart of what’s required to save both people and planet. Pleading with the profiteers won’t work; nor will praying for peace between rival capitalist powers, who preside over a world wracked by wars and ethnic civil wars.

The STUC should enthusiastically support the Motions demanding an end to austerity, reversal of public sector pay cuts, and for the Scottish government and local councils to set No Cuts budgets, spearheading mobilisations of trade unionists and communities to win back some of the billions stolen by successive Westminster governments; butchery in turn passed on by Holyrood.
Serious struggles to win collective bargaining rights is equally important to reversing the theft of wages, rights and conditions across all sectors.

Sign the Online Petition HERE - TODAY!

£10 Now & Guaranteed Minimum 16-Hours Contracts

One of the pivotal policies that the entire trade union movement should unite in action around is being proposed at the STUC by my own union, Usdaw: an immediate minimum wage of £10-an-hour, regardless of age; guaranteed minimum 16-hour contracts for all workers who want them; and the legal right to contract hours based on actual hours worked – abolishing zero hours contracts.

In reality, the £10 minimum agreed by the TUC almost 5 years ago is rapidly falling behind a genuine living wage, with at least 14 per cent inflation since, which is why Usdaw (in our forthcoming annual conference document) calls for £10 as the immediate minimum, “rising with either inflation or average wages, whichever is greater”.
Alongside calls for more systematic action on equal pay for women workers, these fighting demands could and should be used to engage, motivate and mobilise workers into action.

Workers Need Socialism

Underlying the wide-ranging policies being debated at STUC is the urgent need for root and branch transformation of the entire system we live under.
Every specific demand for action points to the need for democratic public ownership and control of industries and services, if workers are not to remain enslaved by the pursuit of maximum profit by those in power. In one word, it demands socialism.
That won’t be gifted to us by the capitalist class, nor by parties married to the mis-named 'free enterprise' economy.
It won’t be achieved by resting on our laurels after agreeing transformative policies at STUC Congress.
It requires consciously-led mass action around achieving those policies, rooted in an understanding that we are engaged in a struggle between opposing classes.

We need to prepare workers at every level for what is at stake.
If we fail to prepare, we have to prepare to fail!
With a socialist vision of the future, and key fighting policies to mobilise around, pockets of struggle in recent times prove that we can organise to win. The alternative is too horrendous to contemplate, regardless of the details around Brexit.

CAPITALISM ROBS WORKERS: profit plunders pay

Capitalism creates the Great Class Divide

We may as well live on two separate planets, given the grotesque and growing divide between the rich elite and the rest of us.

This week a media flurry erupted over the crash on the world's Stock Exchanges, starting with the US, then Asia and Europe.

The prime explanation given by apologists for the system we live and work under was something like this: recent US economic reports showed wage growth, which will boost spending power, so companies will feel empowered to jack up prices in the face of increased demand, thereby fueling inflation, which will pressurize the authorities to put up interest rates... so shareholders are dumping their shares.

Of course, the upper-class casino that is the stock market bears little relationship to the real world and the real economy - except that panic in the Stock Exchanges can spread panic amongst capitalist investors and thereby lead to slashing of jobs for workers in the real world.  

Two Planets 

What crazy system do we suffer, whereby working people being able to buy a bit more becomes a problem? The system based on profit for the few, through robbery of the unpaid labour of workers by employers; that's the lunacy at large. 

  

The system where, globally, the richest 1% grabbed 82% of all the new wealth created last year. The system where a year ago 68 billionaires owned as much personal wealth as half the globe's entire population - 3.6 billion humans. But this year the concentration of wealth has accelerated further: now a mere 61 gluttons of greed match the incomes of the poorest 3.6 billion people. That's beyond obscene. 

DPD courier driver Don Lane, with his wife Ruth. 

Profiteering Kills Workers 

The same week that frenzied selling of shares on the Stock Exchange hit the headlines, a terrible tragedy of exploitation at work didn't make much media coverage, even though it captures much of what is rotten and unequal about the world we live in. 

We have often spoken and written that the capitalist employers use fear as their weapon of choice when it comes to squeezing every last penny of profit out of workers' labour. Nothing confirms this more than the tragic case of Don Lane, a DPD courier driver in Dorset, who died of diabetes last week at the young age of 53.

As his devastated wife Ruth explained, Don had collapsed four times at work in the space of a year, and just prior to his untimely death had been sick and coughing blood, but still went into work. Why? In Ruth's words, "Because he feared being fined." 

Don had skipped numerous hospital appointments with kidney specialists after being previously fined £150 for missing a day's work to attend the hospital. When he wrote appealing for the fine to be rescinded, the parcel delivery firm's area manager refused, writing "I fail to understand why a full day off was required." 

Out of fear of being fined - or even fired - Don missed several subsequent medical appointments. Ruth added: "He would never get breaks and they'd get told off if they missed their time slots for parcel deliveries." 

This outrageous inhumanity is all too indicative of the cruel exploitation for profit - at terrible cost to workers' health - that fuels the system and its capitalist owners' profits.

Recent reports confirm fewer days are now taken off sick in the UK than at any time since 1990. We all witness the workers dragging themselves into work when they should be in their sick-bed (if only to keep their germs away from the rest of us!), from fear of being disciplined under sick absence policy, or simply because they can't afford the loss of wages. 

Tesco: boss on £4.1m - 40,000 jobs cut & deprive women workers of £4bn

Demand Equal Pay for Women 

The double oppression of working-class women is another source of super-profits for big business, and always has been a feature of this class-ridden system. That includes unequal pay for work of equal value.

The big supermarkets are amongst the culprits, adding to the gender pay gap. As well as collective claims in ASDA and Sainsbury's, Tesco now faces legal action on an equal pay claim that could cost them up to £4billion. Put the right way round, that's the amount they've deprived women workers in their shops of, by paying shop assistants about £8-an-hour compared with £11-an-hour to predominantly male distribution centre workers. Both contribute to the accumulation of profit - including the Tesco group sales of £49.9billion last year alone!

It's by robbing all workers - but their female staff even more so - that Tesco's Chief Executive Officer enjoyed a personal income last year of £4.1million! That's his reward - to himself! - for slashing 40,000 Tesco jobs since he took over in 2014.

The fight for equal pay is an integral part of the struggle to end capitalist exploitation. 

Bad Jobs Recovery 

A new, comprehensive report from the European Trade Union Institute, on what's called the Jobs Quality Index, confirms what experience already teaches most of us. Compared with 2005, and despite the feeble economic recovery after the 2008 financial crash, there's been a generalized decline in the quality of jobs across the EU's 28 member states, plus wage stagnation. One of the many features identified is the explosion of temporary contracts, zero hours contracts, and deep-rooted job insecurity. 

Importantly, the report highlights how, in general, higher density of trade union membership and collective worker representation correlates to better wages, improved skills training and career development, and better overall working conditions. And this research also buries the lie that we have to choose between more jobs and more in our wages. Nations with better pay (after adjustments for prices through Purchasing Power Parity) also generally have a better record of creating jobs. 

But the galloping growth of insecure work and underemployment has not abated, even in nations where the economy has grown in economic output (GDP). Is it any wonder the report is entitled "Bad Jobs Recovery"? 

Zero Hours Wage Robbery

In this country, at least a million workers suffer the horrendous stress and insecurity of being hired on zero hours contracts. It's no accident that a report last year showed young people on these super-exploitative schemes were 50% more likely to suffer mental health problems than their counterparts in more secure work. Nor should it be forgotten that, as research in 2017 proved, those on zero hours contracts suffer an average £1,000 less in wages than workers in permanent jobs with similar backgrounds, skills and job roles. 

Alongside short hour contracts, the 7-year public sector pay cap, and the use of the blunt instrument of fear of the sack, zero hours contracts are one of the means by which wages have been systematically slashed as a share of overall national wealth. Methods by which wages for workers in this country have stagnated and fallen at the worst rate since the Napoleonic Wars, 200 years ago! 

Mass Underemployment 

Mass unemployment was the curse of the working class in the 1980s and 1990s - consciously inflicted by Maggie Thatcher and the parasitic financial wing of the capitalist class. Mass underemployment is its modern equivalent, with at least 3.3 million workers crying out for more contract hours - including the wish to move from part-time to full-time - but unable to get them, as employers rely instead on a pool of workers they can have at their beck and call... according to fluctuating 'business needs'. 

And this week's Westminster legislation on the issue of 'good work' offers absolutely no protection to workers, and a lot of loopholes that protect employers' ruthless profiteering. Following the advice of Lord Taylor's Report, they are keeping zero hours contracts, with the hackneyed excuse that people need flexible working. And instead of wiping out bogus self-employment scams in the 'gig economy', the Tories are providing get-out clauses to the exploiters through a new category of 'dependent contractors' - which still prevents those who in real life are employed workers from being entitled to at least the legal minimum wage, paid holidays and sick pay. 

My USDAW NEC election poster

For Guaranteed Minimum 16-hour Contracts 

That's why the pioneering policy of a guaranteed minimum 16-hour contract for all who want it is so timely. In the past month, I've been waging a campaign for election to the National Executive Council of my union, Usdaw. Visiting scores of workplaces, and broadcasting campaign videos, I highlighted, in particular, my determination to help lead the battles for an immediate £10 minimum wage for all over 16 - rising with inflation, with equal pay for women - and replacement of zero hours and pitifully short hours contracts with a guaranteed 16 hours. 

Concretely, that employers should be legally obliged to offer at least 16-hour contracts, with the only exception being where a worker - accompanied by their union rep, to prevent any skulduggery - requests lesser hours. And alongside that, I've fought for the legal right of all workers to be offered higher contract hours after working more than their contract for 13 weeks. Those two measures would wipe out the galloping disease of casualisation, but give workers the power to be flexible. 

Workers' eyes lit up at the mention of these points. Numerous retail workers in every conceivable firm said they'd vote for me on that basis alone. Regardless of whether I get elected to the Usdaw NEC to represent our 45,000 Scottish members, the issues have been broadcast; the awareness of these simple, hard-hitting, far-reaching alternatives broadened. 

Lessons from Germany 

We need every union to take up the cudgels around these fighting demands. Such measures would begin to reverse the vicious spiral of insecure contracts, accompanying poverty pay, which lowers spending power, adding to job scarcity and insecurity. 

And if the union leaderships showed the bottle to organise and inspire workers to take action for these immediate reforms in the way we work - and the way wealth is distributed - it would infinitely strengthen the unions' collective strength, helping to seriously challenge the rotten, unequal, profit-crazed system of inbuilt exploitation that is capitalism. 

Further proof of this vision can be currently spotted in Germany. The economy has grown - but of course, as in other countries, that's no guarantee of improvement for workers' living standards. It takes determined, collective action to win a share of the increased wealth for the one productive class in society - the working class. Germany's biggest union, IG Metall, has just won massive concessions for nearly a million members in the metal and engineering sector, after staging a series of 24-hour strikes. They fought for a pay rise and won 4.3%. They also demanded a 28-hour week, and originally demanded this should be with little or no cut to the earnings from the current 35-hour week. Unfortunately, the deal reached accepts the employers' demand that reduction to a 28-hour week also involves an equivalent cut to pay. But for workers who want a shorter working week, this is a significant breakthrough, achieved through the power of union strike action.

Join the fight for an immediate 35-hour maximum working week

Cuts Hours of Work - With No Loss of Pay 

Learning from this, unions in Scotland should not only step up to the plate and wage a serious fight for an immediate minimum of at least £10-an-hour, and a guaranteed 16-hour week, but also for a shorter working week - to share out the work and slash the drudgery and overwork that many suffer. Millions of workers are suffering back-breaking, mind-breaking long hours of work - simply to survive, as hourly wage rates fall or stagnate compared with rising inflation on the daily necessities of life for working-class families. 

But crucially, a shorter working week shouldn't be on the basis of equivalent pay cuts. We should demand an across-the-board maximum working week of 35 hours now - rapidly moving to a 4-day week and 6-hour day - without a penny in loss of earnings. 

Maximum Working Week

As well as sharing out the work, and improving work/life balance, this would free up time for workers to actively participate in the democratic functioning of their communities and workplaces - for the first time in history! And a shorter working week without loss of earnings would also radically redistribute the wealth - created by workers' combined efforts in the first place - from profits to pay.

The unions have a duty to make the clarion call for action, demanding "Cut hours and profits - not pay or jobs!" 

EQUAL PAY DAY - MIND THE GAP!

Women work for nothing from 10 November to 31 December this year!!

Today is Equal Pay Day.

In my book Break the Chains, I wrote:

"The Fawcett Society's August 2014 research claimed that by 2013 shortfall [the gender pay gap -RV] had risen again for the first time in five years, to a staggering 19.1%. That's the equivalent of a workplace where full-time male workers are paid all year round, but female workers work for free from about 22 October!"

Since that was published, the Fawcett Society calculates the annual date equivalent to when women cease to be paid for the rest of the calendar year, due to the gender gap in pay.

This year it is today, 10th November - which has remained unchanged since 2015. It's due to their calculation that for every £1 men earn, women get just 86p.

So alongside fighting for an immediate, legally enforced £10-an-hour minimum wage for all from the age of 16, I and the SSP are proud to persistently demand equal pay for women. And to unite with the women battling for equality, as for example described in this blog I wrote recently - Women Workers Demand Equality.

WOMEN WORKERS DEMAND EQUALITY

Women workers are battling for equality at work on several fronts.

A succession of protest demos have been staged by members of Unison and GMB unions at Glasgow city council, demanding immediate action on Pay Justice by the new SNP council. 

Women working for the council and its arms-length offshoots (ALEOs) have fought for equal pay for equal work for the past 12 years. They are demanding an end to the outrageous pay gap, mostly derived from some occupations being treated as 'women's work' - such as homecare, cleaning, administration, schools, libraries and catering. With this gendered branding comes lower grades and lower pay.

Decade of Delay 

A Single Status Agreement was signed between Scottish councils and unions about 11 years ago, supposedly guaranteeing an end to this discrimination, by unifying grades for equal skills, regardless of gender.

Disgracefully, over a decade of union struggle has been required to force councils to implement this. 

Many workers due compensation have since died, or moved out of jobs with the council, as the lawyers rake in fees from legal wrangling by councils. 

There are still over 27,000 Scottish council workers with unresolved claims for equal pay, and compensation for historic daylight robbery. The outstanding bill is estimated to be £750million. 90% of the workers involved are women.

Glasgow city council makes up a huge share of this pay gap: 11,000 workers still owed a total of about £500million! 
The previous Labour council scandalously dragged its feet, dodged paying up, using countless legal delaying tactics. 

Labour - now SNP - Delaying Tactics

In last May's council elections, the SNP made a big play of their promises to immediately implement equal pay, and won considerable voters' support through this. 

The Unison and GMB demos have been demanding 'No Delay, Equal Pay', now the SNP have been in charge a clear six months. 

Alarmingly, after their manifesto promises to the contrary, the SNP council has still not taken any concrete steps to speed up payment of this scandalous debt to workers. In fact, the one and only step so far by the SNP administration has been to seek 'leave to appeal' against the Supreme Court ruling in favour of equal pay settlements, in the case pursued by Unison on behalf of their 6,000 members amongst the 11,000 city council and ALEOs staff involved. Different political party, more delaying tactics!

Some of the key messages from the women leading the lobbies of the council recently are that equal pay should mean equalizing upwards, not downwards - raising the pay of women-dominated jobs, not cutting the pay of male-dominated sectors. 

Likewise, that equal pay should not be funded out of job losses or cuts to services - including to the (often vulnerable) clients many of them provide lifeline services to. 

Demand No Cuts Budgets 

This raises the issue consistently fought for by the SSP: the demand that both the Scottish government and all 32 local councils should refuse to pass on funding cuts issued by Westminster or Holyrood. To instead set No Cuts Budgets and join workers and communities in a massive campaign to win back some of the £billions stolen off Scotland and local communities by successive central governments, to fund equal pay, expanded services, and job security. 

March of the Mummies

Meantime, on Halloween, a set of women workers used a humorous means to deliver a deadly serious message. The March of the Mummies, in several UK cities including Glasgow, saw women marching in bloody bandages like the 'walking dead' version of mummies, demanding an end to the discrimination and mistreatment at work suffered by pregnant women and new mothers. 

The 2015 Report by the Equality and Human Rights Commission discovered one in nine new mothers said they had been forced out of their job due to pregnancy; an appalling total of 54,000 a year. 

An astonishing 77% of working mothers reported negative or discriminatory treatment by their employers. 

A full 40% of employers had the gall to admit they would avoid hiring a woman of childbearing age. All this in the 21st century!

Pregnant then Screwed 

The March of the Mummies was organised by campaign group 'Pregnant then Screwed', which helps women tell their stories of pregnancy and maternity discrimination, and campaigns for a package of measures currently being pushed as an Early Day Motion at Westminster. 

These demands include extension of the time limit for raising Employment Tribunal discrimination cases from 3 months to at least 6 months. A demand entirely justified by the fact only 1% of women facing such discrimination have pursued Tribunal cases - in part, no doubt, because 80% of women in a survey by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists admitted to having had at least one mental health episode during or immediately after pregnancy.   

The campaigners are also demanding 6 weeks paternity leave for Dads, on 90% salary; a requirement that employers report how many Flexible Working requests were made and how many granted; extension of statutory shared parental pay to the self-employed; and state subsidies for childcare from the age of 6 months, instead of the current 3 years. 

SSP Demand Equality

The SSP has a proud record of demanding and campaigning for equal pay for women; at least 12 months' maternity and one month's paternity leave, on 100% of pay; and a massive investment in free pre-school nurseries and workplace crèches. 

The trade unions should take up these issues vigorously, and demand changes to the feeble employment laws that guarantee the right to apply for flexible working, but with absolutely no guarantee of getting it, when employers merely have to say 'No' on the flimsiest grounds of 'business needs'. 

WIN INDEPENDENCE FOR WORKERS' RIGHTS: don't rely on EU bosses bearing gifts!

The SNP government's declaration of a second Referendum, including its timing - and the brutal, dictatorial response of unelected Tory Prime Minister, Theresa May - has framed the whole debate about independence around EU membership and Brexit. 

As the Scottish Greens, rightly, help the SNP vote for Indy Ref2 in the Scottish parliament, they both - wrongly - make Brexit and membership of the EU and its Single Market the centrepiece of the case for Scottish independence.

Socialists unequivocally support Scottish independence - but not as a means of making life more comfortable, more obscenely profitable for the capitalist elite, whether home-grown or multinational.

We want to win independence as a means to end Tory dictatorship from Westminster, on behalf of the bankers and billionaires, wielding the butchers' knife to public services, pay, job security, rights at work, and our civil rights. 

The SSP's call for an independent socialist Scotland is an inspiring goal that would transform the lives of the working class majority of the population, from the cradle to the grave. Independence would empower a Scottish government – provided it was a government with the principles, policies and political will to confront the capitalist powers at home and abroad – to redistribute wealth and power from top to bottom.

That also makes the case for a socialist Scotland an indispensable weapon of persuasion in the battle for self-rule. Without that message being heard loud and clear, working class people won't be inspired to vote for change, and could be thereby imprisoned in at least another decade of Tory savagery, especially given the enfeebled, war-torn state of Labour. 

Separate Fight for Indy from the EU 

Socialists and trade unionists need to wrestle the case for independence away from being about membership of capitalist Brexit Britain or the capitalist EU. 

It's true enough indeed that the 62% Remain vote in Scotland being ignored by the Blue Brexiteers adds to the case for the Scottish people being empowered to make their own decisions, through independence. But that alone will never win independence; for starters, calling on the 400,000 pro-Indy voters who chose Leave to now vote for independence so Scotland can Remain in the EU is utterly divisive and counterproductive.

I strongly believe we need to demand two key things alongside describing the transformational vision of what could be achieved in an independent socialist Scotland, to decouple the case for Indy from the divisive, confusing issue of the EU. 

Firstly, call for a separate decision on an independent Scotland's relationship to the EU to be fully debated in democratic forums AFTER winning independence, including a post-independence Referendum on the options then available. 

And secondly, here and now broadcast that we want an independent socialist Scotland to help forge cooperation between equals, on the basis of an alliance of socialist democracies across Europe - instead of either the Blue Brexiteers' capitalist, isolationist hell-house, or the EU of brutal big business interests. 

Tell the Truth - about Brexit

In fighting to convince a majority of working class people to vote Yes, we need to tell the truth - including on what needs to be done to defend and vastly enhance workers' rights, at work and in their communities. 

Those who imagined a Brexit vote would turbocharge a wave of united workers' struggle against the Tories and capitalist bosses are indulging in a dystopian version of La La Land. Whilst for many the Leave vote was a raging against years of neglect by the capitalist machine, the Brexit outcome has sown even more confusion and division, including the scapegoating of migrant workers, and handed the Tories an unexpected golden opportunity to bludgeon to death the flimsy rights workers cling onto. If we let them away with it!

Tell the Truth - about the EU 

But when the SNP and Scottish Greens advocate the gushing glories of Scotland keeping its place in the EU, they are at bottom advocating a continuation of the capitalist Age of Austerity, and the interlinked attacks on workers' rights. 

Whilst most ordinary people who voted to Remain in the EU did so for honourable, internationalist ideals – and in rejection of the axe-wielding, service-slashing, pay-cutting Tories, plus the ugly racism of Farage, Boris Johnston and their Leave leadership - many also shared the SSP's view that it was the lesser of two evil choices in the binary EU Referendum. 

One of the key tasks of socialists, including in our workplaces and unions, is to unmask the debilitating, demobilizing nonsense peddled not only by the SNP and Greens, but especially (and more importantly) by most trade union leaders, that membership of the EU is the road to salvation for workers' rights. 

Struggle is the only Guarantee 

Our fundamental message needs to be that united, collective struggles by workers is what's won the all-too-limited rights we have; not some benign handouts from the EU and its ruling, unelected executive, the European Commission (the selected heads of 28 Member states). 

And whether in or out of the EU, it will require massive resistance and action by workers and their organizations to halt and reverse the tide of assaults on our rights and conditions. Just as we need to hoist high the case for a Scotland run by its working class majority, a socialist Scottish republic, so too we need to enhance people's understanding that class-based struggle is the only guarantee of decent wages, workplace conditions, equality, humane public services, environmental protection...

Evolution of the capitalist EU 

Like any institution, the EU has changed over time, reflecting wider trends throughout the capitalist societies it was founded to uphold and develop in the first place. And those changes are reflected in the EU Directives, Regulations and policies - issued by the European Commission, or sometimes ruled on by the EU's Court of Justice (ECJ). Some have been helpful to those struggling for better rights andconditions for working class people in the various member states; others have been downright dangerous, obstructive and regressive. 

Space prevents a full description, but suffice to say in an earlier period of the EU, particularly from the late-1980s - some progressive regulations were issued, encapsulated in the term 'Social Chapter'. But the EU never pretended to be a socialist institution; it preferred the term 'Social Market' - the model of post-War Germany, with some limited state regulations over the excesses of the capitalist market.

Social Chapter - a Passing Phase

Compared to the red-in-tooth-and-claw savagery of Maggie Thatcher’s monetarists of the 1980s, EU President of the time, Jacques Delors, won rapturous applause at the 1988 TUC conference, for his promises of what became the Social Chapter at the following year’s Strasbourg Summit. What Delors carefully concealed, of course, to the assembled TUC delegates, was his role – as its Finance Minister - in helping the ‘Socialist’ Mitterand government of France abandon all the promised reforms that had enthused millions in the previous elections.

In the face of subsequent defeats at the hands of Thatcher’s civil war against workers’ rights and livelihoods, culminating in the defeat of the 1984/5 miners’ strike, a big majority of union leaders sheltered behind the mildly progressive rules and Directives issuing from the EU Commission in that period. It was a substitute for giving leadership in struggle. It ran in tandem with their constant refrain during the 13 wasted years of Tory rule: “Wait for a Labour government”. It was one feature of the defeatist, class-collaborationist philosophy of far too many union leaders at the time – which aided and abetted the biggest wealth transfusion to the rich from the rest of us over 30 years of them discouraging a more combative course by workers.

As the crisis of capitalism intensified, the EU’s phase described as the Social Chapter died; morphed from being a sweetener to bitter pills, to being the poison of austerity and deregulation of the market itself; from being a partial shield from Thatcherism in Britain to being a vehicle for the spread of ‘Thatcherism’ across the EU.

The EU's lifelong adherence to the interests of monopoly capitalism has increasingly meant the Commission, European Central Bank, and European Court Justice have helped national governments enforce vicious austerity, particularly since the 2008 bankers' crisis. 

European Decency Threshold Downgraded 

A few examples illustrate the general trends, and the central lesson that we need to rely on working class struggle, not the EU, to resist the savagery of the capitalist class and their pliant politicians. 

In the past, the European Decency Threshold, which called for the national minimum wage in each EU country to match 68% of the national average wage, was a very useful weapon in the hands of those of us fighting against the growing theft of wages for profit. But it was only ever an aspiration, not legally enforceable on each state's government. And as social democratic parties and governments converged with the traditional conservatives in unabashed defence of capitalism - as in New Labour - the EU reflected this and drastically downgraded the Decency Threshold, rendering it almost useless in the fight for a decent living wage here or abroad.

Workers Won Reforms, not EU bosses 

Many of the positive rights attributed to the EU by its zealous advocates are either the product of class struggles by workers in one or more EU state, or actually have nothing whatsoever to do with the EU! 

When the TUC General Secretary, Frances O'Grady, last year wrote that "It's the EU that guarantees workers paid holidays, parental leave and equal treatment of part timers" - a claim repeated almost verbatim by Jeremy Corbyn, who added "equal pay" to the list - they were at best misleading workers.

Dangerously misleading, in a fashion almost designed to make workers rely on the benign EU Commissioners rather than defend our rights and conditions through the organised trade unions and their allies. 

Nothing to do with the EU!

Entitlements to paid holidays vastly predate the very existence of the EU, or even its EEC predecessor. French workers won guaranteed annual paid leave of 12 days back in 1936, when they forced the elected Left Front government to take action by occupying the factories and striking! 

Trade union struggles in the UK won the Holidays Pay Act in 1938. 

And even today, organised union pressure has meant UK workers are guaranteed 5.6 weeks paid holidays, well better than the 4 weeks the EU demands.

Equal Pay 

Equal pay - still disgracefully denied to millions of women in practice - was legislated for in the UK in 1970, well before Britain even joined the Common Market/EEC, in 1973. And the Equal Pay Act was forced upon the British government by the ground-breaking strike action of women workers in Fords Dagenham plant in 1968. Furthermore, the same women had to launch a more prolonged strike years after the Act was passed, to actually get the equal pay it promised! 

So whilst anti-discrimination Directives from the EU are welcome, they merely reaffirmed what was won on the picket lines and workers' demonstrations. 

The EU Directives guarantee 14 weeks paid maternity leave; decades of campaigning has won the concession of 37 weeks here. 

Health and Safety laws in Scotland are based on the 1974 Act that was conceded on the wave of industrial struggles that overthrew Ted Heath's Tory government in February 1974; it was not a generous handout from either British capitalists nor their EU co-thinkers. 

Some EU Regulations, like the Working Time Directives, acted as a dented, limited shield in the face of savage attacks by Thatcher's, and subsequently Blair's governments. In terms of capping compulsory hours of work at 48 and insisting on guaranteed minimum break times during and between shifts, they are welcome reforms. 

But all along the British government insisted on opt-out clauses, and can do so entirely legally, within the framework of EU regulations and rulings. For instance, the Tories' railroading laws to remove doctors and nurses from the 48-hour limit underlay the Junior Doctors' strike last year. And all workers in Scotland can 'choose' - often under 'subtle' duress from employers - to waive that right anyway, fuelling the life-threatening long hours culture we are cursed by.

Capitalists Pick and Choose 

The positive EU measures are often ferociously resisted and bypassed by the Westminster club of capitalist politicians, but the equally numerous anti-working class EU Directives and regulations are eagerly seized upon to back up their drive to privatize, slash public expenditure and make workers pay for a capitalist crisis caused by bankers and the profit system. 

And in the case of Scotland, these EU Directives have been frequently used as an excuse for inaction, or regressive measures, by the SNP government. We shouldn't forget that as an added reason to decouple the case for Scottish independence from the SNP's advocacy of the EU as a land of milk and honey.

Strangling Public Spending 

For decades, and increasingly in recent years, the EU has framed laws to aid the privateers and the help enforce the capitalists' chosen path of austerity. 

The EU Stability and Growth Pact prohibits government budget deficits above 3% of GDP, thereby banning state expenditure to provide jobs, houses and services, reinforcing the downward spiral of cuts. 

A 2008 Directive called for postal services to be "fully open to competition by December 2012", adding to the Tory (and Labour) armoury in shedding the 400-year-old, public sector Royal Mail. 

From the EU's First Rail Directive in 1991, to its more recent Fourth, the EU Commissioners seek to break up and privatize the entire rail networks of all EU states. 

Successive British Tory and Labour governments needed no encouragement from the EU to privatise all and sundry, or apply a scorched earth policy to public services. But they certainly got encouragement, as increasingly anti-working class governments in the member states huddled together in the one and only EU institution with the powers to initiate rules and Directives - the unelected European Commission.  

SNP Hide Behind EU Directives 

That's an example of where the SNP government chooses to comply rather than defy all that's reactionary and regressive about the EU. 

On both the issues of railway renationalisation and Scotland's ferries, they chose to obey the laws of the capitalist market, including its EU bureaucracy, and hide behind them instead of proceeding to implement the oft-expressed wishes of the overwhelming majority of Scottish people by taking the entire transport system into public, democratic ownership. 

It was only after strike action and legal challenges by the RMT union that the SNP government conceded on keeping some of the ferries in the public sector, and retreated on implementing their contract clause for ScotRail that insists on driver only trains - in itself the product of their refusal to nationalise the railways, regardless of EU rules.

Undermining Wages 

Another major weapon used by employers and national governments in their war on wages is the EU Posted Workers Directive (PWD). This, and associated ECJ rulings, allows profiteers to set up shop abroad, or post workers from one EU country to another branch of their operations, to undermine wage rates. 

In its actual wording, the EU PWD states: "Member states shall guarantee workers posted to their territory the terms and conditions of employment...which in the member state where the work is carried out...are laid down by law, regulation or administrative provision." 

On the surface, harmless sounding? On the contrary, it means bosses paying only the national minimum wage to migrant workers, not the rate for the job negotiated and fought for through the unions in the host nation.
For instance, last year construction workers' unions in Rotherham, Yorkshire, waged a battle against a Croatian subcontractor company hiring Croatian workers to build a power station on £7 an hour, undercutting the national industry collective agreement rate of £16.64 an hour. The unions rightly fought to organise the migrant workers and win equality, the rate for the job, rather than fall prey to the racist division this Posted Workers Directive inevitably triggers. 

Tory Brexiteers Wage Class War 

The Tories are hell-bent on inciting division during the Brexit process, to ease the path to further crush workers' rights, public services and wages as a share of national wealth.
It's no accident their recently-implemented Trade Union Act has taken full effect in March 2017, with barely a whisper of protest, as the white noise around Brexit lets rip. 

But to counter this reactionary plan by the Tories and employing class, it's worse than useless, indeed downright dangerous, to counter-pose it with claims of the EU being some Nirvana of workers' rights and protection of all that's civilized. 

We need to advocate Scottish independence as the best, quickest escape route from Tory dictatorship.

An opening to demand and enforce a Charter of Workers’ Rights, alongside other key measures like a £10 minimum wage for all at 16 (in 2017 figures); a maximum wage no more than 10 times the minimum to help close the chasm of inequality; the union-negotiated rate and rights for the job for migrant workers; guaranteed minimum 16-hour contracts instead of zero hours serfdom; public ownership of all services, energy, banks and landed estates.

Greek Tragedy 

But that's got nothing to do with false claims that EU membership would gift the Scottish people a secure, pleasant future. 

On the contrary: not only will that claim drastically undermine the case for independence, but it is selling a lie to the working class. And underneath it all is the pernicious message that we don't need to organise in an almighty class struggle for transformational change, but that we should just rely on benign politicians to hand out workers and communities rights and services like sweeties issued by kindly grandparents. 

Try telling that tale of 'EU bosses bearing gifts' to the Greek people, who voted massively against austerity, and then were told by the EU to slash spending even further, despite starvation on the streets and hospitals running out of painkillers, and to tax the poorest as part of a grossly misnamed 'rescue package'. 

For an Independent Socialist Scotland - In a socialist Europe

We need to decouple the issues of independence and the EU.

For an independent Scotland that can then proceed to debate and decide its place in Europe and the wider world after gaining self government.

For an independent socialist Scotland that could help pioneer collaboration between equals in a future alliance of socialist democracies across Europe.

Most important of all perhaps, we need to unmask the demobilizing myth that Scottish people should rely on the EU and its benign regulations to protect us from capitalist exploitation.

Anything protective, however limited and feeble, that the EU calls for is the result of struggle by workers' organizations, and in any case hedged with umpteen opt-out clauses.

And as the populist right and hard-faced capitalism holds more and more sway across Europe, the EU act as thuggish enforcers for the Age of Austerity. 

Working class people need to rely on their own organised strength, demanding all that's best in Europe for the people of Scotland, and likewise defying all that's worst in the EU capitalist club. 

We need independent workers' struggle, an independent socialist Scotland, and an alliance of European socialist democracies to confront and eradicate the crimes of profit against people.