FOR A DECENT LIVING MINIMUM WAGE & GUARANTEED 16-HOUR WEEK

The Westminster government's legal minimum wage rates are set to rise on 1st April, with new hourly rates ranging from £8.21 for workers aged 25 and over, to a derisory £4.35 for those under 18, and £3.90 for apprentices. 

Every penny extra is naturally welcomed by millions of workers' families struggling to survive, as prices rocket, especially on daily necessities like food, transport, energy and rent. And the average increase on the various minimum wage rates of 4.5% has been hard won, by the naming and shaming of the profiteers by trade unionists and socialists; the battling by workers and socialists like the SSP in our unions and on the streets. 

But these rates remain a major cause of the grinding poverty in this rich nation, not a means of eradicating it. They are miles short of being a solution to the criminal fact workers in jobs make up 52% of the one million Scots officially living below the poverty line. 

Furthermore, employers increasingly treat the basement level minimum wage as the norm, not the minimum - something which only collective bargaining and collective action by the unions can overcome.

Rampant Job Insecurity

Pathetic hourly rates of pay, twinned with insecure and short or zero hours contracts, are the root causes of shameful numbers of working people having to swallow their dignity and turn to food banks so they can swallow some food.

The retail workers who make, sell and put food on the shelves - but can't afford to put food on the family table. 

The fast-food workers who accumulate millions in profit for tax-dodging giants that hire them on zero hours contracts, but themselves have to resort to emergency food parcels, courtesy the generosity of other workers in collections for food banks.

Wages as a share of overall wealth, GDP, are at a record low. Profits soar as people suffer. Stagnant wages are accompanied by cuts to in-work benefits. The systematic cuts to benefits since 2015 - including Working Tax Credits and child benefits - means over £1.4billion a year less to working families than if they'd kept pace with inflation.

Far from the Tory government "tackling burning injustices" as Theresa May declared on being foisted on us as PM, they are further shackling the unions, escalating job insecurity, slashing workers' benefits - all behind the deafening noise about Brexit.

There are still officially 850,000 workers on zero hours contracts. Two-thirds of them have been stuck on these modern forms of slavery for over a year. A TUC survey has shown 51% of them have had shifts cancelled with less than 24 hours notice, and a whopping 73% offered shifts with less than a day's notice. So much for planning your future! 

Nearly half the workers on zero hours contracts get no paid holidays, and on average they are £4-an-hour worse paid than workers in the same jobs that are not on ZHCs.

These are but a few statistical reminders of the need to abolish them. Reinforcement of the case for the alternative which the SSP has pioneered and has now been agreed by the entire trade union movement - as a result of our convincing my own union, Usdaw, to pioneer the demand: a legally guaranteed minimum 16-hour contract for all workers who want it.

Tories Rob our Language!

The Tories are past masters at using twisted language to bamboozle those they are exploiting for profit. 

They took up the perfectly honourable idea of 'a living wage' and deliberately abused it when they introduced a new, marginally-higher minimum wage for workers aged 25 and over - labelling it the 'National Living Wage'. The new figure of £8.21 is nothing of the sort. If in doubt, try living on it!

To add to the confusion, the Living Wage Foundation calculates a figure for what they call a 'Living Wage', uprated every November. This is now set at £9-an-hour. We should be clear: although six million people earn less, it is still not a real living wage. Furthermore, it only applies to those over 18, and is entirely voluntary, not legally binding.

Recent news stories merely confirmed what many of us have warned for years: employers often gain the kudos (and additional customer base) of being Accredited Living Wage employers, whilst delegating the dirty work to contractors who prolong and delay paying their staff anything like this figure.

Recent media reports rightly exposed four Scottish Further Education colleges which hire contract cleaners denied the Living Wage Foundation figure that the college bosses signed up to. 

But as I've exposed and argued for action against within Usdaw for years, this is rampant practice within the private sector too. Big companies winning public applause for being a Living Wage Employer - now paying core staff £9-an-hour - but using contractors who for instance impose a 6-day week, instead of 5, on workers only getting the paltry minimum wage (currently £7.83).

Union and Political Action

That's why we need serious trade union and political action across all sectors to achieve two things: to bring these contractors in-house, and to insist on a decent, legally-enforced, living minimum wage for all, regardless of age. 

Not the derisory current minimum, which is also riddled with age discrimination. 

Not the entirely voluntary, and still far too low Living Wage Foundation figure (£9), applied according to the whims and fancies of employers, who often contract out lower-paid jobs anyway, whilst keeping up their public image. 

Instead, we need a legally guaranteed living minimum wage for all over 16,  calculated by a formula that helps close the gender pay gap, helps eradicate poverty, and ensures the absolute minimum keeps pace with increases in average wages or inflation, whichever is the greater. 

Two-thirds Median Male Earnings

That's why the SSP has consistently fought for a national minimum wage based on two-thirds median male earnings.

In September 2014, that formula worked out at £10-an-hour. Since that same month,  the SSP has spearheaded  campaigns on the streets and in the workplaces and unions for £10now! That's also the policy unanimously agreed by the TUC all those 4.5 years ago. 

For millions of workers - including about 480,000 in Scotland - this would be a substantial hike in their wages. But frankly, even £10-an-hour is increasingly falling below what can be genuinely regarded as a decent living minimum wage. And it certainly no longer matches the formula of two-thirds median male earnings, nor allows for the galloping inflation since 2014, when the TUC first demanded this minimum wage for all workers.

Let us illustrate just how modest the demand for £10 immediately, rising with inflation, really is. Since 2014, average inflation has officially risen by 14%. So £10 then would need to be £11.40 now to keep up with price rises.

Recent reports say the overall median wage for all is £632 a week. For the best-paid bracket - men aged 40-49 - the median weekly wage is £707. In contrast, an immediate £10-an-hour, assuming a 35-hour working week, would only reach £350.

Join Our Struggle!

The battle for a decent living minimum wage - regardless of age or gender, and legally binding - is more urgent than ever, as the working poor make up the absolute majority of those below the breadline. 

Alongside that, the demand for a guaranteed minimum 16-hour contract for all workers who want it is a key weapon against poverty and insecurity, plus the epidemic of mental illness which they help create.

It's no wonder 26,000 people have already signed the new online petition for these minimum employment standards, launched by Usdaw - which we need 100,000 to sign to force a debate in parliament.

It's no wonder thousands respond to the SSP street campaigning on these twin demands.

Join a union and help make sure there's collective struggle to achieve these aims. And join the SSP to challenge the entire rigged capitalist system, which robs workers to feed the profits of a tiny, rich minority. 

It's time for radical socialist change - to put people in charge of the economy, instead of profit dictating to people. 

Please take one simple step TODAY to help the campaign to win these minimum employment standards. Sign the Online petition, launched by my own union, Usdaw. Our target is 100,000 signatures - to force a debate on the demands in parliament. 

FIGHT TO SAVE EVERY TESCO JOB!

Retail giant unilaterally declares 9,000 job losses 

Tesco workers have reacted with a mixture of shock, anxiety and fury at the announcement of 9,000 job losses, and the manner in which this jobs slaughter was declared.

In what was undoubtedly a cynically calculated leak from the higher echelons of Tesco's bosses, the weekend press was full of speculation about 15,000 job losses. If they thought this would lead to a collective sigh of relief from thousands of distressed workers when the official announcement of ‘only’ 9,000 job losses was subsequently made, they were badly mistaken. Workers are rightly furious at Tesco bosses treating them, and their unions, with such utter, high-handed contempt.

An unprecedented number of retail workers are talking about the case for industrial action to stop these job losses. Unless talks with Tesco produce an acceptable, total retreat from these plans - protecting all jobs, wages and conditions - union activists and members in general are going to have to seize the bull by the horns and make it plain that they are indeed prepared for collective action. Otherwise, unless serious resistance is mounted, three times as many jobs as were infamously wiped out at the Lanarkshire Ravenscraig steelworks could be decimated.

TESCO RIP UP PARTNERSHIP AGREEMENT

What does this grotty episode say for Tesco’s attitude to the oft-trumpeted partnership agreement with Usdaw?

They've arrogantly ripped this agreement to shreds, not even consulting the union, let alone negotiating their plans. Instead, unilaterally declaring their savagery via the media, proving in action that they believe in the dictatorship of big business over workers and their elected representatives.

Even the pathetically weak employment laws in this business-dominated state prescribe consultation – and meaningful consultation at that – at the formative stage of any planned changes to a business. This plan of butchery is in flagrant contradiction to that procedure, let alone the alleged partnership agreement Tesco’s signed up to with Usdaw.

As I've often written before, social partnership is the partnership of the rider and the horse, with big business in the saddle.

Tesco bosses plan to slash 9,000 jobs, closing fresh food counters in 90 of their 790 large stores. They also want to only open the meat, fish and deli counters part-time in the other 700 stores, plus cut back on staffing levels in the replenishment and layout design operations. To add insult to injury, they aim to replace staff canteens with glorified vending machines. That in itself means loss of jobs for canteen staff. And when worries about the future of their bakeries are raised, they trot out those well-worn, weasel words, “we have no plans to shut the bakeries”; aye, no plans now, but what about the next phase of cuts, if they get away with this round?

HOW IS ENDING FRESH FOOD COUNTERS ‘SUSTAINABLE’?

What does this plan do for the growing, modern demand for fresh, locally-sourced food? How does that match their soothing words about merely wanting “a simpler, more sustainable business”? In truth, it’s just the latest link in the chain of strangulation of small businesses, small farmers and food producers which the big supermarkets wield every time they move into a town or area. For instance, they wipe out local butchers’ shops and fishmongers, and now plan to get rid of fresh fish and meat counters in their own super-stores.

Of course, the immediate task of the union is to challenge Tesco’s bogus claims, and demand that there is not a single job loss, nor a penny lost in any worker’s pay, in any changes to roles in the stores that might be (belatedly!) negotiated with the unions – where Usdaw itself represents over 160,000 Tesco workers. And every store should have a proper staff canteen – not to mention protection and expansion of fresh food counters, sourced locally.

TESCO’S SKYROCKETING PROFITS

What possible justification can there be for this jobs brutality? 

Workers’ efforts have achieved 12 consecutive quarters of growth for the business, plus a successful Christmas trading period.

And this is no struggling family corner shop!

Tesco’s profits have skyrocketed in recent years, after top bosses incurred a loss of £2billion in share values by, putting it plainly, fiddling the books. Profits rose from £145m the previous year to £1.3billion in 2017, a gargantuan 800% increase. And this bounty rocketed by a further 28% last year, to £1.64billion.

In the UK and Ireland alone, the efforts of Tesco workers produced over £1.1billion in profits last year - another 31% rise on the year before.

Where have all the profits gone? That's one of the central questions workers and the union need to pursue and expose, in fighting to rip apart Tesco’s so-called business case for this butchery of jobs and conditions. They should be forced to open up their company plans and balance sheets to public inspection by the unions and financial experts. What have they got to hide, if they are merely wanting to meet changing customer expectations and “building a simpler, more sustainable business”, as they claim?

DEMAND A LEGAL MAXIMUM INCOME 

We already have a partial answer to the question of where the profits sweated from workers have gone: the bank accounts of top Tesco bosses. Chief Executive,  ‘Drastic’ Dave Lewis, enjoyed an increase of 17.5% on his income last year, to a staggering £4.9million. 

Leaving aside the combined incomes of the other directors, Lewis’s obscene greed alone justifies the policy which I successfully proposed at the 2018 Usdaw national conference (ADM) - for a Legal Maximum Income initially set at ten times the legal minimum wage. 

If that was applied to the Tesco CEO, imagine the impact of ploughing over £4.7m back into workers’ wages and job security, instead of it going into the coffers of one fat-cat.

LOW PAY AND INSECURE CONTRACTS THREATEN JOBS

Retail in general is in crisis, with multiple causes. Last year, 70,000 jobs were shed, and the British Retail Consortium forecasts a further 90,000 job losses this year. 

One of the root causes of the terrible insecurity and loss of conditions facing the 3 million workers in retail is the chronic low pay and insecure contracts imposed by the profiteers on this vital sector of the economy - which contributes at least 11% of GDP.

Low wages and low hours – zero-hours and, more commonly, short-hours contracts – strangle workers’ spending power, and thereby threaten jobs. And it's not just poverty pay in retail that causes this problem; it's a plague across all sectors.

That's why Usdaw’s centre-piece Time For Better Pay campaign is so critically important.  The demands for an immediate £10-an-hour minimum wage for all workers, and a guaranteed minimum 16-hour contract for every worker who wants it, would help fuel the economy, boost workers’ spending power and their sense of security. And it would substantially redistribute wealth from profits to pay.

Likewise, Usdaw’s campaign for a Retail Industrial Strategy is critical in resisting this jobs slaughter, highlighted by the Tesco announcement, but common to all the Big 4 supermarkets and the rest of the sector.  This calls for measures including changes to taxation to end the unfair advantages enjoyed by online traders over ‘bricks and mortar’ stores; reform of local commercial rents, business rates, public transport and car-parking, to help save our High Streets; investment in upskilling retail workers to meet the challenges of new technology; and improved productivity through decent pay and contracts.

DEMOCRATIC PUBLIC OWNERSHIP OF RETAIL GIANTS

But in my personal opinion, the outrageous butchery declared by the unelected, totally unaccountable profiteers also highlights the need for a radical overhaul of who owns and controls retail. 

Why should multi-millionaire owners and Chief Executives have the power to destroy the livelihoods of thousands of workers, and create havoc for entire families and communities?

Why should they be entitled to cream off £billions in profit and then ‘reward’ those workers who created this mountain of wealth for them with a P45?  

At the 2017 Usdaw national conference it was agreed to call for public ownership in such situations. That would lay the foundations for a democratic plan of action - embracing retail workers’ union representatives, local authorities and governments - to invest in town centres and other retail outlets in a fashion that maximises jobs, retail services to communities, and indeed the interests of family farmers and small businesses. 

A retail sector based on public needs and agreed priorities, rather than dictatorship by the retail giants; an end to the rule of private profit for the few over the lives and livelihoods of millions of people.  

FAT CAT FRIDAY - Demand Legal Maximum Income!

Fat Cats earn a year's average wage by Friday lunchtime

Imagine you only had to work 3 days to get the average wage of a typical full-time worker in the country. To have all that free time for other pursuits, personal development and participation in the running of workplaces, the economy and society - and still earn the current median full-time annual income of £29,574. 

But here's the critical clarification: we are not talking about a 3-day week on this annual income; that's a whole other article for another time. We mean 3 days in the entire year of 2019!

Fat Cat Friday

Last year it was dubbed Fat Cat Thursday, because the average Chief Executive of the FTSE 100 top companies could match the entire income of the average worker in the first three days of 2018. This year it was Fat Cat Friday, 4th January - not because it took these corporate fat-cats any longer to pile up a year's average worker's wage, but purely because New Years Day moved by a day. 

The latest report by the High Pay Centre has mind-blowing statistics on the nauseating inequality at the heart of capitalism. The top bosses in the biggest 100 companies in Britain - the FTSE 100 - awarded themselves an average pay package of £3.9million last year. That's £1,020 an hour! It's 133 times as much as the average full-time worker earns. 

As an earlier report (August 2018) from the same source showed, it's an annual income that workers aged 25 and more, on the government's deliberately misnamed National Living Wage, would have to work for 386 years to earn! Not a particularly realistic option, the last time I checked life expectancy figures! 

Galloping Gap in Incomes 

And contrary to the deceitful rhetoric of the Tories and their ilk, there is no trend towards greater fairness in pay, nor any tackling of the obscenity of boardroom greed by an outbreak of shareholders' democracy. Quite the opposite; the average FTSE 100 CEO had an 11% pay increase compared to the previous year - at a time when average workers' pay rises hovered around 1.7%. An annual pay package of £3.9m compared with £3.45m. 

And the gap is galloping ahead between bosses' and workers' pay. In 1998, the average FTSE 100 chief executive earned 47 times as much as the average full-time worker. In the past 12 months, it has risen from a differential of 120:1 up to 133:1. Overall, the gap has tripled in the last 20 years, with no sign of slowing up or narrowing. After all, it's the Remuneration Committees of these top companies - made up of chief executives and directors of other companies! - which decide the pay packages.

Talk about nepotism and corruption! It's built into the very DNA of capitalism. 

That's why these overlords of capitalist exploitation could've clocked off at 1pm on Friday 4th January and still go home with the £29,574 it will take the average full-time worker the whole of the year to earn - if the latter still has a job! 

Morally Repugnant - Economically Destructive 

Not only is this pay inequality obscene, but there is no justification for it whatsoever, and it doesn't even make economic sense. 

Capitalist apologists often trot out claims that such salaries are a just reward for 'the risk takers' at the top of corporations. What risks? 

They hire and fire workers educated by the state, kept well by the NHS, and trained with the aid of lavish state handouts to companies. The same companies grab massive state aid for research and development. They rely on state-funded transport and communications networks to do their daily business, to amass their private profits with the aid of public subsidies. And then, in pursuit of even higher profit margins, these capitalist giants operate in the full knowledge that their pitiful pay rates for the workers who actually produce their company wealth will be topped up by the likes of Working Tax Credits - state subsidies to low-paying capitalists, funded by workers' taxes. 

Nor does it make the economy healthier. When a worker gains a modest pay rise, just about every penny extra is spent - on daily necessities, and in local shops, cafes, pubs, etc. This helps create or secure other workers' jobs. 

In contrast, the bloated rich gamble on the stock markets to make even more money, or invest in useless luxuries like yachts, private jets, and works of art that are often salted away in bank vaults for 'safety', never to be seen nor appreciated by their owners, let alone wider society. 

Capitalist Hoarders 

Their habits of hoarding - further illustrated by record low levels of industrial investment from profits - actually adds to job insecurity. The jobs holocaust in retail recently - with forecasts of 160,000 further job losses in 2019 - is in substantial part the result of low pay for millions, who therefore struggle to spend... a system of low pay designed to fund the profits and privileges of capitalist owners and their disgustingly over-paid chief executives and directors. 

Demand Action for Legal Maximum Income 

It's not sufficient to expose and condemn this stinking income inequality. We need action based on concrete alternatives. 

It's not sufficient for the TUC to criticize chief executives for "taking out more than they put in", to quote Frances O'Grady. It's necessary for the trade union and socialist movement to tackle this head on with the demand for a legally-enforced Maximum Income, tied to a legally-enforced national minimum wage. 

For years, the Scottish Socialist Party has advocated a maximum income based on ten times the minimum wage. Since its Annual Delegate Meeting last April, that's the policy of my own union, Usdaw, with its 430,000 members. 

As I said at the Usdaw conference, in successfully proposing this policy of a Legal Maximum Income initially set at 10 times the national minimum wage:

"Of course, there will be screams of hell and damnation from on high.  Let them scream blue murder as long as they want. When did that ever stop the trade union movement from fighting for what is right? 

"I think this is an extremely moderate and modest demand. I could put the case for 4:1 or 5:1 but I am going to be moderate, let's start with 10:1 as a measure to cut the inequality...

"If we assume a 35-hour week, a policy I strongly and passionately advocate, a 10:1 differential on the policy of the union for a £10 minimum wage will be £100-an-hour. That's £3,500 a week. It is £182,000 a year. Who in hell could object to being limited to that as an income? Who could argue that it is a disincentive to do a job, however skilled it may be, if you only get £182,000? By the way, it doesn't even affect a full 1% of the population. The infamous 1% are those on roughly £150,000 or more. This is setting the ceiling on £182,000 a year. 

"We cannot sit back and wait for social justice off the Tories. We cannot sit back and wait for a social conscience to erupt in the boardrooms of big business. We need to argue the case as a union, amongst our own members, inside the TUC, inside the Labour Party, (we are already convinced in the Scottish Socialist Party!), convince people of this policy, to then go forward and get it adopted and implemented." 

[quoted from Usdaw verbatim Report of ADM 2018]

HES workers left reliant on Salvation Army and food-banks

Two Planets on Earth 

Fat Cat Friday coincided with yet more inflation-busting train fare increases; 160 workers at Health Environmental Services in Shotts being forced to turn to Salvation Army charity and food banks for survival after being made redundant, but without any redundancy payments, and still owed their December wages; child poverty levels rocketing at their fastest rate in 30 years; and one in every 200 people being identified as either homeless or in totally inadequate housing. 

Two planets here on Earth! If these contrasting fortunes of the capitalist exploiters and the working class don't make your blood boil in anger, I'd recommend medical attention.

We need to use this obscene start to the New Year to redouble our resolve in battling against poverty and inequality. To popularise the demand for a Legal Maximum Income initially set at 10 times the national minimum wage, as the inseparable companion to the campaign for an immediate £10-an-hour national minimum wage for all over 16, without exception. 

Organise! 

As I said in the same speech at Usdaw conference last April:

"I do not claim that our proposition solves everything. Speaking as a socialist trade unionist, I believe democratic public ownership of the commanding heights of the economy and the biggest businesses is part of the solution. I do not just want to see a limitation on the slice of the cake that the tops of industry get. I want us collectively to own the whole bloody bakery! 

However, this proposition goes one hell of a way towards tackling the inequality. It is a radical departure from the morally repugnant and economically destructive inequality that is increasing at the minute." 

Take up the fight for a minimum of £10-an-hour now, immediately, and a maximum income of £100-an-hour - in your unions, on the streets. Help make advances in 2019 towards equality and socialism in our lifetimes. Demand not only a fairer share of the cake, but collective ownership of the bakery! 

TORIES ADMIT GUILT - BUT CONTINUE INSECURE WORK CRIMES

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

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

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

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

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

Oliver Twist, Tory-style

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

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

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

Crimes Admitted – Without Solutions

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

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

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

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

Ban Zero Hours Contracts

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

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

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

Real Protection – With Real Flexibility

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

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

Unionise and Organise for Guaranteed 16-hour Minimum Week

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

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

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

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

DEMAND £10 NOW AND NOT A PENNY OFF JOBS OR SERVICES!

Part of SSP National Day of Action 18 November  

As the Scottish government and 32 local councils prepare their Budgets for 2018/19, the Scottish Socialist Party has launched a new campaigning drive for an immediate minimum £10 Living Wage to be written into 'No Cuts' Budgets. 

This is an urgent, realistic demand, well within the powers of Holyrood and the local authorities - who between them employ 500,000 workers - and a potentially powerful breakthrough in the battle for a £10 minimum wage, here and now, for all workers over 16, with equal pay for women. 

"I'm for Austerity - Get me out of here!"

If SNP, Labour, or any other MSPs and councillors reject this demand - alongside reversing seven years of the income-slashing pay cap, plus protection of every single service - they should be rejected and evicted by voters. 

To amend the slogan currently made 'popular' by Kezia Dugdale, such axe-wielding politicians should admit: "I'm for austerity, get me out of here!"

There's absolutely no excuse for one, single person suffering the indignity, deprivation and inhumanity of being impoverished in such a rich country. Scotland has ten billionaires, piles of profit, enormous resources and skilled workers. It's a question of radically redistributing the wealth. 

Paradise for the Parasites

This battle is set in the midst of paradise for the profiteers, and hell on earth for millions struggling to survive in a sea of poverty. 

The recently leaked 'Paradise Papers' confirmed the grotesque, legalized robbery of the rest of us by the rich, with conservative estimates of big business and obscenely rich individuals hiding over £30trillion in offshore tax havens. 

Corporations like Apple and Nike are in the company of tax thieves like Bono and the Queen; dodging taxes, robbing society of £billions, stealing wages, pensions, benefits and public services off the working class. 

A full 80% of all offshore wealth is in the hands of a minuscule 0.1% of the population (that's one in 1,000). 

Multinational businesses shifted $600billion to these (overwhelmingly British) offshore tax havens last year alone. 

The PCS civil service union's research has already shown £120billion every year is dodged in taxes by the rich and big business - the equivalent of four years of Scotland's block grant budget from Westminster. 

Tales of Poverty Amidst Plenty

This legalized, systematic theft helps create a living hell of plummeting pay, life-threatening benefit cuts, and decimation of vital public services. 

Socialist exaggeration? Absolutely not! Anyone in touch with the conditions of the working class majority will testify to the mounting desperation amongst the poorest; the inability of even middle-income workers to match the rising cost of living; and the ticking time-bomb of mental ill-health created by impossible workloads and stress from poverty and debt.

Let's sample just a few examples. 

The one million people in Scotland officially below the poverty line, 52% of them in jobs, working to stay poor. 

The 'hunger-watch' scheme initiated by the EIS teachers' union two years ago, to help spot children unable to concentrate because of literal hunger. 

The equivalent of Dundee city's population who swallowed their pride and turned to food banks in Scotland last year to avert starvation. 

The welfare rights workers who are on the brink of physical and mental collapse with overwork and the harrowing daily experience of desperation amongst clients: the man working 60 hours a week as a taxi just to pay the mortgage and feed his child after his marriage ended; the blind man removed from sickness benefits, relying on his son's income from one or two shifts a week on a zero hours contract, while he waits since June for his benefits appeal, which drove him to attempted suicide. 

The fact teachers' real pay has fallen by 16%, and the EIS union describes teachers' massive workload - working 50-60 hours a week - as having "desperate effects on their health and well-being." 

Heart-breaking human stories are accompanied by chilling statistics. A new LSE Report calculates that since the June 2016 EU referendum and subsequent plunge in the value of Sterling - pushing up prices of items with a high import content, such as food - the average Scottish worker has lost £404 a year in wages. On top of the 10.8% fall in real wages since the banking crisis of 2008. 

Demand Action from the Anti-Tory Parties  

Hell will freeze over before the Tories start looking after the wellbeing of the millions, as opposed to the profits and privileges of the millionaires. So it's right - and urgent - that we demand action from those politicians closest to the ground in Scotland, who also like to define themselves as anti-austerity. 

The SNP helped win its historic landslide by denouncing austerity. That was the key platform of Jeremy Corbyn in his defeat of New Labour leadership candidates, with their record of implementing austerity. Latterly, Richard Leonard tried to echo his opposition to cuts.

We want words made into deeds by Scotland's anti-Tory parties.

That's why the SSP - who since September 2014 have campaigned in the streets and trade unions for an immediate, statutory £10 minimum for all over 16, with equal pay for women - is stepping up pressure on the SNP Holyrood government and Labour and SNP councillors. 

That's why the SSP held a National Day of Action on the Baltic Saturday 18 November,  demanding a guarantee that from April 2018, nobody these governments directly or indirectly employs would be trying to survive on anything less than £10 an hour.

SSP members braved the bitter cold to hold street stalls and street meetings in Glasgow's Partick and Govan; Nairn; Edinburgh; East Kilbride; Paisley; Cumbernauld; Coatbridge and Irvine. 

We met the man who simply stated: "I looked at an old wage slip from 15 years ago, and there's very little difference in my earnings now."

The Richmond Fellowship care worker who was furious at being on £7.50 an hour, unable to afford a holiday, when she has dedicated herself for years to a job she loves, caring for the most vulnerable.

People scrimping and saving simply to pay the rent and buy food. 

Braving the Baltic conditions in Nairn on SSP Day of Action

Demand 'No Cuts' Defiance Budgets

Local authority workers expressed their anxiety at yet more cuts looming in the forthcoming council budgets. Which is why our campaigning demand for councillors to defy austerity, set No Cuts Budgets, with the £10 minimum included, and then fight for the funds to do this, is so timely and important. 

No councillors - whether Labour or SNP - should be prepared to trade wages for jobs, or workers' conditions for public services. Yet that's what they've done for years. And unless the unions, STUC and community campaigns unite in decisive action with socialists, and demand the cash off Westminster and Holyrood, a repeat of the Ice Age of cuts to pay, public services and jobs looms large.

COSLA Cuts Warnings

The council umbrella body, COSLA, has just produced a frightening picture of the choices we face, ahead of the SNP government's draft Budget in December, which in turn sets the spending settlements for Council Budgets.

COSLA reiterates that there's been £1.4billion cuts by councils since 2012, with 30,000 people losing their jobs, and communities priced out of facilities and services by the 13% hike in charges - often the hidden form of austerity. 

The same COSLA document warns that to just stand still - not improve people's lives, but merely hold onto the brutally inadequate provision by councils we have now - the Scottish government needs to allocate an extra £545million to councils for 2018/19 - a 5.7% increase in funding. 

The response of the SNP government so far? "We will continue to treat local government fairly." Continue? Last year's SNP/Scottish Greens Budget slashed another £170m off council funding, adding to successive years of butchery. 

Wield Power of Unions  

We can't rely on the powers of pleading - or resort to prayer - to win the funds which protect jobs, conditions, public services... and also guarantee a £10 minimum as part of a pay compensation package for the 7 years of pay cuts suffered by 500,000 public sector workers. It requires a serious, united fight, wielding the potential power of workers, their unions and their communities.

The Battle for BiFab in Fife and Lewis wasn't won (at least until April) by humble pleas to the employers or government. It was won by brave, united and swift action by the workforce - refusing to leave their jobs; defending the fabrication yards from asset-strippers by union control of the gates; stockpiling resources in preparation for outright occupations - and by telling the authorities they weren't budging. 

Workers' Action Against Austerity 

That's the spirit and method needed to stop the slaughter of services, jobs and pay that has crucified workers and communities alike, as we pay for the bailout of the bankers and billionaires' profits. 

We won't win the modest, increasingly inadequate demand for £10 now - nor replacement of the abomination of zero hours contracts with a guaranteed 16-hour minimum contract for all who want it - without a mighty battle involving street protests, demos and coordinated strike action, putting the politicians and employers on the spot. 

The SSP's street action on 18 November is just the prelude to an orchestrated campaign of explanation and pressure on the Scottish government and councils to put their money where their mouths are. 

The SSP will step up this demand for an immediate £10 in our unions as well as on the streets. 

Sign and Share the Online Petition 

The Online Petition I recently launched on behalf of the SSP is targeting demands for action on Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, and the heads of COSLA, but also Richard Leonard, who we correctly anticipated would become the new Scottish Labour leader. 

Richard's victory speech referred to offering 'hope' to the Scottish people. Here's his chance: we are calling on him to instruct his Labour Party councillors to break the habits of several decades and refuse to vote for a single penny in cuts, and instead inspire public sector AND private sector workers by implementing a £10 Living Wage immediately - not in 2020, as Labour has so far pledged, which will be severely devalued by inflation by then. 

Photo by Craig Maclean

Volunteer to Help Win £10 Now! 

We have no intention of making this campaign a one-day wonder. 

We need more street campaigning; more propositions for this policy and for action in the public sector unions; more volunteers to do all this... and we need thousands of signatures on our Online Petition. 

Please get in touch to play your part in this battle to set the pace in the public sector, transform the lives of tens of thousands of workers - and vastly boost the battle for an immediate, legally-enforced £10 minimum, rising with inflation, for all workers across the land. 

SIGN PETITION HERE