UNIVERSITY BOSSES ON THE RUN: keep chasing them!

Strikes work! Well organised collective action, with full involvement and mobilization of union members, can put to flight even the most hard-nosed employers. 

That's the core lesson from the ongoing, rapidly evolving struggle to defend pensions for university staff, involving unprecedented strike action by members of the University and College Union (UCU). 

Lecturers, teaching assistants, researchers, librarians, IT and other student support staff voted by a whopping 83% majority for strike action, smashing down the multiple barriers erected by the Tory Trade Union Act, designed precisely to prevent workers from fighting back in self-defence. The first phase of action involved 14 days of strikes, plus action short of strike action (ASOS), including sticking to their contracted 35-hour week. 

Before the wave of strikes, growing pickets and massive rallies, the UUK university bosses insisted the existing defined benefits pension scheme was dead and gone, never to be resurrected. Staff were to lose defined benefits, their pensions to switch to an entirely Stock Market-dependent defined contribution scheme, with the loss of an average £10,000-a-year on retirement. All based on their dodgy valuation of the state of the pension scheme - the USS - which perpetrated the austerity-driven narrative that the pension pot is in deficit, so they simply can't afford to sustain the deferred wages of university staff, throwing them at the mercy of the vagaries of the grotesque gambling den that is the Stock Exchange. 

For weeks, the UUK bosses refused to even talk to the UCU union. Then they made the absurdly offensive offer of talks... but not about pensions! 

Strikers' Control 

Faced with the third of a four-week strike plan, they entered ACAS-sponsored talks with the UCU, and offered some concessions, which initially the national UCU negotiators portrayed as an agreement. All hell erupted on the picket lines, with online petitions gathering thousands of objections to the 'deal' literally overnight, and just about unanimous rejection of this 'agreement' by every single UCU branch meeting the next morning. The rank and file of the union - the strikers and their branch activists - seized back control, and insisted the national negotiators throw out a shoddy package that meant (to quote a couple of the numerous examples I was given on the pickets) staff 'only' losing 42% of their pension instead of 52%, or 'only' 38% instead of the original 48%! 

Emboldened by Insulting Offer 

This episode massively emboldened the strikers, hardened their resolve to hold onto their defined benefits pensions, without cuts to what after all is earned, deferred wages. New forces joined the pickets. New recruits joined the UCU and joined the strike; union membership grew by 15-20% nationally over the duration of this phase of strike action. 

The strikers' strength was further fuelled by the solidarity shown by fellow trade unionists at the pickets, solidarity rallies, and collections for their Strike Hardship Fund. Likewise, by the widespread support from students - including the courageous actions of a determined minority in student occupations at Edinburgh, Stirling, Glasgow, Strathclyde, Aberdeen and Dundee universities.

Solidarity and Steep Learning Curves 

This workforce has not traditionally been the most militant in its trade unionism, but a month of collective action has taught more than decades of theoretical discourse. The electrified atmosphere of the pickets, roving marches round university buildings, and rallies with strikers and their allies speaking, have served to make determined fighters of people who are often on their first ever strike... or who've only just joined the union! 

The growing strike force went back to work after the first phase of 14 days with heads held high. In Stirling, for instance, they assembled at the site of picketing and marched back to work with union banners, behind a piper! 

Bosses Split 

The strike and widespread solidarity from other workers, and students, impacted on the university bosses, leading to splits and public disagreements between the various Vice-Chancellors and the UUK. Union branches pounded the former with demands to make supportive declarations, and to spread loss of earnings through strike action over 3 months, often successfully. 

They also kicked up hell about more bellicose bosses docking pay for staff working to contract, rather than the usual millions of unpaid hours worked through goodwill towards students' education. 

After the roaring success of the first four weeks of strikes, UCU members enforced a 'work to contract', and in preparation for the second national strike phase announced for the exam period from 25 April onwards, over 700 resigned their posts as External Examiners, which would make the exam-period strikes really bite. 

First Serious Offer 

Hot on the heels of this mounting pressure, Unison announced a ballot of its union members on the same pension scheme, which undoubtedly was an added factor in the sudden, apparently spectacular retreat by UUK bosses on Friday 23 March. 

Many strikers were at first astonished and euphoric at what appeared like capitulation by the bosses. But as they scraped away the layers of verbal trickery and obfuscation, it became clear that whilst this is the first serious offer from the employers, and a huge retreat by them, it needs an awful lot of clarification and tightening up to become acceptable. 

As Strathclyde UCU branch president Brian Garvey told me, "After declaring the UCU demand for the status quo on defined benefits to be impossible, they've now conceded it - at least until April 2019." 

The new offer also proposes 'an independent panel of experts' to assess the valuation of what the pension scheme (USS) can support in the future, with 50% nominees from the union, 50% from the employers. But as Brian added, "We need to test the real independence of this panel." 

One of the crunch clauses in the offer is that after April 2019, and after valuation of the USS by the 'independent panel', pension benefits would remain "broadly equivalent to current arrangements." What does 'broadly equivalent' mean? This could be a trap, a deal-breaker, whereby a besieged gang of university bosses try to obscure future cuts to pensions for current and/or future staff, including the spectre of two-tier pension schemes for current and future staff. 

Closing the Loopholes: No Detriment! 

Strikers have pored over the details, and as I write this (Monday 26 March), are holding branch meetings instructing national union negotiators to demand these grey areas are cleared up, to defend the existing defined benefits system, without detriment to staff. 

As Brian Garvey told me, "We need to close the loopholes on economic arguments about the valuation of the pension scheme. If the proposed Panel was to decide the USS is in deficit, we should demand action against mismanagement - and there's been plenty of that around! For instance, the employers' past pension contributions holidays. The bottom line needs to be no detriment to staff. 

This is a huge step forward which demonstrates the effectiveness of strike action, but in its current wording, it's not yet an acceptable offer." 

The UCU strikers have plenty of grounds to be distrustful of top UUK bosses - and their slippery use of language! 

After all - as I've hammered home in speeches at four solidarity rallies at Strathclyde and one at Stirling university, speaking as newly-elected USDAW NEC member:

"These are the same bosses who declare a black hole in the pension fund - despite last year's USS annual report showing 20% growth in assets. These are the bosses who claimed £8million in expenses over the last two years - on top of the 60 Vice-Chancellors who each earn over £300,000 a year. In the same institutions which rake in £17billion a year from students alone. Hardly a corner shop in crisis!" 

And if - contrary to all the existing evidence - the valuation process was to declare a deficit in the USS pension scheme, the employers who took several years of contributions holiday should be forced to fill any gap by increasing their contributions, rather than punish workers for the university and pension scheme bosses' past dodging of their duties. 

Sustain the Action Until Victory 

One of the obstacles to the UUK's verbal trickery, as they are beaten back by the solidarity of the strikes, is the expertise on pensions of many of the academic staff on strike! They've helped demolish the bogus claims and false valuations that were constructed to justify these drastic pension cuts. 

But the power of their expertise needs to be combined with the power of sustained industrial action, until such time as defined benefits are guaranteed not just "until at least April 2019" but for the future. As we publish this, members' branch meetings are poised to demand the planned 14 days of further strikes from late April go ahead, unless the UUK fully concede on the UCU's demands. 

Powerful, unprecedented strikes have pummeled the austerity brigade at the top of this huge sector of the economy, forcing massive retreats already. It could be a massive victory for the entire working class, provided the planned action is sustained until the university bosses accept UCU members' demands to close the loopholes in their 23 March offer. 

As one after another group of workers suffer loss of Final Salary Pension Schemes, and switch to defined contribution schemes and increased worker contributions - paying more to get less, and later - this could be a turning point in fighting back against austerity. 

Pensions Plus...

This struggle is about pensions, but also about much more; against the spreading curse of casualisation and precarious employment, and against marketisation of education, which has increasingly turned students into passive consumers for university business profits, instead of being partners in learning for the good of society as a whole. 

Unless the UUK bosses capitulate completely, we need the wider trade union movement to escalate solidarity for the UCU strikers until they win an outright victory for us all. 

#nocapitulation  #nodetriment  #victorytotheUCU 

VICTORY TO THE UCU STRIKERS!

UCU members striking against savage pension cuts and austerity

The breadth and depth of strike action by staff at ten Scottish universities and 61 across the UK are unprecedented. Members of the University and College Union (UCU) voted overwhelmingly to stage an escalating series of strikes in defence of their pensions, with a total of 14 days already named.

The pickets are large, the roving demos colourful and noisy, and the support for staff from students vast and visible.

Pensions Under Attack

This strike is primarily about an assault on staff pensions, with their bosses in Universities UK (UUK) wanting to slash the current defined benefits scheme - the Universities Superannuation Scheme - to a cheap and nasty defined contributions scheme, where retirement income would be dependent on the fluctuations of the stock market. 

Concretely, as the UCU union spells out, this would mean an average annual cut of £10,000 to pensions for lecturers, teachers, librarians, researchers and student support staff. 

As Dave, one of the strikers in Glasgow, told me, "I face a 50% cut! In many ways, this was always quite a conservative workforce, reluctant to take industrial action, and we often put up with the pay levels because at least there is a decent pension at the end of it. But we have to take the pain of losing pay now, through striking, or there'll be nothing left at the end of our careers."

The UUK bosses claim they have to take this slice off pensions because they face a £6billion deficit. But the same bosses have further infuriated teaching staff with their choices of expenditure. As Dave added, "They say they can't afford to sustain our pensions. But the principal is on over £300,000. And have you noticed the £1billion being spent on buildings and investments in Glasgow and Strathclyde universities?"

On the picket lines 

Marketisation of Education 

Another striker gave me her view of the UUK bosses' claim - and of the deeper causes of the strike - as she rushed in to address a 'teach-in' of supportive students:

"This is about our pensions, but also about the power structures behind it. The way the pension scheme is set up tells all: it's based on a flawed risk assessment, which favours those investing, to the detriment of workers. The assumption in the risk assessment is that all 65 universities will all go into administration; if that were true, our problems are a lot greater than the pensions scheme!

In these underlying power structures, we are told pensions are a benefit. But we work hard for them; pensions are part of our wages. And this doesn't just affect lecturers, but all staff, and it's really important workers are not divided. This is about the casualised workforce, temporary research assistants, the library staff, and all the rest too.
We want to shut down the education factory - because that's how we and the students are treated. The irony is that free education means those who pay are treated better. Free education is of less and less value on the market. That's why we have the students on our side. They live through it and know what it's like to live through the marketised universities."

Student Support 

First-year engineering student and SSP member, Max McKay, told me some of his reasons for actively supporting the strikers and attending their picket lines.

"It's vital we support the strikers. They're the ones trying to teach us and be available to us. Now they need us in their moment of struggle. All students should do what they can: join picket lines, not attend lectures, talk to other students to get their support."

I asked Max what difference the attack on pensions makes to him, as a student. 

"If the UCU don't win, and the pension cuts go ahead, some of the best lecturers will be gone, they'll just leave. Their pay is already low, and the only thing making the job OK is a reasonable pension. Some students may be considering going on to become lecturers, but these cuts may stop them, a loss of opportunity. And if the staff lose on pensions, what next? Us as students attacked next? That's why I've been on the pickets showing my support."

SSP supports the UCU strikers

Principal's Pets... and Pension Cuts! 

Pensions are the upfront source of the anger that has erupted into strike action. But that anger is also fuelled by the ongoing attacks on education, the brutally precarious nature of many of the jobs for the likes of tutors and teaching assistants, and the grotesque contrasts between pleas of poverty by the university bosses and their own opulence. 

Take the case of Peter Mathieson, the recently appointed principal of Edinburgh University. He graciously accepted the offer to move from being vice-chancellor of Hong Kong University so long as he got a basic salary of £342,000 - a mere £80,000 more than his predecessor at Edinburgh!

But while UCU members have been driven to withdraw their labour in defence of their pensions, Mathieson enjoys an additional payment of £42,000 "in lieu of pension contributions". On top of his £342,000, that is. And as a reward for the trek north, he was given use of a lavish "grace and favour" home, plus a £26,000 relocation package. Just in case that's not cause enough for outrage, the relocation bung handed over from university funds included the cost of moving his pet cat and dog.

So the university bosses plunder workers' pensions, but pay out travel costs for the principal's pets! You couldn't make it up... and you don't need to; it's a metaphor for what the university bosses think of hardworking staff. 

The School of Struggle

A new generation is being educated in the fundamentals of trade unionism in the heat of battle. For many, this is their first-ever strike. 

As Strathclyde University UCU chair, Brian Garvey, told me, "Many members are on strike for the first time. And many, many more have joined the union since we started this strike action. They may have been scared to take action at first, but once it gets going, it's like being liberated."

Another key feature of this struggle is the rapid learning about unions, strikes and solidarity that a new generation are living and learning. Whilst withdrawing their labour, lecturers are staging 'teach-ins', addressing hundreds of students on issues like privatisation, the marketisation of education, and as Brian remarked, "I'm going in to speak about what unions and strikes are because consciousness of those issues had declined amongst younger people for a time."

The UCU strikers need and deserve the solidarity of every reader, every trade unionist, every SSP member. Show support on their pickets and demos; invite them to your union branch; help win a victory for the UCU - which would be a victory for all workers, in the face of austerity cuts designed to boost the perks, privileges and profits of the rich and big business.

 

Brian Garvey puts the case for pensions justice 

FROM THE FRONTLINE: article by a strike leader for the Scottish Socialist Voice:

The staff, students and supporters of the strike know that while this strike is about pensions, it is about more than that. 

The unprecedented turnout is a clear message that we, together, have had enough of austerity, where pensions are cut while those cutting them award themselves £0.5million salaries. 

Enough of cuts in education, enough of taking more and more from workers, enough of taking an axe to our pensions and spending billions elsewhere. 

This strike is wakening academic staff up to the fact that their future is tied up with nurses, construction workers and all working people, and not the heads of UUK taking £10,000 a year from pensions. 

We call our members, staff, students and supporters to join us in our ongoing strike action that will continue until we win this fight for dignity.

 By Brian Garvey, Chair, UCU Strathclyde University

HIGH COURT OF INJUSTICE: stand by your posties!

In a class-ridden fashion that was all too predictable, a High Court judge has granted Royal Mail bosses an interim injunction against the Communication Workers' Union strike action going ahead next week (19-21 October).

The mass democracy of a 9:1 majority for strike action amongst 110,000 CWU members has been trampled underfoot by an unelected judge on behalf of the unelected Royal Mail Group bosses.

After the resounding Yes vote was won - despite all the threats and obstruction thrown up by Royal Mail bosses - they tried to get a legal crushing of the subsequent action by absurdly claiming the union had not taken sufficient steps to inform its members of the planned strikes. Only those posties on a trip to Mars, with all communication channels to ground control cut off, could have been unaware of the planned action! 

These scared, desperate, but brutal bosses had to drop that crude nonsense, but then pursued the line of seeking an interim injunction on grounds of financial damage to the company. 

Court of Class Injustice

In stark confirmation of the role of the judicial arm of the state in the struggle between workers and big business employers, the judge had to decide who would suffer the greater financial damage, depending on whether he allowed the democratically decided industrial action to go ahead, or not. So his decision was to financially protect the Royal Mail bosses, at the expense of stalling the fightback by posties. At the expense of democracy. He instructed the CWU to suspend all industrial action "until external mediation had been concluded". 

The Issues Remain

But in reality this judicial setback only defers rather than defeats the struggle by Royal Mail workers. 

The issues remain. 

Nothing has been solved in the struggle to defend workers' pensions from a cut of up to 30%. 

Nothing has been conceded on the CWU's demands for a decent wage on retirement; or for a 35-hour working week without loss of pay, inclusive of breaks, to protect jobs, reduce drudgery and harness the advantages of new technology; or for defence of the right of union reps to properly function; or to withdraw plans for a two-tier workforce, with lower pay for new starters. 

The 9:1 Ballot Remains 

The ballot result remains.
As CWU General secretary Dave Ward declared outside the High Court of (In-)Justice:

"We walked into the Court with a 90% Yes vote, and we walked out still with a 90% Yes vote. This ballot is still live and kicking." 

The ruling merely delays the likelihood of strike action by 7 weeks, because the judge issued that as a deadline for the warring sides to reach an agreement through 'external mediation'.

This is an entirely bogus proposal; a fig leaf for a naked, class-driven offensive against workers and their ability to defend both their own conditions and the public services they provide. 

Negotiations on these issues have been dragged out by Royal Mail for 18 months already - including external mediation! 

Workers and their union reached the end of their collective tether, and only then balloted for strike action to force the out-of-touch bosses to sit up and listen. 

Strike Before Christmas 

As the CWU's Dave Ward declared, unless mediation leads to an acceptable offer in defence of workers and the great public service they provide, Royal Mail bosses are still staring down the barrel of a gun. The company either protects workers' pensions, pay, jobs, union rights and the service to the public, or they'll still encounter strikes before the peak Christmas period. 

And that's a key detail: the union is absolutely right to declare they will not allow the Royal Mail Board to string out mediation beyond the timescale specified by the High Court. 

The danger is that the employers want to stretch out 'external mediation' until the enhanced impact of a strike in December is dead and gone. They must not succeed. Either they concede to the demands of a workforce they are blatantly out of touch with during the mediation,  or they should be forced into doing so by decisive strike action before Christmas. 

Stand by Your Posties 

The war to defend Royal Mail services and it's workers is far from over. The use of the High Courts to tramp workers' democratic decisions into the dirt will only harden the resolve of these 110,000 men and women - and the determination of fellow trade unionists and socialists to build solidarity with them. 

FOR A SOCIALIST CHARTER OF WORKERS' RIGHTS

Victories for the working class, our unions, our rights at work, are nearly as rare as people of conscience in the Tory Cabinet! 

So it's all the more justified that we celebrate the recent abolition of Employment Tribunal fees, as ruled unanimously by the seven Supreme Court judges. They deprived the Tories and LibDems of a fourth birthday party for the pernicious measure they jointly imposed in July 2013. 

Under mounting pressure from the trade union movement, and growing public fury, the upper-class judges abolished forthwith the fees of £1,200 payable before workers could even get a Tribunal hearing on cases of unfair dismissal, discrimination, or equal pay.

And the £1,600 payable to seek an Employment Appeals Tribunal hearing; to challenge any of the 50% of ET cases that go against workers, or the incredible 78% of all ET cases on discrimination - potentially the most important, involving the biggest compensation - which rule on the side of employers. 

This decision was the result of three years of legal challenges by UNISON, and widespread public support, as expressed in the response to Jeremy Corbyn's promise to  scrap the fees - ending years of criminal negligence by Labour, who merely promised to reduce the fees. 

Build on Employment Tribunals Victory 

This outcome underlines the potential power for progressive change possessed by the organised trade union movement. It answers the doubters and sceptics, who surrender under the battle-cry, "There's nothing we can do".

Now we need to push for far more sweeping changes, actually mobilizing the solidarity in action of workers and their unions, demanding a full-blown Charter of Workers' Rights.   

Not by waiting for some Messiah, but by motivating and mobilizing the millions of workers and their communities; utilizing the unified power of our class against the capitalist class and their political mouthpieces. 

And not just demanding it as a futile propaganda exercise towards the stone-faced Westminster puppets of capitalist rule; we might as well appeal to the stone statue of Churchill as await the Westminster road to workers' rights.

We need to target the far more accessible and susceptible Scottish government, and the 32 Scottish local authorities, with such demands. 

Unite for a Charter of Workers' Rights 

The SSP is more than eager to unite in action with supporters of other parties and none; trade unionists, young people, community groups; anyone willing to demand a Charter of Workers' Rights that could begin to transform the lives of the millions - unashamedly at the expense of the millionaires - both at work, at home and in our communities. 

By no means an exhaustive package, this could include the following:

Full rights at work from day one. 

Not 'equal rights', as demanded by Jeremy Corbyn's For the Many, Not the Few manifesto - which would include equal exclusion from the right to an Employment Tribunal hearing on unfair dismissal for the first 2 years in a job. 
Full rights, from day one, whether part-time, full-time, temporary, agency, etc.

The right to organise, strike and take solidarity action with fellow workers - and on so-called political issues, like privatisation or cuts - without fear of victimisation. 

This would require repeal of all the anti-union, anti-worker laws, introduced by Thatcher's Tories, retained by 13 years of Labour government, made even more repressive by the Tories and their LibDem coalition partners. Not just the welcome, but extremely limited pledge by Corbyn to repeal the 2016 (anti-) Trade Union Act, but all 30-years' worth of repressive laws. 

A guaranteed, well-paid, secure job for all on leaving school or college. 

Scotland's teenage model, Govan shipyard worker's son Connor Newall, told Radio Scotland that if he wasn't blessed with a career with cameras shooting at him he'd be in the army being shot at in wars. That captures the criminal lack of decent jobs, contrary to the vast array of work that needs doing to build a decent society. 

We should demand action - not pious platitudes - from the Scottish government and local councils to create hundreds of thousands of decent jobs, for instance by building social sector houses for rent; expanding education and public transport; investing in an NHS fit for the 21st century; ensuring free, quality social care services; developing a vast new, publicly-owned green energy industry.

A legally-enforced living minimum wage set at two-thirds male median earnings - for all over 16, with equal pay for women. 
Wages have been systematically driven down, to boost profits, and to cut public spending. Wages have stagnated and declined at the worst rate since the Napoleonic Wars. 

We should demand this guaranteed living minimum wage, legally enforced, which would mean over £10-an-hour here and now. Not three years hence in 2020, as promised by Jeremy Corbyn's manifesto; and not just for those over 18, as it says - but for all over 16, as consistently fought for by the SSP for the past 20 years. 

And if Labour or SNP MSPs and councillors are serious about a living wage, demand they here and now declare a voluntary £10 Living Wage for all workers they directly employ, plus issue public contracts only to firms implementing £10 minimum - pending their return in-house. 

Demand back the funding off Westminster and Holyrood to pay a minimum of £10-an-hour to the half-a-million workers employed by central and local government. 

A guaranteed 16-hour contract; ban all zero hours contracts. 
The SSP has pioneered this policy, to cater for those who prefer part-time work, but to banish the curse of casual, insecure contracts. Legally oblige all employers to guarantee a minimum 16 hours-a-week, unless a worker requests lesser hours, accompanied by their union rep. 

Demand the Scottish government and local authorities set the pace by introducing this 16-hour guarantee for their 500,000 workers. 

A guaranteed warm, weather-tight, affordable home for all, built to the highest environmental standards in Europe.
End the scandal of 157,000 families in Scotland languishing on the waiting list. Build 100,000 new social sector homes for rent over the 4-year parliament. Create tens of thousands of well-paid construction jobs and apprenticeships. Combat fuel poverty and pollution by building and renovating to the best standards of insulation and green housing technology in Europe. 

Guarantee a living state pension, with voluntary retirement at 55 for men and women. 

Reverse the creeping abolition of the state pension - the worst as a share of average wages in Europe! Give workers a genuine lifestyle choice between working and retiring on a living pension - based on the national minimum wage - immediately at 60, rapidly moving to 55. This would give concrete content to the "review of pensions" in Corbyn's manifesto. 

Guarantee free public transport for all, through immediate, democratic public ownership.

End the crimes of train fares rising twice the rate of wage increases since 2010; reverse the spread of safety-threatening Driver Only Operations; chaos and cuts on the privatised buses; mounting pollution and spreading social isolation. 

The SSP campaigns for immediate public ownership of our railways - not the gradual, piecemeal, potentially chaotic return to the public sector "as [separate] franchises expire", as Jeremy Corbyn's For the Many manifesto pledges. And for investment in an integrated, fare-free public transport network.

A modern solution to pollution and poverty. 

Demand More, Far More

The significant victory on Employment Tribunal fees should embolden workers to demand more, far more. 

The appeal of Jeremy Corbyn's radical-sounding social and economic policies should encourage us to demand more, far more, than his very modest manifesto policies actually advocate. 

The potential power of organised unions - held back for decades by vicious laws, use of the weapon of fear by employers, and cowardly trade union leaderships - should now be unleashed to reverse the tide of attacks on our rights and livelihoods. 

Join the SSP in demanding a concerted, broad campaign - rooted in the unions and community campaigns - for a far-reaching Charter of Workers' Rights. 

Help to make Scotland a place that puts people before profit; the 5.3 million people before the ten billionaires who own the same £30billion as the entire annual Scottish government budget. 

£10 NOW - outlaw poverty pay!

Poverty scars the face of Scotland. Poverty pay is at the heart of it. And the only thing more ugly than the national scandal of a million Scots struggling to survive on pitiful incomes is the fact there's absolutely no excuse for it. 

We live in a fabulously rich country - officially the 14th richest economy on the planet. A nation with a super-abundance of energy resources; a net food exporter; a leading centre of life sciences, with several world class universities; one of the world's financial centres; home to many advanced industries - and the priceless asset of a skilled, educated working class.
Scotland now 'boasts' its first billionaire, but is shamed by 220,000 kids living in poverty, a thousand foodbanks issuing handouts to the desperately hungry, and one in three households shivering their way through another winter because of fuel poverty - in a nation that has the potential to become the Saudi Arabia of green energy production! 
The ugly twins of poverty and inequality are a national disgrace, and we need urgent action to banish them from the face of Scotland.

Poverty kills
On a global scale, a child dies of poverty every 3 seconds. That's a devastating indictment of the system of capitalist economy we live under, a system that knows everything about profit for the tiny elite and nothing about the needs of humanity. A system where 65 multi-billionaires possess more wealth than half the global population.
A bit closer to home, the capitalist system of markets and profit means the richest five families in Britain have more combined wealth than the poorest 12.4 million people in the UK!
In the case of Scotland, the richest ten fat-cats have grabbed £13billion between them, just short of half the entire annual budget of the Scottish government. 
We live in a brutally class-divided society.

Forms of poverty
There are several sources of poverty in Scotland, all of them easily solved by a government with the vision, courage and political will to carry through sweeping change to the ownership of wealth.
Pensioner poverty needs to be eliminated by a decent level of state pension, in answer to the crime of older people being unable to heat and eat, after a lifetimes' contribution to society.
Fuel poverty is not for lack of resources; it's because the Big Six energy giants that dominate domestic supplies are ripping the profit out of us, jacking up prices to feed their greed for profit. And the green energy sector is equally a source of obscene profit for big landowners granting us a corner of their landed estates for a few wind turbines - paid a fortune through 'green taxes' on our electricity bills - and multinational marine engineering companies. 

Public ownership of all forms of energy, turning our natural resources into a public service, is at the heart of a solution - alongside public ownership of the construction industry, investment in free home insulation and the building of 100,000 new public sector homes for rent in the lifetime of a Scottish parliament, to the highest environmental standards.
The Westminster dictatorship of and for the rich are crucifying people on benefits, with even worse to come after their announcement of another £25billion cuts over the next two years. We need a serious, resolute campaign of resistance to this butchery, demanding a welfare and benefits system that protects people in need, instead of demonising the poorest, as part of their divide-and-rule strategy against the working class.

Poverty pay the biggest cause
But underlying all these sources of poverty is the biggest of them all: poverty pay.
An absolute majority of those below the breadline live in working households. Far from being a route out of poverty, having a job nowadays is one of the chief sources of being poor!
The cold statistics cannot begin to convey the stress and strain of working to stay poor - in a fabulously rich country. Over one in five workers (22%) in Scotland earn less than the so-called Living Wage of £7.85 an hour. That figure rises to 25% of women, and rockets to 43% of us who work part-time, and an appalling 72% of workers aged 18-21.
The wage freeze in the public sector has meant zero pay increases for millions for several successive years. With rip-roaring real-life inflation on the daily essentials of food, fuel, rent and transport, this means an Ice Age of pay cuts. 

On average, wages have fallen by £50 a week for every worker since 2008, when the bankers brought the economy to the brink of collapse and were bailed out from the public purse to the tune of £1.3trillion. It's publicly-funded bonuses for the banking executives, pay cuts and job losses for the rest of us (including bank workers!).

Minimum wage pittance
Back in the mid-1990s those of us who later founded the SSP fought for the introduction of a statutory national minimum wage to banish poverty pay. We welcomed its introduction in 1999. But from day one, the Labour and subsequent Tory governments made sure the national minimum wage was at rock bottom level, and included an outrageous batch of exemptions and exclusions. In particular, the lower youth rates have blighted a generation of workers seen by employers as a source of even cheaper labour to boost their profit margins, bosses' bonuses and big shareholders' dividends.
Right now the levels of legal minimum wage are a scandalous route to exploitation: £6.50 at 21-years-old; £5.13 for 18-20-year-olds; £3.79 for workers aged 16-17; and modern slave labour on £2.73 for Modern Apprentices!

Mass armies of the low-paid
Instead of being the legal minimum, with higher rates for many workers negotiated by their trade unions in free collective bargaining, these basement level wages have increasingly become the norm.
The biggest concentrations of poverty pay are retail, hospitality and care services. So it's not just a case of small, backstreet sweatshops ripping profit out of super-exploited workers. Huge armies of low-paid workers are producing £billions in profit for multinational giants - who are aided and abetted in their exploits by the government's minimum wage legislation. 

For example, in the pre-Xmas spending spree, with the commercial frenzy of 'must have' advertising bombarding low-paid families, retail workers are pounded into doing extra shifts - part-timers on flat money with no overtime premiums - to feed the tills of a handful of giant firms that could well afford a decent living wage for all. For instance, Tesco's are driving through all manner of cuts to terms and conditions for their workers, whilst paying just above the minimum wage, but whinge about 'only' enjoying profits of around £1.4billion this year! 

Ban Zero Hours Contracts
One of several devices used to maximize profits and minimise wages is Zero Hours Contracts. A brutal system of being at the beck and call of your employer, unsure of what hours, if any, you get next week; a recipe for mayhem in daily life. They should be banned outright - not just amended or reformed as proposed by Labour in their weasel words about "ending exploitative Zero Hours Contracts". Workers need guaranteed contracted hours, part-time or full time, and a decent hourly rate of pay guaranteed, as negotiated by fully recognized trade unions.

Living Wage 
The current minimum wages of £6.50, £5.13, £3.79 and £2.73 are a criminal guarantee of poverty for workers. And although the much-trumpeted Living Wage of £7.85 is a very welcome advance on these paltry incomes for the hundreds of thousands scraping by on them, it is not only still inadequately low, but fatally flawed by one simple fact: the Living Wage is entirely voluntary and not legally enforceable.
It is laudable that the Scottish Living Wage Campaign has helped cajole three times as many employers into becoming Accredited Living Wage Employers during 2014. But to highlight the problem of it not being a legally enforced minimum, that means it has merely risen from 23 to 60 companies in Scotland paying the Living Wage. Not a single one of them is in retail, one of the two big centres of poverty pay. And some of the same outfits might pay the Living Wage to their direct employees, but rely on lower-paid contract workers from firms not paying the £7.85.

£10 now!
Since our formation in 1998, the SSP has campaigned for a legally enforced national minimum wage for all at 16, calculated on the formula of two-thirds median male earnings. In today's figures that is a minimum wage of about £10 an hour. That is also the figure unanimously agreed at the recent British Trades Union Congress.
Some might say it's unrealistic. But nothing is realistic unless you're prepared to fight for it! 

And it's extremely modest compared to the cost of living. It's modest compared to the fact that if even the (paltry) current minimum wage had kept pace with the rise in income for directors of the top 100 companies since 1999 it would now be £18.89 an hour!
But should it apply to workers and apprentices from 16 upwards? Yes! When did you last see special discounts on the price of clothing, food, footwear or rents for the 16-21 year olds?! Abolition of the lower youth rates is a key part of banishing super-exploitation. And of course it needs to be coupled to a crusade to unshackle the trade unions, by repealing all the anti-union laws, allowing free collective wage bargaining by workers' unions, so that additional skills, responsibilities, anti-social hours of work and experience can be rewarded by rates above the national minimum.

Subsidies to low-paying profiteers

What about small firms that say they couldn't afford to pay £10 an hour to the handful of staff they employ? We would argue for open public inspection of their accounts, to look at wages, bosses' bonuses, profit margins and conditions of work. If a small firm is not a backstreet death-trap that deserves to be shut down and their workers redeployed, then the government could subsidise genuine cases from taxation of the rich and big business to help them afford to pay a legal £10 minimum. 

Right now we have the opposite, where it is mostly big, profit-hungry companies who are being subsidized by taxpayers to exploit their workers with poverty pay, through the likes of Working Tax Credits. We should turn this situation on its head, force big companies to dip into their profits to guarantee a living wage of £10 at least, and help smaller, socially useful businesses flourish with decent-paid jobs.

SSP: the workers' party
None of the mainstream political parties are willing to confront the national crime of poverty pay. The Tories and LibDems are opposed to national guaranteed minimum wages on principle. Labour is trying to appease the working class who are deserting their New Tory agenda by promising an £8 an hour minimum - but try to hide the fact they only aim at this by 2020, meaning it would barely sustain the current, pathetic £6.50 rate when you account for inflation.
The SNP say they support the Living Wage, which is very welcome, but also very limited as it's entirely left to the whims and fancies of company bosses rather than enforceable by law. 

And the SNP have belatedly joined the call by the SSP for minimum wage levels to be devolved from Westminster to Holyrood - but in the SNP's case only so that its level "will rise by at least inflation". Based on the bogus official inflation measures of today, that implies a pathetic 13 pence an hour rise on the current 'adult' minumum wage of £6.50!

Act on TUC policy 

The SSP is determined to make this issue the centrepiece of Scottish politics in 2015. We are demanding £10 now - not in 2020 or some distant date beyond that. The fact the TUC has voted "to campaign for a £10 per hour minimum wage for all workers" - with not a single union delegate opposing it - adds powerful potential force behind this battle for a decent living minimum wage.
The SSP stands up for the working class. We are Scotland's working class party.

Join the SSP in the campaign for £10 now, to outlaw the crime of poverty pay and Zero Hours Contracts. We live in a fabulously rich nation, but one scarred by the twins of poverty and inequality. We need to organise and demand a massive redistribution of wealth. The guarantee of secure jobs with at least a £10 hourly rate is a measure that would transform the lives of millions currently swimming in a sea of poverty and insecurity.

DEMAND SCOTTISH £10 MINIMUM WAGE: demand the powers to transform our lives

                                                                    

"All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others", was the memorable satirical line in George Orwell's Animal Farm.
Well the pigs with the biggest snouts in the trough here and now in capitalist Britain would agree. As millions of people work to remain poor, we have a new obscenity on parade: the UK's best-paid boss, Simon Peckham of Melrose engineering investment company, last year 'earned' £31million! 

That means he grabbed 2,238 times as much as the annual wage of a worker on the so-called Living Wage of £7.65 an hour. Put another way, whereas it would take a worker a whole year on £7.65 an hour to earn £13,923, this chief executive only has to spend 49 minutes to get that much.
The mind boggles! And your blood should be boiling, your resolve to fight poverty pay hardened by such examples of the worst levels of inequality ever recorded.

A YEAR'S LIVING WAGE IN 49 MINUTES!
The directors of the top 100 companies in the UK only need spend one single day at work to earn a year's Living Wage; their incomes average £3.195m.
Most companies studiously conceal the facts about the incomes of their top dogs compared to those of the workers they hire to produce their profits. And no wonder! Just one example in retail tells the story they don't want told.
NEXT shops CEO Lord Wolfson last year grabbed a modest £4.6m for himself, which is 459 times as much as the average annual wage of workers in NEXT. They are paid a miserly £6.70 an hour - if they're 'adults'!
And 3 out of every 10 jobs in NEXT are 12 hours a week or less - one of the common causes of crucifying poverty in retail, where profit-crazed employers want workers at their beck and call, with very few guaranteed hours a week, but a reserve army of labour to work additional hours at busier times, without the overheads of holiday and sick pay for longer contracts. And of course many big companies go the whole hog and rely on Zero Hours Contracts, the ultimate in casualised, low-paid labour.

RECOVERY? WHAT RECOVERY?
We are told daily about the economic recovery. "What recovery?" is the universal reply of the army of workers who slave away without the reward of a share of the booming national wealth.
A clutch of charities published figures in March 2014 showing that a devastating 870,000 people in Scotland live below the poverty line. And although it was ancient news for some of us, their Report's most damning indictment of capitalist employers and capitalist politicians was the revelation that over half of those in poverty - 436,000 of us - are in jobs, working to stay poor!
80,000 kids in Scotland in 2014 suffer the hunger, disappointments, and stunted ambitions of growing up in poverty despite having one or more parent in work.
A more recent report confirmed that the root cause of this national scandal is the blindingly obvious: low hourly rates of pay.
372,000 workers in Scotland - 18 per cent of the national workforce - earn below the £7.65 Living Wage, which has been calculated as the bare minimum required for access to a decent life.
93 per cent of these workers are in the private sector: by far the biggest proportions are in retail and hospitality.

TORY CLASS WAR
Throughout the Referendum campaign we in the SSP warned of the horrendous consequences of remaining under the heel of Westminster Tory dictatorship for the working class majority population. We warned a No vote would usher in assaults on pay, benefits and public services on a scale unprecedented. 

But even we underestimated just how swiftly this revenge attack would be unleashed. Within a week of the No vote being achieved by a cocktail of lies, scaremongering and false promises for 'far more powers for Scotland', the Tories launched full-scale class war on workers and working class communities.
The obnoxious George Osborne declared war on benefits - including child benefits, working tax credits, income support and other in-work benefits - robbing an average of £480 a year off a million Scots, ten million across Britain. He further announced plans to rob people under 21 of Housing Benefit, and of all Job Seekers Allowance after six months unemployed.
In shameless contrast the same Cameron-Osborne Tory dictatorship slashed taxes on the rich, awarding the well-off at least £1,900 a year in tax reductions, and even more outrageously announced what Osborne boasts is "the largest reduction in the burden of Corporation Tax in our nation's history." 

CASH PILES STASHED AWAY
Corporation Tax is to slump to 20 per cent next year, the lowest in the G20 richest capitalist nations. That will mean £8billion less in big business taxes in 2016; £8bn less for vital services, job creation or - god forbid! - a decent minimum wage.
And it's not as if the big companies that hire the majority of workers - often on pitiful pay - are in need of a handout. Just the FTSE 100 companies alone have already stashed away a monstrous £53.3billion in what is politely termed 'cash piles'; wealth they refuse to invest in jobs, or modernization of their business, or improved wages. That's close to twice the annual budget of the entire Scottish government, salted away in the vaults of a mere 100 companies, waiting to be added to when they have to pay even less in Corporation Tax next year.

THE HUMAN TOLL
Reams of statistics fail to convey the human misery and insecurity caused by this ocean of poverty pay and rocketing inequality.
People in work are amongst those who have to swallow their pride and traipse to Foodbanks for a handout in this rich, food-exporting nation. People are literally starving whilst those at the top of the pile of wealth gorge themselves shamelessly, grabbing a year's Living Wage in a day, or in 49 minutes in the case of Simon Peckham.
We face another winter where many elderly people will suffer a cruel, avoidable death through hypothermia because they can't afford to eat and heat their homes. Because their pensions are the worst in Europe compared to average wages, whereas the chief executives of the supermarkets and the Big Six energy companies rake in utterly immoral levels of profit and personal perks.

POWERS TO TRANSFORM OUR LIVES
Others have reported the crime of poverty amidst plenty: the point however is to challenge it, fight to banish the root causes, fight fire with fire in the face of the Tories' class warfare.
For most of this year, the SSP campaigned on the streets of the west of Scotland with the slogan "Vote YES for a decent living minimum wage", arguing that independence would open the door to organise and demand such a central anti-poverty measure. We didn't get independence - yet! So now we need to link the battle to banish rock-bottom wages with the debate over what powers are to be granted to the Scottish parliament.
The Smith Commission on this issue speaks of "financial powers". The trade union movement, including the STUC, should join the SSP in demanding that Holyrood must have the powers to set the level of guaranteed minimum wage in Scotland; that's a key financial issue!

LIVING MINIMUM WAGE OF £10
There's a lot of confusion around terms like Minimum Wage and Living Wage. 

The National Minimum Wage is legally enforceable by government legislation - and the vigilance of the trade union movement, to outlaw wage-dodging cowboy employers. But it is set at a pathetic level: £6.50 an hour for over-21s, and the slave-wage £2.71 for Modern Apprentices. It is a recipe for poverty - and brazen profiteering by employers, who are more than happy to let taxpayers subsidise their low pay through Working Tax Credit.
As a reminder of the class-divided society we need to change, if the national minimum wage had kept pace with company chief executives' pay rises since it was introduced in 1999, it would now not be a miserly £6.50, but £18.89 an hour!

CAPITALISTS DON'T VOLUNTEER LIVING WAGES!

The Living Wage is the product of research and laudable campaigning by the Living Wage Foundation, Poverty Alliance and others. It is calculated as the bare minimum required for a basic standard of decent life, currently set at £7.65 an hour.
But it has two fundamental flaws: it is still far too low to match the mounting cost of living, and it is entirely voluntary, relying on the whims and fancies of employers. Employers are under no obligation to pay it; they can volunteer to do so and win 'Living Wage Accreditation' from the SNP government-funded Poverty Alliance/Living Wage campaign. But to highlight the problem, a mere 23 companies in Scotland have signed up so far!

What is needed is a legally enforced national minimum wage, set at a level to guarantee a decent life. A decent, living minimum wage. Which is why since 1998 the SSP has fought for such a minimum to be set at two-thirds male median earnings - about £10 an hour in today's figures. And that £10 an hour was agreed as the national minimum wage demanded by the recent TUC congress in Liverpool - unanimously!

POWERS TO TRANSFORM OUR LIVES
The recent STUC march to 'challenge poverty' needs to be urgently built upon with a systematic campaign in workplaces and on the streets demanding the powers to implement a £10 Scottish minimum wage - for all at 16, with abolition of the lower youth rates, and equal pay for women. Further rallies, demos, pickets of low-paying companies and support for workers who strike for better pay needs to accompany the demands on the Smith Commission.

And alongside that central demand we need a drive for other powers and policies to tackle poverty in 21st century Scotland. Powers to transform our lives. The power to implement a living level of state pension in Scotland, linked to a £10 minimum wage. Full powers over welfare and benefits to reverse the savage assault on the sick, disabled and unemployed by the millionaires' Westminster bootboys. 

SCRAP ANTI-UNION LAWS

And a critical issue is repeal of the battery of anti-trade union laws implemented by Thatcher, retained by 13 years of Labour governments, and made even worse by the current Coalition. Handcuffing workers and their unions was a central strategy in the fundamental redistribution of wealth and power to the rich and big business by successive Tory and Labour regimes. As recent academic reports confirm, inequality in Britain was at its lowest, its least obscene, in the years when 58 per cent of workers were in trade unions and 82 per cent of wages were covered by collective bargaining. Now, by 2012, only 26 per cent are in unions, and a mere 23 per cent of wages are determined by collective bargaining, by the combined efforts of workers banded together through their unions. And the gap between the highest and lowest incomes is the greatest it's ever been since records began.

DON'T PLEAD - ORGANISE!
The link between poverty and the most repressive anti-union laws in the whole of Europe is glaringly obvious. And the position needs to be reversed, if we are serious about banishing the poverty and inequality that scars the face of Scotland.
Likewise, the leaders of the 630,000-member trade unions in Scotland need to face up to a simple truth: begging and cajoling employers for a decent wage doesn't work! There's no excuse for poverty pay, or poverty pensions, or skinflint benefits. There's oceans of wealth surrounding us - but it's in the hands of 'the 1%'.
So those who fought for independence, plus those who didn't, should demand the power to tax the richest minority and big business by Holyrood, to fund decent pay, benefits, pensions and public services.

TAKE SIDES!
The Tories have launched ruthless class war on the rest of us in defense of the rich. That's in their political DNA, so no surprise there.
Labour has joined them at the hip in pursuit of profit for the millionaires and poverty for the millions. It's time the trade union leaders woke up to that reality too, and stopped funding a party that declared their own war on workers with plans for cuts of £27billion by 2017.
And those who have rushed off to join the SNP should pause and ponder some fundamentals: you can't appease the profit-hunger of the multinational corporations - including with pledges of even far lower levels of Corporation Tax than the Tories' 20 per cent - and at the same time hope to banish the crushing poverty of nearly a million Scots. When the rich and their political puppets unleash class warfare, you can't stand in the middle, or take both sides.
The SSP has no hesitation in taking sides with workers, their families, people on benefits and pensions, the millions in open conflict with those in charge of the massive wealth created by nature and generations of working people. Join us in a crusade against poverty and inequality, here and now, as part of the struggle towards an independent socialist Scotland.