BUILD WORKERS' UNIONS: demand £10 now and 16-plus hours

"Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated", quipped American novelist and humourist Mark Twain, when a New York reporter conveyed the fact his obituary had been published back in the US while he was on a speaking tour in London. 

A similar reply should have been issued by the leadership of the trade union movement this month, as Doomsday reports on the state of the unions and workers' struggles were published to coincide with the 150th anniversary of the formation of the British TUC, at the Manchester Mechanics Institute in 1868. 

Capitalist media outlets - including the allegedly liberal Guardian - gleefully reported government statistics of 2017 witnessing the lowest number of strikes since records began In 1891; a mere 79, involving just 33,000 workers in a total of 276,000 days of strike action.

Parallel government figures reported 6.2 million union members in the UK, which - due to the overall rise in numbers at work - means a marginal dip in the percentage of workers unionized, down to 23.2%.

Wake Up Call

Certainly, these cold statistics should act as a loud, screeching alarm-call to union leaders and activists. Especially so the startling fact that the average union member grows older, as less than 5% of workers aged 16-24 are union members.

But such data only give us a superficial glimpse of workplace realities. 

The low strike figures heavily disguise the mounting anger, bitterness and discontent of workers at employers' exploitation. 

The reign of fear, often terror, imposed by senior managers on behalf of the owners might cow many workers for a period but is also storing up the combustible materials for future outbreaks of struggle, on pay, conditions, loss of hours and jobs, against repressive, petty measures at work. 

The back-breaking and mind-breaking workload, as bosses across every sector demand more output from fewer workers, has led to an epidemic of stress at work, camouflaged by reductions in sick absences as the same workers fear for their jobs and face cruel disciplinary sanctions for being off work. 

Fury is gathering on 'the shop floor' at the gaping chasm between the pay and perks of top management and Chief Executives compared to the Ice Age pay freeze for workers, both in the public and private sectors, with the deepest and longest real wage cuts since the Napoleonic Wars, 200 years ago. 

Anyone in any workplace will testify to these growing resentments. Anyone campaigning on the streets for an end to poverty pay, zero hours contracts and job insecurity will confirm the growing desire by people to vent their anger at the ruthless profiteering, even if initially only by signing a petition.

Workers Always Need Unions 

Workers - who constitute a growing, overwhelming majority of the Scottish and UK populations - need the collective defence of unions now more than even their parents or grandparents did. 

That will always be the case, for as long as the rapacious system of capitalism exists - the system which systematically robs workers of their unpaid labour as the source of private profit for a tiny handful. 

The right to collectively withdraw our labour - to strike - is one of the core weapons workers ultimately possess, to stop cuts to jobs, wages, conditions and human dignity at work.
And indeed, even in a future socialist society, we will need independent workers' unions to help democratically plan and organise production for society's real needs, and to help check and prevent the development of government excesses and state bureaucracy.

Given the grotesque gap between the rich and the rest of us is growing - with a million Scots below the poverty line, including over half a million workers, whilst 'our' eleven billionaires have combined wealth of over £16,200million - the urgent need for organised workers' unions cries out more loudly than ever.

Living Example

So why are the unions not growing? And what do we need to do about it? 

On a microcosmic level, union membership in my own 400-plus workplace has grown from 15% in 2010 to 75% now, because we've stood up for members on day-to-day issues; won some reforms, such as minimum 4-hour shifts and 16-hour contracts; resisted detrimental changes, even when we've not always won; and broadcast our aim of policies such as an immediate £10-an-hour minimum wage. 

Significantly, not only does that contrast with the average union density of 13.5% across the private sector, but the membership embraces all age-groups from 16 to 70, and workers from at least 17 different countries of origin. 

More telling by far, those unions which have fought back against the onslaught by successive governments and employers - in a period of general setback and retreat since the brutal defeat of the heroic miners' strike in 1985 - have retained and increased their membership. Unions prepared to put up a fight, to defend members, including by strike action, may frighten a few overpaid, remote union (including TUC) bureaucrats, but they attract and embolden workers into joining.
This experience applies to a wide range of employment sectors. 

20,000 Join UCU During Strikes

University staff in the UCU union, of vastly different job grades and age ranges, took determined strike action this Spring, initially on pensions, but also raising the growing curse of insecure contracts. 

A remarkable 20,000 new members joined the UCU, in many cases literally on the picket lines, because they saw action on issues they relate to; issues rooted in their material self-interest. Action forced upon a reluctant, lacklustre, compromising union leadership by the demands of branch activists, it has to be added. 

Thousands of them have been transformed by learning the fundamentals of solidarity, and into an awareness that regardless of job title they are education workers, selling their labour power to employers battling to boost profits by a race to the bottom on wages, deferred wages, and conditions. 

RMT Grows By Fighting Back

Another union which has strengthened its numbers in recent years, despite vitriolic attacks by the privatised employers, successive Tory and Labour governments, and the media, is the RMT.
It's no accident that transport and storage accounted for 68% of all strike days in 2017. They've fought to improve wages; defied the propaganda onslaught when they've used their pivotal position in the London economy, in particular; courageously battled for public safety in strikes against Driver Only trains (winning in Scotland's case); and led the campaign for public ownership of the railways and ferry services, including here in Scotland. 

A union that takes its own rule-book clause about "replacing the capitalist system with a socialistic order of society" has emboldened workers to stand up for themselves... and grown in strength. 

PCS Strike Ballot 

The civil service workers' PCS union, which has a left-wing leadership (including members of the SSP) was specifically targeted in an attempted demolition job by the Tories - and in previous decades by Labour under Blair and Brown, when they declared a target of 100,000 job cuts.
Last year's attempt to crudely wreck the PCS by the abolition of the check-off system of collecting union members' subs directly from their wages, made PCS activists more determined; they defended membership levels in a systematic campaign of signing members up to payment by direct debit. 

If anything, the whip of Tory counter-revolution may have reminded many workers why they need the union. And they are now balloting for strike action in pursuit of a 5% pay rise, to partially compensate for a decade of pay cuts.

The Cruel Trap of Social Partnership

These examples (and there are others) demonstrate a simple truth that needs to be applied across the board: unions prepared to fight for workers on bread-and-butter issues, informed by an understanding that workers have interests in direct conflict with the interests of the employers, with a willingness to mobilize members in decisive action, are best equipped to grow. 

And the corollary is also true: unions which fall for the monumental con-trick of 'social partnership' with the employers, discouraging members from daring to take action in case it upsets their 'social partners' in the boardrooms, are prone to seem irrelevant and unattractive. Especially to a younger generation who have little or no living examples of successful, mass, national struggles by unions. 

Yet these are the very people most in need of powerful, active, determined unions, prepared to combine for collective defence and improvements. 

Super-Exploitation

There are literally millions of younger (and older) workers in low-paid, precarious sectors like fast foods, hospitality, retail (the second-biggest jobs sector, after the NHS) and social care. 

The ten million across the UK in 'precarious jobs' including those on zero hours and short hours contracts, agency staff, temporary jobs, the gig economy, and bogus self-employment.

The one million in part-time jobs only because they can't get the full-time jobs they want.

The hordes of retail staff on 7-hour, 10-hour or 12-hour contracts, but at the beck and call of 'business needs' - the phrase heartily hated by workers expected to chop and change their sleep patterns and family life to do additional hours in busy spells, only to be cast aside onto their lowly contract hours without overtime at the whims of management.

And that's not to mention the 21st Century version of 'the dark satanic mills' run by the likes of Amazon. 

A new report by the GMB union exposes the outrageous scandal that ambulances have been called out to Amazon plants 600 times over the past 3 years, with workers taken to hospital in over half of these 600 call-outs. They describe "pregnant women being forced to stand for 10 hours, to pick, stow, stretch and bend, pull heavy carts and walk miles - even miscarriages at work." 

Winning Young Workers Through Courageous Action 

Workers in these super-exploited sectors especially need to be organised to fight back. But in order to win over new and younger workers to the union cause, leaders of the TUC, STUC and specific unions need to revive the fighting methods and spirit of the early pioneers of the most downtrodden sections of the working class - such as those who heroically battled during the waves of struggle by the unskilled and semiskilled workers in what was known as 'New Unionism', from the 1880s to early 1900s. 

It's all very well the TUC's Frances O'Grady marking its 150th birthday by declaring "the unions have to change or die", followed by vague talk of a digital reach, and dodgy mutterings about helping workers BEFORE they decide to join a union. That dodges the key questions: what do the union leaders plan to fight around, what issues, what alternatives that relate to workers' material conditions and needs? 

And when will they dump the fatal trap of relying on their 'social partnership' with the employers, which in turn hampers their ability or inclination to confront these 'partners' with collective action to win workers' demands? 

To quote but one example, when will O'Grady and the TUC pledge to never again repeat last year's dirty deed of excluding the Southern Rail strikers' RMT representatives as they huddled in a meeting with the privateers to do a deal behind the striking guards' backs? 

Nothing New About 'Social Partnership' 

These misnamed 'Social Partnership' deals are neither original, nor good for workers' health, nor for union growth. 

They were called 'Mondism' (after the big chief of chemicals giant multinational, ICI) after the defeat of the 1926 general strike. 

Under the Labour government of 1974-9, it was called the 'Social Contract', which meant union leaders enforcing government wage restraint; workers' wages being slashed by an average 10% whilst prices let rip at about 30% inflation, leading to workers' bitterness, confusion - and the ultimate election, by default, of the obnoxious Tory Prime Minister, Maggie Thatcher. 

Past generations of socialists and trade unionists had a less polite, more accurate name for 'social partnership': class collaboration!

Pockets of Resistance 

Pockets of resistance by workers are already erupting, giving a glimpse of the potential for a wider, bigger struggle to stem the tide of insecurity, poverty pay and exploitation that curses the modern working class. 

Small groups of McDonald's workers - victims of poverty pay, zero hours contracts and harassment at work - have been on strike for £10 and union rights. McDonald's tried, in vain, to buy them off with the biggest pay rise in about 10 years. 

TGI Friday's workers are striking every Friday against the theft of their tips and wages by Friday's profiteering bosses. The last straw - after earlier loss of premium pay for bank holidays, Christmas and New Year, and denial of even the miserly government minimum wage through charges for black shoes as part of their uniform - was the two-day notice of robbing front-of-house staff of 40% of tips from customers (up to £250 a month) to top up the plummeting pay of kitchen staff. These Unite union members show young (and older) workers will fight, provided unions take a lead. 

Tesco Dagenham Strike 

Retail - including the giant Tesco's - is a prime example of partnership agreements that are designed to facilitate union recruitment, but hamstring the ability of the unions to resist attacks or organise action for improved pay, hours and conditions. Bitter disappointment from workers at their unions ("the union did nothing when our pay/bonuses/premium pay was slashed", being an all-too-common complaint) is beginning to shed members. 

In contrast, at the stand-alone Tesco distribution centre in Dagenham, Usdaw members have recently staged strike action for pay parity with workers in identical jobs in neighbouring depots. Only ten out of about 500 crossed the picket lines, and even more workers have joined the union, as they see it taking a determined stance, forcing Tesco bosses into talks on the very first day of strike action, after them ignoring the union for over a year.

The central message that should be shouted from the rooftops of every union headquarters is that they need to break from the grisly embrace of so-called Social Partnership with the employers; and organise every union official, shop steward and union activist to launch a concerted campaign around key issues that will make the unions immediately relevant in the eyes of the 75% of workers who haven't yet been convinced to join. 

£10 Now & 16-hour Minimum Week 

Aside from battling on issues specific to particular workplaces, the trade union movement could gain a vast new lease of life if they seriously prepare action plans around two immediate issues: a national minimum wage of £10 here and now, rising with inflation, for all over 16; and a guaranteed minimum 16-hour week for all who want it, to replace the curse of casual, insecure jobs. 

The entire trade union movement committed to "a £10 minimum for all workers" back in September 2014 - nearly 4 years ago, at the TUC conference - unanimously! It's criminal that, with honourable exceptions, they've barely lifted a finger in pursuit of this since. We need socialists and other dedicated trade unionists to bludgeon the more reluctant union leaders into action on this... before the £10 demand becomes entirely obsolete through inflation! 

The other central demand here suggested - a legally enforced guarantee that all employers are obliged to offer a minimum 16-hour contract to all workers who want it - is a new, pioneering policy that could tackle the complex balance between workers needing flexibility and the same workers needing stable incomes and stable lives. 

No employer should be allowed to opt out. But workers who wish to opt out in favour of fewer hours could do so, with representation by their union to protect them from any bullying by bosses. 

This would transform the lives of millions of workers who simply can't survive on zero hours or short hours contracts. The latter is especially rampant in the likes of retail. 

The fighting demand for a guaranteed 16-hour minimum was first raised in my book, Break the Chains, subsequently adopted as a policy by the Scottish Socialist Party, and I'm proud to have convinced my Usdaw union national conference, in April, to agree to it as union policy - unanimously! 

Reach Out to Young People 
As well as drawing up urgent plans to campaign around workplaces on these twin demands, the unions could reach out to young people by asking for meetings in secondary schools and at colleges, especially aiming at the 'student-workers' who now frequently staff retail, hospitality, food and drinks to earn a living in the absence of a student grant. 

The National Rate For the Job 
In all this, unions can also combat the vicious exploitation and racist division surrounding migrant workers, by seeking to recruit and organise them around the demand for 'the national rate and rights for the job' - countering divide-and-conquer tactics by employers and governments. 

Just as socialists played a pivotal role in the pioneering days of trade unionism, especially around the demand for an 8-hour day to reduce the grinding drudgery of the times, so too socialists in the unions and workplaces - and indeed in schools and colleges - can do so around fighting policies like £10 now and 16-plus hours. 

The Pioneering Spirit  
There is no need to write the obituaries of the trade union movement. But there is every need to break from the compromising, self-defeating trap of 'social partnership' with workers' own worst exploiters and enemies. 

The unions, and STUC, should reach out to genuine political allies including the SSP, construct plans to vigorously fight for these policies, and show the same brash readiness to battle for them that was the hallmark of the best of the early pioneers. 

Resist the Fear! 
Workers have been forced to live in fear for far too long, without the confidence that most of the union leaderships are prepared to confront and defeat the capitalist employers. 

The 150th birthday of the TUC shouldn't be marked by mourning and moaning, but by organising around such class demands that will inspire workers to struggle for a better future, melting away their fears in the process.

To give the last word to the aforementioned Mark Twain: "Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear." 

McSTRIKE! - build the fight for £10now and a union

September 4th 2017 should go down in the history books as the start of a fight by a new generation of workers against poverty pay, insecure jobs, bullying, intimidation and lack of union rights. 

A very brave group of 40 McDonald's workers in Cambridge and Crayford, south east London, voted by a whopping 96% to strike, in the ballot conducted by their union, the Bakers, Food and Allied Workers Union (BFAWU). 

They defied management threats and victimisation - including slashed hours and sexual harassment - for daring to be in the union; walked out to form pickets, were joined by big crowds of supporters on rallies, plus 14 solidarity demos across the UK. 

Their core demand was for £10-an-hour and a union. 

They chose to strike on 4 September to coincide with US Labor Day, where fast food workers involved in the sweeping mass movement in the Fight for $15 went on strike, as did McDonald's workers in Belgium and elsewhere.

It was the start of global workers' action against global capitalism's totemic symbol - McD's - global casualisation and cheap labour. 

Starvation Wages 

The conditions these workers suffer, and are striking back against, are symptomatic of not just one of the world's biggest multinational corporations, but of the modern serfdom that 21st century capitalism relies on to turbocharge their profits. 

Tyrone is one of the Cambridge strikers. Aged 17, he's on £4.75 an hour. He describes working with the unbearable kitchen heat, the impatient queues, the aggro - but still forced to skimp meals through poverty pay; still unable to get a home of his own, sleeping on a punctured air bed in his mate's bedroom, wakening several times to pump it up again. 

His dream of winning £10-an-hour through the union and strike action is humbling in its modesty: "I could get a proper bed. I could get out of my mate's house. That's all I want, a place and a bed."

Tom, one of the union reps, is 24, and therefore on £7.55.  But he often skimps meals to save enough to visit his 4-year-old son, making do with the one free meal McD's allows him. This is the same corporation with the company line: "We have committed to investing in our people, to competitive rates of pay."

That's the problem; the government's paltry levels of minimum wage means they are often all too 'competitive' - in particular for younger workers, whom McDonald's and their ilk prey on for profit, because they're legally cheaper to hire, due to the lower legal youth minimum wages. 

Them and Us 

McDonald's methods encapsulate the whole system perfectly, grotesquely. 

Their own investment calculator reckons if you'd been able to buy 1,000 shares last December - when young Tyrone started with them - you'd have made £34,025 profit by now... whereas even if Tyrone had slaved in a hot kitchen full-time since he'd have earned only £7,410. 

Tom can barely afford to travel to see his toddler son, but McDonald's Chief Executive, Steve Easterbrook, has use of the company's private aircraft, and enjoys a package equivalent to £5,684 an hour!! 

They use zero hours contracts to wring maximum profit out of their 80,000 UK workers - and almost zero-rated corporation tax; well, a rate of 1.49%, to be accurate! They only promised to offer secure contracts, with guaranteed hours, in a state of panic after the strike ballot. And they've yet to put anything acceptable in writing. 

"I'll Tell You What It's All About!" 

As BFAWU Scottish Organiser Mark McHugh told the recent SSP public meeting in Govanhill, McDonald's were the first to introduce zero hours contracts to the UK, back in 1974! 

"It's taken this long to take them to task. I'll tell you what this strike is all about. It's about respect and dignity at work; the right to join a union; proper health and safety - not suffering burns and being told to take your break now, instead of getting treatment. It's about the right to join a union. About having the same right to go on holiday as anyone else. To actually get a shift when you turn up, not be sent home because it's quiet. 

We owe it to young people to win decent rights, because these retail park jobs are not stop gap jobs, they're what thousands face long-term. The food industry is booming, so they should be treated as serious jobs." 

From Acorns to Mighty Oaks 

It's to the eternal credit of these strikers, and their union, that they've taken serious, courageous action. For £10 and a union. For abolition of zero hours contracts and secure jobs. For an end to bullying and sexual harassment, both of which are rampant in these sectors: fast food, hospitality, retail. 

These are sectors bedeviled by the poverty pay and job insecurity that go with zero hours contracts like burgers go with chips. 

The strikes were a tiny proportion of the total workforce. But a similarity small section of McDonald's workers went on strike in New York City in November 2012, starting the Fight for $15, which through strikes and mass actions in the communities has now won big wage hikes for 22 million workers in the USA. 

£10 Now! 

The trade union movement needs a leadership that is serious about its own grand words and wishes. A long, torturous 3 years ago - September 2014 - the TUC congress voted unanimously for the BFAWU Motion for "a £10 minimum wage for all workers." 

Since then most union leaderships have done little - or literally nothing - to implement that demand. The BFAWU and some other union branches have campaigned for it - as has the Scottish Socialist Party, on the streets, in our unions, and as a demand we put to councils and the Scottish government to immediately introduce. 

And unlike even Labour's best, Jeremy Corbyn, the SSP wants £10 immediately, not three years hence, in 2020; in fact £10 is rapidly approaching its sell-by-date, given the inflation on daily necessities. 

Defend the Strikers

These McDonald's workers deserve a medal, but above all deserve the protection and solidarity of other workers and other unions. As the BFAWU President, Ian Hodson, told a strike rally,

"If even one striker is victimised for going on strike, we demand that others come to the McDonald's branch and occupy it." 

That's the militant spirit of defiance and class solidarity that pioneered the creation of the trade unions, especially amongst the most exploited sections of workers nearly 150 years ago. 

We owe it to the next generation to build on the courage of the first ever McStrikers in the UK, to fan the spark they lit into a flame that helps burn out the casualisation and super-exploitation faced by millions. 

The SSP pledges to play its part, alongside the BFAWU and others, for £10 now and a union; for a guaranteed minimum 16-hour contract instead of the serfdom and insecurity of zero hours contracts; for full union rights and full employment rights from the first day in a job. 

Ultimately, for a society based on workers' solidarity and sharing out the collective wealth workers produce. As a Guardian columnist put it, "The problem isn't one company, but the system of which it is part." 

.............................................................................................................................................................

Here's the video the SSP did to build solidarity as the McStrikers prepared their brave action:

SOLIDARITY WITH FIRST EVER UK McDONALD'S STRIKERS

A small group of McDonald's workers has today made history. 

Forty of them, in two McDonald's restaurants in Cambridge and Crayford, south east London, have voted to stage the first ever strike in Britain in the history of this fast food multinational.

By a whopping 96% in the ballot, conducted by the Bakers, Food and Allied Workers Union (BFAWU). 

They are striking against bullying; cuts to their hours that has left some of them unable to pay the rent, leading to the loss of their home; and against zero hours contracts, for a £10-an-hour wage, with union recognition. 

Braving the Bullyboy Bosses 

Imagine the bravery of these workers. Small in number, but incredibly courageous, considering the vicious anti-union record of McDonald's. Living on the derisory national minimum wage, with no nest eggs to fall back on, but prepared to walk out on strike for justice, decent wages and union rights. Striking against bullying and cuts to hours which they regard as punishment for joining a union.

They deserve our unqualified, active solidarity. Including donations to the BFAWU union's strike fund, via...

https://actionnetwork.org/fundraising/fast-food-rights-uk?source=direct_link&

Zero Hours Contracts Hell 

This strike hasn't dropped out of a clear blue sky, however. 

It's the result of years of being underpaid, undervalued, harassed, treated without dignity. And the insecurity and poverty pay that go together like burgers and chips under the use of the infamous zero hours contracts. Contracts which remain despite recent promises - under trade union campaign pressure - to concede more secure hours.

With over 90% of McD's workers on them, the fabulously wealthy multinational can dish out Big Mac starvation wages, preying on the fear and insecurity that go with the hell of zero hours contracts. 

The Fight for $15 

From the opposite side of the class divide, these workers have also been inspired to take action by the heroic struggles of workers across the opposite side of the Atlantic. Strikes, pickets, demos and political campaigning around the Fight for $15 also started out with a tiny minority of McDonald's workers going out on strike - in New York City, back in November 2012. 

As I explain in more graphic detail in Break the Chains, this movement has won massive breakthroughs in several cities and states, with over ten million workers now on the road towards $15-an-hour! Workers primarily in fast food and retail, (but also other low-paid sectors), challenging the claims in the UK that "it'll never happen in the likes of retail", which some of us face from union leaders as well as company bosses. 

A Million Times More

Contrary to the squeals of anguish from the top bosses of McDonald's, they can easily afford $15 now, or its equivalent £10 now. After all, their Chief Executive Officer, Steve Easterbrook, just awarded himself almost double the annual income he scraped by on in 2015 - now a modest $15.4million! 

McDonald's condemn the unions and their members for fighting for $15 whilst this corporate dictator is on over a million hours' worth that rate. The reason they ferociously resist unionisation of 'their' workers, whether in the US or UK, is plain for all to spot: the right to be in a union is the only guaranteed means to prevent bullying, end zero hours contracts, and win £10-an-hour. All of which would curb the multinational's insatiable hunger for profit! 

£10 Now! and a 16-hour Minimum Contract 

It's to the eternal credit of the Bakers' union that they've turned fine words into active deeds - unlike, unfortunately, the leadership of too many other unions. 

The BFAWU moved the motion for "a £10 minimum wage for all workers", way back three years ago at the September 2014 TUC congress. It was passed - unanimously! 

To their shame, many union leaderships have done nothing in the three years since to actively pursue this policy. 

The SSP has fought for action within our own unions for £10 now, alongside relentless campaigning on the streets for an immediate £10 for all over 16. In fact that's been our central demand since September 2014 - not the welcome, but feeble, promise of £10 in 2020 (and then only for workers over 18), recently pledged by Jeremy Corbyn's Labour. 

The SSP has also consistently called for a total ban on all zero hours contracts, and pioneered the policy of a legally guaranteed minimum 16-hours-a-week contract for all part-time workers, except where a worker requests lesser hours, in the presence of their union rep. 

The BFAWU have conducted the Hungry for Justice campaign among fast food workers, demanding "£10 and a union". That's what has emboldened these workers to throw down the gauntlet, striking against a multinational. 

Solidarity With the Strikers

Readers should send messages and donations to these brave McDonald's strikers, and help fan a spark into a flame across the UK. A movement that can hopefully help erase the curse of poverty pay, zero hours contracts and bully-boy bosses getting away with it in the absence of organised union rights. 

Stand up for these brave McDonald's strikers. Demand £10 and a union, secure jobs and an end to bullying.