TORIES ADMIT GUILT - BUT CONTINUE INSECURE WORK CRIMES

When is a radical new package of workers’ rights nothing of the kind? When it’s announced by a besieged Tory government, increasingly bombarded by public anger at the horrendous insecurity of jobs and workplace rights in Britain.

Theresa May is today trumpeting a package of measures that her spin doctors describe as “the most radical upgrade of rights at work in a generation”. Let’s look behind the manufactured headlines.

They plan legislation that insists employers issue a “statement of rights” from the first day of a worker’s employment – including what paid leave they are entitled to for illness, maternity and paternity.

Anything that improves transparency in worker’s rights is welcome. But this is a planet apart from what many have fought for: the demand of full employment rights from day one in a job, as opposed to having to wait full two years before having legal rights on things like unfair dismissal – the same Tory government doubled the qualifying period.

The Tories promise to “close a loophole that allows agency workers to be paid less than permanent staff.” A welcome small step, if it refers to hourly rates of pay, but it still does nothing to combat the short-term, crushingly insecure nature of agency work.

Oliver Twist, Tory-style

The new legislation will give workers “the right to request more predicable hours”.

To ‘request’!? This pre-Christmas promise is about as useful as Charles Dickens’ starving child, Oliver Twist, having the right to utter “Please, Sir, I want more”, only to be walloped over the head with the gruel-serving ladle by his over-fed master!

Already, workers have ‘the right to request’ changes in their working shift patterns – but employers have the right to reject that request, and habitually do so, using the catch-all ‘business needs’ excuse.

Crimes Admitted – Without Solutions

This new legislation is an implicit admission that workers’ lives are wracked by the rampant insecurity caused by zero hours contracts, short hours contracts, agency work and the gig economy. But it falls far short of actually tackling these issues.

For instance, the Tories have reiterated the viewpoint of former Tony Blair aide, Matthew Taylor – whose Review on modern working practices they commissioned – that an outright ban on zero hours contracts “would negatively impact more people than it helped.”

This is all part of their deliberate and malicious conflation and confusion of two entirely different things; flexibility and insecurity.

Workers need flexibility, on the likes of starting and finishing times, to cope with the increasingly complex demands of family life, or juggling a job with a college course, for instance. But that’s not provided by the insecure, low-paid jobs that are increasingly the only employment on offer – part-time, short-term, agency, zero hours or short hours contracts.

Ban Zero Hours Contracts

Deliveroo delivery workers at a solidarity protest. [Photo: Craig Maclean]

Zero hours contracts give all the flexibility to the employers, who have workers at their beck and call, sending them home “unwanted” and unpaid on a regular basis, and denying workers shifts for weeks as a punishment if they have the audacity to turn down one shift. And all the insecurity of income, working patterns, denial of access to credit and mortgages, etc, is the lot of workers on this modern epitome of casual labour.

As a major recent survey of 10,500 retail workers by my own union, Usdaw, confirmed, this insecurity of income and lifestyle is the root cause of a galloping epidemic of mental ill health.

Real Protection – With Real Flexibility

Instead of token gestures about “the right to request more predictable hours” we need real, radical legislation to guarantee every worker the right to a minimum working week of 16 hours, if they want it, as pioneered by my own party, the SSP, and now my own union, Usdaw – and as agreed unanimously as policy at the recent TUC congress.

That would mean outright abolition of zero hours contracts. It would help eradicate the criminal situation where a full one million workers are only in part-time jobs because they can’t get the full-time job they actually want. It would erase the startling fact that – by the Tory government’s own admission – 400,000 workers regularly work 6 hours a week or less. And it would confront the atrocity that sums up the modern curse of underemployment, governments can boast of record levels of employment: but the Office of National Statistics counts anyone working a minimum of one hour a week as being employed!

Unionise and Organise for Guaranteed 16-hour Minimum Week

And legislation guaranteeing a minimum week of 16 hours to all workers who want it would also offer genuine flexibility; as the policy Motion I put forward at the 2018 Usdaw national conference put it, the 16-hour minimum would apply “except where a worker, accompanied by their union representative, requests less hours”. That’s also the wording of the Motion we successfully submitted from Usdaw at the British TUC.

Workers in the burgeoning sector of insecure work, in its various forms, would be wise not to rely on the Tories’ false claims of providing protection. Instead, they need the collective protection of being in a union, and in turn the unions need to get stuck into fighting for implementation of the policies adopted at union and TUC conferences.

This latest Tory announcement amounts to an admission of guilt, but without any real plans to end their crimes against workers.

As ‘the Good Book’ might put it, the sinner hath sinned, but repenteth not!

SPEECH FOR A GUARANTEED MINIMUM 16-HOUR WEEK

As TUC Congress looms...
SPEECH ADVOCATING GUARANTEED MINIMUM 16-HOUR WEEK

The annual congress of the British TUC starts on 9th September, where my own union - Usdaw - will propose not only a £10 minimum wage, but also the pioneering demand for a legally guaranteed minimum contract of 16-hours a week for all workers who want it - instead of the curse of zero hours contracts and rampant under-employment through short hours contracts.

As background - and as information to use in your own union to lobby support for this policy at the TUC - here's (below) the text of the Policy Proposition and the union's official verbatim report of the speech I made at April's Usdaw annual conference, where I proposed this brand new policy of a minimum 16-hour week, except where a worker and his/her union rep negotiates fewer hours. 

I will post a proper article on the TUC and this key issue soon.

Meantime, please help spread the case amongst workers and their unions for a radical alternative to low-paid, insecure jobs.

TEXT OF MY SPEECH AT USDAW Annual Delegate Meeting, April 2018...

WELCOME NEW USDAW CAMPAIGN FOR MINIMUM EMPLOYMENT GUARANTEES

In a major new breakthrough for millions of workers suffering poverty pay and insecure jobs, the country's fifth-biggest union, Usdaw, has launched a campaign for a £10 minimum wage, a guaranteed 16-hour minimum contract for all who want one, and contracts that reflect actual hours worked. 

And as agreed at Usdaw's annual conference in April, these policies are being taken to the September TUC congress, as a policy Motion, to seek the support of the entire trade union movement. 

Low pay is condemning a huge swathe of the population to stress, deprivation and dependency on food banks. 

Work is no longer a route out of poverty; 52% of the Scots officially living below the poverty line are actually in a job, working to remain poor. 

We have the grotesque spectacle of fast food workers and supermarket staff turning to food banks for emergency food supplies in 21st Century, rich, arable Scotland. 

Workers' wages have suffered the worst real stagnation and fall since the Napoleonic Wars, 200 years ago! 

And with a national minimum wage that peaks at £7.83-an-hour for those aged over 25, and slumps to £3.70 for apprentices, decent pay is not about to be gifted to us any time soon.

It takes an organised fight to win a decent minimum wage - with the abolition of the lower youth rates too. 

Demand £10 Now! 

£10-an-hour is an extremely modest demand. It's not even two-thirds of the median wage of male workers - the policy of the SSP since our foundation, 20 years ago. 

But compared to the pathetic wages on offer today, £10 would be a mighty step forward. 

And the SSP has always argued for the full rate at 16, recognizing younger people don't enjoy discounts on food, rent or clothing! 

So the campaign launched by Usdaw - the 440,000-strong main union in retail, with members also in food production, transport and distribution - for £10 minimum for all at 18 is a very welcome step. Especially after four years of holding that policy but doing nothing about it until now. 

The same applies to the TUC as a whole; it unanimously voted for "£10 minimum wage for all workers" a full four years ago, in September 2014, but hasn't lifted a finger to fight for it since. 

The time for serious action by the unions is long overdue, so Usdaw's campaign plan is very welcome. 

Demand Guaranteed Minimum 16-Hour Contracts 

Casualised, insecure work - in its modern forms - has been around since at least the 1970s. 

Zero hours contracts, the very pinnacle of this monstrously insecure employment, have existed in the UK since the 1980s. 

But a plague of job insecurity has exploded in more recent years, masked by government boasts of 'record levels of employment'. And low pay goes hand-in-hand with insecure contracts. 

TUC research suggests a full one out of every ten workers is in an insecure job. Latest figures on zero-hours contracts range from 1.4 million to 1.8 million. And much less publicized, but at least as pernicious, are short hour contracts - typically 8, 10 or 12 hours a week. These are absolutely rampant in retail. Increasingly so, as full-time jobs become an endangered species. 

These zero and short hours contracts put millions of workers at the beck and call of their employers; dragged in for far more hours than their contract when it's busy, slashed back to contract hours when it suits the bosses' needs. 

It blights workers and their families with totally insecure incomes, with all the attendant stress and suffering. 

It blocks workers on low guaranteed hours from loans and mortgages; it's their contract hours that count, not actual hours worked. 

Part-time work also imposes lower average hourly rates of pay than those for full-time jobs.

And it even denies access to wage top-ups for many; a couple seeking Working Tax Credit, for instance, must have one person on at least 16 hours.

Break the Chains 

Those are precisely some of the reasons I first came up with the idea of a minimum working week - a guaranteed 16-hour minimum contract - for all workers who want it, in Break the Chains, published in December 2015. 

In turn, this policy was agreed at the 2016 SSP conference. 

And in a major, pioneering breakthrough for the mass organizations of the working class, the April 2018 Usdaw national conference voted for this new policy, unanimously, after I'd proposed it on behalf of my Glasgow G111 Usdaw branch. 

After being recently elected to Usdaw's Executive Council, I've combined with others to insist on a plan of campaigning action on this agreed, pioneering policy - which is now being implemented. 

Join the Struggle! 

Workers and trade unions throughout Scotland and the UK should welcome and support these demands for a minimum £10-an-hour and guaranteed 16-hour minimum contract for all who want it - with the only exception being where a worker, accompanied by their union rep, asks for less than a 16-hour contract. 

Usdaw is committed to a public launch at the September TUC, plus putting these demands into all negotiations with employers, and lobbying all levels of government and political parties.

The SSP stands enthusiastically alongside Usdaw and all other trade unions prepared to fight for these life-changing demands. We appeal to other workers to join in campaign activities, to bludgeon the employers, the Scottish government and local authorities into conceding these minimum standards of employment. 

The demands for £10now and a guaranteed minimum 16-hour week for all workers who want it are both modest and also a revolutionary change compared to the low-paid, casualised wage slavery that curses society today. 

Join the struggle! 

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." 

FOR A GUARANTEED 16-HOUR MINIMUM WORKING WEEK

I am immensely proud that the Scottish Socialist Party conference passed another pioneering new policy which could transform the lives and livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of Scottish workers. We agreed to campaign within the trade union movement for the idea of a guaranteed minimum working week of 16 hours, to tackle the criminal insecurity and poverty that blights vast armies of workers on zero-hours and short-hours contracts.

Crazy capitalist contradictions

As I pointed out in proposing this new addition to the SSP's comprehensive package of workplace and trade union policies, capitalism curses working class people with the crazy contradiction of mass unemployment, mass underemployment and masses of overworked people on long, unhealthy hours of work. 

For instance, 260,000 workers in Scotland last year toiled for more than 48 hours a week. That's nearly one in eight of all those in work. And 54,000 worked a mind-boggling 60 hours or more each week! That's a threat to health, adding to the mountain of stress and mental health problems already all too common, a threat to workplace health and safety, and undermines family and social life. 

And although we all know the one greedy bandit in our workplace who treats overtime as an incurable drug addiction, grabbing every hour on offer, the fundamental reason people put themselves through this prolonged drudgery isn't greed, it's dire necessity: rotten hourly rates of pay. In fact a survey showed that 57% of these long-hours workers wanted to cut their hours at work.

Cut Hours - not Pay or Jobs

So the longstanding SSP policy of a guaranteed living minimum wage set at two-thirds male median earnings - £10-an-hour now in 2016 - is crucial alongside our campaign for a shorter working week, but with no loss of earnings. For cutting hours, not pay or jobs; for an immediate maximum working week of 35 hours across the board, rapidly moving to a 4-day week, and soon far lesser hours of work - harnessing the potential of new technology to slash the hours taken to produce life's necessities and thereby give workers time to live, not just work.

Famine of Guaranteed Work

That's one side of the battle to be fought. But at the other end of the nightmare contradictions in capitalism stands a vast army of workers stressed out by a famine of guaranteed hours of work - those on zero hours contracts and 4, 8, or 12-hours a week contracts.

Not everyone wants a full time job - not even the 35-hour week maximum we advocate, let alone the current average 42.7 hours worked in this country. But hordes of part-time workers want more work than they can get under the present system of insecure, casualised labour. For example, surveys show 1.4 million part-timers want more hours of work but can't get them. 

Why? Because employers prefer workers to be at their beck and call, according to 'business needs', hiring them on very low contracted hours - zero, 4,8,12, etc - and then dragging them in for extra hours during peak periods, of course with no premium payments for overtime. This also makes it cheaper for the employers in terms of sick pay, National Insurance Contributions, and (at least until recent rulings) holiday pay. 

16 Hours Guarantee 

So the demand for a guaranteed minimum weekly contract of 16 hours would tackle some of these problems head on. As well as abolishing all zero hours contracts, it would eradicate the terrible insecurity and absolute poverty of only being guaranteed a handful of hours a week, with the stress and upheaval of trying to claim benefits some weeks, not the others when the employer needs extra hours worked. 

Opt-out - With Union Protection 

But what if someone wants less than 16 hours a week? The policy statement carried at SSP conference deals with that. 

We want the unions to crusade for government legislation that obliges all employers to offer nothing less than 16 hours a week. We want the unions to negotiate for that demand where they are already recognized, and use this and associated policies to help recruit new members to win union recognition in new areas. 

But we also agreed the rider that if a worker wants less than 16, they should be entitled to negotiate lesser hours with the help of their union, with guarantees against bullying into such an arrangement by management. In other words, the right to opt out of a guaranteed 16-hour minimum working week, strictly on the proviso they have union representation when doing so.

Pioneering Proposal 

This new proposal - which I first raised in my book Break the Chains - not only tries to eradicate the cruel poverty of pay and job insecurity that blights millions of workers in Scotland and the UK, but also seeks to give an element of workers' control to working life, a challenge to the dictatorship by senior management on behalf of the owners that is the norm in 21st century capitalism. It runs in tandem with the fight for powerful, free and campaigning trade unions. 

We will now proceed to organize to win support for this pioneering policy in our trade unions, as part of the SSP's ongoing struggle for a society founded on human need not capitalist greed, where the fabulous wealth and inventions available are used to liberate workers from poverty, insecurity and drudgery.