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.

STAND UP - PAY UP - DEFY TORY AUSTERITY!

Christmas is supposed to be the season of goodwill towards all. Not so when it's the season of budget-setting at Scottish and local government levels. With the knives being sharpened and wielded, far from being a source of good cheer, it threatens ill-will towards public service workers, and wilful damage to public services - including life-and-death services for children and elderly people. 

Most of us are already long-since convinced that the obnoxious Tories are the chief axe-swingers, with a callous record of killing people through health and safety cutbacks, benefits sanctions and decimation of lifeline services. 

Their claims that austerity is ended fools nobody living on below-breadline benefits, the derisory minimum wage, or stressed into a state of mental illness from insecurity in their job. Nor do the Tory soothsayers convince elderly frail people subjected to mere flying 15-minute visits from overstretched care workers; or teachers and students crammed into overcrowded classes; or people absolutely desperate for a home, who confront the slaughter of decent social sector housing.

Words and Deeds

Things are supposed to be different in Scotland. Millions voted for candidates declaring their undying opposition to Tory austerity, particularly in the 2017 general election. That was the central feature of Jeremy Corbyn's improved performance for Labour; his pledge to ditch austerity. That was pivotal to the SNP's appeal to voters, with their 2017 Manifesto declaring "we will roll back the impact of Tory austerity". 

But words are cheap, and they don't put food on the table. Governments and parties will be judged - harshly - by what they do when they are handed the reins of office by voters, as opposed to any ringing declamations in glossy election manifestos. 

And growing tens of thousands of Scottish workers are judging those holding office in Holyrood and the town halls as Ebenezer Scrooges on pay and conditions, rather than being seen as bountiful Santa Clauses. That's why a vast - and potentially very powerful - army of workers are marching, meeting, lobbying, protesting and voting for strike action, particularly on pay.

The Lost Decade

Millions of workers have suffered over a decade of pay cuts, in both the public and private sectors. It's been officially declared the longest period of real pay cuts since the Napoleonic Wars, 200 years ago. Plunging wages have choked off spending power and added to the horrendous epidemic of job insecurity, with workplace stress and mental ill health spreading like a modern plague. 

In the recent survey of 10,500 members of my own union, Usdaw, we discovered 63% feel worse off compared to five years ago, with a shocking 76% of them relying on pay day loans, credit cards and overdrafts to pay everyday, essential bills. As well as two-thirds of these workers - employed in the second-largest sector of the entire economy - saying financial worries are damaging their mental health, a full 10% of retail workers who put food on the shelves are unable to put food on their family's table, resorting to food banks over the past year!

Unison Scotland surveyed 2,000 Scottish union members last June. The picture that emerged is a bleak condemnation of the politicians who promised to end or roll back Tory austerity. A full 74% of these public service workers have witnessed job cuts in their department, leading to 52% feeling their workload is unmanageable, and 57% of them regularly working unpaid overtime to try and catch up in the provision of services to often vulnerable people. 

Their horror stories of overcrowded, mouldy housing; increased rat infestation; and vulnerable children and adults not getting the services they desperately need, led to 78% of council workers having no confidence in the future of local services. And exactly half of them are thinking of leaving their council job for something less stressful elsewhere; good luck to them in finding that, we have to add. 

Which Response to Mayhem?

Such dire conditions of insecurity, falling incomes and unprecedented stress and anxiety can fuel one of two types of response. Utter despair and resignation (and for some, openness to right-wing demagogues who blame immigrants). Or an angry, well-directed collective revolt through trade union and political struggles, to put the blame squarely where it belongs, the profiteers and their political representatives, with a rational alternative based on putting people before profit. 

The potential for the positive, latter course of action is to be seen in a rash of recent outpourings against pay cuts, unequal pay for women workers, and demands for proper funding of local services. 

Pay Revolt Erupts

Over 8,000 low-paid Glasgow city council workers, about 90% of them women, recently staged the biggest equal pay strike in the country's history. They are in revolt against a pay system which means they are £3-an-hour worse off than they should be under equal pay legislation - a criminal system in place since at least 2012, mostly under a Labour-run council, now under the SNP-run administration. This was an eruption of working-class anger and mass, collective power - not calls for equal places on company boardrooms by a handful of extremely privileged women.

The power and vitality of the strike - driven from below by carers, caterers, cleaners and classroom assistants - has raised the sights and confidence of thousands of other workers, and put the SNP council on the run. So much so that a vocal section of ultra-loyal nationalists have insulted the intelligence of these workers by claiming they are mere puppets in a cunning Labour Party plot to discredit the SNP council and SNP Scottish government. They should try telling that to one of the mass meetings of women, who are seething at being treated as second-class citizens for years, furious that far too many of them have died before getting the equal pay and back-pay compensation that was rightfully theirs. 

Labour's Stench of Hypocrisy

Of course the hypocrisy of Labour on this issue stinks to the high heavens. Up until 2017, it was a Labour council which resisted union demands for equal pay - including during 10 different strikes against the council - and squandered over £2.5million of Council Taxpayers' money on court cases to overturn rulings in favour of equal pay. And they suppressed the findings of the Equality & Human Rights Commission in 2010, which found the Labour council guilty of discrimination.

Equal pay will cost the council at least £500m, plus the ongoing increase in the wages bill when the necessary new pay structure is hammered out in talks with the unions, to banish pay inequality for the years and generations of workers ahead. But as union activists have rightly insisted, this must not be at the cost of pay cuts to other workers, nor even further cuts to services; it should be a case of equalizing upwards, with demands for adequate funding off the Scottish government. 

Education, education, education?

The 2016 SNP Manifesto declared: "The defining mission of this government will be education." 

Music to the ears of parents and teachers alike, after decades of cuts, rising class sizes, class-based inequality in attainment, and mind-breaking workloads for staff. But such melodious promises are turning into an ugly echo of Tony Blair's infamous mantra that his Labour government would prioritize 'Education, education, education', only to then slash the service. 

The same noisy handful who have accused Glasgow's equal pay strikers of being puppets worked by Labour Party plotters have likewise claimed the eruption of school teachers' demonstrations and ballots for their 10% pay claim is all a ploy to discredit the SNP government. I doubt if even the most big-headed Labour MSPs or spin doctors could dream of having the power to pour out 30,000 teachers on their recent mass demo, with its combination of family carnival atmosphere and determination to turn the tide on pay cuts, work overload and recruitment crisis in many schools! 

No, Cabinet Minister! 

It was an outpouring of years of teachers' frustration and angry rejection of the divisive 3% offer from COSLA and the SNP government. And far from being mere stooges of some Labour plot, it's a fair guess that a majority of the teachers on this 3-mile-long demo will have voted SNP in a recent election! No wonder they were dismayed at the letter jointly issued by COSLA bosses and SNP Cabinet Secretary John Swinney, designed to bypass the teachers' union representatives, in the vain hope of atomizing and browbeating individuals into surrender. 

On the heels of the demo, EIS teachers voted by a landslide 98% majority, in a whopping 74% turnout, to reject the 3% offer, and look set to ballot for strike action in the New Year. 

Parallel to these high profile pay battles, local authority workers in the three unions - Unison, Unite and GMB - have rejected COSLA's 3% pay offer, and have started to vote for strike action. 

Simultaneously, lecturers in Scotland's further education colleges are voting for strike action in pursuit of a cost-of-living pay rise. These members of EIS-FELA union are furious at college management only offering a 2.5% pay rise over three years - a pay cut, given inflation levels - with the added atrocity that the employers want to tie this offer to the pay increases won through strike action for pay equality across all the FE colleges two years ago, robbing back up to £1,000 from the rises won then. 

Combine - Make Them Pay Up!

These combined workforces make up nearly 200,000 workers. The coming together of these separate strands of the same struggle - for decent pay that compensates a bit for inflation and years of pay cuts - should be an opportunity for coordinated campaign rallies and industrial action. 

The 'Pay Up' lobby of the Scottish parliament on Budget Day, 12th December, and similar localized events targeting council meetings, should be used by union leaderships to spell out a clear, bold alternative to the litany of annual cuts to pay, jobs and services. 

No Cuts Budgets

Given the slaughter of services, jobs and wages over the last decade and more, we actually need a crusade to reverse austerity cuts. But as an absolute bare minimum, unions should demand that the Scottish government and all 32 local councils set No Cuts budgets for 2019/20, incorporating the immediate pay claims and equal pay claims of the workers already taking action. And also including the minimum employment standards in their budgets of a £10-an-hour minimum wage and guaranteed minimum 16-hour week for all their staff and contract workers who want it - as unanimously demanded at our recent Scottish Usdaw conference, representing 45,000 members. 

Roll Back – or Roll Over?

Some will plead that councillors or MSPs simply cannot take such a defiant stance, given the budget cuts handed down to them by Westminster. If that's the case, why make false election promises to "roll back the impact of Tory austerity"? Why not honestly declare "we will roll over in the face of Tory austerity"?! 

It's true that after all the huffing and puffing and claims to have ended austerity in their recent Budget, the Theresa May Tory government has only increased the block grant to Scotland by a minuscule 1.8%, to £30.5billion. 

But where's there's a political will there's a way! May's Tory government is in an unprecedented crisis. Surely the political leadership of Scotland, in collaboration with the leadership of about 200,000 trade unionists already poised for action - and those of over 600,000 organised trade unionists in Scotland as a whole - can turn the Tories' difficulties into our opportunity? 

By setting No Cuts budgets, and mobilising mass demonstrations and supporting any strike actions voted for in union ballots, the Scottish government and council leaderships could cudgel the besieged Tories with demands for extra funding to avoid all cuts and meet workers' demands. They could popularise the demand "Give us back some of our stolen £billions!" That's what a socialist council or government would do. 

Tax the rich – double the money!

Furthermore, the SSP has for 20 years persistently advocated an immediate, straightforward, fully-researched alternative form of council funding which could shield Scotland from the atrocities of austerity. 

It's true that the majority (54%) of all council funding comes directly in a grant from the Scottish government. But 18% of all funding (last year) came from the Council Tax, and amounted to £2.24billion across Scotland. But the Council Tax is an unfair, regressive tax, that hammers the poorest and middle income families, and merely tickles the wallets of the rich with a feather. 

Scottish Service Tax

The SSP has fully costed our alternative, a Scottish Service Tax, based on income, on ability to pay, with rising tax bands. And the beauty of this progressive tax proposal is that about 80% of people would pay less, but by taxing the rich minority the funds raised would be double that coming from the regressive Council Tax; over £4billion a year instead of £2.24billion. 

So instead of hammering workers with higher Council Tax bills, or pay cuts, or job losses, or the slaughter of services... and in reality a cocktail of all these multiple attacks... the Scottish government has the full powers under devolution to stop all austerity, pass legislation to implement such a Scottish Service Tax, and shelter Scotland from the Westminster storm. And the additional £2billion raised would almost reverse the cuts of the past five years in one year alone! 

Whose Side Are They On?

We approach 2019 with Scotland at a crossroads.

We can sit down in surrender as the Tories at Westminster issue austerity, which the Holyrood government meekly devolves to local councils, health boards and college managements to implement, which in turn they do without a whimper. 

We can blithely pass by while SNP MSPs line up alongside Tory MSPs to block an end to the profiteering debacle of Dutch-owned Abellio ripping the profit out of ScotRail workers and ScotRail passengers - so that the same profiteers can two weeks later announce abolition of free travel for children. 

We can accept poverty pay, cheap casualised labour and a mental health epidemic with the plea "there's nothing we can do about until independence". 

Or we can seek to weld the several strands of struggle on pay and public services into a coordinated resistance movement, armed with a vision. 

The vision of an alternative system that taxes the rich; that demands well-paid, secure jobs, including a minimum wage of at least two-thirds average male earnings, and a guaranteed 16-hour minimum working week; that provides cradle-to-grave public services fit for the 21st century; that constructs a free, publicly-owned transport system that helps tackle poverty, pollution and provides decent jobs and apprenticeships at one fell swoop; a clean, green socialist Scotland that builds green energy technology instead of warships. 

The Scottish Socialist Party is determined and willing to stand up on our hind legs in resistance; to play our part in pursuit of these aims, in the workplaces, unions, colleges and streets. 

We appeal to fellow-workers to demand the same of their unions, and those who regard themselves as socialists in Labour or the SNP to demand nothing less of their own party leaderships. It's time to decide whose side they are on! 

I spoke to a teacher about her reasons for preparing to strike for 10%...

Q: What has created such strength of feeling – the 98% vote to reject the 3%?

A: Teachers have reached the end of their tether like all workers in the public sector, working increasing hours through more changes in education, and in mitigating some of the worst poverty-related issues we have seen since the Thatcher and Major years with their time and money. The huge cuts in provision, our salaries, and the increased pressure of increased classroom sizes, really have pushed teachers to emotional limits.

Q: What did you think of letter from COSLA and John Swinney?

A: I think John Swinney and COSLA made huge errors in treating teachers as scabs. Swinney and the SNP won the elections after betrayals of workers by New Labour. Swinney should carefully reconsider his disregard of workers’ representatives and proper negotiation.

Q: Why is 10% justified - when most workers get 2%?

A: All workers should have confidence in fighting for what we are due. Tory austerity is completely ideological. It is a cover for the robbery of all workers. The millionaires and billionaires are becoming richer beyond most people's imaginations while workers are paying their gambling debts.

Q: How will employers pay for it? Cut other services or jobs??

A: Simple. Raise taxes of the highest earners, and replace the dreadful council tax with a fair, Scotland wide, service tax.

Q: What should the union do now to win the 10%?

A: Industrial action, in my opinion, is the only way forward. A simple work to rule would be a start. Teachers in my school are working 50-60 hour weeks. Working 35 hours a week will expose the huge hole in funding we are plugging with our extremely stretched good will. Teachers really don't want to impact on already stretched working class families. But the increasing pressure on delivering a curriculum with less resources, fewer adults in schools and with ever decreasing free time, is pushing teachers towards industrial action that will see schools closed.

SCRAP THE PAY CAP: don't let divided Tories divide workers

The Tories are suffering internal Mayhem, with public divisions between Cabinet members spilling out over how to respond to the public fury at pay cuts under their brutal regime of austerity since 2010. 

But like the centuries-old class they represent, they're past masters at dividing their working class opponents, in their ruthless desire to cling onto power, to retain the ability - that goes with being in government - to hand out perks and privileges to their own class of people.    

The trade union movement, socialists, and all those wishing to put an end to the planned poverty and inequality that is austerity, need to be especially vigilant in this period of Tory crises. We must not let weasel words divide one section of public sector workers from others. Nor allow the Tories to make workers pay with job losses, further service cuts, or tax rises, for any cosmetic concessions on the hated public sector pay cap.

After the pounding the Tories suffered in their self-inflicted snap general election - and especially the tide of support for the anti-austerity message of Jeremy Corbyn - Theresa May's Cabinet are wrestling with how best to silence the roar for decent pay and an end to cuts to public services. 

Listening to Public Fury?? 

They are especially desperate to give the (false) impression of listening to 'public opinion' in the wake of the furious backlash at the vote by Tory and DUP MPs to block pay rises for the likes of nurses, police officers and firefighters - when that was proposed by Corbyn as an amendment to the Queen's Speech. 

A public fury fueled by the Tories' sudden discovery of a spare £1bn to buy power, courtesy of the DUP. 

And mounting anger at the fact the same Tories literally cheered as they voted down pay rises, mere days after the population's hearts went out not only to the victims of Grenfell Tower, but also to the firefighters who raced into the inferno to try and save lives, at risk to their own. The Tory cabal trotted out praise for the emergency services one week, pay cuts the next. 

No wonder the 'Not One More Day' demo in London on Saturday 1st July attracted up to 100,000 people, angry at Tory cuts and demanding their removal. 

Cabinet of Chaos 

Several Tory Cabinet Ministers have called for 'a review' of the 1% cap on public sector pay, in operation since 2010, and an easing of their cuts in funding of some services. They are cynically desperate to give the appearance of having listened to public criticism. Each of them is also eager to save their own skin, and jockey for potential leadership challenges to the hapless May. 

Tory Education Secretary Justine Greening has pleaded with May to abandon plans for further cuts to per pupil spending in state schools. The IFS think tank estimates it would take an injection of £1.2bn a year just to halt planned additional cuts, let alone the vast sums needed if they had any intention of reversing cuts already imposed. Until now, Greening was happy enough to administer the knife to state schools whilst pouring resources into selective Grammar Schools for the well-off... until her 10,180 majority was slashed to 1,554 in Putney last month! 

Arch opportunist Boris Johnson has suggested 'a rethink' on the 1% pay cap. Don't forget he was one of the chief pioneers of curbing, or totally banning, the right to strike for public sector workers, as far back as when he was Mayor of London. 

Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt - object of unfriendly rhyming slang from many an angry NHS worker! - has publicly suggested new deals for nurses, and teachers. 

Damian Green, de facto deputy Prime Minister, has raised the need for 'a national debate' on the continuation of student tuition fees. 

Weasel Words

Michael Gove, who is actually Environment Secretary, found it more opportune to advocate a possible end to the 1% not for staff in his own department, but for... NHS workers.

There's the clue, the warning, of what these new-found 'critics' of pay cuts and austerity in public services are up to. 

They are feeling the hot breath of revolt from workers and students who are sick of Tory attacks - such as the threat of the first ever strike action by the Royal College of Nurses, and the literal queues of students at unlikely places like Canterbury University, eager to vote for Corbyn's pledge to abolish tuition fees this autumn. 

But in looking for a line of partial retreat from the policy of austerity that they've repeated like a devout religious chant for the past decade, the Tories are seeking to divide and conquer workers' opposition.

Pay Review Bodies

The weasel words of Michael Gove are a case study of this poisonous plan. He has trotted out media statements about how his government should 'respect' the looming reports of (eight) Pay Review Bodies for public sector workers. To the uninformed, that sounds like good news for the 5.3 million UK workers employed in the public sector. But let's pause and look at some detail behind the headlines.

The two years' pay freeze and 1% pay cap imposed since 2010 has been a devastating pay cut to these 5.3 million workers, as the cost of daily living rises, alongside substantial increases in workers' pension contributions. According to studies for the civil service union, PCS, the government's own workforce will have been hammered by a 20% real terms pay cut by 2020. 

The fact that large swathes of civil service staff themselves rely on the in-work, top-up benefits they administer, and nurses are amongst those who've had to turn to food banks, is a damning indictment of government policy. 

Divide and Conquer 

But far from offering a guaranteed end to the below-inflation pay cap for all 5.3 million workers - let alone pay rises to compensate for a decade of cuts to their real incomes - Tories like Gove are angling for a divisive concession to just some of them. 

For starters, his talk of 'respecting the Pay Review Bodies' only covers substantially less than 50% of the 5.3 million in the public sector. For instance, the vast majority of civil service staff are totally excluded from these Pay Review bodies. 

The Tories' tactical trick to me seems obvious: promise to concede a few crumbs to the likes of nurses, maybe police, possibly even firefighters - because of the place they hold in the affections of the public - but to hell with the vast armies of low-paid civil service and council workers; show them ruthless resistance on pay. 

"Weary after Seven Years of Hardship"

Chancellor Philip Hammond this week told a CBI dinner of bloated business executives that he "understands why people are weary after seven years of hardship, repairing the damage of the Great Recession", but rejected any concession to 'taking the foot off the pedal', insisting "the government must hold its nerve." 

Theresa May responded to rumour and counter-rumour of the Tories ending the pay cap by stating they will "consider the Pay Review Bodies' reports on a case by case basis." Another signal of divide-and-conquer tactics - even within the parameters of the less-than-half of public sector workers who ARE covered by such Bodies.

Hammond on Mock the Week?

The Tories' shenanigans are in part driven by their desperate attempts at political  survival, in the face of growing opposition to their austerity and pork-barrel politics - and the surge towards Corbyn's anti-cuts message. But they are also reflecting the panic in big business circles at the parlous state of the capitalist UK economy. 

Tory Chancellor Hammond must have thought the CBI dinner on 3rd July was an audition for a place on the Mock the Week panel, when he declared:

"After seven long and tough years, the high-wage, high growth economy for which we strive is tantalizingly close to being within our grasp." (!!??)

Back in the Real World

That's the man allegedly in charge of a British economy with an invisible 0.2% growth in GDP last Quarter - the worst in the G7 biggest economies; with a Scottish economy teetering on the edge of a technical recession; with dire warnings from the Bank of England at credit card debt rising by 10.3% in the 12 months to April. 

An economy where wage-slashing and political insecurity has led to the GfK consumer confidence index today reporting a five points plunge to minus 10 in June - meaning sectors like retail and hospitality are bracing themselves for tough times ahead. 

The same economy where the recent Scottish Widows Adequate Savings index sounded alarm bells at 1 in 4 Scots saving nothing for retirement this year (up from 19% last year), including an astonishing 70% of workers aged 22-29. This despite the new Auto Enrolment Pension scheme. 

All in large part because the sustained and conscious drive to slash wages as a share of national wealth has led to the longest and deepest cuts to wages since the Napoleonic Wars, two centuries ago! 

Worst Wage Cuts since Napoleonic Wars 

Austerity for the working class may have meant boom times for the profits of the multinationals, but it's not even achieved its own stated goals of cutting the government's budget deficit.

Sections of big business, and now of the Tories, are belatedly awakening to the fact their own robbery of wages is undermining the spending power of the working class, thereby choking their prospects for profiteering. Plus they dread a revolt by millions of workers against the long, excruciating pain of the public sector pay cap.

United Strike Action 

The Tories are divided; we must build united action, rather than allow the cornered rats lash out and divide workers, sector by sector. 

The time is ripe for coordinated industrial action to 'scrap the cap' for the entire public sector - not just the minority covered by Pay Review Bodies, and certainly not just for selected sections such as nurses, or firefighters, or the police, as hinted at by the Tories. 

The Scottish teachers' union, EIS, is amongst those proposing coordinated action on pay at the September TUC conference. Already, at the recent 'Not One More Day' demo, PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka called for united public sector strike action. 

A serious, urgent plan to prepare and build such action should be implemented by union leaders, with explanatory materials and meetings across the public sector. And lessons need to be applied from November 2011, when a huge one-day public sector strike was squandered by leaders of several unions capitulating to shoddy promises, letting the Tory-LibDem Coalition off the hook, letting them divide and defeat the millions who'd shown willing to fight back. 

Don't Trade Pay for Job Cuts 

In fighting to scrap the cap on pay, workers must also guard against a 'rob Peter to pay Paul' tactic from the Tories; concessions on pay at the price of further job losses, further public service cuts, and/or tax rises for low to middle-income workers. 

Given the weak state of the economy, and the IFS estimate that it would take £6billion per annum by 2019/20 to bring public sector pay up to that of the private sector, the enfeebled Tory government won't just roll over without pulling every dirty trick in their book. 

They'll deny the existence of 'the money tree'. They'll try to resist across-the-board pay rises for all 5.3 million public sector workers, deploying their tried and tested divide-and-rule tactics. They'll demand even more work from even fewer workers in the event of having to retreat on pay. They'll tell us all that the pot of funds is finite, a matter of 'balance between pay, jobs and public services'. 

SNP Government 

In the case of Scotland, we already have the warning signs of this approach. After meekly obeying and implementing the Westminster public sector pay freeze for the seven long years since 2010, the SNP government have now stepped into the turmoil surrounding the Tories and announced they will lift the 1% cap. That is welcome news, compared to the 'will they, won't they' chaos emanating from the Westminster Tories. But Nicola Sturgeon's explanation is worthy of close attention by public sector workers, their unions, and all those opposing austerity. 

To quote Nicola:

"Over the coming months, ahead of our next budget, there will be a number of discussions with different unions,  public sector workers and employers about how we find the right balance between ensuring people earn a fair wage and protecting employment and public services. That won’t always be an easy conversation – unlike at Westminster we really don’t have a magic money tree, but no matter what the UK government does the SNP will deliver a new pay deal for Scotland’s public sector workers."

The danger nestling in this statement is that after growing anger among workers in Scotland's NHS, local authorities and FE colleges, the Scottish government will try to trade concessions on pay for setbacks on jobs and/or services.

Break Out of Austerity Straightjacket 

The pressing priority is to build a unified, coordinated plan of demonstrations and strike days to put the enfeebled Tories on the run, to scrap the cap for all public sector workers' pay, and demand pay rises to compensate for a decade of savage cuts. But that movement needs to add the demands 'no more job losses, no more service cuts', and refuse to be trapped in the straight-jacket of austerity; of the pretense that the funds available for the public sector are fixed, invariable, finite. 

The IFS's estimate of £6billion to catch up with private sector pay in itself is a modest sum compared with Treasury plans to spend £802billion this year - making it all the more viable as a fighting aim for the unions. 

The fact £1billion was discovered 'down the back of a sofa' at the Treasury to buy the allegiance of the DUP should embolden us to demand funding for pay, jobs and services - including a serious campaign to mobilize workers and communities in Scotland to demand the pro-rata equivalent of £2.9billion. 

And that's as nothing compared with the fortune that could be harvested through taxation of the obscenely rich. 

As just one illustration of the oceans of wealth sloshing around - whilst millions stave off starvation through resort to food banks, or reliance on credit cards rockets, or workers are unable to put anything aside for their retirement - the richest 1,000 humans in a UK population of 60 million have combined wealth of £658billion.

Even a modest 10% wealth tax on these 1,000 alone would reap in £66billion - eleven times the sum reckoned to raise public sector pay to that of the private sector; well over two years' worth of the entire Scottish block grant from Westminster. 

That's not to mention the £120billion a year, every year, that big corporations and hyper-rich individuals avoid, evade or simply don't pay in taxes. Or the £200billion being squandered on Trident weapons of mass annihilation. 

Win Back the Stolen Billions 

There's absolutely no excuse for poverty pay - neither in the public nor private sectors. There's equally no excuse for Westminster or Holyrood suggesting we have to choose between pay and jobs, pay and public services, robbing Peter to pay Paul. 

The consistent, persistent demand of those of us in the Scottish Socialist Party for a mass campaign to win back some of the £billions stolen from Scotland by successive Westminster governments could not be more timely. The Tories are in crisis. Growing swathes of the population have been shocked and appalled at the system of austerity, privatisation, deregulation, cuts to safety standards, cost-cutting for profit - the whole capitalist ethos of profit before people - that created the atrocity of Grenfell Tower. The £1billion bung to the DUP can be used to prise open the door to demands for funding for jobs and services, as well as pay rises to reverse the 20% pay cuts for millions. 

The Tories are divided; don't let them divide the working class as they cling onto power and rule for the rich. 
Do your bit in your union, community or party to demand unified, decisive action - including mass demos and public sector strikes - to win the funds to not only scrap the cap on pay, but reverse the cuts to jobs and public services. 

SOLIDARITY WITH WORKERS IN MINI STRIKE-WAVE

A flurry of strikes has hit Scotland this week, with public and private sector workers fighting back after sweeping majorities in union ballots for collective action, primarily in defense of their wages.

The Scottish Socialist Party has no hesitation in offering 100% support and solidarity to all these trade unionists, who are showing tremendous courage in the frenzied anti-trade union atmosphere coming out of Westminster, which has served to encourage employers to think they can ride roughshod over workers' pay and conditions.

Grangemouth Port

Workers at Scotland's biggest port, at Grangemouth, have started a two-week all-out strike, to be followed by an overtime ban, after Forth Port bosses stonewalled Unite union's requests for a negotiated settlement. Crane drivers and cargo handlers taking this action will hit the port hard, an action they voted 100% in favour of in a 97% turnout!

This strength of feeling is in response to imposed changes of shift rotas that will slash £1,600 a year from weekend premium payments and another £200 a year from nightshift allowances.

This is an increasingly common form of attack on workers' incomes, in pursuit of even higher profit margins and public sector cuts. Those affected also include whole swathes of retail workers and thousands in budget-slashing local government - regardless of whether run by Labour, SNP or various coalitions at council level.

FE Colleges 

Thousands of college lecturers are taking their first sustained national strike action in over 20 years. As with the Grangemouth port workers, these members of the EIS Further Education Lecturers' Association (EIS FELA) voted by a sweeping majority to strike; 93.5%.

At the heart of this dispute is the demand for equal pay, to end pay disparities of £10-13,000 between different colleges across Scotland. Their determined action is further fueled by frustration at years of education cuts, and fury at obscene 'golden parachutes' awarded to Principals and other senior management figures during the SNP's mergers and centralisation of colleges.

The SSP not only offers unqualified support to the EIS-FELA union members taking this action, but in fact we have campaigned for restoration of national pay bargaining since our formation in 1998, and even produced a special edition of the SSP's Scottish Socialist Voice on the issue about 15 years ago.

It is to their eternal discredit that the SNP government has carried on where their Labour-LibDem predecessors left off, failing to step in and remove these outrageous pay disparities, with salaries dependent on which college, in which town, lecturers doing exactly the same job happen to work.

On top of that, the SNP's centralisation of colleges has led to no educational improvements, has reduced jobs, and contributed to the loss of at least 144,000 places for students - overwhelmingly working class students; hardly a track record matching the SNP's claims to be 'Stronger for Scotland'.

Council Workers

Smaller workforces are continuing their strike action against Labour-controlled Glasgow city council, and it's arms-length offshoots, Cordia and Community Safety Glasgow (CSG).

About 130 Unison members - school jannies - have staged a 3-day strike as part of their long-running battle to win payments they deserve for duties their job includes, including dirty and heavy jobs. Parity with other workers doing the same type of work would mean an extra £500-1000 a year for the jannies.

CCTV staff, employed by CSG, who earn the giddy sum of £8.25 an hour, have started strikes for parity with others employed by the same CSG - who get payments of up to £7,500 for doing the same anti-social, 24/7 shift patterns as the CCTV staff.

And in neighbouring Labour-run West Dunbartonshire council, teachers in the EIS union have staged several days of strike action, and are now voting on whether to accept the council's new offer on restructuring of schools that would have meant savage attacks on kids' education, being a cost-cutting exercise falsely dressed up as shiny new 'modernized' restructuring of staffing and departments.

Solidarity with the Strikers

The Tories are doing their damnedest to eliminate the last vestiges of collective action by trade unionists. Labour pretend to be the new-found friends of the unions, ahead of the looming elections - but when in power, attack conditions and pay like the worst employers. The SNP make warm, cooing noises towards the unions, but show their unwillingness to take sides in situations where they could make all the difference, such as the FE colleges.

The Scottish Scoalist Party has an unrivaled record, spanning nearly two decades, of taking the side of workers, and building support for their struggles. We offer that ABC solidarity to all those taking action right now, in defiance of attempts by employers to crush their wages even further in favour of profit, and despite the vicious anti-union laws being made even more repressive by the Tories.