FAT CAT WEDNESDAY: THE URGENT CASE FOR A LEGAL MAXIMUM INCOME

Today is Fat Cat Wednesday.

According to analysis by the Resolution Foundation, High Pay Centre and others, the typical chief executive of the biggest 100 companies in the UK will have grabbed the typical annual wage of a full-time worker by 5:30 p.m. on Wednesday 6^th of January 2021.

Put another way, it will have taken just 34 hours for the top dogs in the FTSE 100 companies to earn the equivalent of an entire year's wage for the typical UK worker.

But we should spare a kindly thought for these poor buggers, because last year they only had to put in 33 hours work for full year's pay!

The median (or middle income) of a full-time worker was £30,353 as of June 2019 – the High Pay Centre's last available figures - but the median Chief Executives’ income is 120 times that much.

If we switch to the median wage for all workers, full-time and part-time, Company bosses earn 145 times as much.

And taking the average (mean) income of CEOs - which was £4.7million back in June 2019 - then the average worker would have to toil for 154 years to match these parasites’ annual income.

CASES OF CAPITALIST GREED

There are many, many obscene examples of individual greed and privilege amidst the suffering and insecurity faced by millions of workers, particularly during the pandemic.

The highest paid chief executive is Tim Steiner of Ocado on £58.73million. It would take the average full-time worker 8 years to earn as much as he got in one, single day!

As hospitality workers - already low paid - face carnage to their jobs, Whitbread’s CEO, Alison Brittain, got a pay package of £5.59million.

As millions of us yearn for an effective vaccine against the killer COVID-19, AstraZeneca are poised to make gargantuan profits. Even before this new, bountiful source of wealth for Big Pharma, Pascal Soriot of AstraZeneca raked in £14.33 million, which is 200 times as much as the average worker.

To rub salt in the wound, only 40 of the FTSE 100 companies bother to pay the mis-named Living Wage of £9.30-an-hour to their workers.

And some super-profitable giants, including TESCO, have been recently named and shamed for not even paying the pathetic government minimum wage!

FOR A LEGAL MAXIMUM INCOME

This grotesque new batch of statistics underlines the arguments that I and the Scottish Socialist Party have put forward in favour of a Legal Maximum Income, initially set at a 10:1 differential with the legal minimum wage. 

That’s been the policy of the SSP for most of our existence since 1998.

And at the 2018 annual conference of my own union, USDAW, I successfully argued the case for this policy against the opposition of the central National officials, winning a clear conference majority for a legally-enforced Maximum Income, initially set at 10 times the legal minimum wage.

[Watch the short video BELOW]

Personally, I’ve always thought a 10:1 differential between the maximum income and the minimum wage far too generous.

But the modesty of this demand is its great merit; who in Hell could oppose such a modest measure against the systemic and growing inequality in capitalist Scotland and capitalist Britain?

Instead of the 145:1, 120:1, and 200:1 figures explained above, 10:1 would be a revolutionary advance, as a major source of revenue for better wages and vastly improved public services.

As we demand a legally enforced £12-an-hour minimum wage for all at 16, who on Earth could conjure up a case against a ceiling of £120-an-hour as the maximum income allowed?

And I believe it is important to describe this policy as a maximum income rather than just a maximum wage.  Why? Because, for example, chief executives' fixed salaries typically only account for 20% of their total annual income, whereas long-term and short-term incentive schemes account for 75% of their ill-gotten incomes.

WE DEMAND THE BAKERY, NOT JUST A BIGGER SLICE OF THE CAKE!

Indeed, this point is a reminder that whilst socialists and trade unionists should take up the demand for a Legal Maximum Income with ferocious enthusiasm, we will only ever entirely eliminate wealth inequality by challenging the private ownership of the means of producing that wealth; the private accumulation of profits, perks and privileges for the few.

Capitalism by its very nature is a system where the millions make the wealth and the millionaires take the wealth.

Democratic public ownership of all the big companies which dominate the means of production, distribution and exchange is the foundation for an egalitarian society where the vast majority of the population - the working class – gain back the fruits of their labour in the form of wages and the social wage, such as universal provision of services like health, education, housing and transport.

On Fat Cat Wednesday, renew and redouble your determination to combat the obscene poverty and inequality which scars the face of Scotland by demanding immediate measures like a £12 minimum wage and a maximum income initially set at 10 times that. 

Join that fight alongside the struggle for the collective ownership of the natural, industrial and financial wealth that could eliminate poverty overnight, if taken out of the hands of the capitalists, bankers and landowners who rob the rest of us, through the organised exploitation that is capitalism.

 

VIDEO ON THE CASE FOR A LEGAL MAXIMUM INCOME:

DEMAND £12 MINIMUM FOR 'THE MINIMUM WAGE HEROES'!

As even the BBC's Panorama was obliged to express it, "millions of minimum wage heroes are putting their lives on the line."  


After decades of being systematically robbed of their real-term wages, subjected to insults about being unskilled by employers and governments, vast armies of the lowest paid have now been belatedly recognised as 'key workers' in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis. 


But don't get fooled again on 1st April; this government recognition is more about getting these key workers to continue working, to prop up 'the economy ', with the offer of school-based childcare, than it is any sudden Tory conversion to accepting their value to society.


The Tories' ongoing concern for profit over people, for the health of company balance sheets over the health of the workers who create that wealth, is underlined  by their continued refusal to guarantee a decent living wage for 'the minimum wage heroes'. 

THE CURSE OF POVERTY PAY 

Poverty pay has stalked the land for decades, enforced by a cocktail of anti-trade union laws, fear of mass unemployment and incitement to divisions within the working class. 

Over one in five workers - 22% of the workforce - are officially living in poverty. 

Five million workers earn below £9.30 an hour. 

In Scotland alone, 400,000 workers earn less than £9-an-hour. 

30% of all children - that's 4.2 million kids - live in poverty in the fifth-richest economy on earth. 

Over half - 52% - of all those in poverty are also in a job, working to remain below the breadline. 



The one thing that is on the rise is not wages - they've been in the longest, deepest decline and stagnation since the Napoleonic Wars 200 years ago; it's inequality. Government figures accept that inequality, as expressed in the GINI coefficient, was last year higher than in every single year from 1961 to 2006 - only outstripped by the year of the banking crisis, 2008-9. 



As the Resolution Foundation think tank put it, "We entered the COVID-19 crisis with, at best, stagnant living standards for households in low or median incomes."

POVERTY ENDANGERS LIVES 

This appalling state of affairs has had catastrophic effects in the current COVID-19 crisis. It's a fact that many workers are dragging themselves into work, in danger of infecting others as they are asymptomatic carriers, because the Tory government failed utterly to prepare well in advance for this widely predicted pandemic by mass testing. But it's equally true that others are doing so because they can't afford to go without wages. 


Household debt is at an all time high, and personal savings at an all time low. 

CARNAGE FOR HOSPITALITY WORKERS 

And of course such impoverished incomes for millions of families is not only literally life-threatening to many classified as key workers, but also wreaks devastation on the swathes of workers made redundant, or laid off on drastically reduced wages. 


For instance, the third-biggest workforce in the country are hospitality workers - many of whom were thrown on the scrapheap by unscrupulous employers prior to the belated government 80% wage subsidy. Some have fought and won reinstatement; the rest should be taken back on and paid 100% of their normal wages. 

Most workers in this huge sector are on the minimum wage. In fact, hospitality accounts for about a fifth (20%) of all minimum wage workers. 

Supermarket staff ensure food supplies, at great risk, but suffer poverty pay

NHS AND RETAIL STAFF CURSED BY LOW PAY 

The largest and second-largest workforces in Scotland and the UK are the NHS and retail, respectively. 

Vast armies of care workers, cleaners, porters, drivers, food production workers, farmworkers, supermarket staff and others who are critical to the provision of food and healthcare to the entire population are on, or marginally above, the government minimum wage. 


They can't afford to be in self-isolation without pay. They literally can't afford to be sick, which means more of them will get sick - especially as the provision of Personal Protective Equipment is a lottery. 



Even the offer of working from home - on full pay - is heavily dependent on what wage bracket you are in. Less than 3% of the poorest-paid tenth of workers can work from home; less than 10% of the lowest half of earners can do so; whereas 27% of the highest-paid tenth of earners can still work but isolate themselves from the risks of the workplace. 

Cleansing workers have had to stage sit-ins for safety

NEW GOVERNMENT MINIMUM WAGES 

Of course, anyone on low pay will welcome the increases to the statutory minimum wage that kicks in on 1st April. But the wages being legally guaranteed fail to compensate for decades of accumulated poverty, and utterly fail to match the rising cost of living. Especially not with inflation on life's daily essentials, such food, energy, shelter, childcare and public transport. 



The grotesquely misnamed National Living Wage, for employees aged 25 and over, rises by 51p to £8.72-an-hour. 

The pernicious age wage discrimination continues unabated: £8.20 for workers aged 21-24; £6.45 for those aged 18-20; £4.55 for workers under 18; and an even more derisory £4.15-an-hour for apprentices (those under 19 and any apprentice of any age in their first year). 



No wonder there's a noticeable absence of workers out in the streets doing the conga in celebration - with or without social distancing! 

These wages perpetuate the atrocity of poverty pay, rather than combat it. 

 

Alloa posties on strike for safety & keeping social distance on the pickets!

Thousands of care workers and hospital staff and bin collectors are putting their lives on the line, and this is their reward. Likewise with the posties, who have had to resort to strike action to even get basic hand sanitizers. 

Supermarket staff are facing daily health risks (and all too often abuse from frustrated customers) for wages a few pence above the minimum wage; most of them around £9 or £9.20-an-hour, with all sorts of premium payments for anti-social hours abolished, and paid breaks taken away in recent years.  

SSP have fought for a decent minimum wage on the streets for years

DEMAND FOR £10 LAGS BEHIND WORKERS' NEEDS 

Since September 2014, both the entire trade union movement through TUC Congress,  and the Scottish Socialist Party, have campaigned for a £10 minimum wage. The SSP has campaigned in the streets and our workplaces and unions for this to apply to all from the age of 16, with equal pay for women. 

This campaigning has undoubtedly pressured the government into a bigger percentage rise to the minimum wage than in previous years. 

But not only are the multiple new rates a recipe for continued poverty; even the call for a £10 minimum is woefully lagging behind workers' needs, nearly 6 years on from it first being raised. 

TWO-THIRDS MALE MEDIAN EARNINGS 

Since our foundation in 1998, the SSP has fought for a decent level of national minimum wage, legally enforced for all at 16, calculated on the formula of two-thirds male median earnings.  

That formula serves several purposes. It links the minimum wage to the earnings of others, countering the widening chasm between a very few grotesquely well-paid and a vast army of low-paid. 

It helps combat the scandalous gender pay gap, by being based on the higher median wage of male workers. 

It's incredibly modest, only asking for two-thirds of the middle wage of all men, rather than for instance demanding the full male median wage.  

It's also a radical challenge to the overall share of wealth that goes to profits rather than wages. 

WAGES MUST RISE WITH INFLATION 

Throughout the SSP's fight for a minimum wage of at least two-thirds the male median wage, we have also added "rising with earnings or inflation, whichever is the greater". 
That is critically important. 



Since the bankers' greed triggered the financial collapse of 2008/9, workers' wages have stagnated. Latest available figures show that wages in 2018/19 were lower than those of 2004/5! 


But prices haven't stagnated! Far from it. The official, doctored government figures show at least 14% inflation in the five years from 2014 to 2019. 
And distorted they are, because these figures include luxury items like yachts, with low inflation, whereas you only need do the weekly shopping to know real price rises on food has rocketed far beyond that average. As has the cost of public transport, childcare, gas, electricity and housing itself. 

SSP DEMANDS £12 MINIMUM NOW! 

Allowing for all sides of the policy already described, the SSP has launched the demand for an immediate £12-an-hour minimum wage for all at 16, without exception, legally enforced, as a step towards a decent living income. 

This alongside our pioneering campaign for abolition of all zero hours contracts and their replacement with the guarantee of a minimum 16-hour contract for all workers who want one. 

Calling for £12-an-hour minimum is still a very modest demand - but it would transform the lives of millions of workers. In the hospitals, in social care, retail, hospitality, cleansing workers, the posties... millions would be radically better off. 

IT'S EASILY AFFORDABLE 

And it's easily affordable. One of several things the C-19 crisis has proven is that since Theresa May contemptuously dismissed calls for public investment last year with the comment "There is no money tree", a whole orchard of them have sprung up! 


The state has the resources to subsidise 80% of wages for under-threat workers, and to offer £330billion in loans and grants to employers. 

And that's without even a hint of progressive taxation of the obscenely rich, which could overnight fund measures like a £12-an-hour minimum wage.  
For instance, the Blairite reptile Richard Branson is rattling the begging bowl under the government's nose for a £7.5billion bailout, when it's been calculated  - by Tory MP Richard Fuller, no less! - that he could pay every one of his 8,500 laid-off workers their full 8 weeks' wages just on the basis of securing 2% interest on his investments. 

WAGES AND PROFITS 

Share prices for the big supermarkets chains have rocketed, as people have piled in and bought an extra £1billion worth of food at the outbreak of COVID-19, with the prospect of mounting profits.


True, several of them have hired thousands of temporary staff to cope with demand, and some rewarded their dedicated staff with a bonus. But that should be converted into a permanent 'bonus' - a £12 minimum wage, guaranteed minimum 16-hour contract for all workers who want one, and contracts topped up to the actual, normal hours worked by people currently cursed by short hour contracts of 8, 10 or 12 hours a week. 

LET THE RICH SCREAM THEIR OPPOSITION!

Of course billionaire and millionaire company bosses will scream blue murder, painting visions of Armageddon if such a wage was demanded of them. Let them! 



They've had a profits bonanza for decades. The share of national wealth that goes back to wages is at its lowest since records began in the 1950s. 


Of course this is a challenge to the profit margins of big business - and the personal grotesque incomes of the Chief Executives, who infamously earn as much in 3 days as it takes the average worker a whole year to earn. 
That's part of its purpose; to radically redistribute wealth.


And if there's only one thing the C-19 crisis should teach us, it's the undeniable fact that society relies on the labour power, the skills and dedication, of the working class, not on the grotesquely rich minority who take the wealth whilst workers make the wealth. 



One startling, further fact to bear in mind as the bosses scream poverty in the face of such a demand: big businesses have £750billion stashed away in cash piles, in their bank accounts, totally unused; not invested in either improved wages nor modernisation of production. 

TRANSFORM MILLIONS OF WORKERS' LIVES 

Such a wage would not create a nation of millionaires! But for a 35-hour week, it would mean £420-a-week, modest even compared with government figures of the current 'typical' weekly full-time wage being £576, or £620 for men. 

However, full-time jobs have become as scarce as hen's teeth. At least a £12 minimum wage and guaranteed minimum 16-hour week would mean the battalions of part-time workers got at least £192 in their weekly wage, going some way to paying the rent and feeding families. 



It might mean millions of workers could put a few quid aside for an annual holiday, or for a rainy day. It might mean many who feel ill would not have to choose between their livelihood and their life in the current health crisis. 

NO GOING BACK AFTER COVID-19 CRISIS 

We are living through an unparalleled crisis, which highlights how society works. Amongst other things it should highlight the crime of poverty pay and its consequences, and build our resolve to end that atrocity, a hallmark of capitalism and its core motivation of profit.  

We must start the debate now for a decent minimum wage of £12-an-hour, immediately, rising with inflation or average earnings, whichever is the greater.  

Once this health crisis allows it, the SSP will be on the streets and arguing in our unions for this modest but far-reaching measure. 

There can be no going back to the outrageous poverty and inequality that have exacerbated the impact of the Coronavirus. 


[This blog is also being published by the Scottish Socialist Voice. You can SUBSCRIBE HERE to the regular Online E-Voice.... https://socialistvoice.scot/subscriptions/?utm]

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. 

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.