DEFEND THE POSTIES! DEFEND 6-DAY DELIVERY & 20,000 JOBS!

DEFEND YOUR POSTIES! DEFEND 6-DAY DELIVERY! DEFEND OVER 20,000 JOBS!

Wednesday 29th of April is National Postal Workers Day.


This union event is designed to show solidarity with workers who have carried out life-threatening work throughout the COVID-19 crisis.


It's designed to allow the public to say 'Thank You' to the posties for their valiant efforts, but now it must also become a declaration of solidarity against a brutal, full-frontal declaration of war by Royal Mail bosses. 


Literally on the eve of national #PostalWorkersDay, Rico Back and the rest of the millionaire dictators in charge of Royal Mail have unilaterally declared that from the 11th of May, letter delivery will only be Monday to Friday, with parcels and packages delivered on Saturdays.


This is a blatant breach of the longstanding Universal Service Obligation (USO) whereby every household is guaranteed deliveries six days a week.


That's precisely one of the core issues at the heart of the showdown between postal workers and their privatised bosses, which led to two overwhelming strike ballots, before and since Christmas. 

Royal Mail use Corona crisis to smash jobs and public services!

With the outbreak of the killer virus, CWU trade union leaders suspended plans for strike action, in the hope the bosses would stop their assault whilst posties helped to provide a key service to the beleaguered public.

But instead, the employers have declared war on the union, its members and on the public service they provide. In the midst of the pandemic. That's stooping down low, even by their standards. 


They entirely bypassed the union in reaching this decision.


Their plan was never mentioned in discussions with the union just days ago.


Their announcement is undoubtedly timed as a ruthless act of provocation, cold and calculated, putting the CWU in the position of having to either surrender, or stand up and fight back - and then face a tornado of media vilification.


That's where other workers and unions need to rally round the posties and make it clear we will not accept abolition of 6-day service, just as we will not accept the loss of 20,000 or more Royal Mail jobs.


Royal Mail have cynically used the coronavirus crisis as a smokescreen for ramming through an assault which the union had resisted on behalf of members and the public for the past two years.


The same bosses have shown absolutely no concern for the health of the workforce. 
At first they refused to put anybody on furlough. They resisted the demands of the union for full pay for any worker with childcare problems, or where their sick pay had been exhausted, or were self-isolating with symptoms, or looking after other shielded household members.

They arrogantly told workers who faced literally no income to go to a charity.


It was only after massive union pressure and publicity that they made a concession. But it still does not include furlough for posties with childcare issues, nor for the over-65s, nor for anybody who wants to self-isolate because others in their household have the symptoms.


On top of which they've refused to back-date any pay, and expect workers who are put on furlough to use at least two weeks of the their annual holidays.


Now they're trying to con the public by dressing up abolition of 6-day delivery as a measure to "ease the pressure on posties".

That is a barefaced lie.


Imposing it within 10 days, as they propose, will cause mayhem for shift patterns for drivers, delivery staff and those in sorting offices alike, also threatening pay-cuts in many cases.


It's a cynical attempt to abolish a longstanding service, get rid of at least 20,000 jobs, and smash the power of the union in the process.

Workers and trade unionists need to stand up with the CWU - stand by your posties.

 I spoke to TAM DEWAR, CWU Divisional Officer for Scotland and Northern Ireland: 


"In all this time Royal Mail management have shown no concern nor readiness to act in defense of workers' safety.

Whereas posties see COVID-19 as a life-threatening virus Rico Back and his cabal see it as a commercial opportunity and a chance to rush through changes to working practices they have been unable to do so far because of union resistance.


Postal workers are not only been fighting COVID-19 but fighting the employer as well.


The only way we got any safety measures was through collective action.

We wanted to protect posties' safety and lives by each of them working a 3-day week during this crisis, but keeping the 6-day delivery. Of course Royal Mail bosses ruled that out on grounds of cost.


It's only by taking action as a trade union we won any protection.

The Chief Executive needs to be sacked and replaced by somebody who's willing to work with the union to defend the future of Royal Mail. 

Otherwise it would be sold off to Amazon or Poundland, because the past two years have been an absolute disaster commercially since Rico Back took over.


We could well now be forced into taking strike action nationally by the actions Royal Mail. 

They have declared all previous agreements are scrapped from now on. 

They have announced there will be no deliveries on Saturdays and claim to have the support of Ofcom and the government.


It's true that letters have collapsed in number during this crisis, but there are absolute stacks of packets piled up at Mail Centres. 

It's ten times worse than the Christmas rush, for example with at least ten huge trucks queued up at the Glasgow Mail Centre, full of parcels.

The bosses want to control their budget, refusing overtime, but still demanding the work is done, even though 20% of the workforce are off sick.


They seem hell bent on switching to parcel deliveries which could affect about 27,000 jobs.

If you can't drive you can't deliver. And when we got removal of two workers to a delivery van, because of social distancing, Royal Mail did not hire a single van to compensate - even though there must be thousands of hire vans available during the lockdown.


We had strikes in four places in Scotland using health and safety legislation, because people were being forced to work in unsafe conditions to deliver pizza leaflets and leaflets for companies that are shut! 
All that after it had been declared an essential service. 
Our idea of an essential service would be delivery of prescriptions, food and looking out for the vulnerable, not junk mail. 
If we have to take strike action now, nationally, we will welcome support on the picket lines." 

RESIST A PREMATURE STAMPEDE BACK TO MONEY-MAKING

Employers demanding 'business as usual' could threaten workers' lives

for PPE, mass testing and workers' control over health and safety 

Nobody wants the so-called lockdown to continue indefinitely. But for the preservation of human life, it's absolutely essential. All the evidence shows it's helping to suppress the spread of this deadly killer. 


It may appear bizarre to raise this in the same week the governments of the UK and Scotland announced continuation of the lockdown until at least 7 May, but the growing danger is a premature removal of restrictions, motivated by big business profits, at terrible risk to human life.

As we warned two weeks ago, sections of employers, of the Tory party, and indeed right wing Labour figures such as Sir Keir Starmer and Tony Blair, are ramping up the drumbeat of demands to 'reopen the economy'. 


Literally as we post this, the Scottish government has published a paper on future criteria for easing the lockdown. 
However well-intentioned as "the start of a conversation that treats the public like adults", the danger is it could be turned into background music for a growing chorus of demands by profit-itchy businesses to 'get back to normal'. A dangerous stampede towards a premature exit strategy motivated by their desire to make money, whatever the human risk. 

The Pressures of Social Isolation

Millions of workers are currently stuck at home. The Resolution Foundation think tank predict 11.7 million will have been either furloughed or made unemployed in the UK over the next three months. 
The ability to work from home is closely linked to earnings levels, with the lowest paid almost entirely unable to do so. 


Many of those millions not only live in fear of infection - including from household members who are working in essential services - but also suffer isolation, sometimes family tensions, increased incidence of domestic abuse, and even a lack of adequate food supplies through combinations of poverty and the inability to access supplies. 


Cramped housing, and lack of a garden to enjoy the pleasant weather, add to the frustration for millions. Whether living alone or with small children in a small flat, each creates its own pressures, plus humans are a naturally social being. 
And millions are on 80% or 90% of their normal wage, as employers with profits measured in not just millions but billions take the public subsidy of the Job Retention Scheme, but whinge that they simply can't afford to top up workers' wages to 100%. 

Trump leads the wreckless stampede

So no trade unionist or socialist worth their salt would advocate an indefinite lockdown. But that is not the threat we face. The growing and present danger is the government bending to big business lobbies to prematurely revive production, in pursuit of recovering profit margins, putting thousands of workers at risk of death.  


The most glaring, grotesque display of this trend is to be found in the USA. As far back as 24 March, a group of powerful billionaires met with Donald Trump, bombarding him to set an early date for lifting health restrictions, so as to reassure the money markets. 

The rich and powerful lobbyists Trump met included chief executives of private equity companies, hedge fund managers and others with so-called 'net worth' ranging from $17.1billion to a mere $2.8billion. The same fat cats are enjoying splendid self-isolation on vast holiday estates or lavish private yachts, but are hellbent on throwing millions of American workers back into production, and to hell with the consequences. 


Within hours of meeting this batch of brass-necked billionaires, Trump appeared on Fox News, declaring he would like to see the economy open up and "just raring to go by Easter," 12 April. He gushed that it would be "a beautiful timeline because Easter is such a beautiful day". 


Just days later Trump handed over $500billion in a bailout of big business. But not content with being subsidised to the hilt, many business moguls persisted with their demands to reopen production. 
For example, Dick Kovacevich of Wells Fargo demanded that people aged under 55 should return to work by late April, stating: 
"Some of them will get sick, some may even die, I don't know. Do you want to take an economic risk or a health risk? You get to choose." 


Not to be outdone, Paychex Inc's Tom Golisano - whose personal wealth sits at $3billion - said: 
"The damage of keeping the economy closed as it is could be worse then losing a few more people. You're picking the better of two evils".

Tragic scenes of mass, unmarked graves on Hart Island, Bronx, New York

‘I’d rather die than kill the country’

One other singer of this song in a whole chorus-line of the obscenely rich is conservative TV and radio host Glenn Beck, who even six years ago had personal wealth of $90million. He blurted out the opinion: 
"I would rather have my children stay home and all of us who are over 50 go in and keep this economy going and working. Even if we all get sick, I'd rather die than kill the country".


The same week that the global death toll crossed the grisly landmark figure of 100,000, refrigerated lorries stacked high with human corpses stood outside hospitals in the USA, and people were buried in unmarked mass graves in a field in the Bronx. But that same week the media emphasis switched from grim warnings of the mounting death toll to talk of 'light at the end of the tunnel', with Trump advocating the US "open with a big bang." 

And Texas governor Dan Patrick was but one of many politicians leaving no doubt about their priorities:

"American senior citizens should accept the likelihood that some of them would die in order to allow the economy to reopen and preserve the America that all America loves for their children and grandchildren." 
Now Trump is actively encouraging small but highly publicised right-wing, gun-toting demonstrations calling for an end to the lockdown, with vicious, populist slogans like 'Liberate Minnesota', 'Liberate Virginia'.

Gun-toting right-wing demo to 'Liberate Florida' from lockdown

British bosses put profit first

However, this mounting pressure to put what they call 'the economy' before public health is not restricted to the USA. 

In fact, we've seen an intensification of aggressive national capitalist rivalries, in the face of a global pandemic that knows no borders. We witness this as they not only grab hold of safety equipment intended for other countries, but also ignore scientific warnings in a race to reopen production in the interests of the separate national ruling classes. 


Across Europe, governments are being pressurised by the big profiteers to reopen 'business as usual', and nowhere more so than in Britain. 

With its customary brutality, the Economist magazine has written: 
"COVID-19 presents stark choices between life, death and the economy. It sounds hard-hearted but a dollar figure on life...is precisely what leaders will need if they are to see their way through the harrowing months to come. Eventually even if many people are dying, the cost of distancing could outweigh the benefits."


Director of Wellcome Trust and Tory government advisor Sir Jeremy Farrar told Sky on Sunday on 19 April that the lockdown should be eased within weeks.
"The damage it's doing to all our health, our well being, our mental health, is disproportionately affecting the most vulnerable."

Tories 2018 Act to hamstring union safety reps

What Tory & corporate con-merchants really mean

We even suffer the grotesque spectacle of Tory Scottish Secretary of State, Alistair Jack, declaring:
"I would hate it if we come out the other side and the poverty that came from a broken economy killed more people than COVID-19. We know from previous analysis of recessions and depressions that poverty kills."


There should be no doubting what these voices of big business really mean, behind their honeyed words of 'concern'.  


When they speak of 'the economy' they actually mean the profits of a tiny clique who own the bulk of the economy. 

When they express concern about people's mental health being damaged through social isolation, the lockdown, these are the very same class of business owners who have generated an epidemic of mental illness before COVID-19 ever appeared. 
They've caused record levels of mental illness through insecure jobs; alienation at work from total lack of control by workers, even over their working hours; poverty pay; and horrendous physical and mental pressure by them overworking a shrinking workforce in pursuit of maximum profit. 

The same Tories, like Alistair Jack, who belatedly stumble on the truth that poverty kills, preside over a system that is built to consciously create poverty for millions to provide the wealth of a few millionaires -  in the full knowledge that poverty kills. 
They have systematically dismantled wages, benefits, sick pay, and the health service in a fashion that has caused countless avoidable deaths. 


The same Tories listened to and echoed the same big business voices by not calling a halt to non-essential production in good time, and thereby caused thousands of unnecessary infections and deaths in February-March, as they let COVID-19 rip through the population, with their ruthless theory of 'herd immunity', until they eventually conceded a partial lockdown on 24 March.


They couldn't give a damn about workers' health. Their one concern is owners' wealth. They are quite prepared to sacrifice human life on the altar of their great god, Profit.

London Mayor's warning, as calls to lift lockdown there earlier raised

Tories split under pressure?

The Tory Cabinet appear split on the issue. Leaks to the Times newspaper report that Gove and Chancellor Sunak want restrictions lifted once the peak of death has passed, arguing the government should "run things quite hot". 
Health Minister Hancock was more cautious, and de facto deputy PM Dominic Raab remained silent but is expected to side with those who want a rapid return to work. 
Boris Johnson, not noted for his humanity or care for workers' health,  has come out against lifting restrictions too early in fear of a second wave of the virus. He no doubt feels the pressure of scientific experts and public opinion, at least for now - especially in the wake of milking his own illness for every droplet of propaganda and popularity.


For example, when The Sunday Times reported senior ministers wanted to reopen schools on 11 May, it provoked a ferocious backlash from concerned staff and parents, with the head teachers' union (NAHT) denouncing unattributed government comments for spreading fear and confusion. 
"Instructing school leaders and their teams to return without including them in the planning stages or sharing proper safety arrangements would be extremely reckless." 

Meantime, the National Education Union (NEU) launched a petition to delay schools reopening until it is safe to do so, gathering 160,000 signatures within days.

"Now is not the time to ask if Tories were too slow" - Sir Keir Starmer

Starmer: being savaged by a dead sheep!

In a devastating display of the nature of the new Labour leadership, Sir Keir Starmer has for weeks repeatedly opined "Now is not the time to ask if the government was too slow to act."

When he did eventually question the government in parliament on 22 April for 'being slow', his criticism of the Tories whose actions have caused countless unnecessary deaths was about as effective as being savaged by a dead sheep. 


Starmer instead says "The critical question is the exit strategy from lockdown", even demanding a recall of the parliament to discuss it. Starmer has even seemed more eager to reopen schools than at least some of the Tory Cabinet. 

That working class hero and warrior for truth, justice and peace, Tony Blair, has been resurrected to parade round TV studios preaching the same gospel. 


At best, Starmer and Blair could be accused of attention seeking in a fashion that creates confusion around the need for strict measures to suppress the virus, as death still rips the heart out of families, not just in hospitals but in care homes and in the community. At worst, they are echoing the chorus line of profiteering businessmen who put profit before people and are prepared to ignore or deny the evidence that the lockdown is at least one part of what is necessary to stem the fatal tide.


When Starmer insists "now is not the time to ask" if the Tories were too slow to initiate social distancing and (at least partial) lockdown of non-essential businesses, he is dangerously letting them off the hook, removing pressure from them. 
Because the same Tories are just as liable to prematurely end these precautionary measures as they were reluctant to introduce them, for the same reasons: not wanting to undermine private profiteering, putting what they misleadingly call 'the economy' before public health, profit before people, regardless of how many are slaughtered in the hunt for renewed production and sales. 

Scientists warn of catastrophe

An array of eminent scientists, nationally and internationally, are warning against premature removal of lockdown restrictions. 


The World Health Organization has warned it could lead to a deadly resurgence of the disease, which in turn could force governments to reinstate even more severe lockdowns. They warn that there is no clear evidence that people who have contracted COVID-19 then become immune to it. And in fact reports from South Korea and China indicate people who had recovered from it have caught it a second time, which further punctures the callous nonsense of relying on 'herd immunity'.  


Directly contradicting Donald Trump, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious diseases, Anthony Fauci, recently said: 
"We need to shutdown all non-essential business for several months, with social quarantine, to at least slow or stop COVID-19."


Professor of Virology at the University of Surrey, Nicholas Locker recently stated:
 "You can't lift the lockdown as long as you're not testing massively. As long as the government is not testing in the community we're going to be on lockdown." 



Editor of The Lancet magazine Richard Horton says: 
"It's wrong to say we don't have an exit strategy. We do. What is missing are the plans for its implementation. Surveillance, early detection, isolation, contact tracing, monitoring, real time estimates for the speed of spread of the virus."

Mass testing, tracing, isolation 

Emphasising that much more needs to be done than the current partial lockdown, the head of the Institute for Global Health at University College London warns isolation of the elderly and vulnerable on it's own is doomed to failure. These people do not live apart from others, they will inevitably catch the disease if it lets rip in the rest of the population, and it's unlikely those most at risk could be isolated for the four to five months they reckon is required to get 'herd immunity', which they in any case reject as unethical. 


This body of experts has a different plan they calculate will avert 353,000 deaths in Britain. It includes mass testing of everyone; contact tracing for those testing positive; care and thorough isolation; alongside proper provision of PPE for workers in essential services, such as the NHS, care workers and those in food supplies. They advocate weekly testing for everyone which would require 10 million a day, something they estimate is possible to virtually reach by August. The same Institute for Global Health estimate this would require 70,000 public health workers (about 6-7,000 in Scotland). 

Very limited testing early March abandoned by UK & Scottish governments 

But there is no evidence that the government has such plans. 
They have failed to provide PPE of either the quantity or quality required to frontline staff putting their own lives on the line to care for others. 
The alleged 'Health' Secretary Matt Hancock recently advised hospital staff to wash and re-use contaminated gowns, and blamed the scarcity of PPE not on supplies organised by his government, but on how much NHS staff use it! Nurses have died of COVID-19 after complaining of lack of proper protection. 


The Tories' promises of 100,000 tests a day at the end of April sound increasingly hollow and insulting as they only just reach the figure of 18-20,000 daily. 
Every day, the 5pm UK government briefing claims progress on testing and provision of PPE, followed an hour later by TV news horror stories of hospital staff and care workers left unprotected and untested for the virus, with increased numbers pronounced dead as a result. 

JD Sports warehouses still working - unsafely

Unions must demand concrete safety measures

Rather than allow workers to be victims of a premature stampede back to 'business as usual', the unions have a particular duty to demand a concrete plan of safety measures before non-essential businesses reopen. 
And not just empty promises of such measures from a government shown to have lied and prevaricated throughout this crisis, but actual concrete supplies and measures already in place. 


Those would need to include recruitment of a vast army to conduct mass testing of the population without stripping frontline workers from other lifeline services. 


'Test, trace and isolate' needs to be transformed from a mantra to a material reality before it's safe to consider reopening non-essential businesses. 
And isolation for those who test positive should include safe, caring health facilities, not just being stuck at home with others in the family, when the evidence from China suggests most transmission occurs within families or households. 

Seize production to match needs

It should include demands for the government to take over appropriate production units for the emergency, sustained supply of quality PPE for all workers in the firing line. 

It's brilliant and life-affirming to see networks of people sewing scrubs for NHS staff in their homes, but the scale of mass production required can only be organised by the state. Which raises the need for the government to take over major companies to coordinate armies of workers producing - in safe  conditions - all the safety equipment for NHS, care, food retail, and other essential services staff. 


Likewise, rather than the unseemly squabble between different nations for supplies of masks, scrubs, ventilators and Intensive Care Units, the government should commandeer factories to produce all that is needed, in the same fashion industries were taken over by governments for war production during World War Two. 
We cannot rely on the whims of the capitalist market to meet the life and death needs of workers and their families.

Recent scenes inside JD Sports warehouse: putting profit before people!

Unions' critical role

This whole crisis has heavily emphasised the critical importance of organised trade unions and collective action. It took intense lobbying by union reps, and mass walkouts by workers in many cases, to gradually force employers to introduce basic safety standards, or to shut down non-essential workplaces, with the demand for 100% average pay. 

Likewise, the RCN was right to offer full support to any of their 450,000 nurse members who "make the difficult decision to refuse to work without proper PPE" in the hospitals. 


The Royal College of Anaesthetists has since conducted a survey of members, who are at the very front line of treatment, applying ventilators to patients with severe COVID-19 infection. They found one in every five lacks proper PPE, and one in four feels pressurised to work despite this lack of protective equipment. 
They have now, rightly, advised members to refuse to work without adequate PPE, not only to protect their own health but that of patients too. 

Demand workers' control of Health & Safety through elected union reps

For workers’ control of health & safety

At workplace level, this whole experience underlines the importance of workers' control of health and safety, through elected shop stewards and Health & Safety reps. 

Such bodies need to be revived or established in every workplace, applying concrete demands for safer working conditions where they are already at work, or before non-essential production or sales resume. 

These to include reorganisation of workplaces to guarantee safe social distancing; deep cleans and intensified daily cleaning routines; screens, masks, surgical wipes and increased washing facilities; full average pay for vulnerable workers to self-isolate, or to shield vulnerable family members; and the right to refuse work when feeling endangered, as already exists as a right on paper, under Health & Safety legislation. 


Mass, weekly, professional testing at workplace level, as well as in the community, would be a major strand to any serious plan towards reviving production, sales and public transport.


Through this whole process it's right there needs to be a plan on when and how to ease lockdown. But workers' union representatives,  alongside scientists, need to be fully involved in decision-making, not just told what senior management have already decided in their absence. 

Construction workers still being forced to work: how can they keep 2m apart?

Workers’ voices must be heard 

It's welcome that Nicola Sturgeon has established a panel to look at this scenario, but very unwelcome that the unions are not represented on it, certainly not so far. 


The initial members of the SNP government's Advisory Group on Economic Recovery gives us a warning glimpse of the 'business as usual' outlook of that government. It's to be led by Benny Higgins, former Chief Executive of Tesco Bank for ten years, after stints as a top boss in RBS and HBOS. His first comrade-in-arms is Sir Anton Muscatelli, overpaid Principal of the University of Glasgow, not best known for his support for striking staff or protesting students! 


Both at national level and in each workplace the expertise and knowledge of workers themselves needs to be harnessed to ensure the safest possible working arrangements regardless of the impact on short-term profits. 


We need to organise resistance to any premature return to capitalist 'business as usual'. 

Workers' lives must come before the profits of the parasitic plunderers.  

BRANSON THE BILLIONAIRE BEGGAR: nationalise, don't subsidise!

I don't think I'm unique in feeling increasingly irritated by attempts at guilt-tripping the low-paid and average-paid worker to cough up for all sorts of charity drives for the NHS. 

Don't misunderstand what I'm saying: the NHS is a cause that cannot be matched for its worthiness, especially in these times of horrendous, fearful crisis, when NHS staff (along with millions of other workers) are risking their own lives to save others. 

But since when did it become a charity? 
Is that what the Tory government have in mind for it after the current pandemic fades a bit? 
Sell even more of it off to private profiteers, cut taxes on the rich even further, slash funding even more than they've done for several decades already - and have incessant charity appeals, which those on modest incomes tend to pay far more towards proportionately than the rich do?

It's especially annoying when you look at what else is going on in this lockdown, with the wholesale bailout of big business by the same working-class and middle-class taxpayers who are being shamed by charity appeals.  

One of the most grotesque sights in the Covid-19 crisis is the queue of begging billionaires asking for bailouts from the public purse, in the form of government tax breaks and other grants.

Near the front of the queue is Sir Richard Branson. 


He's the 312th richest person in the world, and the 6th richest in (?) Britain, with a personal fortune of £4.2billion.

Branson lives on and owns the private 30-hectare Necker Island, part of the British Virgin Islands archipelago. 

Branson on his private Caribbean beach: is this his idea of social distancing?

But he recently reassured us he does so“to take advantage of the weather rather than the tax breaks”! 


Not entirely true. 


Last month Branson shifted his $1.1billion stake in Virgin Galactic Holdings - his business for space tourism for billionaires - from Delaware in the USA to the Virgin Islands. He did so on the very same day (16 March) as share prices on the USA Dow Jones Index collapsed at the worst rate for any single day on record. 


Over the past 22 years Branson has collected £306million in dividends from Virgin Trains, and by getting those dividends sent to him on his island, he's had it entirely tax free. 


From the safety of his island, Branson now has the audacity to demand £700million in a bailout from the Australian government and another £500million from the British government.

He's backed in these demands by the bosses of Airbus which makes Virgin planes and Rolls Royce which makes its jet engines.

Meantime, Branson laid off 8,000 Virgin Atlantic staff, telling them to either take extended unpaid leave or take voluntary redundancy. 

Branson's Necker Island house: that reminds me, I must do the hoovering!

This brass-necked billionaire beggar has paid no income tax whatsoever in Britain since moving to the tax-free British Virgin Islands 14 years ago. 


In the spirit of entrepreneurship, his portfolio also includes Virgin Care, who were awarded £2billion worth of NHS and local authority healthcare deals.

You've guessed it: Virgin Care have not paid a penny in Corporation Tax and is ultimately controlled by Virgin Group Holdings in British Virgin Islands, one of the world’s main tax havens. 


Health campaigner Dr John Lister earlier this year accused Virgin healthcare of “playing a parasitic role in the NHS, fragmenting services, poaching NHS-trained staff and undermining nearby NHS Trusts." 


Now the Blairite billionaire is shamelessly rattling his begging bowl, demanding public subsidy for his private profit.

Branson is but one grotesque example of the queue of similar big business beggars who expect the working class to endanger their lives at work or take a 10% to 20% pay cut - if they're lucky enough not to be made redundant.

Bird's eye view of Branson's house: I could do lockdown in that space! 

Instead of subsidising private profit for the parasitic rich, we should demand democratic public ownership of their assets. 


The airline industry should be nationalised – not subsidised - to integrate it into a modernised public transport system, which can plan free public transport, reduction on reliance on air travel. 
Alongside democratic public ownership of rail and bus services - including Virgin Trains. 

Measures to not only combat the growing climate crisis - which they vastly contribute to - but also create hundreds of thousands of skilled, well-paid, unionised jobs in a socialist Green New Deal.

DEMAND £12 MINIMUM FOR 'THE MINIMUM WAGE HEROES'!

As even the BBC's Panorama was obliged to express it, "millions of minimum wage heroes are putting their lives on the line."  


After decades of being systematically robbed of their real-term wages, subjected to insults about being unskilled by employers and governments, vast armies of the lowest paid have now been belatedly recognised as 'key workers' in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis. 


But don't get fooled again on 1st April; this government recognition is more about getting these key workers to continue working, to prop up 'the economy ', with the offer of school-based childcare, than it is any sudden Tory conversion to accepting their value to society.


The Tories' ongoing concern for profit over people, for the health of company balance sheets over the health of the workers who create that wealth, is underlined  by their continued refusal to guarantee a decent living wage for 'the minimum wage heroes'. 

THE CURSE OF POVERTY PAY 

Poverty pay has stalked the land for decades, enforced by a cocktail of anti-trade union laws, fear of mass unemployment and incitement to divisions within the working class. 

Over one in five workers - 22% of the workforce - are officially living in poverty. 

Five million workers earn below £9.30 an hour. 

In Scotland alone, 400,000 workers earn less than £9-an-hour. 

30% of all children - that's 4.2 million kids - live in poverty in the fifth-richest economy on earth. 

Over half - 52% - of all those in poverty are also in a job, working to remain below the breadline. 



The one thing that is on the rise is not wages - they've been in the longest, deepest decline and stagnation since the Napoleonic Wars 200 years ago; it's inequality. Government figures accept that inequality, as expressed in the GINI coefficient, was last year higher than in every single year from 1961 to 2006 - only outstripped by the year of the banking crisis, 2008-9. 



As the Resolution Foundation think tank put it, "We entered the COVID-19 crisis with, at best, stagnant living standards for households in low or median incomes."

POVERTY ENDANGERS LIVES 

This appalling state of affairs has had catastrophic effects in the current COVID-19 crisis. It's a fact that many workers are dragging themselves into work, in danger of infecting others as they are asymptomatic carriers, because the Tory government failed utterly to prepare well in advance for this widely predicted pandemic by mass testing. But it's equally true that others are doing so because they can't afford to go without wages. 


Household debt is at an all time high, and personal savings at an all time low. 

CARNAGE FOR HOSPITALITY WORKERS 

And of course such impoverished incomes for millions of families is not only literally life-threatening to many classified as key workers, but also wreaks devastation on the swathes of workers made redundant, or laid off on drastically reduced wages. 


For instance, the third-biggest workforce in the country are hospitality workers - many of whom were thrown on the scrapheap by unscrupulous employers prior to the belated government 80% wage subsidy. Some have fought and won reinstatement; the rest should be taken back on and paid 100% of their normal wages. 

Most workers in this huge sector are on the minimum wage. In fact, hospitality accounts for about a fifth (20%) of all minimum wage workers. 

Supermarket staff ensure food supplies, at great risk, but suffer poverty pay

NHS AND RETAIL STAFF CURSED BY LOW PAY 

The largest and second-largest workforces in Scotland and the UK are the NHS and retail, respectively. 

Vast armies of care workers, cleaners, porters, drivers, food production workers, farmworkers, supermarket staff and others who are critical to the provision of food and healthcare to the entire population are on, or marginally above, the government minimum wage. 


They can't afford to be in self-isolation without pay. They literally can't afford to be sick, which means more of them will get sick - especially as the provision of Personal Protective Equipment is a lottery. 



Even the offer of working from home - on full pay - is heavily dependent on what wage bracket you are in. Less than 3% of the poorest-paid tenth of workers can work from home; less than 10% of the lowest half of earners can do so; whereas 27% of the highest-paid tenth of earners can still work but isolate themselves from the risks of the workplace. 

Cleansing workers have had to stage sit-ins for safety

NEW GOVERNMENT MINIMUM WAGES 

Of course, anyone on low pay will welcome the increases to the statutory minimum wage that kicks in on 1st April. But the wages being legally guaranteed fail to compensate for decades of accumulated poverty, and utterly fail to match the rising cost of living. Especially not with inflation on life's daily essentials, such food, energy, shelter, childcare and public transport. 



The grotesquely misnamed National Living Wage, for employees aged 25 and over, rises by 51p to £8.72-an-hour. 

The pernicious age wage discrimination continues unabated: £8.20 for workers aged 21-24; £6.45 for those aged 18-20; £4.55 for workers under 18; and an even more derisory £4.15-an-hour for apprentices (those under 19 and any apprentice of any age in their first year). 



No wonder there's a noticeable absence of workers out in the streets doing the conga in celebration - with or without social distancing! 

These wages perpetuate the atrocity of poverty pay, rather than combat it. 

 

Alloa posties on strike for safety & keeping social distance on the pickets!

Thousands of care workers and hospital staff and bin collectors are putting their lives on the line, and this is their reward. Likewise with the posties, who have had to resort to strike action to even get basic hand sanitizers. 

Supermarket staff are facing daily health risks (and all too often abuse from frustrated customers) for wages a few pence above the minimum wage; most of them around £9 or £9.20-an-hour, with all sorts of premium payments for anti-social hours abolished, and paid breaks taken away in recent years.  

SSP have fought for a decent minimum wage on the streets for years

DEMAND FOR £10 LAGS BEHIND WORKERS' NEEDS 

Since September 2014, both the entire trade union movement through TUC Congress,  and the Scottish Socialist Party, have campaigned for a £10 minimum wage. The SSP has campaigned in the streets and our workplaces and unions for this to apply to all from the age of 16, with equal pay for women. 

This campaigning has undoubtedly pressured the government into a bigger percentage rise to the minimum wage than in previous years. 

But not only are the multiple new rates a recipe for continued poverty; even the call for a £10 minimum is woefully lagging behind workers' needs, nearly 6 years on from it first being raised. 

TWO-THIRDS MALE MEDIAN EARNINGS 

Since our foundation in 1998, the SSP has fought for a decent level of national minimum wage, legally enforced for all at 16, calculated on the formula of two-thirds male median earnings.  

That formula serves several purposes. It links the minimum wage to the earnings of others, countering the widening chasm between a very few grotesquely well-paid and a vast army of low-paid. 

It helps combat the scandalous gender pay gap, by being based on the higher median wage of male workers. 

It's incredibly modest, only asking for two-thirds of the middle wage of all men, rather than for instance demanding the full male median wage.  

It's also a radical challenge to the overall share of wealth that goes to profits rather than wages. 

WAGES MUST RISE WITH INFLATION 

Throughout the SSP's fight for a minimum wage of at least two-thirds the male median wage, we have also added "rising with earnings or inflation, whichever is the greater". 
That is critically important. 



Since the bankers' greed triggered the financial collapse of 2008/9, workers' wages have stagnated. Latest available figures show that wages in 2018/19 were lower than those of 2004/5! 


But prices haven't stagnated! Far from it. The official, doctored government figures show at least 14% inflation in the five years from 2014 to 2019. 
And distorted they are, because these figures include luxury items like yachts, with low inflation, whereas you only need do the weekly shopping to know real price rises on food has rocketed far beyond that average. As has the cost of public transport, childcare, gas, electricity and housing itself. 

SSP DEMANDS £12 MINIMUM NOW! 

Allowing for all sides of the policy already described, the SSP has launched the demand for an immediate £12-an-hour minimum wage for all at 16, without exception, legally enforced, as a step towards a decent living income. 

This alongside our pioneering campaign for abolition of all zero hours contracts and their replacement with the guarantee of a minimum 16-hour contract for all workers who want one. 

Calling for £12-an-hour minimum is still a very modest demand - but it would transform the lives of millions of workers. In the hospitals, in social care, retail, hospitality, cleansing workers, the posties... millions would be radically better off. 

IT'S EASILY AFFORDABLE 

And it's easily affordable. One of several things the C-19 crisis has proven is that since Theresa May contemptuously dismissed calls for public investment last year with the comment "There is no money tree", a whole orchard of them have sprung up! 


The state has the resources to subsidise 80% of wages for under-threat workers, and to offer £330billion in loans and grants to employers. 

And that's without even a hint of progressive taxation of the obscenely rich, which could overnight fund measures like a £12-an-hour minimum wage.  
For instance, the Blairite reptile Richard Branson is rattling the begging bowl under the government's nose for a £7.5billion bailout, when it's been calculated  - by Tory MP Richard Fuller, no less! - that he could pay every one of his 8,500 laid-off workers their full 8 weeks' wages just on the basis of securing 2% interest on his investments. 

WAGES AND PROFITS 

Share prices for the big supermarkets chains have rocketed, as people have piled in and bought an extra £1billion worth of food at the outbreak of COVID-19, with the prospect of mounting profits.


True, several of them have hired thousands of temporary staff to cope with demand, and some rewarded their dedicated staff with a bonus. But that should be converted into a permanent 'bonus' - a £12 minimum wage, guaranteed minimum 16-hour contract for all workers who want one, and contracts topped up to the actual, normal hours worked by people currently cursed by short hour contracts of 8, 10 or 12 hours a week. 

LET THE RICH SCREAM THEIR OPPOSITION!

Of course billionaire and millionaire company bosses will scream blue murder, painting visions of Armageddon if such a wage was demanded of them. Let them! 



They've had a profits bonanza for decades. The share of national wealth that goes back to wages is at its lowest since records began in the 1950s. 


Of course this is a challenge to the profit margins of big business - and the personal grotesque incomes of the Chief Executives, who infamously earn as much in 3 days as it takes the average worker a whole year to earn. 
That's part of its purpose; to radically redistribute wealth.


And if there's only one thing the C-19 crisis should teach us, it's the undeniable fact that society relies on the labour power, the skills and dedication, of the working class, not on the grotesquely rich minority who take the wealth whilst workers make the wealth. 



One startling, further fact to bear in mind as the bosses scream poverty in the face of such a demand: big businesses have £750billion stashed away in cash piles, in their bank accounts, totally unused; not invested in either improved wages nor modernisation of production. 

TRANSFORM MILLIONS OF WORKERS' LIVES 

Such a wage would not create a nation of millionaires! But for a 35-hour week, it would mean £420-a-week, modest even compared with government figures of the current 'typical' weekly full-time wage being £576, or £620 for men. 

However, full-time jobs have become as scarce as hen's teeth. At least a £12 minimum wage and guaranteed minimum 16-hour week would mean the battalions of part-time workers got at least £192 in their weekly wage, going some way to paying the rent and feeding families. 



It might mean millions of workers could put a few quid aside for an annual holiday, or for a rainy day. It might mean many who feel ill would not have to choose between their livelihood and their life in the current health crisis. 

NO GOING BACK AFTER COVID-19 CRISIS 

We are living through an unparalleled crisis, which highlights how society works. Amongst other things it should highlight the crime of poverty pay and its consequences, and build our resolve to end that atrocity, a hallmark of capitalism and its core motivation of profit.  

We must start the debate now for a decent minimum wage of £12-an-hour, immediately, rising with inflation or average earnings, whichever is the greater.  

Once this health crisis allows it, the SSP will be on the streets and arguing in our unions for this modest but far-reaching measure. 

There can be no going back to the outrageous poverty and inequality that have exacerbated the impact of the Coronavirus. 


[This blog is also being published by the Scottish Socialist Voice. You can SUBSCRIBE HERE to the regular Online E-Voice.... https://socialistvoice.scot/subscriptions/?utm]