CAPITALISM ISN'T WORKING!

"Observers might conclude that the DWP had been tasked with designing a digital and sanitized version of the 19th century workhouse, made infamous by Charles Dickens." 

"As Thomas Hobbes observed long ago, such an approach condemns the least well off to lives that are 'solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short'". 

These are just two of the many devastating sentences in the recent UN report on Britain by their rapporteur on extreme poverty, Professor Philip Alston. 

In terms of facts and figures, there is not that much new in his account of poverty and inequality in the fifth-richest economy on earth. It's more the source and force of presentation of this searing condemnation of the state of Tory Britain that has hit the headlines - and inflamed the feelings of Tory Ministers like Amber Rudd, who whinge that it's not representative of the UK, 2019. 

In fact, this short, sharp, 20-page Report - based on far-reaching research and two weeks of face-to-face meetings with people affected - is all too realistic, all too accurate, and therefore all the more an indictment of the life-crushing poverty and inequality that is in the bone-marrow of capitalism. 

Poverty and Destitution 

One in five of the UK population (14 million people) live in poverty - 4 million of them at least 50% below the poverty line. 

A further 2.5 million are less than 10% above the official poverty line; one emergency away from falling into the pits of penury. 

'Destitution' is a word sometimes demeaned by over-use. The official definition of destitution is having less than £10-a-day after housing costs, or having to go without at least two essentials such as shelter, food, heat, light, clothing or toiletries during a one-month period. An incredible 1.5 million citizens of the world's fifth-richest economy experienced destitution in 2017! 

Some of the symptoms of this appalling state of affairs, identified by the UN Report, include "a shocking rise in use of food banks [a four-fold increase since 2012 - RV] and rough sleeping...falling life expectancy for some...denial of benefits to the severely disabled...impoverishment of single mothers and people with mental illness..." 

 

'Systematic Immiseration' 

But Professor Alston rightly points the finger at the Tory government for consciously driving people down into the muck and misery of poverty. It's not the natural order of things, nor some god-given condition. 

He accuses the Tories in scathing language: 

"Much of the glue that held British society together since World War Two has been deliberately removed and replaced with a harsh and uncaring ethos... There's been a systematic immiseration of a significant part of the population... Austerity has deliberately gutted local authorities [on provision of libraries, youth facilities, parks and other services], leading to unheard-of levels of loneliness and isolation." 

Alston identifies the cruel abomination of Universal Credit as one major cause of this suffering - an accusation made flesh and bone by one of the community activists he met in Scotland, Ruchazie's Jamie Clark: 

"I've seen people get into two months' rent arrears while they wait 8 weeks for their first payment of Universal Credit. In that time they've been threatened with legal action by their housing provider. I know from personal experience the impact it has on your mental health and family life when you live in fear of eviction because you can't pay the rent."

Warning the Exploiters 

But Alston also rightly highlights that "60% of the people in poverty are in families where someone works." 

That's 60% of 14 million people, left stranded in poverty because a family member or members suffers poverty pay and/or insecure contracts; victims of a system that has systematically robbed wages in favour of profits. 

As Alston warns, alongside "massive disinvestment in the social security network", this low-wage economy has "created a highly combustible situation that will have dire consequences."

As well as lambasting the Tories for their track-record, their ideologically-driven austerity agenda, the UN rapporteur is hereby warning the ruling capitalist class of the social and political upheaval they are storing up. 

'Capitalism Isn't Working' 

An even more stark version of the same alarm call has been issued by Nobel prize-winning economist, Professor Sir Angus Deaton, in his far-reaching report on inequality in the UK, for the Institute for Fiscal Studies. 

"There's a real question whether democratic capitalism is working, when it's only working for part of the population", the IFS report cries out. 

It goes on to warn that widening wealth gaps "make a mockery of democracy", with the assessment that "people are more troubled by inequality than at any time since the 1940s." 

'Deaths of Despair' 

This major new study shows that the share of household income going to the richest 1% has tripled in the past 30 years, as Britain has become one of the most unequal societies on earth, after the US. Deaton describes the contrast between "runaway incomes for high earners" with the rise in what he calls "deaths of despair" - early deaths through addiction and suicide - linked to poverty, social isolation and mental health problems. 

Since the 2008 bankers' crisis, such 'deaths of despair' have rocketed from 30 to 61 per 100,000 for men, and from 15 to 26 per 100,000 women. 

The capitalist economist's devastating picture of growing, galloping inequality lacks any substantial proposals to overcome it, but concedes "Falling trade union membership may have removed constraints on wage dispersion, increased the surplus going to executives, or more generally reduced the political clout of ordinary workers against other dominant groups." 

Emergency Measures Against Poverty and Inequality 

These two authoritative reports condemn the Tories and capitalism as a system for failing the millions; deliberately! So what possible solutions to poverty and inequality can we advocate? 

The meek and mild recommendations of the UN Report to restore local authority funding, reverse benefit caps and scrap the two-child limit are welcome and necessary, but wholly inadequate in the teeth of a social and human catastrophe. 

The benefits system needs to be fundamentally overhauled, to transform it into a genuine 'social security system' for those most in need, or at times of greatest need. 

Going beyond that, the battle for a decent wage and secure jobs is critical. For an immediate £10-an-hour minimum wage for all over 16, scrapping the lower youth rates, as an emergency step towards a real living minimum wage. And for a guaranteed minimum 16-hour week for all who want it, abolishing the poverty and mind-bending insecurity of zero-hours or short-hours contracts. 

For a Legal Maximum Income 

Equally, the trade union and socialist movement needs to take serious action against inequality, around the demand for a legal maximum income, initially set at no more than 10 times the minimum wage. 
That would help reverse the rising tide of extreme incomes for those who take but don't make wealth - and add to social cohesion and well-being.

Along with progressive taxation of the rich and big corporations, such fighting demands would vastly strengthen the organised trade union movement - which the IFS report acknowledges is one of the pivotal requirements to combating inequality. 

As we've written before, it's no accident that inequality was at its narrowest in Britain when the unions had over 13 million members, with collective bargaining covering the big majority of workers - the mirror opposite to today's situation. 

Democratic Ownership 

If we are to challenge the widening gap in wealth, health and life expectancy itself, we need the audacity to question the whole source of such appalling inequalities: the ownership of wealth and its means of creation. 

It's not 'democracy' that isn't working, it's capitalism - a system of ownership of wealth and power that excludes the vast majority of the population from any meaningful democracy, let alone a secure lifestyle. 

Why should a handful of bankers, a few hundred industrial corporations, and shrinking numbers of fabulously rich landowners dictate the lives of billions of people across the globe? 

We need to build a socialist party and trade union movement that campaigns for real democracy - democratic public ownership of land, industry, finance and services - with a plan of sustainable social production that creates hundreds of thousands of homes, decent jobs, clean energy and free public transport. 

There's no question about it: capitalism is not working. Our task is to organise for its replacement, in defense of both people and planet. That's the democratic and socialist future that fills the thinkers of capitalism with dread. 

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.

Labour Conference Adopts a Policy Pioneered by the SSP

Labour Party Conference has adopted a policy pioneered by the SSP!

Hot on the heels of the TUC congress unanimously adopting the pioneering new policy of a guaranteed minimum 16-hour working week - instead of the abomination of zero and short-hours contracts - so too has the Labour Party conference, in a composite Motion on In-Work Poverty, moved by my union Usdaw, seconded by the GMB.

If acted upon, this could be a lifeline to millions of workers subjected to insecure, low-paid jobs, dependency on foodbanks, and mounting mental ill-health.

So it's immensely welcome that the Corbyn-led Labour conference has overwhelmingly agreed a policy pioneered and spearheaded by socialists OUTSIDE Labour - specifically, the SSP!!

To avoid any confusion, here's the timeline:
- in my book, Break the Chains, published in December 2015, I first proposed this new idea of a guaranteed minimum week for all workers who want it; 16 hours, to match criteria for Working Tax Credit, Statutory Sick Pay, and employers' NIC contributions.

- in 2016, this was unanimously agreed as SSP policy, and then fought for on the streets and in our unions.

- in April 2018, I proposed this policy on behalf of Glasgow no 1 Usdaw branch at Usdaw national conference (ADM), winning unanimous support from nearly 1,000 delegates. 

- as a newly elected Usdaw Executive Council member, I combined with others to argue for rapid implementation of the 16-hour policy, in tandem with the 4-year-old policy of a £10 minimum wage (NOT seriously acted upon up until now!).

That included pushing for it to be advanced by Usdaw as policy at the TUC, Labour conferences... and likewise in other parties. 

The result? Usdaw has now launched the major 'Time For Better Pay' campaign, with these demands at its core, winning support at both the TUC and Labour conferences.

HISTORIC VINDICATION!

I can't resist a wry smile at this brilliant news, especially as it comes from Labour's Liverpool-held conference.

Back in 1986, I and eight other socialist leaders in Liverpool were expelled from the Labour party by the insufferable windbag, Neil Kinnock - for the crime of being far too successful at mobilising the Merseyside working class, defeating Maggie Thatcher's Tory government, winning massive concessions in government funding to build council houses and create thousands of jobs. And winning record votes for socialists in Liverpool elections, whilst Kinnock displayed an unrivalled ability to lose elections and leave the Tories in office to assault the working class.

I remember saying at the time that they might succeed in expelling socialists from the Labour party, but they couldn't expel us from the wider labour movement or the working class. It's taken a while, but it's quite gratifying to see that prediction proven.

And it's a perfect 20th birthday present for the SSP; courageous, principled socialists organised OUTSIDE Labour have been instrumental in committing Labour to a policy that could transform many workers' lives - in a fashion Scottish Labour's 'left' never managed to do. 

We now look forward to uniting in action with fellow-trade unionists, both inside and outwith Labour, to force through the implementation of this far-reaching policy, to give workers a bit of security and control over their working lives.

BUILD ACTION TO END POVERTY PAY & INSECURITY

The British TUC meets in Manchester for its annual congress, 150 years after its founding meeting in the Mechanics Institute of the same city. Much has changed in life since 1868; but much has remained the same, with the fundamentals of class division and capitalist exploitation.

The TUC is potentially a very powerful force for change, but only if it had a leadership determined to challenge the employers and governments in pursuit of the many progressive polices agreed by its annual congress - by mobilizing the 6.3 million workers  organised in the 48 trade unions affiliated to the TUC.  

Reforms and Betrayals 

The trade union movement has been instrumental in winning many vital reforms in living conditions for millions of workers and their families: an end to systematic child labour; improved health and safety; paid holidays; weekends off for some workers; equal pay and minimum wage legislation, etc. 

But every reform won has required mighty struggles. Struggles against the resistance of capitalist employers and their hired governments, but also within the unions, against conservative right wingers and overpaid bureaucrats who've quivered and capitulated at the thought of going into battle with the employers. 

Many momentous events in history have proved the baleful role of the right wing compromisers, and the urgent need for fighting socialist leaderships in the unions, accountable to the members, engaged in mobilising those same members in action for change. 

The TUC's betrayal of the 1926 General Strike; their desertion of the heroic miners' struggle of 1984/5; their exclusion of the RMT from talks with Southern Rail bosses last year in the midst of a ferocious RMT members' strike against Driver Only trains; their failure to lift a finger in pursuit of "a £10 minimum wage for all workers" for the four years since it was passed - unanimously - at the 2014 TUC congress... these are just some harsh reminders of the need to transform the potentially mighty trade union movement into an instrument for change, with a democratic, fighting, socialist leadership at every level. 

Great Jobs Agenda 

A major theme of the 2018 TUC congress is their 'Great Jobs Agenda'. Conference documents carry devastating evidence of the millions suffering jobs that are anything but 'great'. 

Alongside many other policy Motions for investment in skills, sustainable 'green' manufacturing, and public services, one from my own union - Usdaw - calls for a pioneering new policy to replace the rampant job insecurity of zero-hours, short-hours and fixed-term contracts. 

Usdaw's Motion is based on the brand new policy I successfully moved at the union's annual conference in April, on behalf of Glasgow no.1 branch, calling for a ban on all zero-hours contracts, to be replaced by a legally guaranteed minimum 16-hour contract for every worker who wants one, in tandem with an immediate £10-an-hour minimum wage. 

Poverty Pay and Under-Employment 

We're subjected to the hollow Tory and big business boasts of record levels of employment. In reality, low pay, insecure jobs and mass underemployment have side-lined mass unemployment as the biggest sources of punishing poverty for millions in this rich land. 

Wages have been crushed whilst prices rocket; by 2025 the average worker will have lost out on £18,500 in real earnings. (TUC Research). 

Ten years after the financial mayhem triggered by the bankers' greed, real wages are today worth £24-a-week less than in 2008. All the forecasts agree wages won't be restored to 2008 levels - which weren't exactly luxury living! - until after 2025; the longest period of wage decline since the Napoleonic Wars, 200 years ago. 

The government's own DWP admit there are 300,000 more in poverty now than a year ago - and 55% of those are in working families. 

Child Poverty Rising 

The sins of the capitalist profiteers have been visited upon the children! 

Over 3.1 million kids with working parents are below the breadline, here and now in 2018, compared with 2.1 million in the year 2000. And an astonishing two-thirds of all the children living in poverty have one or two parents working. 

Public sector cuts and crucifixion of in-work benefits have been major causes of this catastrophe. But underlying it all is the merciless robbery of wages by the capitalist employers over recent decades, aided by successive Tory AND Labour governments, with anti-union laws their weapon of choice in boosting profits at the expense of wages and public services. 

Nearly one in every eight workers (11.9%) is in some form of insecure job: on zero-hours contracts, agency, casual, seasonal, bogus self-employed, and pitifully short-hours contracts. For instance, all the giant supermarkets offer a minimum weekly contract of a mere 8 hours. 

A full one million part-time workers want a full-time job but can't get one, as employers escalate use of micro-jobs to put workers at their beck and call, dragged in at short notice to do extra hours to match 'business needs', then cast back onto miserably small contract hours when the bosses want to cut their wage bill. No wonder stress is hitting the roof in workplaces; millions have no control over their daily working lives, and just as little control over their income. 

For a 16-Hour Minimum Working Week 

That's a taste of the reasons it's critically important the Usdaw policy Motion - for a guaranteed minimum 16-hour week for all workers who want it - is passed at TUC congress. And not just agreed and then stashed away in a filing cabinet (or its digital equivalent!), but made the active property of every union member in workplaces across the country, with an action plan to fight for it immediately.

This one measure, twinned with an immediate £10 minimum wage for all workers, rising with inflation, would begin to transform the lives of millions - children included. Alongside demands for investment in skills and learning (currently, scandalously, at only half the level of the EU average!); a million 'green' jobs; vast expansion of public sector housing and transport... such a package of radical measures, seriously fought for by the trade union movement, could bring about genuinely 'great jobs'. 

As could a struggle for use of digitalization and robotics to slash the working week without a penny loss of pay - as opposed to the dystopian nightmare of new technology condemning millions of workers to unemployment and destitution. It's a question of who owns and controls the new technologies, as with the wider economy. 

How Can We Win? 

Many workers have already asked me 'How can we get the TUC to act on good policies, like a £10 minimum wage and guaranteed minimum 16-hour week?'

There was nothing pre-ordained about committing the TUC to a £10 minimum wage nor Usdaw to the new policy of a 16-hour minimum working week; they had to be organised and argued for, through union structures, from branch level upwards. That's a start. 

Assuming the TUC, representing 6.3 million trade union members, adopts this policy, trade union activists and socialists have a massive role to play in getting action to implement such life-improving reforms. 

We will need to argue for and organise meetings of union members in branches and workplaces to discuss and popularise the arguments for £10-an-hour and a guaranteed 16-hour week as immediate minimum employment standards - to make union polices the property of thousands of workers. 

That's the best way to light bonfires beneath the backsides of the TUC and national union leaderships, demanding action and resources of them. 

Leaflets and literature arguing these policies should be demanded of the TUC and national unions, to spread the word, involve members on the streets as well as in workplaces, through days of campaign activities. 

An aware union membership is indispensable when union negotiators put these demands to employers - as they should and must, if policies are to mean anything. 

Strike, if Necessary 

Ultimately, unions need to prepare their membership for the possibility of needing to use industrial action to win such reforms. 

It's to their eternal credit that the Bakers' union (BFAWU) have already recruited, organized, balloted and led McDonald's workers out on strike 'for £10 and a union', and are now doing the same with Wetherspoons staff. These are also sectors rotten-ripe for the demand for a 16-hour minimum for all workers who want it. 

Other unions need to implement TUC policies with the same determination. 

Pound the Politicians 

We also have other pressure points that should be pounded with these demands by the unions, in particular local government and the devolved Scottish government. 

In the policy passed unanimously at Usdaw conference, those points are specified, calling for lobbying all these levels of government, demanding they introduce the £10 and 16 hour minimums for all their directly and indirectly employed staff... which amounts to a massive 500,000 workers in Scotland! 

Socialists and trade unionists need to bombard councillors and MSPs - regardless of their party label - with demands that in the forthcoming budget-making process for 2019/20, they set both a £10 minimum wage and guaranteed 16-hour week into No Cuts budgets, and then mobilize workforces and communities in struggle for the funding off Holyrood and Westminster to implement these reforms. 

Many who've joined the SNP and Scottish Labour proclaim themselves socialists. Now is the time for them to make demands on their own councillors and MSPs to stop implementing Tory austerity and start standing up for the working class with concrete, radical reforms like £10 and 16 hours minimum. 

The STUC should take the bold step of organising protest demos demanding this of MSPs and councillors. 

Socialists Fight On! 

The potential power of unified trade union action has all-too-rarely been applied. The crushing poverty and insecurity of millions of workers and their families cries out for such action. 

The SSP will continue to vigorously campaign on these policies, both within our own workplaces and unions, on the streets and in colleges. We appeal to others to join us in that crusade. The combined forces of the trade unions and socialist policies are a force that could change the lives of masses of people. Join that struggle! 

SPEECH FOR A GUARANTEED MINIMUM 16-HOUR WEEK

As TUC Congress looms...
SPEECH ADVOCATING GUARANTEED MINIMUM 16-HOUR WEEK

The annual congress of the British TUC starts on 9th September, where my own union - Usdaw - will propose not only a £10 minimum wage, but also the pioneering demand for a legally guaranteed minimum contract of 16-hours a week for all workers who want it - instead of the curse of zero hours contracts and rampant under-employment through short hours contracts.

As background - and as information to use in your own union to lobby support for this policy at the TUC - here's (below) the text of the Policy Proposition and the union's official verbatim report of the speech I made at April's Usdaw annual conference, where I proposed this brand new policy of a minimum 16-hour week, except where a worker and his/her union rep negotiates fewer hours. 

I will post a proper article on the TUC and this key issue soon.

Meantime, please help spread the case amongst workers and their unions for a radical alternative to low-paid, insecure jobs.

TEXT OF MY SPEECH AT USDAW Annual Delegate Meeting, April 2018...

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!" 

HELP ELECT A SOCIALIST TO THE USDAW NEC

I know this isn't in keeping with the blogs I normally write, but in case some of you are either members of an USDAW union branch in Scotland - or you know somebody who is - I'm posting this letter appealing for branch nominations for the Usdaw National Executive Council elections.

Several Usdaw activists asked me to stand for one of the two positions on the NEC elected by Usdaw's 45,000 members. I eventually made my mind up and agreed to be a candidate!

I want to bring decades of experience as a trade union activist, campaigner and socialist to the deliberations of my union's NEC. Hopefully, the letter briefly explains some of my priority policies and aims.

Retail and related jobs are polluted by poverty pay and job insecurity.

I want to help push our union into a far more urgent approach to actively implementing policies agreed at its own conferences (ADMs - Annual Delegate Meetings), on issues like an IMMEDIATE £10 minimum wage... before inflation makes this a redundant demand!

I want to pursue policies like a guaranteed minimum 16-hour contract for all workers who want it, instead of the abomination of zero hours contracts.

And I want to combine with others to make our union more transparently democratic, with far greater membership control.

I have energetically built up the union membership during my 10 years in Usdaw, and spoken out for what I believe in at conferences of the union - both Scottish and UK-wide.

Please consider what you can do to help me get nominations at Usdaw branches.
Nominations started last week, and the deadline for receipt of all branch nominations at the Usdaw HQ is 13th November. Get in touch if your Usdaw branch needs more of my details for the nomination procedures.

Apologies to those NOT in Usdaw who read this - but have a think if you know anyone in the union who you can share this with, and encourage them to support a socialist candidate for the Usdaw NEC.