FOR A DECENT LIVING MINIMUM WAGE & GUARANTEED 16-HOUR WEEK

The Westminster government's legal minimum wage rates are set to rise on 1st April, with new hourly rates ranging from £8.21 for workers aged 25 and over, to a derisory £4.35 for those under 18, and £3.90 for apprentices. 

Every penny extra is naturally welcomed by millions of workers' families struggling to survive, as prices rocket, especially on daily necessities like food, transport, energy and rent. And the average increase on the various minimum wage rates of 4.5% has been hard won, by the naming and shaming of the profiteers by trade unionists and socialists; the battling by workers and socialists like the SSP in our unions and on the streets. 

But these rates remain a major cause of the grinding poverty in this rich nation, not a means of eradicating it. They are miles short of being a solution to the criminal fact workers in jobs make up 52% of the one million Scots officially living below the poverty line. 

Furthermore, employers increasingly treat the basement level minimum wage as the norm, not the minimum - something which only collective bargaining and collective action by the unions can overcome.

Rampant Job Insecurity

Pathetic hourly rates of pay, twinned with insecure and short or zero hours contracts, are the root causes of shameful numbers of working people having to swallow their dignity and turn to food banks so they can swallow some food.

The retail workers who make, sell and put food on the shelves - but can't afford to put food on the family table. 

The fast-food workers who accumulate millions in profit for tax-dodging giants that hire them on zero hours contracts, but themselves have to resort to emergency food parcels, courtesy the generosity of other workers in collections for food banks.

Wages as a share of overall wealth, GDP, are at a record low. Profits soar as people suffer. Stagnant wages are accompanied by cuts to in-work benefits. The systematic cuts to benefits since 2015 - including Working Tax Credits and child benefits - means over £1.4billion a year less to working families than if they'd kept pace with inflation.

Far from the Tory government "tackling burning injustices" as Theresa May declared on being foisted on us as PM, they are further shackling the unions, escalating job insecurity, slashing workers' benefits - all behind the deafening noise about Brexit.

There are still officially 850,000 workers on zero hours contracts. Two-thirds of them have been stuck on these modern forms of slavery for over a year. A TUC survey has shown 51% of them have had shifts cancelled with less than 24 hours notice, and a whopping 73% offered shifts with less than a day's notice. So much for planning your future! 

Nearly half the workers on zero hours contracts get no paid holidays, and on average they are £4-an-hour worse paid than workers in the same jobs that are not on ZHCs.

These are but a few statistical reminders of the need to abolish them. Reinforcement of the case for the alternative which the SSP has pioneered and has now been agreed by the entire trade union movement - as a result of our convincing my own union, Usdaw, to pioneer the demand: a legally guaranteed minimum 16-hour contract for all workers who want it.

Tories Rob our Language!

The Tories are past masters at using twisted language to bamboozle those they are exploiting for profit. 

They took up the perfectly honourable idea of 'a living wage' and deliberately abused it when they introduced a new, marginally-higher minimum wage for workers aged 25 and over - labelling it the 'National Living Wage'. The new figure of £8.21 is nothing of the sort. If in doubt, try living on it!

To add to the confusion, the Living Wage Foundation calculates a figure for what they call a 'Living Wage', uprated every November. This is now set at £9-an-hour. We should be clear: although six million people earn less, it is still not a real living wage. Furthermore, it only applies to those over 18, and is entirely voluntary, not legally binding.

Recent news stories merely confirmed what many of us have warned for years: employers often gain the kudos (and additional customer base) of being Accredited Living Wage employers, whilst delegating the dirty work to contractors who prolong and delay paying their staff anything like this figure.

Recent media reports rightly exposed four Scottish Further Education colleges which hire contract cleaners denied the Living Wage Foundation figure that the college bosses signed up to. 

But as I've exposed and argued for action against within Usdaw for years, this is rampant practice within the private sector too. Big companies winning public applause for being a Living Wage Employer - now paying core staff £9-an-hour - but using contractors who for instance impose a 6-day week, instead of 5, on workers only getting the paltry minimum wage (currently £7.83).

Union and Political Action

That's why we need serious trade union and political action across all sectors to achieve two things: to bring these contractors in-house, and to insist on a decent, legally-enforced, living minimum wage for all, regardless of age. 

Not the derisory current minimum, which is also riddled with age discrimination. 

Not the entirely voluntary, and still far too low Living Wage Foundation figure (£9), applied according to the whims and fancies of employers, who often contract out lower-paid jobs anyway, whilst keeping up their public image. 

Instead, we need a legally guaranteed living minimum wage for all over 16,  calculated by a formula that helps close the gender pay gap, helps eradicate poverty, and ensures the absolute minimum keeps pace with increases in average wages or inflation, whichever is the greater. 

Two-thirds Median Male Earnings

That's why the SSP has consistently fought for a national minimum wage based on two-thirds median male earnings.

In September 2014, that formula worked out at £10-an-hour. Since that same month,  the SSP has spearheaded  campaigns on the streets and in the workplaces and unions for £10now! That's also the policy unanimously agreed by the TUC all those 4.5 years ago. 

For millions of workers - including about 480,000 in Scotland - this would be a substantial hike in their wages. But frankly, even £10-an-hour is increasingly falling below what can be genuinely regarded as a decent living minimum wage. And it certainly no longer matches the formula of two-thirds median male earnings, nor allows for the galloping inflation since 2014, when the TUC first demanded this minimum wage for all workers.

Let us illustrate just how modest the demand for £10 immediately, rising with inflation, really is. Since 2014, average inflation has officially risen by 14%. So £10 then would need to be £11.40 now to keep up with price rises.

Recent reports say the overall median wage for all is £632 a week. For the best-paid bracket - men aged 40-49 - the median weekly wage is £707. In contrast, an immediate £10-an-hour, assuming a 35-hour working week, would only reach £350.

Join Our Struggle!

The battle for a decent living minimum wage - regardless of age or gender, and legally binding - is more urgent than ever, as the working poor make up the absolute majority of those below the breadline. 

Alongside that, the demand for a guaranteed minimum 16-hour contract for all workers who want it is a key weapon against poverty and insecurity, plus the epidemic of mental illness which they help create.

It's no wonder 26,000 people have already signed the new online petition for these minimum employment standards, launched by Usdaw - which we need 100,000 to sign to force a debate in parliament.

It's no wonder thousands respond to the SSP street campaigning on these twin demands.

Join a union and help make sure there's collective struggle to achieve these aims. And join the SSP to challenge the entire rigged capitalist system, which robs workers to feed the profits of a tiny, rich minority. 

It's time for radical socialist change - to put people in charge of the economy, instead of profit dictating to people. 

Please take one simple step TODAY to help the campaign to win these minimum employment standards. Sign the Online petition, launched by my own union, Usdaw. Our target is 100,000 signatures - to force a debate on the demands in parliament. 

STRUGGLE OR STARVE! - pay, prices, profit

There's no evidence of low paid workers and apprentices doing the Conga in the closes, celebrating in the shopping centres, or throwing street parties in the housing schemes. 
The Westminster government's increasing variety of national minimum wage levels have risen this month, but not so you'd notice. 

Workers aged 21-24 are now guaranteed £6.95-an-hour; those aged 18-20 £5.55 - in both cases a paltry 25p rise. And it gets stingier still: workers aged 16-18 have 'enjoyed' a 13p rise to the giddy heights of £4-an-hour. Worse still, apprentices have been granted an insulting 10p increase to a £3.40 minimum wage. 

Discounted Young Workers

How the hell are people meant to live on such basement level wages? Young workers or apprentices don't encounter sales banners in retail outlets or supermarkets declaring vast, special youth discounts. But that's precisely what the bosses - many of them billionaires - enjoy under the pernicious regime of age wage discrimination in this fabulously rich country. 

And don't go thinking workers over 25 have it cushy. Try living on the Tories' maliciously, deliberately misnamed 'National Living Wage' of £7.20-an-hour. Or indeed the Living Wage Foundation figure - currently £8.25, about to be increased - which builds in several self-imposed caps on what is actually required for a basic but reasonable standard of living. For instance, the Foundation itself admitted that a full three years ago, in 2013, it should actually have been set at £9.08 in Scotland to match living costs. And it's entirely voluntary, left to the whims and fancies of employers, with no power to legally enforce it. 

Profits Plunder Pay

Profits for big business are at record highs. Company chief executives award each other salaries that defy human imagination. On average they earn 183 times as much as their average worker. To keep all the figures bandied about for a real and genuine living wage in perspective, if the government's national minimum wage had kept pace with the rocketing pay levels of these company bosses since it was introduced in 1999, it wouldn't be £7.20, nor the Living Wage Foundation figure of £8.25, nor even the immediate £10 which the Scottish Socialist Party is demanding, but at least £18.99-an-hour, here and now in 2016! 

Wage Stagnation 

Workers' wages are stagnating, and have for over 30 years. Real wages have plunged by 10% since the 2008 financial crisis, brought about by bankers, billionaires and the political choices of their capitalist system. Wages have been consciously slashed to boost profits, with the aid of the legal chains forged to stop unions fighting back for a better share in wages and public services. 
And it's set to get worse for millions of workers' families over the next couple of years, as inflation re-enters the political economy after a period of very low official inflation figures. 

Food banks for Food workers

Even before the Brexit vote, workers' wages were slaughtered by the cost of basics like housing, transport and food. 

An astonishing six million UK families - five million of them with one or more people in jobs - are what the Tories have christened "just managing families". In poverty, working to remain poor, in more honest English. 

As the Resolution Foundation think tank has measured, these families now spend 25% of their incomes on housing - equivalent to a hidden income tax rise of 14p in the £1 compared to their situation in 1995. Transport costs are the highest in Europe. And contrary to the press propaganda, most of us haven't noticed the alleged fall in the price of food the last couple of years! On the contrary, as I recounted in my book Break the Chains, there are cases aplenty of fast food and supermarket staff serving food but having to rely on food banks to stave off hunger on their starvation wages. And as the Food Foundation recently commented, 

"Higher prices force families who are struggling to go for the cheapest calories. Children in the most deprived areas already experience twice the levels of obesity than children in the least deprived."

Before and after Brexit vote 

Now the Brexit vote has triggered a nosedive in the value of sterling, which spells disaster for the cost of living for low and middle-income families.

A lot of economically illiterate dross has been pumped out by some capitalist commentators about the fall in value of sterling against the Euro and US dollar meaning a heyday for British exports. What exports? For decades the dominant finance wing of the capitalists, and their hired politicians, have decimated industry in the likes of Scotland. Instead, they've concentrated on making big bucks through financial speculation and slaughtered wages. 

With wages so low, they shored up demand and sales through a glut of credit for a period, which then crashed in 2008, with workers made to pay twice over: through the £1.3trillion bailout of the banks from public funds, and eight years of austerity cuts since to recover that debt. 

Plunging Pound and Inflation 

The central fact is that the uncertainty post-Brexit Referendum has added to panic on the money markets and amongst manufacturers, with an 18% fall in the value of the £pound since May. Already car manufacturers like Fords, Vauxhalls and Peugeot have passed on price increases in the UK to compensate their profits for the weakened pound. The price of raw materials and goods needed by UK factories have in August grown faster than at any time since 2011. 

The very public spat between suppliers Unilever and retailers Tescos over the price of Marmite, PG Tips and Pot Noodle highlights the looming price rises for food. Prices at the petrol pumps are set to rise this month. Foodstuffs and other daily items are already being priced beyond the reach of the lowest paid, including a million people below the breadline in Scotland. For instance, butter prices have rocketed 75% since May; items like shampoo by 17%. 

All this has led economists at several leading banks to forecast inflation will leap to 3% or 4% in the next year, eating away at the value of workers' wages as they fork out for food, everyday essentials, housing and transport. That's also the view expressed forcibly by the Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney - not noted for his trade unionist or socialist tendencies! 

Pay Cuts - With Worse to Come 

Meanwhile, wages are stagnant, and capitalist employers, governments and local governments are poised to make things even worse by protecting profit margins and implementing austerity cuts through de facto wage cuts. For instance, Deloitte did a recent survey of the chief financial officers of major UK companies, and found 94% of them view cutting costs as the key priority for the next year; in other words, cuts to wages and/or jobs. 

Numerous retail giants - with profits measured in £billions rather than £millions - have won kudos for increasing hourly pay rates, in a very few cases volunteering the Living Wage Foundation rate of £8.25. The same ruthless profiteers have tried to bury the bad news that they've robbed back some or all of that wage concession by slashing premium payments for anti-social hours on Bank Holidays, Sundays, nightshifts or overtime. In several instances, workers are literally worse off each week - but their bosses win extra customers through appearing like 'ethical employers'. 

What Alternatives to the Tories' Atrocities?

Most people won't be fooled by the stomach-churning guff from Theresa May (or Ruth Davidson) about the Tories being "the party of the working class", concerned about "the just managing families". This is the party driving people into starvation, even suicide, with their benefits sanctions regime, and whose anti-Trade Union Bill makes Britain the most repressive anti-worker state in the entire western world.

But what alternatives are on offer from other, anti-Tory parties?

Since our foundation in 1998, the SSP has persistently fought for a living national minimum wage - for all over 16, apprentices included, with equal pay for women - based on a formula that would challenge poverty head on, and automatically upgrade pay with rises in average pay or prices: a minimum calculated as two-thirds male median wages. Since 2014 that has meant we've demanded £10-an-hour, here and now, not in some distant future. 

In September 2014, the TUC - representing nearly seven million organised trade union members - unanimously voted for "a £10 minimum wage for all workers". 

In the last month or so, Labour's socialist Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell (and less volubly Jeremy Corbyn), have echoed that demand of the TUC.

TUC and Labour

But here's the problem. The TUC leadership - and most of the individual affiliated unions - haven't lifted a finger to pursue that aim, two years on, despite the demands of SSP members and other socialists in the unions. It's been left hanging as 'an aspiration', with no timescale fixed for achieving it, no plans laid to agitate and organise a battle for it, with union negotiators lodging pay claims that include a £10 minimum. 

In the case of Corbyn's and McDonnell's Labour, whilst an extremely welcome addition to the clamour for a real living wage, they only ask for £10 by 2020! Provided the Labour leadership advocate that for workers of all ages, it would obviously be better than the Tories' 'promise' of £9 by 2020 - but only for those over 25.

It would also be substantially better than the £8.70-an-hour by 2020 which the SNP committed to in an independent Scotland since the 2014 Referendum campaign. 

But £10 in 2020 would be nothing like the £10 now, today, in 2016, which the SSP and an honorable minority of unions - especially the Bakers' Union - are demanding. It would be drastically devalued four years hence, given the forecasts on inflation already explained. 

Waiting for Westminster?!

We can't just sit back and wait for generous handouts from the Westminster government - increasingly likely to be Tory for at least another parliamentary term, given the shameful civil war against Corbyn by Labour MPs and the Scottish Labour leadership around Kezia Dugdale. 

Workers and socialists need to agitate and organise for £10 now in their unions and on the streets, and bombard local councillors, MSPs and the Scottish government to implement a Scottish living minimum wage of £10 for all without further delay. 

The SSP campaigns for devolution of power to Holyrood over setting the statutory minimum wage. But whilst fighting for that, we should also demand that all Scottish councils and the Scottish government not only gain the kudos of volunteering as Accredited Living Wage Employers, but also insist on them implementing it through contracts and procurement... and set the (voluntary) Living Wage for Scotland at £10 here and now. 

SNP Shortcomings 

The SNP government claims to be 'Stronger for Scotland'. At the recent SNP conference, they made the wholly welcome call for an end to the lower youth rates for the so-called Living Wage. The original Motion, from the SNP Trade Union Group and Chris Stephens MP, only asked for the feeble £7.20 for all ages. A Paisley branch amendment improved that substantially to the Living Wage Foundation's £8.25. But the Motion agreed merely asks the Westminster government to implement this, rather than any concrete proposals on how to archive this within Scotland - even within the confines of devolution - and furthermore puts no timescale on when Westminster should implement it!

Slave Wages at Sea

At the same SNP conference, a lobby of seafarers in the RMT union demanded an end to the scandal in the Northern Isles where a shipping company (Clipper), registered in the notorious Bahamas tax haven, is paying foreign workers a criminal £3.66-an-hour for working the contract they won off the Scottish government. That's the brutal realities behind the headlines, which must be outlawed immediately. 

Join the SSP's Struggles 

The SSP won't relent on our campaign for £10 now, for pay before profit, for a radical redistribution of the wealth produced by the working class in the first place. Join us in battling for a genuine living wage, with no age or gender discrimination, and put the employers, councillors and Scottish government under relentless pressure to outlaw the crucifying poverty pay suffered by about half a million workers in Scotland. 

It's increasingly, literally, a case of the old 1930s socialist slogan: Struggle or Starve! 

DON'T GET APRIL FOOLED! - £7.20 is not a living wage

The Tories must think we're all April Fools. 

On 1st April, their much-trumpeted and obscenely mis-named 'National Living Wage' takes effect. But you have to be 25 or over to qualify. And £7.20 an hour is nothing like a living wage. In their own hidden government documents, Cameron and Osborne more accurately label this a 'Minimum Wage Premium'. It's an extra 50p for those reaching their 25th birthday, compared to the miserly National Minimum Wage suffered by millions aged 18-24, not to mention the insulting pittance earned by younger workers and apprentices. 

The Tories' scheme is a conscious campaign to confuse the hell out of people about what constitutes a real living wage - as well as being yet another layer of age wage discrimination, which also threatens to displace 'older' workers with dirt-cheap younger wage-slaves.

No Street Parties!

Anyone over 25 getting an extra 50p an hour will welcome it. Even more welcome is the £8.25 Living Wage Foundation figure which 500 employers in Scotland have now signed up to - voluntarily, as this scheme has no legal standing, and is purely at the whims and fancies of employers. A scandalous 29% of women and 18% of men still earn less than this £8.25. 

But street parties are not about to break out across the nation! Neither the £6.70 minimum wage for 18-24-year-olds, nor its £7.20 'premium' rate bear any resemblance to a living wage that guarantees a  decent life for workers. Nor indeed is the voluntary, unenforceable £8.25 - even according to its own authors! Back last summer, the Living Wage Foundation admitted that if their calculations stopped assuming reliance on a full uptake of in-work benefits - such as Child and Working Tax Credits - the London Living Wage rate would have to rocket from £9.15 to £11.65! 

And of course the Tories are hellbent on slashing such in-work benefits. Despite being forced to temporarily retreat on their more blatant version of cuts to Tax Credits a few months ago, they are still brutally cutting them by a combination of a freeze on the amount paid, literal cuts through the new Universal Credit, and new sanctions against part-time workers they deem to not be sufficiently seeking additional hours of work. 

Taking these attacks into account, the Resolution Foundation recently calculated that despite the Tories' misnamed 'National Living Wage', by 2020 the poorest 30% of the population will lose an average of £565 a year, with the example of a low-earning couple with three kids being a shocking £3,000 a year worse off.

SSP Pioneers of £10 now!

The Scottish Socialist Party has consistently and persistently fought for a legally enforced national minimum wage set at the modest level of two-thirds male median earnings - £10-an-hour in today's Scotland. That's the minimum required to climb out of depending on top-up benefits. That's the least required to afford a very basic standard of living. It's still just £18,200 a year for somebody working a 35-hour week, hardly the route to becoming a millionaire. 

We have always demanded that the multiple lower youth rates should be scrapped, with the £10 minimum guaranteed to all workers and apprentices from the age of 16 upwards. That would also help prevent employers turbo-charging their profits by displacing older workers by super-exploited young people, which is precisely one of the Tories' motivations in their bogus 'National Living Wage' at 25. 

The demand for a £10 minimum for all workers was unanimously agreed at the TUC conference way back in September 2014. The time is rotten-ripe for the unions to act on this policy. Not for a £10 minimum in 2020 or some other distant date, but now. Unlike all other parties, that's what the SSP is demanding, as are our allies in the May elections, RISE. 

Slashing Real Wages 

In fighting for this modest but radical wage rise, the unions and socialists also need to organise ferocious resistance to cuts in other payments, conditions of work and hours of work that are - right now - transforming hourly pay rises into actual pay cuts for tens of thousands of workers. 

Capitalist employers have howled their anguish at even paying £7.20 to those old enough. Other profiteers have won massive Brownie points in the media for signing up as Living Wage Employers, giving a grandiose £8.25 to those who produce profits frequently measured in £billions rather than £millions. Meantime, behind the backs of society, smothered in silence from the mainstream media, these same employers are systematically slashing the incomes of many of their workers.

Retail giants like Tescos and Morrisons have scrapped double time premium payments for working Sundays.

In response to the Tories' £7.20 for over-25s, B&Q have just forced workers to 'sign up or be sacked' to a package that reduces many workers' wages by thousands of pounds, including loss of winter and summer bonuses equating to 6% of annual salary, and removal of double time for working Bank Holidays. 

McVities biscuit factory has been handing out 6-day weeks in recent months, on the miserable £6.70 minimum wage, but days before the £7.20 rate came into being, suddenly announced a lack of orders for the next two months and told workers they'd get no work at all - whilst denying they employ these people on zero hours contracts! 

The 15% leap last year in the numbers suffering the cruel insecurity of zero hours contracts is a sure recipe for capitalist employers - and cost-cutting public sector employers - to compensate themselves for a piddling pay rise by slashing hours of work, with the added, backbreaking workload on staff that accompanies these cynical steps to reduce the overall wage bill. 

Unions Need Action 

The unions need to step up to the task of organizing a battle to win their own declared policy of £10-an-hour minimum for all workers - regardless of age - and to defend and enhance premium payments for working unsocial hours, such as weekends, nightshift and public holidays.

Unions in Scotland's local authorities - who employ about 250,000 staff - need to organize appropriate industrial action to stop councils slaughtering these premium payments, and build a campaign to win back the funding off Holyrood and Westminster to defend all jobs, wages and local services.

Socialist Alternative 

This whole issue raises the need for power over the minimum wage (and employment law) to be devolved to Holyrood - this side of outright independence - so workers can organise and demand a £10 Scottish minimum wage without any loss of hours, jobs or premium payments. And within the private sector it points up the need for the socialist alternative of democratic public ownership - to remove the dictatorship of capital, where profiteering capitalists hold workers hostage, slashing hours of work, jobs and other conditions in order to boost their profit margins, whilst basking in the kudos of signing up to a marginally higher hourly wage rate. 

Join SSP 

Join the SSP in campaigning within the unions and on the streets for an immediate £10 minimum wage for all at 16, without loss of hours, jobs, premium payments or working conditions. 

Vote for that in the Scottish elections by using your second vote - the regional list vote - for RISE, Scotland's Left Alliance, to elect SSP members and other socialists to boost the battle for a legally enforced living minimum wage of £10-an-hour, without strings. 

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YOU'VE READ THE ARTICLE, NOW BUY THE BOOK!

If you want to read far more extensively into the issues surrounding and underlying poverty, pay and profit - and a vision for an entirely different (socialist) future - buy a copy of my recently published book, Break the Chains.

And for all the stories, statistics and socialist arguments it provides, it's cheap at twice the price! You get 276 pages for less than an hour's wages in the kind of system we want here and now!

Order online at www.scottishsocialistparty.org

Buy, read, enjoy and use it - and let me know what you think. 

POVERTY KILLS - £10Now! a matter of life and death!

Poverty kills people. 

That's the clear conclusion to be drawn from yet another damning report on health inequalities in this rich nation. And since the prime roots of poverty and inequality are rampant low pay and cruel cuts to already miserly welfare benefits, this makes the struggle for a national minimum wage of £10Now! - and an end to benefit cuts - matters of life and death.

The authoritative Glasgow Centre for Population Health (GCPH) has issued a Report proving that life expectancy is a lottery, dependent on what district and income bracket you're born into. 

Overall, during the past 20 years there's been a rise in life expectancy in Scotland and its biggest city, Glasgow. But the wealth-based gap in the length of life a man lives has remained static, with the rich living 13 years longer than the poor. For women, the situation is even more backwards-going. The latest figures show a rich woman living on average 85.2 years, compared with a near-neighbour who is poor only living 74.5 years. That gap has leapt up from 8.1 years to 10.7 years over the past 15 years.  

The Great Health Divide 

Glasgow suffers shorter life expectancy than the Scottish average. But within the same city, and indeed the same corner of the city, we get examples that illustrate the chasm that separates the rich from the rest of us. Women in Drumchapel, Ruchil and Possilpark can only expect to live 73.1 years, whereas a short drive along Great Western Road, those in relatively affluent Kelvinside and Kelvindale enjoy 84.3 years. And that says nothing about the relative quality of life; the prevalence of illnesses in later life that those on low incomes suffer far more than their rich contemporaries.

The GCPH Report's authors write that "health inequalities are intrinsically linked with social inequalities: household income, life circumstances, education and opportunity..." and go on to cite "a third of Glasgow children live in poverty, which is set to rise - in part as a consequence of current and proposed welfare reforms. Related to this, around half of the population living in poverty in Scotland come from households where at least one adult is working."

Health Experts Confirm Socialist Case 

For many of us, there's nothing new in this Report, nor the root causes it identifies, nor indeed the solutions it proposes - which include, to quote, "progressive tax systems on income and wealth, a national living wage and adequate welfare support", with their conclusion that "reducing inequality is the most effective way of addressing inequalities in health or educational attainment". 

But the great advantage of this Report is that a team of health experts have confirmed - in the cold, harsh statistics they've researched - what socialists have been arguing for decades. 

The Price of Profit

Poverty stunts people's lives. And the ruthless, relentless race for maximum profits by the rich who rule society is at the heart of inequality and poverty, including health inequality. 

The same week this GCPH Report was published, a few random examples of the rotten system we have to challenge and eradicate also emerged. 

Energy giant nPower announced plans to slash 2,400 of its 11,500 workforce, the same week their profits in the UK alone reached £154million. 

The government admitted another rise in the numbers suffering the chronic, stressful, health-threatening insecurity of Zero Hours Contracts - where the average weekly wage is £188, compared with an average £479 for permanent employees. 

Shocking statistics on deaths and serious injuries on building sites showed the horrendous consequences of Tory government cuts to the Health & Safety Executive budget, as a means of letting profiteers cut corners to boost their margins. The number of inspections, enforcement orders and prohibition orders on dangerous sites by the HSE have all plummeted by over 50 per cent compared to 2012/13, endangering workers' lives in the name of profit.

£10 is a real Living Wage 

Governments of several party stripes are instrumental in upholding or worsening the levels of poverty and inequality in capitalist Scotland, alongside their allies in big business. 

The Tories have consciously sown utter confusion in the minds of many about the National Minimum Wage, the National Living Wage, and the Living Wage. As of 1st April, workers aged over 25 will have a miserly enhancement of 50p on the pitiful £6.70 national minimum wage 'enjoyed' by those aged over 21. They'll get the brutally mis-named National Living Wage of £7.20. Not to be confused with the Living Wage Foundation's recommended 'Living Wage' of £8.25 an hour!

This deceitful Tory package belittles the concept of a decent living wage, and actually introduces another layer of inequality, designed to divide, rule and exploit the working class. 

Howls from the Profiteers 

Capitalist companies, including in retail, cleaning and catering sectors, are howling at the horrors of having to pay people £7.20 - whilst they pile up profits measured in £billions rather than mere £millions in many cases. 

Even those firms - such as in retail (the biggest single concentration of low pay) - which have granted an hourly pay rise and won plaudits in media headlines for their generosity, are busily, quietly slashing the terms, conditons, hours of work, jobs and premium payments of their staff to pay for the headline-grabbing pay rates. 

That doesn't reach the mainstream media! But at last week's Scottish Divisional Conference of my own union, Usdaw, when I proposed coordinated action to resist this theft of payments and working conditons, numerous other Usdaw reps agreed, and told of people ripping up their union cards after the Usdaw leadership recently accepted and recommended the deal in Tescos which slashed double-time for Sundays and other premium payments. With Westminster plans to extend Sunday trading, and its consequences in Scotland, this problem is set to escalate. 

Labour and SNP pay cuts 

The SNP government can rightly attack cuts to their budget from Westminster, but when they meekly pass on real-time pay cuts to NHS staff with a 1% rise this year after successive years of below-inflation settlements, the unions should organise to force them to issue a decent pay rise, overcoming the recruitment crisis faced by Scotland's NHS, and then mount a struggle to win the funding off Westminster's dictatorship of and for the rich. 

Labour councils, including Glasgow, have provoked strikes by underpaying the likes of the school Jannies and CCTV staff, whilst boasting they are 'Living Wage Employers'.

Join the Struggle for £10Now!

The rampant disease of poverty pay, galloping attacks on premium payments, alongside vicious benefit sanctions that throw people into literal starvation, are the primary causes of the criminal divide between the rich and the rest of us, including the length of life a child is born to expect. 

That's why it's a matter of life and death importance that the demand for an immediate national minimum wage - for all over 16 - of £10-an-hour, and for enhancements to benefits, not sanctions, is stepped up. That's what the SSP has fought for persistently for years. That's what the TUC congress unanimously agreed in September 2014. That's what candidates of the RISE electoral alliance - to which the SSP is affiliated - are committed to. 

Don't let the robbing rich steal years off our lives in their hunger for profit. Join the struggle - inside your union and in the SSP - for £10Now! and against all benefit cuts, as part of the broader struggle to redistribute wealth and enrich the lives of the millions, not the millionaires. 

TORY THIEVES AND LIARS TURN 'LIVING WAGE' INTO PAY CUTS

It should come as no surprise, but Tory Chancellor George Osborne is not only a thief but a brazen liar.
He unleashed naked class war on the working class in his Emergency Budget on 8 July, whilst conjuring up a contrick that a master magician would eat his heart out for.
The headline-grabbing talk of a 'National Living Wage' is a cynical attempt to throw dust in people's eyes, to blind them to the Tories' theft of incomes from low-paid workers, young people and parents with the audacity to have more than two children.

CLASS WAR UNLEASHED
This Budget was a bloodcurdling awakening to anyone who thinks 'class' is an outdated, ante-diluvian concept: from behind all the recent bullshit about the Tories being 'the party of working people', One Nation Tories, leaps out a Budget that makes the bankers, billionaires and big business even more bloated in their opulence, by robbing the rest of us. It's undiluted class war, disguised by the confusing guff about 'a National Living Wage'.

WINNERS...
Before dealing with the issue of wages, let's glance at a few features of this first Tory Budget since 1996.
First, some of the winners. Corporation Tax on big business was 28% in 2010, when Osborne first took up his rent-free residence in No 11 Downing Street. Now it's set to plummet to 18%, the lowest business tax in any country in the western world. By contrast, for example, German corporations are taxed at 30%; those in France 33.3%; and 40% in the USA.
Even before this bounty to big business, analysts at the University of York have shown that in 2012-13 the government gifted big business £58.2billion in subsidies, grants and Corporation Tax benefits - whilst only getting in £41.3billion in Corporation Tax that year. Now Osborne's openly capitalist government is set to give big business an obscene £93billion in such handouts. That means every household has been forced to pay - without even being asked their leave to do so - an average of £3,500 in subsidies for big corporations. And the winners include many Corporation Tax-Dodgers.
Another major set of winners are those in receipt of inherited properties worth £1million without having to fork out any Inheritance Tax. One figure quoted is that 26,000 such estates gain a giant £2.5billion.
The Tory warmongers didn't want to make their pals in the City of London feel left out in their handouts to the rich: contrary to the headlines, they'll gain from the replacement of the bank levy by the less 'punitive' (?) 8% bank profits tax. And those profiting from war and death can sleep peacefully in the knowledge Osborne has agreed to jack up defence spending to the 2% of GDP demanded by NATO.

...LOSERS: workers, young people, the disabled and children
A small minority are winners, but they gain £billions. In contrast there are millions of losers - overwhelmingly the 'hard-working families' we hear such repeated, hypocritical prattling about from Tory (and Labour) politicians, especially pre-elections.
Whilst handing out £93billion to big business, the Tories are stealing £35billion from working class people in benefits - especially in-work benefits.
Over 5.3 million public sector workers - half a million of them in Scotland - have suffered pay cuts since 2010. According to UNISON, a 3% pay rise in the past five years, whilst inflation rose by 17%. Now they are condemned to another four years of a 1% pay cap.
That's not a decade of suffering a Pay Freeze, it's a modern Ice Age for workers in the NHS, councils, education and the likes.
Disabled people deemed fit to work stand to lose £30 a week. Young people will have all their benefits withdrawn if they decline unpaid work placements. Grants for working class students are to be scrapped in favour of loans. Housing benefit is to be wiped out for people aged 18-21. Council and housing association tenants are to be given a miserly 1% cut to their rents, but if their household income is above £30,000 (and the official average wage per person last year was £27,200, don't forget) they will have to pay the full market rent.
Nearly all working age benefits are to be frozen until 2020, despite forecasts of rising inflation by then. The household benefit cap is to be slashed from £26,000 to £20,000.

OSBORNE OUTSTRIPS KING HEROD
In a measure that King Herod would have blushed and baulked at implementing, the multi-millionaire Gideon Osborne is to deny any additional housing benefit, Tax Credit or Universal Credit for any more than two children. As the Children's Commissioner, Tam Baillie, was moved to comment, "Parents and carers must feed and clothe all of their children, not just the first two. This is denying millions of children their basic human rights."
An estimated seven million children face savage cuts to their families' incomes from the overall Budget. And Osborne's rule about 'two kids only' smacks of class hatred and a form of eugenics; only the rich are allowed to breed, it seems.
One of the biggest component chunks of cuts is that suffered by low-paid workers through attacks on Tax Credits, including Working Tax Credits. A horrendous £4.5billion is to be robbed off some of the poorest-paid this year alone.

OSBORNE STEALS OUR INCOMES - AND OUR LANGUAGE
But that's where Osborne the ruthless thief becomes Osborne the shameless liar. To distract and confuse those outraged at his daylight robbery of the incomes of workers, students, disabled people, young people and parents, he perpetrates the monstrous lie that "Britain needs a pay rise and Britain is getting a pay rise". Stealing not only our incomes, but also our language, he then plays dirty, disgraceful tricks with the term 'Living Wage'.
To unmask his lies, it's useful to recap a few simple facts - which even some who hate the Tories with justified loathing don't always remember or make plain for all to see and understand.

A FEW VITAL FACTS
The current National Minimum Wage is £6.50 an hour - once you're aged 21. It's set to rise to £6.70 this October. And, crucially, it's legally enforceable.
The current Living Wage Foundation figure for a Living Wage is £7.85 an hour. It will be uprated in November. It's a huge deal better than the legal National Minimum Wage, and therefore very welcome. But it has two crucial flaws.
The best known weakness is that it's entirely voluntary, optional, not legally enforceable, left to the whims and fancies of employers. Which helps to explain why only 200 employers in Scotland have volunteered to sign up to be Accredited Living Wage Employers, most of them smaller employers, affecting only a tiny minority of workers. That's why the SSP has always fought for a legally enforced living minimum wage.

£7.85 IS NOT A REAL LIVING WAGE!
The second profound weakness of the current Living Wage is known by hardly anyone! In fact it's an admission that £7.85 is not a genuine Living Wage at all. Because the figure calculated for the Living Wage Foundation is based on a very important assumption: it assumes the full uptake of all forms of in-work benefits, including Tax Credits and Housing Benefit. Otherwise, its own authors admit, it would have to be far, far higher. To give one example of this: if it wasn't for the top-ups assumed in the Living Wage figure, today's London Living Wage would not be £9.15 but almost exactly £12-an-hour.

GIDEON GIVETH, GIDEON TAKETH AWAY!
There's the rub, the essence of the God almighty lie perpetrated by Osborne and the Tories. It's a Biblical case of Gideon giveth, and Gideon taketh away!!
Osborne manufactured media headlines - in a masterly distraction ploy from his slaughter of benefits and wages - by talking of 'a National Living Wage' of £7.20 by April 2016, with "an ambition of this rising to £9 by 2020". None of the media seems to mention that weasel phrase "an ambition".
But leaving that for now, one key point is that £7.20 next April is a mere 50p up on the impending National Minimum Wage, in itself derisory.
Furthermore it is well below the current 'Living Wage' of £7.85, even before that is uprated this November.
Perhaps most telling of all, it disguises the theft of Tax Credits which will mean low-paid workers will lose, not gain, from Osborne's sham 'National Living Wage'.
To quote a few initial calculations by various economists in the wake of the Budget baloney about "Britain getting a pay rise".
A couple, with two kids, both working full-time on the current £6.50 minimum wage would gain £1,560 in wages, but lose £2,200 in Tax Credits.
Two workers, both earning £9.25 an hour, with two kids, would be £850 a year worse off.
A family with two at work, currently earning £20,000, would have a fall in their income of £2,057 a year.
A single parent now earning a pathetic £10,000 would lose £1,455 of that under Osborne's deceitful package.

DON'T DARE BE UNDER 25!
And those are just sample figures for workers who qualify for his grossly misnamed 'National Living Wage' by dint of being aged 25 or more! Over two million workers under the age of 25 are to be denied the Tories' bountiful 'increase' - but will be hammered, like older workers, by cuts to Tax Credits.
Far from being a recipe for 'a high wage economy', this Budget is amongst other things a recipe for replacement of older workers by those under 25 as a source of dirt-cheap labour.

£10 NOW! - FOR ALL AT 16
The SSP has never favored a pathetically low, legal national minimum wage. Nor have we restricted our fight to support for a voluntary, unenforceable 'Living Wage' - especially one which is not actually a genuine living wage at all, since it depends on top-ups, which in turn come out of the pockets of workers' taxes.
Since our formation, the SSP has demanded a decent living minimum wage, legally enforced, based on the formula of two-thirds male median earnings. I've expanded on this case in many previous articles. In 2015 figures that means we demand a national minimum wage of £10, here and now.
And critically, the SSP's demand has always been that this applies to all workers and apprentices aged 16 and over. Not the over-21s as applies now. Not the over-25s as Osborne plans. And not accompanied by cuts to in-work benefits.
The fact is, a £10 minimum, right now in 2015, not five years hence, would constitute a genuine living income, and is the level required to remove reliance on state top-ups, which constitute a £30billion annual subsidy to bosses who pay their workers peanuts in pursuit of ever-higher profits.
The trade union movement and socialists need to cut through the crap perpetrated by the Tories on this issue, and mobilize workers in struggle for a living minimum wage of £10 now, for all over 16, with equal pay for women.
The Budget is enough to make anyone's blood boil in anger at the bitter class war by the rich it represents. But it should also put fire in our bellies and steel in our resolve to fight back.