THIS IS CAPITALIST CLASS WAR!

The Tories don't bother preaching class war because they're far too busy practising it. 

They and the capitalist class they are part of have launched the most bitter assault on working-class people in living memory - as we persistently warned they would do, during the pandemic.

Inflation has reached the highest levels in at least 40 years. 

The global food price index is at the highest ever recorded. 

New official reports in Scotland confirm 20% inflation in the cost of supermarket shopping over the past 2 years. 

And the poorest Scottish people suffer far higher inflation than the richest: 10.2% already, compared with 8.7% for the wealthiest tenth of people. 

All the different schools of capitalist economists and their political echoes try to convince us that inflation is caused by rising wage demands. Andrew Bailey, governor of the Bank of England, who recently claimed under questioning at the Westminster Treasury Committee that he “can't remember” his salary of £575,000, lectured workers that “we do need to see restraint in wage bargaining”. 

The Tories perpetrate the same lie and do everything in their power to slash wages and neuter the collective strength of trade unionists in the defence of living standards. 

ASLEF members demonised and granted some concessions 

Class Hatred Towards Train Drivers 

We see their class hatred in response to the demands of a modest pay rise by train drivers in the face of inflation already at 9%, with forecasts of at least 14%. 

The full might of the media - broadsheet and tabloid alike - has been unleashed to demonise these workers. MPs, 200 of whom have second jobs that brought them in an additional £9million on top of their £84,000 salaries – use the media to denounce the drivers as overpaid, with utterly false and hypocritical sudden ‘concern’ for the comparative wages of nurses and teachers, dredged up to try and isolate and defeat ASLEF members. 

Of course, meantime not a word is muttered about giving inflation-matching pay rises to the very same NHS workers, after the hell they've lived through during the pandemic, with rampant burnout, early retirement, and a growing crisis in an underfunded, understaffed healthcare system. 

Defend the Right to Strike 

Faced with the power at the point of production held by London Underground workers and railway workers in general, and their critical role in the wider economy, the Tories have unleashed renewed threats of effectively banning the right to strike, with proposals to legislate ‘minimum service requirements’ on the railways (and other essential services) during any industrial action - which would effectively mean strikes were banned. 

On that issue the Tories did preach class warfare, but only in the hidden depths of the Tory election manifesto, as we exposed at the time; they now aim not just to preach class war on railway workers but also practise it. 

Like a second-rate echo chamber of Tory propaganda, SNP Education Minister Richard Lochhead has joined the shoddy chorus of demands that workers should restrict themselves to what he calls “sensible wage claims". 

Spreading Strikes 

A vast variety of workers are already taking action on pay as the skyrocketing cost of essentials like food, energy, transport and housing devours their real wages. 

FE College lecturers are striking for decent pay, with a claim for 5,000 staff which would only cost approximately £1.5million in total, whereas the combined salaries of 26 College Principals cost the public purse £2.7million. 

School teacher members of the EIS have overwhelmingly rejected a 2% pay offer by COSLA, as have hundreds of thousands of local authority workers, ranging from Social Care staff to cleansing workers and many others. 

RMT members in Network Rail and 15 Train Operating Companies have smashed the Tory anti-union barriers with a 71% turnout and an 89% majority for strike action, which would be the biggest such industrial showdown on the railways in 40 years. 

The sheer scale of this vote for action may well force some concessions from the employers, but anything short of inflation-proofed pay rises after 2 years of zero increases, alongside reversal of the planned loss of 2,500 Network Rail maintenance jobs, would be unacceptable. 

RMT members on ScotRail are voting for action after a derisory 2.2% pay offer, while the SNP/Scottish Green Party government try to square the circle, claiming credit for ‘nationalising' ScotRail on 1st April, then claiming “we are not in the room" when it comes to this pay dispute, whilst of course ScotRail is not only owned and funded by the Scottish government, but their (grossly overpaid) bosses have to get Cabinet permission for any pay rise above the same government's public sector pay cap. 

Royal Mail workers are balloting to protect their pay, and are about to be joined by fellow members of the Communication Workers Union in the BT Group. 

Countless groups of Unite the union members are likewise squaring up to the employers with demands on pay to catch up with inflation. 

Tories Battered into U-turn 

This rolling thunder of industrial fightback by hundreds of thousands of workers is what helped to terrify the Tories into a U-turn on a windfall tax on oil and gas companies, as they face fights on far too many fronts for their own liking. 

After months of stubbornly rejecting the notion of taxation of the grotesque super-profits of the energy giants, as their profiteering drives millions into fuel poverty, the Tories have conceded a temporary 25% tax on the profits of North Sea oil and gas companies, which they claim could raise up to £5billion. 

Whilst that figure dwarfs the pathetically weak windfall tax demands by the Labour leadership - which they themselves estimate would have raised £2billion - it still goes nowhere near matching the life-threatening hike to energy bills which have already been imposed, with an additional £800 increase forecast by Ofgem's chief executive for October. 

Whereas the universal £400 energy subsidy is a welcome, hard-won concession, it doesn't match even half the rise in bills. 

And in contrast to everything the Tories stand for, they've felt compelled to offer targeted (but totally inadequate) additional aid on mounting fuel bills, in a battle for electoral survival. To pensioners, a demographic with a higher than average propensity to vote; and to some of the most impoverished of the working class, to appease their rage in the so-called Redwall seats of northern England - former Labour fortresses recently conquered by the Tories. Classic ruling class tactics: limited reforms from above to prevent 'revolution' from below. 

Public Ownership of Energy 

And the windfall tax is tied to bountiful concessions to the Big Polluters, which threatens to not only subsidise their profits from taxpayers’ money but also vastly exacerbate the climate crisis. 

Shell, BP and the other fossil capitalists have been promised 91 pence back out of every £1 windfall tax provided they invest in energy production - with absolutely no precondition that such investment should be in clean, green renewable energy. 

It feeds into the renewed drive by Boris Johnson for increased fossil fuel production alongside a binge of nuclear power investment, neither of which offers any short-term answer to the energy crisis, and both of which only add to pollution and the threat to the lives of people and our planet. 

And the super-profitable electricity generating and supply companies and privatised National Grid are sheltered from the Tory windfall tax, which targets only oil and gas producers - leaving profiteering out of people's misery intact. 

Nothing short of public ownership of all forms of energy, democratically controlled and managed by elected boards comprising union representatives of energy workers, alongside representatives of the wider working class and governments, can begin to tackle the underlying energy crisis, cure poverty and pollution - all of which requires the planned production of clean, affordable green energy in a People's Energy Service. Made affordable by taking the profit out of it. And made clean by a worker-led transition to renewables. 

Tories party whilst thousands die in isolation 

Tories Can be Beaten! 

However, the £15billion package of concessions on the cost-of-living crisis, wrung out of the hands of Rishi Sunak against all the Tories’ ideology and inbuilt instincts, holds rich lessons for the wider struggles of working-class people. 

Despite their parliamentary majority the Tories are not invincible. They can be beaten. This is something like the 25th U-turn in their short period of office since December 2019. 

They are in crisis, as is the capitalist system they are part of, and can be driven back or even toppled. 

Public outrage at ‘partygate’ has laid siege to Boris Johnson's callous cabal, who arrogantly partied, quaffed alcohol to the point of vomiting all over 10 Downing Street and abusing cleaning staff, at a time when everyday people couldn't even say goodbye to dying relatives, at the height of the pandemic. 

Fury at the outrageous behaviour of this entitled, upper-class razor-gang, led by a serialised liar, has fused with rage at the rising cost of food and fuel, leading to a very significant upsurge in the readiness of workers to strike back through collective action. 

Coordinate the Strikes 

Instead of allowing employers and the government to isolate and pick off one section of workers at a time, national trade union leaders should urgently organise coordination of strike action, including the potential for a 1-day general strike, with common demands on wages, prices and job protection. 

The TUC’s ‘We Deserve Better’ national demonstration in London on June 18th is a welcome opportunity to rally the combined forces of the trade union movement. 

It cannot just be an exercise in going through the motions and letting off steam. Instead, it should be used as the launch-pad for systematic coordination of struggles, including strikes, across different sectors, to demand pay rises that at least match inflation; in round figures, at least 10% across the board. 

In doing so the TUC and individual national union leaderships need to take up the cudgels to bury the malicious myth that wage rises are what cause inflation. Nothing could be further from the truth. 

Wages are lagging behind prices, and have been doing so for years. To illustrate the point, figures from the USA show that in the 20 years before Covid, corporations systematically suppressed wages, making labour's share of national wealth the lowest ever by 2019. 

Wages Don't Cause Inflation 

Real weekly wages only rose by 0.4% per annum, whereas annual growth in the national economy (GDP) was over 2% a year. In the period 2012-19, corporate America (excluding the financial companies) made $1trillion a year in profit; in contrast they made $1.7trillion profit last year alone. 

Corporate profit margins are at their highest since 1950 – increased by a median 49% in the last two years, whereas workers’ wages have only risen by 1.6%. The same pattern applies across the globe, including in this country. 

It's fattening profit margins which are causing inflation, not wage rises, which are failing to keep up with inflation. As the Economic Policy Institute sums it up, 54% of all price increases are due to increased profit margins, with labour costs only accounting for less than 8% of price rises. 

One more stark example: the big energy companies recently reported their profits had doubled in the last quarter, at the same time as most people's energy bills have doubled, as their real wages are collapsing, after over a decade of wage stagnation. 

Fattening profits fuel inflation, combined with the bottlenecks in supplies of certain goods because of snarl-ups in the logistics of shipping supplies across the oceans, which was previously hailed as the magic of globalisation, with its ‘just in time production’ slashing costs and turbocharging profits for global multinationals. 

The impact of Covid lockdowns, including port shutdowns, has thrown the globalisation ‘dream’ into chaos, creating supply chain bottlenecks and terrible costs to the working class worldwide, as scarcity of supplies pushes up prices. 

The crises of capitalism create inflation, not wage rises. 

Demand Price Controls 

The TUC London demo should also be used to demand price controls, as at least some governments did in the aftermath of a similar inflationary spiral caused by blockages of goods supplies in the aftermath of World War Two; to be monitored and implemented by Price Committees of workers and consumers. Cut prices and profits, not pay! 

Going beyond that, the trade union movement needs to crank up a serious campaign for democratic public ownership of key sectors like energy, transport, construction, food production and retail, to end the grotesque profiteering and horrendous escalation of food poverty, fuel poverty, substandard housing and social isolation. 

Trade unionists and socialists need to bombard the Scottish government and local authorities with demands for an emergency plan to retrofit every home free of charge, with insulation, draught proofing, new eco-friendly boilers and fast broadband – to slash energy consumption, fuel poverty, and create tens of thousands of skilled jobs into the bargain. 

The Scottish TUC missed an opportunity for far greater mobilisation of workers in Scotland on 18th of June; instead of just laying on transport to London they should have organised a Scottish demonstration to pound the employers and politicians closer to home with demands for pay increases of at least 10% across the board, underpinned by a Scottish minimum wage of at least £12 plus inflation. And investment in a Socialist Green New Deal based on public ownership of energy, all forms of transport and construction, rather than allowing the Scottish government hide behind the limitations of devolution as an excuse for following fundamentally the same path of real terms wage cuts as that being pursued by the Tories. 

Build a Scottish Mass Demo 

The STUC summit on the cost-of-living crisis on 17th of June is a golden opportunity to plan just such a mass demonstration in Scotland, to build solidarity with the various groups of workers taking industrial action, mobilising communities alongside trade unionists, and to rally behind an emergency programme on wages, job creation and a Socialist Green Recovery Plan to combat the cost of living crisis - which in reality is the cost of greed crisis, the cost of profiteering inherent to a capitalist system of production.

Protesting P&O, an obnoxious example of class war by employers 

 Seize the Billionaires' Wealth! 

We live in a fabulously wealthy economy, with no excuse for people having to choose between heating and eating; making all the more reprehensible the reports by Energy Action charity of people in Scotland literally burning furniture and floorboards to heat their homes. 

The combined wealth of Britain's 177 billionaires rose by 9.35% last year, to £653billion. A rise of £55billion in a year for 177 bloated fatcats. No ‘sensible wage demands’ for these creatures, one in three of whom have funded the Tory party. 

 The state of crisis facing millions of working-class people screams out for seizure of these exploiters’ ill-gotten wealth. For a socialist overturn of the class-ridden system that condemns millions to impoverishment whilst blessing the billionaires with wealth beyond human imagination. 

It’s time to meet the Tory class war on workers with equal determination and collective action. And we are many, they are few! 

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2020 VISION OF CAPITALIST CLASS WAR: build workers’ struggle, solidarity and socialism

Storm clouds are gathering as we turn our backs on 2020 and face the struggles of the rest of the 2020s.

Several groups of workers are flexing their muscles, threatening to fight back against the multiple tributes being hacked out of their jobs, wages and everyday conditions by the obscenely rich elite, to pay for the crises of 2020.

As we reflect on the past year and prepare for the next, nobody should harbour any doubt that class war is raging in the boardrooms of big business.

Employers and governments work in tandem to unleash a massive redistribution of wealth to the rich from the rest of us, with claims this is unavoidable to balance the books after a year of unprecedented state expenditure. And they plan to use Brexit to rob us further.

In battling to defend every penny of workers’ pay, every job and public service, it is necessary to see the bigger picture, to build the widest possible solidarity action in reply.

The past year has given us ‘2020 vision’ of capitalism in all its ruthlessly exploitative nature.

The globalised hunt for ever-greater profit and new capitalist markets has invaded wilder parts of our planet, bringing humans into contact with lethal pathogens, unleashing global pandemics with increased frequency and ferocity - in particular COVID-19, the worst killer pandemic in a century.

Decades of austerity cuts - better described as planned poverty, in pursuit of even more grotesque wealth for a tiny minority - led to entirely avoidable human carnage, with shortages in the NHS and failure to provide protective equipment or safe conditions in care homes and countless other workplaces the most obvious examples.

As 2020 wore on, more and more people spotted the glaring contradiction between rhetoric and reality; between mantras of “We’re All In This Together” and the brutal expansion of inequality.

In just three months the planet's billionaires increased their wealth by 27%, whilst workers on furlough suffered 20% pay cuts, and a record 370,000 others a full 100% loss of earnings from August-October alone, as they were chucked on the scrapheap of unemployment.

Amazon owner Jeff Bezos increased his personal wealth by $87billion since January, equivalent to the entire, combined NHS budgets for the whole of the UK.

The government propaganda nonsense about treating the Coronavirus like a war prompts one picture they would rather hide from us; as with wars, the pandemic has led to further polarisation of wealth, including increased monopolization of ownership.

That is plain to see in the retail sector, the second biggest employer in the country after the NHS. Retail giants like JD Sports and Mike Ashley's Fraser Group battle over who picks up the spoils as Arcadia, Debenhams and countless small firms go to the wall. Big retail thrives, the High Street turns into a wasteland.

Handouts to Big Business

Government policies in response to the pandemic were shaped by the clash of two opposite class interests.

The furlough scheme was the result both of demands by the trade union movement and socialists to protect workers in their jobs, and the fear and loathing of collapsed profits by big business.

Still, it was primarily huge handouts for the capitalist rich and horrendous insecurity for workers. For example, supermarkets got state handouts of £1.9billion in business tax relief, which they converted into handouts of £1.3billion in dividend payments to shareholders and 230,000 redundancy notices this year to retail workers - whose efforts on the front line not only fed the people but fed the profits of the big four supermarkets and their likes.

It's Capitalism to Blame – not just COVID-19

In fighting to shape the future in the interests of the vast working-class majority of the population, we need to be crystal clear it was not the pandemic which created the crisis of job insecurity, pay cuts and threats to essential services, but the capitalist system itself. The pandemic simply exacerbated the crisis.

Pre-pandemic Britain witnessed an incredible 54% rise in the number of people suffering not just poverty, but destitution, between 2017 and 2019. The number of kids condemned to destitution in their formative years rose by 50% in the same two years.

The ultimate indictment of capitalism must be the fact that in the fifth-richest economy on Earth, UNICEF has been obliged to give a grant for breakfast boxes to feed hungry children in South London on Christmas Day; the first such emergency aid to the UK since UNICEF’s foundation in 1946.

Bosses Unleash Class War

As we step into 2021 it is no longer adequate to predict a ruthless crusade by employers and their hired politicians to claw back the costs of 2020 from workers’ pockets; it’s happening already! It requires at least equal determination to defend the class interests of the millions as is on display by the millionaires in their own self-interest.

Patterns are emerging of systematic pay cuts; ‘fire and rehire’ schemes; reductions in sick benefits, terms and conditions; reduced hours of available work, and a slaughter of jobs.

And as Karl Marx identified over 150 years ago, burgeoning unemployment - and indeed underemployment - are being used to bludgeon workers into accepting lesser pay and conditions, with the age-old, obnoxious declaration “You’re lucky to have a job!”

The Struggle Determines the Outcome

Workers in a range of sectors are limbering up for crucial defensive struggles: in BT, Scottish Gas, further education colleges, ScotRail, CalMac ferries, the NHS and wider public sector, etc.

They face the choice of fighting back or being crushed by pay cuts; jobs downgrading: the corporate thuggery of ‘fire and rehire'; decimation of jobs – and the immediate, ongoing threats to health and safety in the workplace, as employers prioritise profit over lives amidst new waves and strains of the killer COVID-19.

There is nothing predetermined in the outcomes of these struggles.

But some things are certain: the employers are out to use the twin viruses of COVID-19 and capitalist recession to beat down workers’ wages, conditions and jobs; to beat workers down onto their knees.

Unless we get up off our knees and fight back with maximum solidarity across sectoral and Union boundaries then working-class people will pay a terrible price at the hands of class enemies who sing hymns of national unity and “We’re All In This Together” as they seek to divide and conquer.

Defeat Divide-and-Rule Tactics

The Tories announced a public sector pay freeze with mock concern at the pay cuts in the private sector, with Rishi Sunak trying to appear sincere when he said: “This means we cannot possibly justify public sector pay rises.”

But they've taken their divide-and-rule trickery even further, trying to split different sections of public sector workers, promising pay rises to at least some NHS staff but not the millions of frontline workers in local government, civil service departments and others who also kept society functioning during COVID-19.

The Scottish government is a bit more cute about this, announcing a £500 award to health and care workers (which of course the Tories insist is taxable!). But that one-off payment still excludes hundreds of thousands of other key workers in Scotland, and should also not be allowed to distract from the entirely justified demands for a 15% pay increase for all NHS staff, which the Scottish government has given no indication of supporting or funding.

£12 Minimum Wage at 16

One of the weapons which SSP trade unionists are determined to popularise in combating the divisive tactics of employers and governments is the demand - first raised by the Scottish TUC during the spring lockdown - for an immediate £2-an-hour pay rise for every key worker, regardless of occupation.

This is an extremely modest but unifying demand in recognition both of the heroic efforts of workers in the NHS, care sector, retail, postal services, bin collections, utilities, council and civil services, and countless others - and of the fact those workers who society most relies upon are usually also the lowest paid.

However, as we explained back on 1st April, it’s not just ‘Time £2 Pay All Key Workers’ (to quote the STUC) but this needs to be underpinned by a legally enforced National Minimum Wage of at least £12-an-hour from the age of 16 upwards, if we are to avoid further divisions between different low-paid workers, and overcome the rampant poverty which also undermines job security - because workers cannot afford to buy the goods or services produced by other workers.

Workers’ Solidarity and Socialism – not ‘Social Partnership’ With the Enemy

Solidarity in action is a critical plank of what’s required in 2021.

Socialists and trade unionists need to challenge and defeat the false and dangerous philosophy which pervades the upper echelons of most trade unions; namely that of ‘Social Partnership’ between union leaders and company chief executives.

The ‘2020 vision’ of capitalism revealed to millions of people surely exposes the idea of common interests between the very rich and the rest of us, the employers and the working class, as a preposterous, dangerous nonsense.

It took courageous struggle - including strike action in many cases, and even a preparedness by union shop stewards to put their job on the line - to even win adequate sick pay or Personal Protective Equipment from employers who put privatised profit before people’s lives.

And the Tories have gone from hypocritical claps to slaps in the face for key workers, as they prepare to pick the pockets of the very people they proclaimed heroes when it suited the government to get them to work in the jaws of death.

Collective action, good old-fashioned working-class solidarity applied to the modern age, is what’s required, not cosying up to company bosses who would cut your throat as quick as they'd look at you in defence of their profit margins.

Workers Need Socialist Party – join the SSP

Going beyond that, one of the clearest lessons of the past year is that in order to end the rule of the rich in a society based on class division and class exploitation, workers need a conscious socialist party rooted in the workplaces and communities.

A workers’party with a socialist vision and ideology - turned into fighting socialist policies capable of mobilising masses of people because they are expressed in the language and needs of the working class.

The SSP enters 2021 determined to help build a socialist force in the unions, workplaces and communities that can link immediate battles over jobs, wages and rights at work with the need to take the likes of energy, construction, transport, all public services and banks into democratic public ownership. As the foundation for a Socialist Green Recovery Plan which could build 100,000 eco-friendly homes; establish an integrated, free public transport network; provide cheap green energy to all; construct universal basic services fit for the 21^st century; thereby also creating at least 150,000 well-paid, unionised jobs and apprenticeships, guaranteeing meaningful work and security to the next generation in a socialist Scotland.

Look back in anger at capitalist 2020, but look forward with determination to shape a socialist future in the 2020s.

Join the SSP (scottishsocialistparty.org)

 

 

 

 

 

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.