WHY SHOULD UNIONS FEED THE (LABOUR) HAND THAT BITES THEM?

There are growing signs that many trade union activists are seeking to break the strangulating ties with Sir Keir Starmer's Labour Party, seeking other means of struggle in defence of jobs, livelihoods and workplace rights. Two developments in the one week are signposts of this shift in outlook.

The three-way contest for the new general secretary of the giant Unite union was won by Sharon Graham, whose main campaigning slogans were ‘Back to the Workplace’ and ‘Payment by results’ for politicians, rather than blanket financial backing for a Labour party hell-bent on crushing the last remnants of socialism from its membership and its actual practices.

The right-wing candidate, Gerard Coyne, was the darling of most of the capitalist media, Blairite and Starmer's pet candidate.  He sought to play on discontent in the ranks with bogus calls for ‘change’, but his track record of cosying up to big business in partnership agreements and his virulent opposition to both Jeremy Corbyn and outgoing general secretary Len McCluskey did not inspire a right-wing coup by Unite members. In fact, Coyne’s vote crashed by 20,000 compared with when he stood against McCluskey in 2017.

UNITE: Sharon Graham Wins Despite Divided Left Vote 

Many workers understandably feared that Coyne might slip through the middle given the divided left vote, where initially there were three self-declared left candidates: Howard Beckett, Steve Turner and Sharon Graham. After putting up a vigorous challenge during branch nominations, with a powerful cache of left-wing policies and high-profile campaigning against the virus of Fire and Rehire, Beckett then withdrew and made the bizarre decision to support Turner. That left two candidates competing against the nakedly right-wing Coyne.

Although declared as the official United Left candidate in a hotly disputed vote, and supported by many of the Labour left and the Communist Party, Turner would have been a move to the right compared with the outgoing McCluskey regime, and much tamer in his approach both to employers and Starmer's right-wing cabal. For instance, Turner declared throughout that there was “no need for an attack dog general secretary”, advocating one prepared to do deals behind the scenes.

Workplace Organisation

Whilst the claims by an extremely well-paid full-time national official of the Union to be ‘The Workers’ Candidate’ is a dubious concept, nevertheless Sharon Graham's well-crafted message of building more powerful workplace organisation hit home with many of the best Unite workplace activists. It's true that a major part of her campaign team were actually full-time paid officials in her own Organising Department of Unite, but they were added to by a whole raft of shop floor fighters, attracted by her fighting talk. For instance, Manchester bus workers who recently defeated fire and rehire through prolonged strike action, and construction industry electricians who likewise defeated deskilling of their jobs by the employers, openly campaigned for Graham, as did hundreds of other workplace activists. 

For many Scottish Unite members, Sharon’s openness to the right of the Scottish people to a second independence referendum - in sharp contrast to her opponents - was an added attraction.

 

Loosening Ties to Labour 

But alongside her promise to pour resources into workplace organisation, her association with high profile campaigns to unionise - such as Action for Amazon – and leverage campaigns to bludgeon employers into concessions, the other significant appeal from her campaign amongst many activists was undoubtedly a refusal to give carte blanche to the Labour Party, including with Union members’ cash. 

She pledged to fight any local authorities, including Labour councils, which imposed cuts and to only support political candidates who side with the workers she represents: “payment by results”.

This undoubtedly points towards a rapid loosening of ties between many union activists and the Increasingly anti-worker, anti-socialist Starmer Labour Party. That process of course is miles further ahead in Scotland, where Scottish Labour is not even a shadow of its former self and is widely reviled amongst many of the most active trade unionists. 

Bakers Union Threatens Disaffiliation from Labour 

Even more stark evidence of the growing breach with Labour is revealed by the Bakers Union, which although small is one of the most combative, fighting unions around.

In April 2020, alongside the Fire Brigades Union and an array of left formations inside the British Labour Party, the Bakers Union launched ‘Don't Leave, Organise’ as an umbrella to resist the charge to the right in Labour, in the hope of reconquering the party for left-wing, pro-worker policies. Less than 18 months later, on 18th September, the Bakers Union are holding a recall conference to debate the possibility of disaffiliating their union from the Labour Party. 

That dramatic step, after helping found the Labour Party in 1902, follows the decision by the Starmer   leadership and their McCarthyite machine to expel Bakers Union President, Ian Hodson, from the party, as part of a wider purge of socialists. In a survey of members earlier this year the majority of Bakers Union members voted for disaffiliation from Labour. It remains to be seen whether the Union sticks by its ‘don't leave, organise’ philosophy or makes the break from a party utterly incapable of mounting serious opposition to the reviled Tories. As Bakers Union general secretary, Sarah Woolley, has said, “We will not accept bullying from any bosses or a party that seems to prefer to be on the bosses’ side.” 

Make the Break – Why Feed the Hand that Bites You?! 

The events in both Unite and the Bakers Union highlight what the Scottish Socialist Party has argued for over 20 years: the modern Labour Party, particularly since the Blair/Brown leadership, transformed into a nakedly capitalist party of New Tories. And although a brief interruption to that process occurred with the election of Jeremy Corbyn, his removal even from party membership and Starmer's gallop to the right have reasserted the anti-working-class nature of that party.

Increasingly, the demand first championed by the SSP over 20 years ago to ‘Make the Break from capitalist Labour’ will revive in popularity amongst trade unionists. 

Why should union members’ fees be used to prop up the party that at local government level attacks them, and nationally is incapable of seriously standing on the side of workers and prefers to cosy up to big business? 

To invert the ancient proverb, why feed the hand that bites you?!

Reject Non-political Trade Unionism 

The SSP firmly rejects the notion of non-political trade unionism. Every daily issue facing workers throws up political choices and questions. 

The battery of anti-union laws which suppress wages, conditions and workplace rights and permits vicious thuggery like Fire and Rehire are the result of political decisions - first by Thatcher's Tories and subsequently by successive Labour and Tory governments. 

Pay cuts and job losses amongst half-a-million Scottish workers employed in the public sector are decided upon by politicians, whether Tory, Labour, SNP or Scottish Green.

Workers need a political vehicle to defend and advance their rights and conditions. Individual members of Unite, the Bakers Union or any other trade union can assist that struggle for political change in favour of the working class by joining Scotland's socialist party, the SSP.

Active trade unionists can enhance the democracy of their unions by demanding rule changes that allow members a multiple choice of pro-trade union parties (including the SSP) which they can fund through the political levy.

Sharon Graham, the Bakers Union leadership and others can boost the struggles of workers against the onslaught by the employers and governments both through workplace organisation and militant collective action, and by helping to build a mass political alternative to the Labour Party which has so demonstrably abandoned workers. 

This article was written on 25 August 2021 for publication in the Scottish Socialist Voice. 

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DEMAND FULL AVERAGE WAGES FOR ALL SICK WORKERS!

Throughout the pandemic I have argued, both as a socialist and elected trade union convenor, for full average wages for anyone sick or in self-isolation from COVID-19.

My concern, particularly amidst the worst killer pandemic in a century, was that some workers dumped onto £95-a-week Statutory Sick Pay (SSP) would confront the impossible choice of financial ruin or dragging themselves into work, spreading the virus, sickness, even death.

Even where unions have conquered some form of occupational sickness benefit, it is frequently less than normal wages, accumulates sick absence penalty points, and excludes workers from a single penny company sick benefit if their absence points are too high.

And right across the board, employers are busily hacking away at occupational sick benefits, under cover of the Coronavirus crisis. That includes companies whose profits rocket beyond £millions to £billions. 

With household debts at record highs, savings at record lows, and job insecurity looming like a train charging down the track towards millions of workers, they are stressed to breaking point, but have nothing to fall back on; work makes many sick, but they can’t afford to take time off to recover. 

A new volcano of both physical and mental ill-health is set to explode, after months of home-working, cramped housing, and social isolation.

Sickness Unaffordable 

Mine might be the first case of a shop steward in Scotland losing his/her job in a dispute with an employer over workers’ health and safety during the Coronavirus, but it throws a harsh spotlight on the broader, deeper crime in society: sick workers can’t afford to be sick – and that makes them even sicker!

Sick pay in the UK is not only a national, but an international scandal.

Statutory Sick Pay of £95.85 a week is appallingly miserly even by the inadequate standards of Britain’s capitalist competitors.

The European average equivalent is £245 a week.

A worker taken sick in this country is only guaranteed 20% of average wages, whereas across Europe it’s 65%. 

Belgium guarantees sick workers their full salary for 30 days. Germany pays their full salary for 6 weeks and 70% of a worker’s wage for the remainder of sick leave. Norway pays up to 52 weeks full salary if a worker has a long-term illness.

Britain is the worst in the whole of Europe, with the single exception of Malta.

Sick Pay Exclusion Zones 

And it gets worse. The word ‘statutory’ implies everybody is guaranteed that amount. Far from it!

Anyone on less than the Lower Earnings Threshold of £120 a week is disqualified from SSP.  That constitutes a mass army of 1.8 to 2 million workers excluded from even that derisory £95. 

That includes a third of all those on zero-hour contracts; one in 10 women workers; 20% of 16-24-year olds; and over a quarter of those working beyond the age of 65 - in part because of the pathetic state pension.

The UK is one of only four countries which totally excludes the self-employed; a growing proportion of workers. 

And most migrant workers are excluded from even this paltry benefit, relying on literally zero income if they fall sick; many hired by the most unscrupulous profiteers, who habitually ignore health and safety regulations, let alone offer any kind of company sick benefit. 

Britain truly is the sick man of Europe, making working class men and women sick, but depriving them of adequate sick pay.

Greencore Northampton - lack of union makes you sick! 

Fatal Consequences 

The consequences are horrendous at the best of times, but fatal during the pandemic.

A new rash of COVID-19 clusters has erupted in poultry and meat plants, sweatshop garment factories, and at several food production workplaces.

Greencore, who produce Marks and Spencer’s sandwiches, have been at the heart of a scandal at their Northampton branch where 324 of its 834-workforce tested positive for COVID-19.

As Sarah Woolley, the new general secretary of the Bakers union (BFAWU) explained at a recent online rally I was invited to speak at - alongside other workers, Sarah and John McDonnell MP - it’s significant Greencore’s Northampton branch does not recognise the Union. They refused to close as cases multiplied, ignoring workers' concerns. 

When the government eventually forced temporary closure, self-isolating workers were expected to exist on £95. As Sarah explained, many were forced to use food banks, and with many multiple family members working there, entire household incomes vanished overnight. “Hearing people who work for a company that makes £55million in pure profit talking about how their income dropped from £240 to £95 is just horrific. How the hell are they supposed to pay the bills?”

Throughout the lockdown we warned Scotland's care homes were incubators for COVID-19. In part, due to decades of refusal to invest in NHS staff and equipment leading to 1,200 elderly patients being transferred out of hospital wards into care homes to clear bed space, without being tested, or worse still, despite testing positive.

This criminal carnage was added to by care home workers, almost universally denied any occupational sick benefit, being terrified of self-isolating, with their already-low incomes slashed to £95 SSP. 

Bakers' Union at TUC 

The Bakers’ Union initiated a Motion at the TUC congress calling for full wages for sick workers for 6 weeks, paid directly by the employer, and increased Statutory Sick Pay thereafter. 

Alongside the struggle for a vastly enhanced minimum wage for all over 16 - at least £12 an hour - the battle for full 100% average wages for all sick workers - whether with COVID-19 or anything else - is critical. Central to a future that puts workers’ health and lives miles ahead of the wealth and privileges of profiteering capitalist employers and their hired enforcers in the boardrooms and senior management. 

Workers' Control of H&S 

The lived experiences of millions during the pandemic has also reinforced the urgency of the Scottish Socialist Party's demand for workers’ control of health and safety, through elected committees of union health and safety reps and shop stewards.

Many of the hazards at work, physical and mental, could be removed and prevented by workers’ representatives whose everyday experiences put them far more in tune with workplace risks than the depleted, downgraded Health and Safety Executive Inspectors, whose numbers have been halved. And who are now to be replaced by undertrained substitutes, with less powers, from privatised outsourcing companies. 

No wonder only 38% of workers reported in this week's BritainThinks Survey that their employers carried out a COVID-secure risk assessment, and only a similar 42% have been given adequate PPE.

A system run for private profit will always cast workers' health to the back of the queue, and when capitalist profiteering triggers illness through stress, insecurity, poverty and shoddy safety standards, sick workers are tossed aside like squeezed lemons. 

The potential power of the organised trade union movement needs to be urgently mobilised to put workers’ health before capitalists' wealth. 

Full, 100% average wages for all sick workers, and control of workplace safety by elected union representatives, are two of the measures which must be pursued by our side with the same determination as bosses chase after shortcuts to profit. 

Workers’ lives before profit must be turned from a phrase into a fight. 

..........................

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UNIONS, DEMOCRACY AND #INDYREF2

The election of brutal Boris's Tory regime against the overwhelming wishes of Scottish voters has triggered debate in the trade unions about Scottish independence; in particular, a second referendum.

The SSP is at the heart of this vital discussion. Since our foundation in 1998, the SSP has not only defended the right of the Scottish people to decide - their democratic right to self-determination - but also positively advocated a vision for an independent socialist Scotland that is planets apart from the future advocated by the SNP. 


The growing inclination of trade unionists to at least support the right to a second referendum  - including many who personally oppose independence - is another hammer-blow to a Scottish Labour Party already under siege after their disastrous 2019 election results.


The opening salvo from the top echelons of the Scottish trade union movement came from outgoing STUC general secretary, Grahame Smith, who in December appealed to Scottish Labour to recognise the right of the Scottish people to IndyRef2. 

After a full debate at the February Scottish Council of branch delegates in Scotland's biggest trade union, Unison, an overwhelming majority (roughly 3:1) voted to "support the call for a second independence referendum, at a time to be determined by the Scottish parliament". This is a momentous breakthrough for democracy, from the largest component of the biggest civic organisation in Scotland, the trade union movement.

Of course, it is not a vote by Unison to actually advocate independence, but it quite rightly stands for Unison members and Scottish workers in general having the opportunity to vote on independence, rather than being denied that choice by a dictatorial Westminster Tory government. 

Unison committed to taking this issue into the wider trade union movement, including at STUC conference.


Subsequently, the Executive Committee of the Bakers' union (BFAWU) voted in favour of a second Scottish independence referendum, correctly using the hashtag #Democracy in their announcement. 

Even under Corbyn, Labour denied Scotland the right to choose

Crises in Scottish Labour 

These union decisions add an explosive new ingredient to the trouble bubbling away inside Scottish Labour. 
For decades, in complete contradiction to the tradition of socialists defending the right to self-determination, Labour set its face against not only Scottish independence but even a people's vote on it. 
The 2017 Labour Manifesto bluntly asserted "Labour opposes a second Scottish referendum. It is unwanted and unnecessary and we will campaign tirelessly to ensure Scotland remains part of the UK" - in a chapter ironically titled 'Extending Democracy'!

In 2019, Labour vacillated from saying they would not allow a second referendum "in the early years of a Labour government" to never allowing it! 


On top of their naked collaboration with the Tories in Better Together in 2014, plus their decades of vicious austerity when in local or national government, this anti-democratic stance contributed to Scottish Labour's dismal results. Until recently the colossus that bestrode all Scottish political office, Scottish Labour can now only win a mere 18% of the vote, returning one unprincipled Blairite to Westminster. 

Labour MSPs Neil Findlay & Monica Lennon support IndyRef2

No wonder senior Labour figures like Monica Lennon and Neil Findlay have come out for the right to a referendum, with some scrambling round for a distinct policy wrapped up in nebulous names like devo-max, federalism and 'radical democracy'. 

Leader Richard Leonard was humiliated by his own Labour Scottish Executive when they chucked out his proposal of a special conference on the issue. 

Scottish Labour are staggering round like headless chickens on the national question, prisoners of their own British unionist dogmatism; at root, their adherence to capitalism and its institutions. 

It will take the potential power of unions and socialists to end their misery and map out a path towards a democratic socialist Scotland that could act as a beacon to the struggles for socialism by workers in neighbouring nations. 

SSP persistently puts a working class case for self-government 

SSP: Workers' Natural Allies 

In taking this brave and democratic stance, Unison and the BFAWU have a ready-made ally in the SSP.

For 21 years since our formation, we have both championed the right to self-determination and persistently campaigned for an independent socialist Scotland. 

A few days after the disastrous election of the Tories in December, I wrote to all unions in Scotland on behalf of the SSP, proposing an STUC-led demo "in the earlier part of 2020" against a Tory government "with absolutely no democratic mandate to rule and ruin Scotland".

In our letter to Scotland's unions, we advocated several reasons for a demo: solidarity with workers in struggle; defence of workers' rights, of the NHS, of migrants and indigenous workers alike from the vicious racism and division incited by government and media. But the final suggested theme of a union-led Demo was to "defend the right of the Scottish people to decide their own future (regardless of your view on independence) instead of having it imposed by a Tory government the Scottish majority haven't voted for since 1955." 

In articles in The National newspaper and Scottish Socialist Voice, we've made persistent calls on the unions to "defend the right of the Scottish people to choose."

So the SSP warmly welcomes this immensely important, seismic shift in union policy towards the right to self-determination. 

We repeat our appeal to the entire trade union movement to debate this issue amongst their membership, and stand up for the ABC democracy that the unions were in part born to champion: the right to vote! 

Chartists fought for the right to vote 180 years ago

Defending the Right to Vote 

The mid-19th century Chartist movement spearheaded the fight for adult suffrage. Over centuries, trade unionists and socialists suffered persecution and victimisation for battling for the right to vote for the working class, including women. In many nations saddled with military dictatorships, the workers' movement were and are the primary force demanding the freedom to vote. 

But in Britain, 2020, Boris Johnson ruthlessly refuses to countenance a free vote on Scottish independence, terrified after the all-too-close call for the ruling capitalist rich in 2014.

So what are the mass organisations of the working class supposed to do as this reactionary populist blusters his way past the pleas of the elected Scottish parliament for the powers to hold a vote? Ignore the Tories' denial of democracy? Leave all the pleading to a Scottish government whose recent statements make plain they have no bottle for a battle that transcends the rules imposed by the Westminster Tory regime? 

No, the unions have a right and a duty to unite around the elementary, democratic right of the Scottish people to choose, to vote, to determine our own future, rather than be chained like slaves by a Johnson government with no mandate to dictate over Scotland. 

So all unions need to thoroughly debate this democratic demand, and follow in the footsteps of Unison and BFAWU. 

For Independence and Socialism 

But there is a world of difference between upholding the right to vote on independence - which we hope the entire trade union movement can unite and rally around - and actually mustering a working-class, pro-trade union, socialist case for independence. That is precisely what the SSP has done since 1998, including in our unions. 

Unless we convince workers that they won't be swapping decades of brutal Westminster austerity for a further decade of austerity in an independent Scotland - which is the repugnant prospect offered in the SNP government's Sustainable Growth Commission Report - there is not a snowball's chance in Hell of winning a working-class majority for independence.


We need instead to broadcast the vision of a self-governing Scotland with a £12 minimum wage; a Legal Maximum Income initially set at ten times that minimum to help confront inequality; a guaranteed minimum 16-hour week for all who want it; a 4-day week on 5 days' pay; democratic public ownership of energy, construction, transport and banking to combat poverty, housing crises, underemployment and pollution through a Socialist Green New Deal - a clean, green socialist Scotland that treats all its citizens as equals, regardless of their origins. 

CLIMATE CHANGE: A WORKERS' ISSUE

As school students and other young people spearhead global strikes and direct action against the planet-threatening climate crisis, they have appealed to workers to join them in 'a global general strike'. 

This appeal is an extremely important and welcome step forward; a glimmering of recognition by young people too young to have experienced work or trade unionism that the organised workers' movement is critical to winning meaningful action against global warming. And an important riposte to the utterly false and dangerous idea that it's older people who are to blame for the climate crisis.

As we've said before, the climate crisis is not a generational issue, it's a class issue.  

Older or middle-aged workers haven't polluted the planet. Profit-crazed capitalists have. 

For over 200 years they've plundered the planet and exploited its people for carbon, to fuel their accumulation of private profit. 
Recent reports confirm that it's the likes of BP and Shell - financed by the big banks - who are the biggest polluters. 
Another reveals the biggest 100 companies on earth account for 71% of carbon emissions. 

Trade Union Issue

As the recent TUC Congress unanimously agreed, climate is a trade union issue. The radical changes needed to tackle the impending disaster - with scientists giving us a mere 12 years to stop irreversible damage to the planet - require the active, urgent, collective action of workers. 


As the SSP has consistently argued, and TUC Congress reiterated, we need a Just Transition to fossil-free energy, not a punishing programme of job decimation and deprivation of working class communities, as some of the fringes of the environmental movement advocate. And public ownership of all forms of energy and other key sectors of the economy - including transport, housing, shipyards, and banking - is at the very heart of the solution to pollution. 

Public Ownership of Energy 

Policies adopted - unanimously - at the recent TUC Congress recognise this truth. Alongside Motions demanding that 'workers must be at the heart of delivering' a Just Transition, and a green transport system, Congress demanded public ownership of energy and the big banks. As Bakers Union general secretary, Ronnie Draper, said in proposing it:


"Public renewable power is less expensive than private, which not only faces higher interest rates and other costs, but also relies on various subsidies and long-term “power purchase agreements” in order to guarantee profits for investors.
Public ownership not only eliminates those unnecessary costs and provides cheaper power for users, but also allows us to address domestic skills deficits. Under public ownership and a planned approach, we can make use of the skills we have in the present, while we develop the new skills we need for a vibrant, thriving sector in the future."

SSP Members Active on Issue

SSP members in the unions have combined with others to maximise involvement of workers in the Youth Climate Strike week of action. For instance, both as an elected Usdaw national Executive Council member for Scotland, and SSP representative, I've collaborated with union activists in Unison, GMB, PCS, Unite and EIS to establish a Campaign Against Climate Change group in Glasgow. 

Though in its infancy, this group is working to involve workers alongside young people. We recognise that the first task is to engage with workers, explaining the issues, offering alternatives that would enhance workers' lives, rather than pose a threat to jobs and living standards. 
For example, we've discussed the win-win policy of free installation of solar energy in homes, and I advocated the council unions lobby Glasgow city council to take over the bus service being surrendered by First Group, as a baby step towards a full municipal bus service, which in turn should become part of a free public transport service to help combat car pollution. 

Alongside that we have been building for attendance at the demos and rallies on 20 September, for instance during workers' lunchtimes, or using flexitime, or days off, or where possible by clocking off to attend. Unison stewards have negotiated non-victimisation agreements with councils for members who participate.

Answering Workers' Fears 

Likewise, at the September meeting of the Usdaw Executive Council, I got the issue put on our agenda, introduced it, spelling out the key issues from a worker's perspective, and advocated concrete steps by our union - all of which were agreed, unanimously.  That includes appealing to all reps to take part in rallies if possible, encourage members whose shifts allow to join the events, and to stage workplace events where feasible - above all, starting discussions on climate change and alternatives in meetings of members.  

Crucially, we need to overcome the legitimate fears of many workers that what's on offer is the slaughter of jobs and a 'hair-shirt'  existence. That emerged in our very healthy discussion at the Usdaw EC, which our explanation of massive job creation through a Green New Deal, and trade union control of a Just Transition, convinced the entire meeting. And that's in the union primarily organising retail workers; how much more critical it is to have a package of policies to engage, convince and mobilise workers in the fossil-fuel sector, such as North Sea installations.

Class and Climate 

That's precisely where a class-based socialist alternative comes into its own. The public ownership demanded by the TUC would open up the opportunity to redeploy existing workers, reskilling where necessary, as well as a whole new green industrial strategy that could create at least 1.5 million skilled, well-paid, unionized jobs. 


The concrete example of the heroic resistance to closure being staged by the 123 Harland and Wolff shipyard workers in Belfast proves the point.  They are battling for renationalisation to include green energy production, which they've already done as their primary source of work in recent years, to help build equipment for offshore energy. 


Alongside the campaign to end the globalised capitalist lunacy of equipment for the giant £2bn NnG offshore windfarm a few miles from the Fife BiFab yards being built in cheap-labour Indonesia, and then transported 7,000 miles in diesel-belching vessels, this shows how democratic public ownership of all production and distribution of energy supplies could vastly boost jobs and wages, combat fuel poverty, and help clean up our corner of the planet for generations to come. 

System Change - to Socialism 

We urgently need system change to combat climate change. 

Change to a system of democratic public ownership, where the skills of workers are deployed to produce and distribute clean, green energy; build and retrofit homes to the highest environmental standards; offer an integrated, free public transport network that combats both poverty, social isolation and pollution; and uses the vast funds of a state bank to help finance a Green New Deal. 


The power of organised workers - alongside the energy and vision of young people - needs to be mobilised for such a clean, green, and nuclear-free, socialist Scotland. 
The SSP commits to combine with others for that future. 

After the General Election: FOR WORKERS' ACTION, not pleas to capitalist politicians

The woman serving me a coffee at the STUC Conference in Ayr racecourse spoke volumes in a short chat. After asking where I was from, and me explaining I was representing the SSP, she said: "I've always been from a Labour family, but I don't know who to vote for. I can't stand Labour, but I'll never vote SNP. I don't trust Nicola Sturgeon," she added in a whisper, as if in fear of upsetting polite society. 

But her most telling comment was her parting shot, after we exchanged views and experiences of low pay in retail and catering. "No matter which of them wins I'll still have to come to work on the 8th of May."

Do any of the main parties represent workers?

The election and media circus will move on, but reality will remain for the working class majority: the struggle to survive on poverty pay, Zero Hours Contracts, part-time and insecure jobs, and the ongoing brutality of savage cuts to vital public services.

WORKING CLASS

But the potential power of the working class to change all that is reflected in the language of the competing parties. Back in the 1990s the fabulously rich Tony Blair declared "Now we are all middle class"! In the 2015 General Election, all manner of political parties have suddenly discovered the need to harp on endlessly about "hard working people" and how much their rival brands of capitalist visions 'represent' us.

Even the Tories shamelessly claimed to be "the party of working people". 

Jim Murphy and Ed Milband have borrowed their spin doctors' phrases, e.g. "Scotland succeeds when working people succeed". 

The SNP bid for traditional Labour voters with talk of being "the voice of working people", alongside their central slogan of "standing up for Scotland."

Looking beyond May 7th, workers (and their unions) need to cut through the fog of slick spin and vague promises, and get back to basics. Those joining the annual May Day celebrations of international workers' solidarity need to recall the fundamental features of the society we live in, and how workers internationally have ever won any improvements in life, living standards and rights.

TWO SCOTLANDS

The SSP quite consciously entitled our Election Manifesto "Standing up for Scotland's Working Class Majority."

We are courageous enough to tell the truth. There are two Scotlands, divided by a chasm of class differences.

The Scotland of the richest 100 with combined wealth of £25billion, and the Scotland of 5 million others depending on £30billion from Westminster's block grant budget for the Scottish government to provide jobs and services.

The Scotland where 432 landowners have grabbed half the nation's land, including arable land, and the Scotland of food banks, where 100,000 (36,000 of them children) rely on food handouts to avert starvation.

The Scotland of millionaires like Brian Souter who fund the SNP from the fortune gained through privatisation of transport, and the Scotland of workers socially isolated because they can't afford the fares.

There is a party for the Working class in Scotland...

CLASS

Class is at the heart of society. Class exploitation is the very nature of capitalism. Soaring profits are sourced from the unpaid labour of the working class. 

It requires collective organisation and collective action by the working class majority to overcome that exploitation, that class division, where the richest 10% of Scots own 20 times the combined wealth of the poorest 30%.

Yes, we need to demand the maximum reforms and redistribution of wealth from the millionaires to the millions through whatever combination of parties takes over the reins on May 8th. And the seismic upheaval of Labour being swept aside by an SNP that stands a bit to their left will immensely increase expectations of radical wealth transfers from the rich to the rest of us.

But to secure that requires lighting bonfires beneath their backsides, with rallies, demos and even strike action, or it won't happen - because every single one of the parties likely to be in that government ultimately stands up for big business, for capitalist Britain or capitalist Scotland - not for the working class who produce the wealth of goods and services. 

It's wise to not forget the basics.

The class system - your life in their exploitative hands...

BIDDING WAR ON WAGES

The growing clamour for an end to poverty pay, the modern plague of working people, has forced the rival parties into a bidding war - for votes.

The hateful, upper-class Tories claim the minimum wage will 'naturally' rise to £8 by 2020. 

Labour promises an £8 minimum, with whispered asides "by 2020" - which would make it virtually no rise at all on today's pitiful £6.50.

The SNP have very belatedly gone beyond - or at least given the appearance of going beyond - their previous mantra of "supporting the Living Wage", £7.85. That cleverly appeals to workers desperate for a pay rise, without upsetting big business, because the Living Wage is entirely voluntary! Now, to outbid Labour, they've declared for an £8.70 minimum wage, but again not until 2020. In reality that would be less than today's £7.85 Living Wage, although with the saving grace of being legally enforced.

£10 NOW!

Standing out from all this noise about what they'll do for us in five years' time, the SSP has unequivocally demanded a living minimum wage, legally enforced, of £10 NOW, in 2015. Based on the modest formula of two-thirds median male wages. The other critical difference is that we demand it for all workers and apprentices over 16, whereas both Labour and the SNP would retain the monstrous age discrimination of lower youth rates.

Read the latest Scottish Socialist Voice HERE

WHAT'S NOT EXPLOITATIVE ABOUT THEM?

The same milk-and-water promises are made into headlines by Labour and the SNP on the modern serfdom that is Zero Hours Contracts. 

Both of them repeatedly talk of "tackling", or "clamping down", on what both Labour and SNP insist on calling "exploitative Zero Hours Contracts".

When are they not exploitative? Why not just pledge to abolish the lot, and bring in secure contracts with guaranteed hours, full-time or part-time?

Labour has elaborated that they will introduce a system where after 12 weeks of regular hours worked, that would become the contract hours. But what's to stop employers dodging such 'regular hours', or simply shedding workers and replacing them after 12 weeks - like the avoidance tactics used towards improved agency workers' rights?

The truth is that it's only because some unions and the likes of the SSP have spearheaded persistent campaigns demanding £10 NOW, and outright abolition of Zero Hours Contracts, that these mainstream parties have gone as far as they have. 

And the underlying reality is that only collective action by workers, up to and including strike action, will enforce either a decent living wage or secure job contracts for all.

WORKERS' RIGHTS NOT MENTIONED!

That's where the strangling repression of workplace rights - the most vicious anti-union laws in Europe - play their part in holding down workers' conditions. Which makes it all the more significant that in contrast to the noisy bidding war of words between Labour and SNP over wages, there is deafening silence from both of them on repealing the anti-union laws - invented by Thatcher's Tory governments of the 1980s, fully retained by Labour from 1997-2010, and made substantially worse since by the Tory/LibDem Coalition.

It is no accident that wages as a share of national wealth, GDP, peaked in 1975. That was an era of massive union membership and several waves of strike action for better wages. The reign of terror of the last 30 years has reversed that process, leaving wages at their lowest share of GDP on record. 

It is no accident that inequality was at its lowest when 83% of workers were covered by collective bargaining, through their unions, whereas inequality is now at its worst, when only 23% are covered.

STRIKES IN THE USA

Workers learn from international experience too. In the heart of the capitalist beast, the USA, wages have plummeted since the 1970s. For most of that time, labor union leaders capitulated, merely begging the capitalist Democrats to be their friends. 

Since 2012, a wave of courageous actions have been taken by brutally low-paid workers in the fast food and retail sectors. Several strike days and protest marches by Walmart workers and fast food staff have won more concessions on wages from their multinational employers than 40 years of pleading by union bureaucrats. 

Wednesday 15th April saw the biggest fastfood strike in history with 60,000 workers involved in over 200 cities, demanding a minimum wage of $15 (£10). Walmart recently conceded $10 and McDonald's pledged to beat each state minimum wage by $1 an hour. Cities like Seattle and Chicago have agreed to phase in $15.

INTERNATIONAL LESSONS

So as we head for the ballot box, and march on May Day events, working class Scots should take inspiration from the struggles of our own past, and the present struggles of fellow workers in the USA. They have defied anti-union laws, taken militant action, marched for decent wages, and at least won substantial concessions. 

Those are the methods of struggle, the collective action, that will be required to squeeze something out of whatever government is elected, and off the unelected, obscenely overpaid boardroom bosses of companies whose whole source of profit is the wages they don't pay workers.

REIGN OF TERROR

The anti-union laws have been instrumental in enforcing a reign of terror on the 'shopfloor' in recent decades. That's why they need to be repealed, and replaced with a Charter of Workers' Rights. 

That's why those workers rightly abandoning the Labour Party that long ago abandoned them, should not in turn be blinded by the SNP's kindly rhetoric.

Not once, ever, has the SNP or Nicola Sturgeon pledged to dismantle the anti-union laws. 

They make welcome noises about "embracing the unions", "respecting the unions' voices", "recognizing the value of collective bargaining". 

Compared with Labour, both in words and deeds during 13 years of Labour government, this is very welcome, and sounds "progressive", to use Nicola's current buzz word. But it's mostly all candlelight and mood music, a wooing of the working class, with no sharp, defining, concrete measures to guarantee workers' rights and ability to organise collective action. 

SOCIAL PARTNERSHIP

It's very akin to the Social Contract of 1970s Labour governments, with their talk of partnership between employers, unions and government, denying the fundamentals of conflicting interests between the profiteers and the workers who produce the profits. 

That ended in massive strikes by the lowest-paid, and massive disillusionment with Labour, as prices and profits rose like a rocket, whilst wages fell like a stick.

WORKERS' ACTION

Post-election, workers need to organise in action for a living minimum wage, secure jobs, redistribution of wealth, resistance to escalated austerity cuts, and workplace rights - with collective action, where necessary in defiance of the anti-union laws concocted to help the capitalist minority rob wages and public services off the working class majority.

Workers will need to organise and demand concessions from a government that will be in crisis, as the ruling-class panic at the demise of their most reliable prop in the working class - Labour. Not as spectators at an election circus - heavily populated by clowns and opportunist politicians juggling words and principles - but as the one reliable active force for change and progress. 

The socialists of the SSP will continue to stand up for and with the working class majority in pursuit of a fundamental redistribution of wealth and power. We will not plead for crumbs off the capitalist politicians, but advocate and take workers' action to win a decent life for the likes of the woman at the STUC coffee bar. No matter who wins on 7 May, we will be back to work for socialism on the 8th!