Solidarity With Scottish Gas Strikers: FIRE THE BOARD!

 

SOLIDARITY WITH THE SCOTTISH GAS STRIKERS!

NO WAY O’SHEA – WE ARE WITH THE WORKERS!

FIRE THE BOARD – AND DON’T REHIRE THEM!

DEMAND DEMOCRATIC PUBLIC OWNERSHIP: end the corporate thuggery of ‘fire and rehire’ 

As Scottish/British gas engineers stage another round of strikes against savage cuts to their jobs, terms and conditions, and invasion of their family time by bosses demanding more work and longer hours for less money, the Scottish Socialist Party extends them the hand of solidarity. 

We know which side we are on in this showdown between workers who have risked their own lives throughout the pandemic, volunteering to carry out repairs in houses where they knew people had Covid-19 – and a gang of profiteers, led my £800,000-a-year CEO, Chris O’Shea.

Owners of Scottish Gas, Centrica, is run by a club of millionaires. They want to browbeat workers into working from 5 to 8 hours UNPAID EXTRA WORK each week. 

Between four of them, the Centrica Board members have earned £37million since 2015, by sitting on the boards of other companies outside the gas industry. 

Stephen Hester made £18million since 2015 as CEO of insurance giant RSA, and stands to gain a further £16million from sales of RSA shares. 

Heidi Mottram took over £4million in salary and benefits as CEO of Northumbrian Water.

Kevin O’Byrne got £2.23million in 2019 as finance chief of Sainsbury’s, on top of £1.45million the previous year. 

Chair of Centrica, Scott Wheway, is on £410,000. He gets another £200,000 as chair of AXA UK and - up until last year - was paid £240,000 for sitting on the board of Santander UK. 

Privatisation is a licence to print money and hand it to a tiny bunch of remote millionaire directors.  Boardroom dictators who then act like gold-plated, mafioso thugs, holding a gun to the heads of workers whose annual wages they wouldn’t get out of bed for a week for. 

The unelected board of Centrica should be fired and the whole industry taken into democratic public ownership, with elected Boards of Management, including direct workers’ representatives, on a skilled wage, not these mind-boggling incomes. 

The case for public ownership and democratic working-class control could not be more glaring. 

Victory to the gas engineers! Reverse the tide of ‘fire and rehire’ corporate thuggery. Fire the board! For democratic public ownership. 

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