DEFY AND DEFEAT CRISIS-STRICKEN TORIES

Workers' livelihoods and rights are being assaulted by an unelected Prime Minister, at the head of an extremist, unelected Tory government.

Whereas 100,000 Royal Mail posties voted to strike in defence of their pay, their working conditions and the public service they provide, a mere 80,000 backwoods Tories elected Liz Truss to preside over the fate of 67 million people. That's a lesser level of democracy than back in the 18th century! Yet the same Tory junta lectures us on how trade union ballots should be conducted, poised to impose more vicious obstacles to workers defending themselves than even Truss's obnoxious idol Maggie Thatcher dared to implement.

However, this is a Tory government ripping itself apart, with internal divisions, plots and crises swamping Tory party conference, and many of their own MPs bolting early to avoid the train strikes timed to hit their trips to and from Birmingham, thereby missing Truss's address to the assembled reactionaries.

They've already been compelled into two screeching U-turns, because of the public fury at rocketing energy prices and their plans to axe the 45 percent tax on income over £150,000. At time of writing, the Tories are likely to be forced into another humiliating U-turn on the question of capping benefit increases to the rate wages have risen, as opposed to the twice-as-high Retail Price Index inflation - which even a right-wing think tank predicts will drive a further 450,000 people into poverty.

Drive Tories Back – Drive Tories Out!

This is a brutal regime which has launched shameless class war on the working class, but one which is ripe to be defied and defeated; not just driven back but potentially driven out, if only the national trade union leaderships harness the growing anger in the population into mass, united and decisive collective action.

The Tories’ mini-budget was a rude awakening to class politics for anyone lulled into swallowing the lie that we are all in this together, in an orgy of cross-class ‘national unity’ which the ruling powers systemically sought to whip up, in two relentless weeks of pomp, pageantry and parades of naked state power after the Queen died.

Kami Kwasi Kwarteng!

Public outrage forced ‘kami Kwasi’ Kwarteng into abandoning abolition of the top 45p tax rate, pleading with the population that this measure had been ‘a distraction’ from the rest of the Tories’ wondrous budget. From an opposite, working-class standpoint, this U-turn is itself something of a distraction; a mere tactical retreat in the war on the working class which the rest of the budget amounts to.

After all, the UK’s top rate of income tax before Maggie Thatcher won power in 1979 was not 45 percent but 83 percent. More contemporarily, the combined impact of freezing the lower income tax threshold and cutting the 20% basic rate leaves everyone earning less than £40,000 worse off.

A millionaire will be £55,000 better off from the Tory budget, whereas the median workers’ wage is less than half that leap in wealth, at £26,000. Naked class-based generosity to the grotesquely rich.

The poorest 3 million of the population will gaìn the grandiose total of 63 pence - per month! - according to the viciously anti-socialist Times newspaper. Across the gaping class divide, £85billion has already been forked out in dividends to big shareholders in 2022.

Nationalise - Don't Subsidise Profit!

The Tories’ alleged restraints on household energy bills means they’ve more than doubled since August 2021, whilst giant energy companies were gifted £100billion in subsidies from taxpayers’ funds – which will further crucify spending on essential services. 

Regressive tax cuts, plus subsidies to giant energy companies, will in part be paid for in an orgy of cuts to public services - on top of real-terms cuts to wages and benefits. 

Public spending cuts to the tune of £60billion (equivalent to almost two years of the Scottish block grant from Westminster), according to new calculations by the Institute for Fiscal Studies.   

Workers in the UK have already suffered one of the steepest falls in real wages in any of the advanced OECD countries over the past year. If the Tories have their way, that mass transfusion of wealth to the rich from the rest of us - to profit from pay - will be greatly added to.

That's where determined, well-prepared collective resistance by the organised workers’ movement is often literally a matter of life and death.

NHS in Crisis

The NHS, widely regarded as the greatest reform ever won by the working class, is in a terrible state of collapse - after decades of underinvestment, accelerating privatisation to gouge profits, and collapsing morale amongst staff after years of being undervalued, understaffed and underpaid.

This crisis precedes COVID-19, which then exacerbated the problem. Many families are losing loved ones to avoidable deaths from cancer, due to horrendous delays in diagnosis and treatment, because the governments of both Westminster and Holyrood have failed to adequately invest, allowing austerity driven by profit maximisation to prevail over people's health.

As the chair of the Royal College of Nursing, Julie Lamberth, declared - as they conduct a ballot for the first strike action in the 100-year history of the RCN –

“Patient care is suffering, staffing levels are unsafe, and members are facing a daily battle on how to feed their family, heat their homes and travel to their work. None of this is new and as we head into another winter, we know it's only going to get worse. This is our opportunity to take a stand for our patients and our profession, to show the Scottish government they must act now and that is why I am urging members to vote in favour of strike action.”

It's an incredible indictment of the state of the NHS that the RCN - historically not even regarded as a real trade union by most of the movement - has now been sufficiently radicalised to step out on the road towards strike action, alongside members of UNISON, GMB and Unite who are also balloting for action, calling for a pay rise 5 percent above inflation!

Strike Wave Rises

Simultaneously, 150,000 members of the Public and Commercial Services union, PCS, are being balloted for strikes by the biggest number of members in the union's entire history. They are demanding an inflation-proofed pay rise; £15-an-hour minimum wage; reversal of plans to slaughter 91,000 jobs - and their redundancy terms to boot; plus a 2% reduction in workers’ pension contributions, after government figures prove they've been overpaying into the pension pot for several years.

Royal Mail workers - over 115,000 of them - are launching 19 days of further strike action against savage attempts to not only suppress their wages, but dismantle the entire Royal Mail, breaking up letters and parcels into separate businesses; scrapping the guaranteed 6-day delivery currently written into the Universal Service Obligation; on top of outrageous attacks on working conditions, whereby posties would have to work late into the evenings, and work longer hours in the winter months than during the summer.

Food Bank Phil

Fellow members of the CWU in BT and Openreach are sustaining strikes of 45,000 workers against the pay cuts being imposed by what they’ve dubbed FoodBankPhil – Philip Jansen, the chief executive whose salary last year rocketed by 32% to £3.5million, whilst several offices have set up food banks for their own staff, such is the crisis in their living standards.

As we report elsewhere, 45,000 railway workers in Network Rail and 15 train operating companies have now been joined by over 2000 ScotRail members of the RMT in strike actions, not just on pay, but on safety for the travelling public as the ‘Railway Rich Listers' try to slaughter at least one-third of maintenance workers’ jobs and cut maintenance services on our railways by half – a sure recipe for death and disaster.

Members of UNISON at several universities are already taking strike action and trade unionists at Dundee University have passed the incredible milestone of being engaged in strike actions for a full year. 

Meantime university lecturers, school teachers, firefighters and control staff are amongst the growing army of workers rising from their knees because everything is rising apart from their wages.

Build a 24-hour General Strike

This welcome recovery of workers’ self-confidence needs to be harnessed by the STUC, TUC and each national union leadership in combined collective action around fighting demands that could transform the lives of millions.

Coordinated and united strikes - including a 24-hour general strike that brings every worker into action in a mighty display of workers’ power - could not only force concessions out of individual employers, but potentially topple the crisis-stricken, divided Tories. It's an opportunity that has not been available to the same extent for several years and needs to be seized.

As an integral part of an expanded, escalating plan of collective action, a 24-hour general strike would not only embolden workers with their own power, and warn off governments, but would be a critical component part of defeating the new batch of anti-union laws being hatched by the Tories. 

The best way to defend the right to strike is to strike – together, across different sectors, in unity.

STUC: Scotland Demands Better

In a welcome move, the STUC has launched a ‘Scotland Demands Better' campaign, around a series of nine quite modest demands on the Scottish government, including wages, benefits, rent controls and genuine implementation of fair work practises.

These demands would at least ameliorate some of the worst savagery against working people and their families. But unless the STUC seriously mobilise - with demonstrations and by spearheading a Scottish one-day general strike - there can be no guarantee of the SNP-Green Party Coalition changing course.

It took determined and courageous strike action by cleansing workers - and the imminent prospect of them being joined by thousands of school workers - to force the same Scottish government into conceding (in round figures) a 10% pay rise, about £2,000 increase for most workers, after months of them insisting it wouldn't break their 2.5% public sector pay cap.

And hot on the heels of workers’ action forcing this Scottish government U-turn on pay cuts, John Swinney announced a ‘difficult choice’ of £500million in cuts to the public sector. In all likelihood deeper cuts still will be added as a consequence of Westminster's escalated butchery.

Don't Buy Petrol for an Arsonist!

There is no need to elaborate on the fact working-class people cannot rely on the Tories - the chief party of capitalist big business, bankers and warmongers.

But neither can we rely for salvation from the Scottish government, which has never once defied Westminster cuts, nor mobilised the Scottish people to win back some of the stolen £billions off Westminster, in order to protect jobs, wages, public services and workers' conditions - which is precisely what a socialist government in Scotland would do.

But any worker who thinks Starmer's Labour is a lifeboat from renewed austerity and class warfare is just as liable to volunteer wads of cash to an arsonist to burn down their own house.

Starmer instructed his Labour Shadow Cabinet members to go nowhere near a workers’ picket line and expelled from office the handful who defied him. 

Whilst spurning even a hint of solidarity with workers, the same Starmer has mobilised his Treasury team in what has been christened ‘a smoked salmon offensive’ - holding at least 250 meetings with Chief Executives of major capitalist companies. They are desperately trying to reassure the profiteering class that Labour is a safe alternative to the Tories, as the latter spook even the moneybags of finance capitalism with their recent mini-budget.

Whilst bending to the rising clamour for nationalisation of the railways - at least in words – Starmer’s right-wing Labour has tried to con people with talk of a publicly-owned Great British Energy, which would merely be yet another energy company (heavily dependent on nuclear power) competing with the existing capitalist Big Polluters - who are driving millions into fuel poverty whilst trashing our planet for profit. So no doubt which side of the class war Starmer's New Blairites stand, then!

SSP: the Workers' Party

In stark contrast, the SSP has no interest in reassuring big business. We instead assure the working class we are on the side of workers and their communities, part of the working class, helping to organise and celebrate every penny extra pay, every minute off the working day, without loss of earnings – but never losing sight of the bigger fight to transform society into a socialist democracy, founded on public ownership of all forms of energy, construction, public transport, telecoms, banking.

We are quite clear: nationalise, don’t subsidise!

Instead of propping up the profits of big corporations – as has just been done for the energy giants – the power of the state needs to be deployed to organise publicly owned industries and services, with elected boards of management and a built-in majority for working-class representatives.

To achieve such a democratically planned economy, the full might of the one productive class in society, the working class, will need to be mobilised for socialist change in the years ahead.

Mobilisations for at least inflation-proofed wages; a £15-an-hour minimum wage; democratic public ownership, and defence of the right to strike in the immediate weeks and months ahead – including through a 24-hour general strike – would be a major advance down that road.

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.

WOMEN WORKERS DEMAND EQUALITY

Women workers are battling for equality at work on several fronts.

A succession of protest demos have been staged by members of Unison and GMB unions at Glasgow city council, demanding immediate action on Pay Justice by the new SNP council. 

Women working for the council and its arms-length offshoots (ALEOs) have fought for equal pay for equal work for the past 12 years. They are demanding an end to the outrageous pay gap, mostly derived from some occupations being treated as 'women's work' - such as homecare, cleaning, administration, schools, libraries and catering. With this gendered branding comes lower grades and lower pay.

Decade of Delay 

A Single Status Agreement was signed between Scottish councils and unions about 11 years ago, supposedly guaranteeing an end to this discrimination, by unifying grades for equal skills, regardless of gender.

Disgracefully, over a decade of union struggle has been required to force councils to implement this. 

Many workers due compensation have since died, or moved out of jobs with the council, as the lawyers rake in fees from legal wrangling by councils. 

There are still over 27,000 Scottish council workers with unresolved claims for equal pay, and compensation for historic daylight robbery. The outstanding bill is estimated to be £750million. 90% of the workers involved are women.

Glasgow city council makes up a huge share of this pay gap: 11,000 workers still owed a total of about £500million! 
The previous Labour council scandalously dragged its feet, dodged paying up, using countless legal delaying tactics. 

Labour - now SNP - Delaying Tactics

In last May's council elections, the SNP made a big play of their promises to immediately implement equal pay, and won considerable voters' support through this. 

The Unison and GMB demos have been demanding 'No Delay, Equal Pay', now the SNP have been in charge a clear six months. 

Alarmingly, after their manifesto promises to the contrary, the SNP council has still not taken any concrete steps to speed up payment of this scandalous debt to workers. In fact, the one and only step so far by the SNP administration has been to seek 'leave to appeal' against the Supreme Court ruling in favour of equal pay settlements, in the case pursued by Unison on behalf of their 6,000 members amongst the 11,000 city council and ALEOs staff involved. Different political party, more delaying tactics!

Some of the key messages from the women leading the lobbies of the council recently are that equal pay should mean equalizing upwards, not downwards - raising the pay of women-dominated jobs, not cutting the pay of male-dominated sectors. 

Likewise, that equal pay should not be funded out of job losses or cuts to services - including to the (often vulnerable) clients many of them provide lifeline services to. 

Demand No Cuts Budgets 

This raises the issue consistently fought for by the SSP: the demand that both the Scottish government and all 32 local councils should refuse to pass on funding cuts issued by Westminster or Holyrood. To instead set No Cuts Budgets and join workers and communities in a massive campaign to win back some of the £billions stolen off Scotland and local communities by successive central governments, to fund equal pay, expanded services, and job security. 

March of the Mummies

Meantime, on Halloween, a set of women workers used a humorous means to deliver a deadly serious message. The March of the Mummies, in several UK cities including Glasgow, saw women marching in bloody bandages like the 'walking dead' version of mummies, demanding an end to the discrimination and mistreatment at work suffered by pregnant women and new mothers. 

The 2015 Report by the Equality and Human Rights Commission discovered one in nine new mothers said they had been forced out of their job due to pregnancy; an appalling total of 54,000 a year. 

An astonishing 77% of working mothers reported negative or discriminatory treatment by their employers. 

A full 40% of employers had the gall to admit they would avoid hiring a woman of childbearing age. All this in the 21st century!

Pregnant then Screwed 

The March of the Mummies was organised by campaign group 'Pregnant then Screwed', which helps women tell their stories of pregnancy and maternity discrimination, and campaigns for a package of measures currently being pushed as an Early Day Motion at Westminster. 

These demands include extension of the time limit for raising Employment Tribunal discrimination cases from 3 months to at least 6 months. A demand entirely justified by the fact only 1% of women facing such discrimination have pursued Tribunal cases - in part, no doubt, because 80% of women in a survey by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists admitted to having had at least one mental health episode during or immediately after pregnancy.   

The campaigners are also demanding 6 weeks paternity leave for Dads, on 90% salary; a requirement that employers report how many Flexible Working requests were made and how many granted; extension of statutory shared parental pay to the self-employed; and state subsidies for childcare from the age of 6 months, instead of the current 3 years. 

SSP Demand Equality

The SSP has a proud record of demanding and campaigning for equal pay for women; at least 12 months' maternity and one month's paternity leave, on 100% of pay; and a massive investment in free pre-school nurseries and workplace crèches. 

The trade unions should take up these issues vigorously, and demand changes to the feeble employment laws that guarantee the right to apply for flexible working, but with absolutely no guarantee of getting it, when employers merely have to say 'No' on the flimsiest grounds of 'business needs'. 

STRIKE BACK AGAINST ALL CUTS!

Councils are setting budgets that plunge the knife into the heart of workers' jobs, working conditions and the services available to children, the elderly, sick and disabled vulnerable people.

TORY CELEBRATIONS

For the Westminster Tories this is grounds for champagne-fueled celebrations. It's hacking away at the public sector, which they detest on principle, and boosting the prospects for profiteering by the private sector - and to hell with the human consequences.

For the SNP government, it's a case of much hand-wringing, justified attacks on Westminster's cuts to the Scottish block grant, and then meek and supine devolution of Tory butchery to local authorities, college and university boards... and ultimately the workers and service users who voted in their droves for the SNP as an allegedly 'anti-austerity' party.

For Labour and SNP councillors, all we see is jockeying for propaganda advantage in advance of the May elections, with councils run by both parties 'regretfully' wielding the axe to an estimated 15-20,000 jobs over two years, and countless losses of vital services in the working class districts most in need of a safety net. 

DEFY WESTMINSTER! 

Instead of passing on cuts - £350million this year alone - the SNP government, and councillors (Labour and SNP), should be standing up for the people who gave them an anti-Tory, anti-austerity mandate, and set No Cuts Budgets in defiance of Westminster, to mount a mass campaign of workers and communities to demand back some of our stolen £billions. 

Alongside that they should be declaring emergency legislation in the Scottish parliament to scrap the Council Tax and replace it with an income-based Scottish Service Tax, shifting the burden from low-and middle-paid workers to the bloated minority, thereby doubling funds for council jobs and services from £2billion to £4billion, on last year's figures.

TAKE THINGS INTO YOUR OWN HANDS!

However, those facing horrendous job insecurity, mind-wrecking workloads, and cruel cuts to daily life necessities, would be wise not to wait for either SNP or Labour politicians to discover a spine and rescue them! 

Labour carries out cuts whilst proposing to increase taxes on workers. The SNP implements cuts and has now - according to a speech by Nicola Sturgeon yesterday - dropped their pledge to abolish the Council Tax, after winning tens of thousands of votes on that promise.

Increasingly, council workers support the call for No Cuts budgets, but also see the need to take things into their own hands, by staging industrial action. 

STRIKING BACK

West Dunbartonshire teachers are staging courageous strikes in defence of children's education, threatened by cost-cutting reorganization. They've resisted brutal attempts by the Labour council to pitch parents against the teachers. 

The Justice for Jannies campaign is gathering steam in Glasgow, as school janitors stage prolonged strikes against a Labour council which has stooped to hiring non-union staff to cover up the chaos.

As cuts budgets are set, with disregard for the opposition of workers and communities, the union leaderships, STUC and socialists need to help prepare workers for united, coordinated action against the cuts. 

A COUNCIL WORKER'S VIEW

I spoke to a Glasgow City Council worker about the impact of cuts, and the need to prepare strike action. 

"Previous years of funding and job cuts have cascaded down to people in most need. For example, under 'personalization' of care, last year people were entitled to five days a week at Day Care Centres, but due to Centre closures, this year they only get two days. People can't afford to buy the placements, so with Social Workers bogged down in bureaucracy, trying to deal with ever-decreasing budgets, the burden increasingly falls on carers. Many are elderly, in some cases parents in their 70s caring for children in their 40s.

Glasgow City Council want to shed 3,000 jobs over the next two years by non-filling of vacancies. But already, after years of job cuts, stress related illnesses are rocketing. Managers are reluctant to let Social Workers go because they know the post won't be filled. 

Non-replacement in Social Work has led to increased caseloads and stress, increasing sickness, meaning a worse service to the vulnerable people in need of attention, and back-breaking workload, a vicious spiral.

Goodwill hours are built up through flextime. Staff don't build up flexi to take a day off, because their diary is filled up for four weeks in advance. So it's really unpaid overtime.

I know of people off sick but using annual leave and earned flexi time to cover sick absence because they're scared to build up their sickness stats, in case it leads to disciplinary action.

Senior management were surprised at the level of uproar about the planned attacks on flexitime and other terms and conditions. We're surprised that they were surprised! 

The system couldn't function without goodwill, where staff stay behind half an hour or more to deal with urgent cases. The council wanted to take away payments for this, through attacks on Flexi-time. They also wanted to cut annual leave to new employees - if we ever get any! - from 28 days to 25. And to give up 6 days of public holidays for annual leave, which would mean refuse collectors and residential care staff losing out thousands of pounds on enhanced payments, plus the childcare complications. 

These attacks, clawing back about £4million from workers' terms and conditions, is one of the reasons we've had record levels of attendance at union meetings, including 350 at the UNISON branch AGM.

The fury that erupted over these attacks has forced the Labour council to back down, at least for now. But we need to be vigilant. They'll come back at us, when they think the time is right, for example after the elections are over!

The mood of our UNISON branch AGM was electric, and determined to fight all cuts. All £131million. If they get away with that, what next year? The 350 members there felt it will take strike action to stop these cuts. And not just token one-day strikes either.

Through individual strikes by small sections of workers we've already cushioned the blow in recent times, winning victories and regradings. People acknowledge we've prevented some cuts through struggle, but they're worried about their security longer term, committed to the job they do, but unable to see themselves working until they're 67! 

This is a savage attack on local government, and it's being carried out by the SNP. In previous elections I'd have given the SNP my first, constituency vote. But what's the point? They're carrying out the attacks."

DISARM THE KNIFE-WIELDING COUNCILLORS & MSPs

Defiance or destruction: that's the stark choice facing elected councillors and MSPs across Scotland as they debate the budgets for local councils in the context of the Scottish government's recent Local Authority Funding settlement. 

Defiance of Tory-initiated cuts to public sector jobs and services, or destruction of at least 20,000 council workers' jobs this year alone, and decimation of vital, lifeline services to children's education, and care services for children, frail elderly people, and vulnerable adults.

IN THE DEAD OF WINTER 

Every one of Scotland's 32 local councils is embroiled in decisions about this year's budget, to be voted on in the next few weeks. In the dead of winter, when most people were preparing their family Christmas, the Scottish government announced its budget, which included what John Swinney euphemistically termed "a challenging settlement for local authorities". In honest English, it actually means a 3.5% cut to council funding from Holyrood (which is overwhelmingly the main source of council funding); a loss of £350m this year alone. 

SNP DEVOLVE TORY CUTS 

The SNP rightly condemn the annual cuts to the block grant from Westminster. But when John Swinney and Nicola Sturgeon claim that they've been 'very fair' to councils, and that "local authorities' share of the budget has remained fairly steady" over the past five years, they're playing with words to hide the truth. Councils'  share might be similar, but with overall cuts to Scottish public spending as a whole, the savage truth is revealed by Audit Scotland in their 2015 Report: in just three years, from 2010 to 2013, Scottish government funding to councils was slashed by 8.5%. Even the SNP-Labour council in Edinburgh admits a fall of 14% in its real budget from Holyrood since 2010. 

And now a further 3.5% is to be hacked off last year's funding, which itself led to thousands of job losses, service cuts and exorbitant increases to service charges. Indeed, 40,000 local authority jobs have vanished in the past five years.  

NEW SAVAGERY IN 2016

The savagery facing Scotland's 250,000 council workers and communities depending on vital services this year and next makes the recent past look like a Golden Age! Cosla, which represents 28 of the 32 councils, has warned of 15,000 job losses. The union UNITE forecasts 20,000 - this year alone. 

And councils of all political complexions are plunging the knife like maniacs, with Labour-led Glasgow threatening 3,000 jobs to 'save' £131m this year; SNP-led Dundee seeking 'volunteers' for redundancy amongst its 6,000 non-teaching staff to slash £23m; and the SNP-Labour coalition in Edinburgh city council no longer guaranteeing that they'll avoid compulsory redundancies as they seek to butcher 2,000 jobs as part of this year's £141m cut. 

Vital services face decimation. One of the flagship policies of the SNP government is to close the education attainment gap between the richest kids and the rest; a gap that is yawning as wide as ever under their watch. Contrary to any such goal, even the Scottish Parliament Information Service (SPICE) reveals that the national education and lifelong learning budget is being cut by £83m (2.3%). In turn this threatens the loss of specialist teachers and support staff in most local authorities. 

WHAT TO DO INSTEAD??

So what should councils - and indeed the Scottish government - do, instead of meekly passing on a menu of brutality ultimately drawn up by Westminster's Tories? 

Some councils, such as Tory-led Moray and Independent-led Highlands, are threatening to defy the SNP government's 9-year-old council tax freeze. But the Council Tax is a pernicious, regressive means of collecting in £2billion for local authorities... still only about 15% of overall council funds, which predominantly depend on funds off Holyrood. So jacking up Council Tax bills (by 18% in the Moray Tories' plans!) will hit the poorest and middle-income households hardest.  

Putting up the Council Tax is death by financial strangulation rather than death by a thousand cuts. 

DON'T FREEZE THE COUNCIL TAX - BURY IT! 

On the other hand, the SNP's freeze on Council Tax bills also helps the better-off more than lower-income families, and adds to the squeeze on council spending, jobs, services.  

As the SSP has persistently argued, the Council Tax shouldn't be frozen, but put into cold storage, killed off, abolished, and urgently replaced by emergency legislation in the Scottish parliament with a progressive, income-based Scottish Service Tax - which we've demonstrated would mean 77% of people paying less, the very rich a damn sight more, with funds thereby raised for councils literally doubled, from £2billion to £4billion.  

SET 'NO CUTS' DEFIANCE BUDGETS 

More immediately, while pushing ahead with such a progressive form of local taxation reform, the Scottish government and local councils should refuse point blank to pass on Westminster's cuts and set No Cuts Defiance budgets. Not as a feeble political gesture, but as the starting gun for a massive campaign built amongst council workers and local communities to win back some of the £billions stolen off Scotland in recent years. 

The SNP swept the elections by claiming to be 'anti-austerity'. Jeremy Corbyn replicated that by storming into the Labour leadership position with his 'anti-austerity' message, which included a call on Labour councillors to "combine and refuse to implement Tory cuts." 

Both the SNP and Labour have a mandate to defy Tory austerity; now they need to start practicing what they preach. 

BUT WHAT IS A 'NO CUTS' BUDGET?

For several years the SSP has advocated Defiance Budgets, No Cuts Budgets, at both Scottish and council levels. But what do we mean? 

It means setting out spending plans that protect every single job, wage packet, local service and community facility. It doesn't even have the ambition of being a 'needs budget', or a 'people's budget', with advances and reforms; merely the modest aim of defending what little we already have.  

WIN BACK THE FUNDING SHORTFALL 

Then, due to successive years of cuts, that would leave an inevitable shortfall compared to income from government funding, council tax, service charges and rents. But instead of punishing the working class by hikes in Council Tax bills or service charges, we advocate a systematic mobilization of workers, user groups and communities to force funds out of the greedy fists of Westminster.  

But that would be illegal, and just lead to fines, sequestration and jail for councillors, cry the Labour (and SNP) benches. Wrong! On several counts, wrong!

In one of his disappointing retreats in the face of treachery in his own party and the media frenzy, Jeremy Corbyn has more recently circulated Labour councillors insisting they "must not set illegal budgets". There's no need for such capitulation to threats of being branded 'illegal'. 

DISMISS THE SCAREMONGERING ABOUT FINES AND JAILINGS!

For starters, councils (and the Scottish government) could temporarily fill much of the spending gap for this year's budgets by use of existing powers over their (annual!) underspend, reserves, borrowing powers and cancellation of debt repayments. On just the latter mechanism, since Scottish devolution, local authorities have forked out £3.6billion in interest charges on their £2.5billion debt!  

Such financial mechanisms would only be a very temporary reprieve, a delaying tactic to help mount a serious struggle to win back funding off the Tory thieves. They would not be a solution in themselves, but a means of buying some time to mobilize for the real solution: more funding from central government. 

And fines and sequestration of councillors were abolished in legislation 15 years ago, giving councillors more room for maneuver than the socialist councillors in Liverpool enjoyed in the 1980s.  

A MANDATE TO DEFY TORY CUTS 

In any case, MSPs and councillors weren't elected to obey David Cameron or George Osborne. Instead of whining about Tory austerity and then passing it on to local people and their own workforce, SNP and Labour politicians should discover the collective spine to stand up to the Tory cuts, defy them, set out a No Cuts budget, and then build a Scottish rebellion to force the Tories into retreat, to win back the funding to balance the books. 

IT CAN AND HAS BEEN DONE!

It could be done. It has been done. I was at the heart of the mass movement in Liverpool which involved regular workplace mass meetings, college students meetings, public rallies in the communities, one-day regional general strikes and demos of up to 50,000 in Liverpool in the '80s. The result? Working class people won back over £60million (about £100m in today's money) off the hard-faced Maggie Thatcher - through a mass struggle inspired by a group of socialist councillors prepared to defy the Tories and go all the way to win the funds to vastly improve working class people's lives, housing, jobs and incomes. 

And that was in one city, smaller than Glasgow. Imagine even a few councils in Scotland, in alliance with the Scottish government, staging the equivalent defiance, demanding back some of our stolen £billions, from the far-weaker Tory government of Cameron? 

MAKE COUNCILLORS & MSPs STAND UP - OR STAND ASIDE FOR THOSE PREPARED TO FIGHT

As we head towards the budget-making meetings, workers, communities and socialists should pound Labour and SNP councillors and MSPs to stand up for the working class majority, defy Tory cuts, and set out on the road to a mass struggle that could defeat the worst savagery in at least a generation. 

And hanging concentrates the mind wonderfully! If these politicians fail to give a lead, and bow the knee to Westminster cuts, they should be forcibly reminded of the forthcoming Scottish elections, where the SSP and other socialists will advocate precisely the option of defiance, not destruction. 

CHOOSE DEFIANCE - NOT DESTRUCTION!

You couldn't make it up! 

David Cameron, Tory MP for West Oxfordshire, recently wrote a letter to the Oxfordshire Tory council leader, berating his local authority for (to quote his epistle) "cuts to frontline services - from elderly day centres to libraries to museums. This is in addition to the unwelcome and counter-productive proposals to close children's centres across the county." 

The MP, claiming "shock and outrage", goes on to demand why the council leader hasn't looked at "back-office savings" - a euphemism for sacking council staff.

Tory Tit-for-Tat 

The Tory council leader replies to the Tory MP that his council has already sacked 2,800 staff, that the cuts they now plan are the only ones left to make, and caustically corrects Cameron's claims in his letter by stating:

"I cannot accept your description of a drop in funding of £72million, or 37% of our budget, as 'a slight fall'."

And of course David Cameron, the Tory MP desperate to express feigned concern at cuts to frontline services, is the same David Cameron, the Tory Prime Minister, whose hatchet-wielding Westminster government has hacked the 37% off the local council in the area where he needs to curry favour with voters. 

Tory Axe Maniacs 

Cameron, and his companion in crimes against working class communities, George Osborne, are swinging the axe like maniacs. Osborne's Autumn Spending Review on spending plans for the next three years looms large and ugly. On top of the £35billion cuts last July, it's likely to detail the target of cuts to departmental budgets averaging 30%, a mind-boggling horror story for millions of people who depend on the public sector either for a job, a vital service, or both.

Block Grant Butchery 

One of the multiple cuts the Tories will impose is that to the Scottish block grant. And that comes on top of successive years of budget cuts. In the words of SNP Finance Secretary John Swinney, "since 2010 Scotland's overall budget has been cut by 9%, and its capital budget by 25%."

The crunch question that follows this savagery is stark: what will John Swinney and the SNP government do about it? 

Will they just do the equivalent of writing a letter of complaint before passing on the cuts, delegating the dirty work to further education college boards, Scotland's 32 local councils, and similar public sector services? 

Or will they kick up a storm of resistance, uniting workers, communities and students in a mass movement to stop the Westminster Tory butchery?

Passing On Cuts 

Past experience of the SNP government's reaction is not encouraging. They've rightly condemned Westminster cuts every year, but then meekly passed them on, to the tune of well over £3billion over four years. 

This year, they've even delayed the Scottish government's Spending Review from its usual September slot to the dead of December or early January, claiming this is because they won't know the amount in Scotland's block grant from Westminster until Osborne's pronouncement on 25 November. 

Some people suspect it's also an attempt to hide the consequential cuts to jobs and vital services from intense public scrutiny and organised opposition, made harder to build in the deep mid-winter.

Set a No Cuts Budget at Holyrood! 

If the SNP government seriously wanted to carry out its mandate, showing in deeds what they claimed in words about being 'anti-austerity', they could even take advantage of Osborne's timetable, by setting out their budget for Scotland early, without a penny cut to jobs, pay, capital investment or services, and then mount a full-frontal campaign of the Scottish people to demand sufficient funding off Westminster to balance the books.

It's been done before! 

It can be done. It has been done. I was at the heart of the struggle by the socialist council in Liverpool in the mid-'80s, when we organised mass meetings of council workers, communities and college students, called demos of up to 50,000, organised regional 24-hour general strikes - all to pound the hard-faced government of Maggie Thatcher into conceding the funds to build thousands of council houses, jobs and expanded services. 

We won back over £60million in 1984, through the defiance and mass struggle of one city, led by socialists and socialist councillors. Imagine that method applied to a whole nation - led by a government with a sweeping mandate to 'stand up for Scotland', as the SNP promised to do during elections?

For No Cuts Defiance Budgets

The same points apply to every local council in the land. They face a stark choice: defy the cuts or destroy the services and jobs of hundreds of thousands of people who elected them to oppose the Tories.

Labour and SNP councils alike are declaring mass butchery of jobs and frontline services, in a shameful refusal to stand up for the working class who elected them. 

Trade unionists, user groups, workers and students should pound these politicians to find a collective backbone, set No Cuts Defiance Budgets, and join in a massive movement to 'win back our stolen £millions', off Holyrood and Westminster. 

Pound the Politicians  

All five council workers' unions in Glasgow city council have adopted the fighting policy of setting a No Cuts budget. Union branches across Scotland should emulate this. And socialists in the SSP will stand four-square with council staff, the trade union movement, user groups and other anti-cuts campaigners in demanding that councillors choose defiance rather than destruction. 

Labour councillors have been advised by their party leader Jeremy Corbyn to 'resist Tory cuts'. The SNP won a landslide by claiming to be 'anti-austerity'. In both cases, let's see the colour of their money. 

Stand Up - or Stand Aside!

Empty talk won't save jobs or protect services. But a serious campaign to win back some of the £billions robbed off Scotland, and the £millions stolen off local councils and colleges, would ignite a movement of hope and determination to change the way we live, on a par with the enthusiastic Yes movement during the Referendum. 

Defiance or destruction: that's the choice facing MSPs and councillors. 

The SSP knows which side we are on. Join the battle to make the politicians in power fight the Tories - or stand aside for those of us prepared to do so.