WIN INDEPENDENCE FOR WORKERS' RIGHTS: don't rely on EU bosses bearing gifts!

The SNP government's declaration of a second Referendum, including its timing - and the brutal, dictatorial response of unelected Tory Prime Minister, Theresa May - has framed the whole debate about independence around EU membership and Brexit. 

As the Scottish Greens, rightly, help the SNP vote for Indy Ref2 in the Scottish parliament, they both - wrongly - make Brexit and membership of the EU and its Single Market the centrepiece of the case for Scottish independence.

Socialists unequivocally support Scottish independence - but not as a means of making life more comfortable, more obscenely profitable for the capitalist elite, whether home-grown or multinational.

We want to win independence as a means to end Tory dictatorship from Westminster, on behalf of the bankers and billionaires, wielding the butchers' knife to public services, pay, job security, rights at work, and our civil rights. 

The SSP's call for an independent socialist Scotland is an inspiring goal that would transform the lives of the working class majority of the population, from the cradle to the grave. Independence would empower a Scottish government – provided it was a government with the principles, policies and political will to confront the capitalist powers at home and abroad – to redistribute wealth and power from top to bottom.

That also makes the case for a socialist Scotland an indispensable weapon of persuasion in the battle for self-rule. Without that message being heard loud and clear, working class people won't be inspired to vote for change, and could be thereby imprisoned in at least another decade of Tory savagery, especially given the enfeebled, war-torn state of Labour. 

Separate Fight for Indy from the EU 

Socialists and trade unionists need to wrestle the case for independence away from being about membership of capitalist Brexit Britain or the capitalist EU. 

It's true enough indeed that the 62% Remain vote in Scotland being ignored by the Blue Brexiteers adds to the case for the Scottish people being empowered to make their own decisions, through independence. But that alone will never win independence; for starters, calling on the 400,000 pro-Indy voters who chose Leave to now vote for independence so Scotland can Remain in the EU is utterly divisive and counterproductive.

I strongly believe we need to demand two key things alongside describing the transformational vision of what could be achieved in an independent socialist Scotland, to decouple the case for Indy from the divisive, confusing issue of the EU. 

Firstly, call for a separate decision on an independent Scotland's relationship to the EU to be fully debated in democratic forums AFTER winning independence, including a post-independence Referendum on the options then available. 

And secondly, here and now broadcast that we want an independent socialist Scotland to help forge cooperation between equals, on the basis of an alliance of socialist democracies across Europe - instead of either the Blue Brexiteers' capitalist, isolationist hell-house, or the EU of brutal big business interests. 

Tell the Truth - about Brexit

In fighting to convince a majority of working class people to vote Yes, we need to tell the truth - including on what needs to be done to defend and vastly enhance workers' rights, at work and in their communities. 

Those who imagined a Brexit vote would turbocharge a wave of united workers' struggle against the Tories and capitalist bosses are indulging in a dystopian version of La La Land. Whilst for many the Leave vote was a raging against years of neglect by the capitalist machine, the Brexit outcome has sown even more confusion and division, including the scapegoating of migrant workers, and handed the Tories an unexpected golden opportunity to bludgeon to death the flimsy rights workers cling onto. If we let them away with it!

Tell the Truth - about the EU 

But when the SNP and Scottish Greens advocate the gushing glories of Scotland keeping its place in the EU, they are at bottom advocating a continuation of the capitalist Age of Austerity, and the interlinked attacks on workers' rights. 

Whilst most ordinary people who voted to Remain in the EU did so for honourable, internationalist ideals – and in rejection of the axe-wielding, service-slashing, pay-cutting Tories, plus the ugly racism of Farage, Boris Johnston and their Leave leadership - many also shared the SSP's view that it was the lesser of two evil choices in the binary EU Referendum. 

One of the key tasks of socialists, including in our workplaces and unions, is to unmask the debilitating, demobilizing nonsense peddled not only by the SNP and Greens, but especially (and more importantly) by most trade union leaders, that membership of the EU is the road to salvation for workers' rights. 

Struggle is the only Guarantee 

Our fundamental message needs to be that united, collective struggles by workers is what's won the all-too-limited rights we have; not some benign handouts from the EU and its ruling, unelected executive, the European Commission (the selected heads of 28 Member states). 

And whether in or out of the EU, it will require massive resistance and action by workers and their organizations to halt and reverse the tide of assaults on our rights and conditions. Just as we need to hoist high the case for a Scotland run by its working class majority, a socialist Scottish republic, so too we need to enhance people's understanding that class-based struggle is the only guarantee of decent wages, workplace conditions, equality, humane public services, environmental protection...

Evolution of the capitalist EU 

Like any institution, the EU has changed over time, reflecting wider trends throughout the capitalist societies it was founded to uphold and develop in the first place. And those changes are reflected in the EU Directives, Regulations and policies - issued by the European Commission, or sometimes ruled on by the EU's Court of Justice (ECJ). Some have been helpful to those struggling for better rights andconditions for working class people in the various member states; others have been downright dangerous, obstructive and regressive. 

Space prevents a full description, but suffice to say in an earlier period of the EU, particularly from the late-1980s - some progressive regulations were issued, encapsulated in the term 'Social Chapter'. But the EU never pretended to be a socialist institution; it preferred the term 'Social Market' - the model of post-War Germany, with some limited state regulations over the excesses of the capitalist market.

Social Chapter - a Passing Phase

Compared to the red-in-tooth-and-claw savagery of Maggie Thatcher’s monetarists of the 1980s, EU President of the time, Jacques Delors, won rapturous applause at the 1988 TUC conference, for his promises of what became the Social Chapter at the following year’s Strasbourg Summit. What Delors carefully concealed, of course, to the assembled TUC delegates, was his role – as its Finance Minister - in helping the ‘Socialist’ Mitterand government of France abandon all the promised reforms that had enthused millions in the previous elections.

In the face of subsequent defeats at the hands of Thatcher’s civil war against workers’ rights and livelihoods, culminating in the defeat of the 1984/5 miners’ strike, a big majority of union leaders sheltered behind the mildly progressive rules and Directives issuing from the EU Commission in that period. It was a substitute for giving leadership in struggle. It ran in tandem with their constant refrain during the 13 wasted years of Tory rule: “Wait for a Labour government”. It was one feature of the defeatist, class-collaborationist philosophy of far too many union leaders at the time – which aided and abetted the biggest wealth transfusion to the rich from the rest of us over 30 years of them discouraging a more combative course by workers.

As the crisis of capitalism intensified, the EU’s phase described as the Social Chapter died; morphed from being a sweetener to bitter pills, to being the poison of austerity and deregulation of the market itself; from being a partial shield from Thatcherism in Britain to being a vehicle for the spread of ‘Thatcherism’ across the EU.

The EU's lifelong adherence to the interests of monopoly capitalism has increasingly meant the Commission, European Central Bank, and European Court Justice have helped national governments enforce vicious austerity, particularly since the 2008 bankers' crisis. 

European Decency Threshold Downgraded 

A few examples illustrate the general trends, and the central lesson that we need to rely on working class struggle, not the EU, to resist the savagery of the capitalist class and their pliant politicians. 

In the past, the European Decency Threshold, which called for the national minimum wage in each EU country to match 68% of the national average wage, was a very useful weapon in the hands of those of us fighting against the growing theft of wages for profit. But it was only ever an aspiration, not legally enforceable on each state's government. And as social democratic parties and governments converged with the traditional conservatives in unabashed defence of capitalism - as in New Labour - the EU reflected this and drastically downgraded the Decency Threshold, rendering it almost useless in the fight for a decent living wage here or abroad.

Workers Won Reforms, not EU bosses 

Many of the positive rights attributed to the EU by its zealous advocates are either the product of class struggles by workers in one or more EU state, or actually have nothing whatsoever to do with the EU! 

When the TUC General Secretary, Frances O'Grady, last year wrote that "It's the EU that guarantees workers paid holidays, parental leave and equal treatment of part timers" - a claim repeated almost verbatim by Jeremy Corbyn, who added "equal pay" to the list - they were at best misleading workers.

Dangerously misleading, in a fashion almost designed to make workers rely on the benign EU Commissioners rather than defend our rights and conditions through the organised trade unions and their allies. 

Nothing to do with the EU!

Entitlements to paid holidays vastly predate the very existence of the EU, or even its EEC predecessor. French workers won guaranteed annual paid leave of 12 days back in 1936, when they forced the elected Left Front government to take action by occupying the factories and striking! 

Trade union struggles in the UK won the Holidays Pay Act in 1938. 

And even today, organised union pressure has meant UK workers are guaranteed 5.6 weeks paid holidays, well better than the 4 weeks the EU demands.

Equal Pay 

Equal pay - still disgracefully denied to millions of women in practice - was legislated for in the UK in 1970, well before Britain even joined the Common Market/EEC, in 1973. And the Equal Pay Act was forced upon the British government by the ground-breaking strike action of women workers in Fords Dagenham plant in 1968. Furthermore, the same women had to launch a more prolonged strike years after the Act was passed, to actually get the equal pay it promised! 

So whilst anti-discrimination Directives from the EU are welcome, they merely reaffirmed what was won on the picket lines and workers' demonstrations. 

The EU Directives guarantee 14 weeks paid maternity leave; decades of campaigning has won the concession of 37 weeks here. 

Health and Safety laws in Scotland are based on the 1974 Act that was conceded on the wave of industrial struggles that overthrew Ted Heath's Tory government in February 1974; it was not a generous handout from either British capitalists nor their EU co-thinkers. 

Some EU Regulations, like the Working Time Directives, acted as a dented, limited shield in the face of savage attacks by Thatcher's, and subsequently Blair's governments. In terms of capping compulsory hours of work at 48 and insisting on guaranteed minimum break times during and between shifts, they are welcome reforms. 

But all along the British government insisted on opt-out clauses, and can do so entirely legally, within the framework of EU regulations and rulings. For instance, the Tories' railroading laws to remove doctors and nurses from the 48-hour limit underlay the Junior Doctors' strike last year. And all workers in Scotland can 'choose' - often under 'subtle' duress from employers - to waive that right anyway, fuelling the life-threatening long hours culture we are cursed by.

Capitalists Pick and Choose 

The positive EU measures are often ferociously resisted and bypassed by the Westminster club of capitalist politicians, but the equally numerous anti-working class EU Directives and regulations are eagerly seized upon to back up their drive to privatize, slash public expenditure and make workers pay for a capitalist crisis caused by bankers and the profit system. 

And in the case of Scotland, these EU Directives have been frequently used as an excuse for inaction, or regressive measures, by the SNP government. We shouldn't forget that as an added reason to decouple the case for Scottish independence from the SNP's advocacy of the EU as a land of milk and honey.

Strangling Public Spending 

For decades, and increasingly in recent years, the EU has framed laws to aid the privateers and the help enforce the capitalists' chosen path of austerity. 

The EU Stability and Growth Pact prohibits government budget deficits above 3% of GDP, thereby banning state expenditure to provide jobs, houses and services, reinforcing the downward spiral of cuts. 

A 2008 Directive called for postal services to be "fully open to competition by December 2012", adding to the Tory (and Labour) armoury in shedding the 400-year-old, public sector Royal Mail. 

From the EU's First Rail Directive in 1991, to its more recent Fourth, the EU Commissioners seek to break up and privatize the entire rail networks of all EU states. 

Successive British Tory and Labour governments needed no encouragement from the EU to privatise all and sundry, or apply a scorched earth policy to public services. But they certainly got encouragement, as increasingly anti-working class governments in the member states huddled together in the one and only EU institution with the powers to initiate rules and Directives - the unelected European Commission.  

SNP Hide Behind EU Directives 

That's an example of where the SNP government chooses to comply rather than defy all that's reactionary and regressive about the EU. 

On both the issues of railway renationalisation and Scotland's ferries, they chose to obey the laws of the capitalist market, including its EU bureaucracy, and hide behind them instead of proceeding to implement the oft-expressed wishes of the overwhelming majority of Scottish people by taking the entire transport system into public, democratic ownership. 

It was only after strike action and legal challenges by the RMT union that the SNP government conceded on keeping some of the ferries in the public sector, and retreated on implementing their contract clause for ScotRail that insists on driver only trains - in itself the product of their refusal to nationalise the railways, regardless of EU rules.

Undermining Wages 

Another major weapon used by employers and national governments in their war on wages is the EU Posted Workers Directive (PWD). This, and associated ECJ rulings, allows profiteers to set up shop abroad, or post workers from one EU country to another branch of their operations, to undermine wage rates. 

In its actual wording, the EU PWD states: "Member states shall guarantee workers posted to their territory the terms and conditions of employment...which in the member state where the work is carried out...are laid down by law, regulation or administrative provision." 

On the surface, harmless sounding? On the contrary, it means bosses paying only the national minimum wage to migrant workers, not the rate for the job negotiated and fought for through the unions in the host nation.
For instance, last year construction workers' unions in Rotherham, Yorkshire, waged a battle against a Croatian subcontractor company hiring Croatian workers to build a power station on £7 an hour, undercutting the national industry collective agreement rate of £16.64 an hour. The unions rightly fought to organise the migrant workers and win equality, the rate for the job, rather than fall prey to the racist division this Posted Workers Directive inevitably triggers. 

Tory Brexiteers Wage Class War 

The Tories are hell-bent on inciting division during the Brexit process, to ease the path to further crush workers' rights, public services and wages as a share of national wealth.
It's no accident their recently-implemented Trade Union Act has taken full effect in March 2017, with barely a whisper of protest, as the white noise around Brexit lets rip. 

But to counter this reactionary plan by the Tories and employing class, it's worse than useless, indeed downright dangerous, to counter-pose it with claims of the EU being some Nirvana of workers' rights and protection of all that's civilized. 

We need to advocate Scottish independence as the best, quickest escape route from Tory dictatorship.

An opening to demand and enforce a Charter of Workers’ Rights, alongside other key measures like a £10 minimum wage for all at 16 (in 2017 figures); a maximum wage no more than 10 times the minimum to help close the chasm of inequality; the union-negotiated rate and rights for the job for migrant workers; guaranteed minimum 16-hour contracts instead of zero hours serfdom; public ownership of all services, energy, banks and landed estates.

Greek Tragedy 

But that's got nothing to do with false claims that EU membership would gift the Scottish people a secure, pleasant future. 

On the contrary: not only will that claim drastically undermine the case for independence, but it is selling a lie to the working class. And underneath it all is the pernicious message that we don't need to organise in an almighty class struggle for transformational change, but that we should just rely on benign politicians to hand out workers and communities rights and services like sweeties issued by kindly grandparents. 

Try telling that tale of 'EU bosses bearing gifts' to the Greek people, who voted massively against austerity, and then were told by the EU to slash spending even further, despite starvation on the streets and hospitals running out of painkillers, and to tax the poorest as part of a grossly misnamed 'rescue package'. 

For an Independent Socialist Scotland - In a socialist Europe

We need to decouple the issues of independence and the EU.

For an independent Scotland that can then proceed to debate and decide its place in Europe and the wider world after gaining self government.

For an independent socialist Scotland that could help pioneer collaboration between equals in a future alliance of socialist democracies across Europe.

Most important of all perhaps, we need to unmask the demobilizing myth that Scottish people should rely on the EU and its benign regulations to protect us from capitalist exploitation.

Anything protective, however limited and feeble, that the EU calls for is the result of struggle by workers' organizations, and in any case hedged with umpteen opt-out clauses.

And as the populist right and hard-faced capitalism holds more and more sway across Europe, the EU act as thuggish enforcers for the Age of Austerity. 

Working class people need to rely on their own organised strength, demanding all that's best in Europe for the people of Scotland, and likewise defying all that's worst in the EU capitalist club. 

We need independent workers' struggle, an independent socialist Scotland, and an alliance of European socialist democracies to confront and eradicate the crimes of profit against people. 

UNITE TO BLOCK THE BLUE BREXITEERS: defend workers' rights

"To restore Britain's competitiveness, we must begin by deregulating the labour market."

These words - from Liam Fox, one of the Tories' Three Brexiteers - should send a chill down the spine of any worker.
Many are sick of listening to endless news items about Brexit. But behind the fog of procedures and jargon, we need to be wide awake to the brutal slaughter of rights and conditions for working class people the Tories aim to impose as part of Britain's exit from the EU, including some progressive rulings by the EU's Court of Justice.

Millions of those who voted to Leave did so as a roar of outrage against decades of neglect and devastation in their communities by successive Tory and Labour governments, since the days of wholesale industrial vandalism by Maggie Thatcher.
Of course, the chief leaders of both the Leave and Remain campaigns also incited a dose of racism, blaming immigrants for the inhumane conditions imposed by the capitalist elite. However, it's an outrageous slur to imagine all Leave voters are racists, just as not all Remain voters are devoted fans of the capitalist European Union. 

But anyone who imagined the Brexit vote would usher in a revival of struggle to topple the Tories and their capitalist system of daylight robbery were living in a dark, dystopian version of La La Land. 

Instead, it's increased the levels of confusion, division, and real danger that the very Westminster elite rejected by so many millions through a Leave vote will get away with murdering even more of workers' rights and living standards. 

The organised trade union movement, alongside community campaigners and socialists, needs to counter this real and present danger with a determined crusade to unite working class people in struggle, to defend and vastly enhance their conditions of life.

The Singapore of Europe 
Several Tories have let slip their aim of making Britain the Singapore of Europe. 

A deregulated tax haven for big business and the obscenely rich, shredding even the flimsy framework of rights that remain for workers already subjected to a cruel, concerted class war for the past 40 years in capitalist Britain. 

They want to usher in even lower tax on corporations and the 1%; drive down wages even lower, despite escalating inflation, and wage stagnation since at least 2008; and dismantle regulations on Health & Safety, food standards, environmental protection, and a host of workplace rights.

Turning their backs on the EU marketplace, the Atlanticist wing of the Tories seek trade deals with some of the craziest capitalist governments they can snuggle up to, including the dictatorial Turkish regime (having just signed a £100million arms deal with them) and, especially, Trump's USA. 

Theresa May is set to hold hands with a Donald Trump whose slogan 'America First' should be a warning that any trade deals with him will be at terrible cost to the people of Britain, as The Donald pursues his nationalist, protectionist version of imperialist plunder. 

Already there's rampant speculation about UK food safety standards (under EU regulations) being dumped to import US pork that's pumped full of growth hormones and antibiotics, and of US corporations being invited to seize privatised chunks of the NHS under new trade deals.

EU No Workers' Nirvana
Contrary to the gushing love of the EU displayed by Nicola Sturgeon, the SNP government and indeed the Scottish Greens, the EU is no Nirvana for working class people. 

Rather than welcome in the huddled masses escaping war and starvation - frequently from regions bombed and previously colonized by big European powers that injected the poison of ethnic and religious sectarianism to make it easier to rule over them - Fortress Europe has allowed thousands of refugees to drown in the Mediterranean. A reported 4,000 tragic, miserable, deaths at sea for these desperate people in each of 2015 and 2016.

As well as being an anti-democratic bureaucracy, the EU has several Directives designed to block nationalisation, accelerate privatization of public services, and batter down wages by measures like the Posted Worker Directive - which allows corporations to hire workers in a low-pay, nil-rights country and then post them on those terms and conditions to another country with better working conditions.
As national governments lurched to the right in recent decades, what used to be called Social Europe has died. 

However, for a period of history, EU Directives and subsequent legislation acted as a badly dented shield for workers in Thatcherite and Blairite Britain. 

Some of the laws of EU origin that partially protected workers from the worst excesses of super-exploitative British capitalism were enforced as a result of mighty battles put up by the unions, and subsequent EU Court of Justice decisions to over-rule the governments and judiciary of Britain. 

For example, some of the laws governing break times at work; Agency Workers' rights; paid holiday entitlements; maternity rights; manual handling and other Health & Safety regulations; payments for some travel-to-work time, etc. 

Tories Dismantling Flimsy Protection of Workers 
Now, using the unexpected golden opportunity of Brexit, the Tories and capitalist overlords are determined to dismantle this flimsy framework of protective laws, to drive forward their mission of a low-waged capitalist free-for-all, to turbocharge their profit margins; to "restore Britain's competitiveness", in the weasel words of Tory Brexit leader Liam Fox.

That's why they're pushing through the Great Repeal Bill - to repatriate all these workplace regulations to Westminster, with the false promise EU-initiated rights will be retained... until the Tories find it timely to flush them down the toilet!
That's why they're about to implement their 2016 Trade Union Act, to throw up ever higher obstacles to workers and their unions resisting this class war on rights, conditions, jobs and wages. 

In that context, trade unionists and socialists should highlight and support the Workers' Rights (Maintenance of EU Regulations) Bill currently being pursued as a Private Member's Bill in Westminster.
But it will take an awful lot more than parliamentary measures to stop the class-driven civil war on the working class by the Tory Brexiteers and their big business puppet-masters.  

Mass Action to Stop the Slaughter 
The first time any employer tries to wield the truncheon provided by the Tory Trade Union Act, all unions need to rally to the side of the workforce and unions in the firing line.
For instance, if bosses try to halt a strike or picketing under this legislation, the STUC, TUC and each affiliated union leadership will need to get off the fence, turn oppositional speeches into mobilsation for mass protests, and defy the anti-union laws in the process.

That's the militant spirit and method required to render such laws powerless. Recent history proves this. In the 1970s, Ted Heath's Tories were forced to abandon their anti-union laws in the face of mass, unofficial, illegal strikes and mass demos of 250,000. 

A stark contrast to the feeble mumbling of the TUC in 2016, when they barely lifted a finger to take action to halt the Tory Trade Union Bill being passed. And a million miles removed from this week's appalling desertion of RMT strikers on Southern Rail by the leadership of the drivers' union, Aslef. 

Or the spineless role of the TUC, who acted as a treacherous referee, brokering the deal between Tory government-bankrolled Southern Rail bosses and Aslef, whilst slamming the door to these negotiations in the face of the RMT - after RMT members have sacrificed 45 days' pay in strikes to protect the travelling public's safety. 

Such readiness to grovel and break workers' solidarity will never in a million years win repeal of the battery of anti-union laws implemented by the Tories, retained by 13 years of Labour governments, made even more repressive by the Tories' 2016 Act.

Over recent decades, numerous workforces in Scotland and beyond have brushed aside the heavy hand of the law in pursuit of their cause, striking and winning without going through all the legal rigmaroles - for instance, postal workers, Glacier Metal workers, council staff, oil refinery construction workers.

Open trade union defiance of legal obstructions to basic rights is the only route to repeal of legislation consciously designed to enslave workers and aid unfettered profiteering for the few.

Beware Tory Divide and Rule 
Another core task we face - even more urgently after the Brexit vote - is to combat the vicious divide-and-rule tactics of the employers, government and most of their hired media. 

The issue of immigration has been whipped up to confuse, divide and weaken working class people's resistance to the real causes of their plummeting standard of living. 

The trade union movement needs to confront the lies and myths on immigration, or suffer the consequences of a divided working class, prey to plunder by the billionaires who feed us this toxic diet. 

Many capitalist politicians - the SNP included - sing hymns of praise to the EU Single Market, a mechanism primarily based on freedom of movement for capital, goods, services - and people, as sources of labour, as the EU capitalist club chases after profit maximization in the biggest possible market.
Whilst defending to the hilt the right of big corporations to shift their investments and operations round Europe and the rest of the globe - with a full 30% of all Direct Foreign Investment flowing through tax havens! - capitalists and their political parties systematically distract and divide us with tales of how the migration of people causes wage cuts, job losses and attacks on local public services. 

Blame the Rich - not Migrant Workers 
It's a monstrous lie; a myth that must be tackled head on by the trade union and socialist movement in order to show people the real causes of poverty pay and austerity cuts. Numerous in-depth studies - including recently by the London School of Economics - prove that immigration does NOT reduce wages for workers in this country. 

Wages fell after the 2008 financial collapse, at the same time as immigration slumped.
Contrary to the claims of many - right-wingers, but even Jeremy Corbyn in a recent concession to the lies of the right - that immigrant labour is driving down wages in the UK construction industry, wages there have risen every single month in 2016, at the same time as a mini boom in construction led to an upsurge of immigration.

In any case, immigrants don't impose low wages, or zero hours contracts, or the worst anti-union laws in the western world; governments and employers do.

Nor does immigration cut public services. For instance, a recent study by University College London shows EU migrant workers pay £20billion a year more in UK taxes than they take back in any form of benefits or services. 

And in Scotland, the aging population means we need net annual inward migration of 24,000 workers, just to stand still, let alone broaden the tax base to fund improved pensions, other benefits and public services.

Unite Against Slave Wages
But the unions also need to face up to other facts: bosses do try to hire slave-labour workers from abroad, or shift their investments overseas to cheap labour economies, and leave a desert behind them. That's where socialist strategy and tactics applied by the potentially powerful trade unions comes in. 

The rights of EU migrant workers in the UK is one of the key issues of concern post-Brexit. But a significant minority of workers are being duped into thinking immigration is a threat to their jobs and wages; incited to scapegoat migrants by the very same profit-hungry capitalist exploiters who are battering down wages in a race to the bottom.

United, collective action by workers, in particular through their unions, has always been the way to fight off such divide-and-rule trickery - not liberal pleas to the non-existent consciences of billionaires who don't give a damn what colour or creed of worker they can exploit, but do strive to divide and conquer. 

A key demand that unions need to actively pursue, to confront the Tory plans around Brexit, is protection and improvement of all existing rights for all workers, regardless of national origin, and application of the nationally negotiated wages and conditions to migrant workers, with full union rights.

The National Rate for the Job

Capitalist shipping magnates have a history of enslaving overseas crews under 'flags of convenience' to undermine the conditions won by workers in the countries they then operate in. The EU Posted Worker Directive aided this plan in other industries. 

In recent months, here in Scotland, we've witnessed an excellent example of a socialist trade union response to this outrageous practice. On the Seatruck freight ferries to Orkney and Shetland, overseas workers were being paid a derisory £4 an hour. The RMT union fought this in a high profile campaign, embarrassing the SNP government who were hiring this company under contract, and have just won agreement that all crew will get at least the UK national minimum wage. 

Hot on the heels of that breakthrough for workers' conditions, the RMT is now bombarding the Scottish government with the same demands for Lithuanian workers on ferries from Rosyth, paid only £1.64 an hour in 2014, and current wages the government declines to reveal! 

Fighting for 'the national rate and rights for the job', the unions should marry that to a vigorous campaign for a national minimum wage of £10 now, the policy shamefully left on the shelf by the TUC and most national unions since it was unanimously agreed as the policy of the TUC a long, lamentable 30 months ago! 

Unite Around Fighting Policies 

The unions and socialists have a critical role to play in preventing the divide-and-conquer strategy of the Blue Tory Brexiteers. Alongside the issues already mentioned, they should spearhead a dynamic struggle for a maximum wage no more than 10 times the £10 national minimum wage; for secure jobs with full trade union rights and restoration of collective bargaining; abolition of zero hours contracts and instead a guaranteed minimum 16-hour week for all who want it; repeal of all anti-union laws and a charter of workers' rights; reversal of cuts to services and privatization.

Such a package of policies would unite workers in struggle, regardless of origin, and indeed regardless of which way they voted in the EU Referendum. 

Alongside these fighting policies, the unions need to review their position on Scottish independence. Instead of offering workers the false choice of a capitalist EU or a low-wage capitalist tax haven for the rich in Brexit Britain, we need to popularize the case for an independent socialist Scotland in a European alliance of socialist democracies, where workers of all countries combine to make sure people come before profit.