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

Today is Fat Cat Wednesday.

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

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

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

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

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

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

CASES OF CAPITALIST GREED

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

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

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

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

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

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

FOR A LEGAL MAXIMUM INCOME

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

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

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

[Watch the short video BELOW]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

VIDEO ON THE CASE FOR A LEGAL MAXIMUM INCOME:

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

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


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


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


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

THE CURSE OF POVERTY PAY 

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

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

Five million workers earn below £9.30 an hour. 

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

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

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



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



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

POVERTY ENDANGERS LIVES 

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


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

CARNAGE FOR HOSPITALITY WORKERS 

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


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

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

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

NHS AND RETAIL STAFF CURSED BY LOW PAY 

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

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


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



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

Cleansing workers have had to stage sit-ins for safety

NEW GOVERNMENT MINIMUM WAGES 

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



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

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



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

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

 

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

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

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

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

DEMAND FOR £10 LAGS BEHIND WORKERS' NEEDS 

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

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

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

TWO-THIRDS MALE MEDIAN EARNINGS 

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

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

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

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

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

WAGES MUST RISE WITH INFLATION 

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



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


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

SSP DEMANDS £12 MINIMUM NOW! 

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

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

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

IT'S EASILY AFFORDABLE 

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


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

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

WAGES AND PROFITS 

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


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

LET THE RICH SCREAM THEIR OPPOSITION!

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



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


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


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



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

TRANSFORM MILLIONS OF WORKERS' LIVES 

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

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



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

NO GOING BACK AFTER COVID-19 CRISIS 

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

Rampant Job Insecurity

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tories Rob our Language!

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

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

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

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

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

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

Union and Political Action

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

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

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

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

Two-thirds Median Male Earnings

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

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

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

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

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

Join Our Struggle!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

HELP ELECT A SOCIALIST TO THE USDAW NEC

I know this isn't in keeping with the blogs I normally write, but in case some of you are either members of an USDAW union branch in Scotland - or you know somebody who is - I'm posting this letter appealing for branch nominations for the Usdaw National Executive Council elections.

Several Usdaw activists asked me to stand for one of the two positions on the NEC elected by Usdaw's 45,000 members. I eventually made my mind up and agreed to be a candidate!

I want to bring decades of experience as a trade union activist, campaigner and socialist to the deliberations of my union's NEC. Hopefully, the letter briefly explains some of my priority policies and aims.

Retail and related jobs are polluted by poverty pay and job insecurity.

I want to help push our union into a far more urgent approach to actively implementing policies agreed at its own conferences (ADMs - Annual Delegate Meetings), on issues like an IMMEDIATE £10 minimum wage... before inflation makes this a redundant demand!

I want to pursue policies like a guaranteed minimum 16-hour contract for all workers who want it, instead of the abomination of zero hours contracts.

And I want to combine with others to make our union more transparently democratic, with far greater membership control.

I have energetically built up the union membership during my 10 years in Usdaw, and spoken out for what I believe in at conferences of the union - both Scottish and UK-wide.

Please consider what you can do to help me get nominations at Usdaw branches.
Nominations started last week, and the deadline for receipt of all branch nominations at the Usdaw HQ is 13th November. Get in touch if your Usdaw branch needs more of my details for the nomination procedures.

Apologies to those NOT in Usdaw who read this - but have a think if you know anyone in the union who you can share this with, and encourage them to support a socialist candidate for the Usdaw NEC.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Starvation Wages 

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

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

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

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

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

Them and Us 

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

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

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

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

"I'll Tell You What It's All About!" 

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

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

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

From Acorns to Mighty Oaks 

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

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

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

£10 Now! 

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

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

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

Defend the Strikers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

COLLEGE SUPPORT STAFF STRIKE - AS WORKERS' PAY PLUMMETS

As 2,500 Further Education support staff take their first ever national strike action for fair pay, figures in a recent report commissioned by their own union, UNISON, show that workers across Scotland's public sector have suffered a real pay cut of 10% since 2009. And in the private sector it's been even worse: a 13% fall in real wages.

These UNISON members have resorted to strike action because at meetings of the newly-established national negotiating forum for all 20 FE colleges - itself the product of the FE lecturers' victorious strike earlier this year for national pay parity - college bosses have failed to shift towards fair pay. 

Whilst conceding £450 to lecturers after strike action in March, college bosses on salaries close to or exceeding that of the First Minister have only offered £230 to support staff - who include admin, admissions, technicians, cleaning and catering staff.

'Our Demands are Simple and Fair'
As Chris Greenshields, chair of UNISON's FE sector committee explained:
"Our demand is simple and fair. Pay college support staff the same flat rate rise of £450 that you gave to our teaching colleagues.
"We work for the same colleges, help deliver the same courses, support the same students and deserve the same cost of living increase."


These low-paid workers deserve widespread support as they struggle to pay the bills.
And they're part of an army of workers drowning in a sea of poverty pay. The recent study commissioned by their own union, UNISON, proved that if wages in Scotland had even stood still, rather than fall by an average 12% across all sectors since 2009, an additional £11.6billion would have poured into the Scottish economy.
And £3.6billion extra would have come into government revenues, plus a saving of £240million made on in-work benefits.

Workers' Pay Plummets - Bosses' Salaries Skyrocket 

The Scottish government needs to properly fund Further Education, a sector jam-packed with working class people seeking to improve their lives and livelihoods.
The one area of savings that could be afforded is not real-time wage cuts to ordinary workers, but a cap on the salaries of college principals.
Whilst college support staff are driven to strike for a miserly £450 lump sum, bosses last year earned from a 'rock bottom' £68,611 at West Highland college, to a sky-rocketing £153,000 at City of Glasgow college. It's outrageous that these bosses are often on ten times the wage of the lower-paid college staff. Not for them the 12% cut in real wages suffered by Scotland's workers since 2009!

SSP Demands £10 Minimum Now! 
The SSP stands in full solidarity with these college staff - and all low-paid workers. And our ongoing campaign in the unions and on the streets for an immediate, legally enforced living minimum wage of £10 an hour for all at 16, with equal pay for women, would transform the lives of hundreds of thousands. Not to mention its advantages to the wider economy, as UNISON's research helps demonstrate. 

CLOSE THE OBSCENE GAP: for a £10 minimum and a maximum wage

The gaping chasm between the incomes of millions of workers and handfuls of millionaire company chief executives is opening up ever wider, like the blades of a giant pair of scissors.

The case I expounded in my book, Break the Chains, for an immediate national minimum wage of £10-an-hour for all workers - regardless of age - and a maximum wage initially based on an overly generous 10:1 differential with the minimum (i.e. £100-an-hour maximum) screams out from every page of every recent report on workers' wages and bosses' incomes. 

The top dogs of the FTSE 100 biggest companies have just had yet another 10% pay rise - and that's before they rake in untold bonuses, shares portfolios, and bottomless pension pots. Since the 2010 recession, these capitalist overlords have had their salaries increase by a third! They now wallow like pigs in the proverbial, on average incomes of £5.5million!

Back on Planet Earth!

Meantime in the same country, but on a different planet, UK workers' wages have plunged by 10.4% in the same five years since the 2010 recession. As the Bank of England expressed it, most families have suffered "a lost decade of income". Mass unemployment has been replaced by mass poverty pay.

Again, as I spelt out in Break the Chains:

"Poverty pay impoverishes not only its direct victims - the growing horde of workers denied access to society on a par with their neighbours and contemporaries - but also impoverishes the whole of society. The lack of spending power that low wages curses affected families with, in turn depresses the wider economy."

That's one of the reasons even the Tories - those privileged mouthpieces for the moneyed class of parasites - felt obliged to superficially increase wages in April, through their obscenely mis-named £7.20 National Living Wage. 

Of course they also sought to divide workers, by excluding the under-25s, who are increasingly hired in preference to 'older', more expensive workers in the likes of retail and hospitality. 

And the other factor that drove the obnoxious George Osborne to do this was the fear of his class at a pay revolt, as workers become increasingly infuriated at the obscene contrast between their grinding poverty and capitalist chiefs' shameless opulence. 

Capitalism has no Solutions 

Poverty pay wrecks lives. It wrecks the economy. It shreds social solidarity. And its accompanying inequality demotivates millions of workers who observe company bosses on 183 times as much as 'their' workers' average wage. 

But that's where the lunacy of capitalism prevents a solution that would keep the rich in the wealth they're accustomed to, whilst paying the wealth-creating working class decent wages that boosts spending power. 

It's alright for Theresa May - or Cameron before her - to spout platitudes about "the irrational, unhealthy and growing gap", but what will they do about it? They promised to 'aim' at the National Living Wage (only for those past their 25th) reaching £9 by 2020. That's pathetic, totally inadequate here and now, let alone four years hence. But it's also provoked uproar amongst business sections, who scream blue murder about "having to make difficult choices". 

Employers in hospitality, the care sector and nurseries recently joined with the Federation of Small Businesses, Association of Convenience Stores and National Farmers Union in a letter to the new Tory Business Minister demanding he abandon such giddy extravagance as £9-an-hour for the over-25s in 2020.

Profit versus Pay

So here's the rub: it's to the advantage of the capitalist class as a whole to have reasonably paid workers who can therefore spend more and thereby boost overall profits for the ruling capitalist class. But in the jungle warfare of capitalism as a system, with each profiteering outfit vying with its competitors, every penny pay increase is a penny lost to their individual company profits. 

As I put it in the book: 

"David Cameron telling a room of capitalist bosses that 'Britain needs a pay rise' is like Dracula appealing to a conference of vampires for volunteers to donate blood. These bloodsuckers have moved mountains for the past 30-40 years to slash the real wages of workers, boosting their profits by driving down the share of wealth that goes to wages."

Organise For £10 Now and a Maximum Wage 

We clearly can't rely on the benevolence - nor even the naked self-interest - of either the capitalist employers or their political representatives to tackle poverty pay nor the opening scissors of inequality. That requires an entirely different approach: workers becoming conscious of how they're exploited by this system, confident of their own power to challenge that set-up when organised.

And a struggle for the likes of a guaranteed minimum wage of £10 now, in 2016 - alongside a legally enforced £100-an-hour maximum income - as the first, modest steps towards the eradication of poverty, inequality and all the social ills they create.  

BREAK THE CHAINS: a book is born!

Behold - a book is born!

My absence from this blog in recent weeks was due to being 'chained' to the computer finishing off this book.
With 276 pages, it's a bargain Christmas present for yourself, family or friends!
Cover price is £7.99 (plus £2 packaging & postage if you can't arrange face-to-face collection) - or £9.99 solidarity price (plus £2 p&p)... which is only right for those who can afford it, as workers' solidarity to win back a greater share of the wealth we produce - and ultimately win power for the working class majority in a socialist democracy - are the central themes.

To get a copy or copies, look out for the official launches next week,
OR contact me through this blog,
OR send a cheque, payable to 'Scottish Socialist Party' - for either £9.99 or £11.99 - or any amount above that!! - to:
Scottish Socialist Party, Suite 370, Central Chambers, 93 Hope St, Glasgow G2 6LD.

Some trade union branches are already ordering multiple copies, in the belief it will contribute to their campaigns and membership's awareness of key issues.

I hope you get it, read and digest it, discuss it. I hope it will make you feel all the more motivated and informed in the struggle against poverty, inequality, exploitation - and the capitalist system that spawns them - and join the battle for socialist democracy.
Enjoy!

POVERTY PAY SCANDAL WORSENS

New figures on low pay reinforce the importance of the campaign by the SSP for an immediate £10-an-hour minimum wage. And the urgency of pounding union leaderships into taking action in pursuit of this policy, which was agreed unanimously at the 2014 TUC conference.

A new publiciation by KPMG has revealed that 450,000 workers in Scotland - one in every five workers - earn below the so-called Living Wage, which was £7.85 at the time of their research, but has been uprated this week to £8.25-an-hour. And far from representing progress, this figure is a leap of another 27,000 workers in Scotland working for less than the Living Wage Foundation's (far too modest) hourly rate compared with last year.

Across the UK a shocking 5.84 million workers suffer such poverty pay. That includes 3.21 million in part-time jobs, a category which is three times as likely to be on low pay as those working full-time.

A disgraceful 90% of bar staff, 85% of waiters and waitresses, and 80% of kitchen and catering staff are condemned to work for this pittance. And the biggest single section of workers affected - 920,000 of us - are in retail and sales.

SICK TORY JOKES 

All the guff about the Tories promising a 'National Living Wage' is designed to confuse the facts, not to eradicate poverty pay. 

The idea of a voluntary 'Living Wage' - now £8.25-an-hour - is noble, but ignored by the vast majority of employers... and in any case still far too low to merit the title 'Living Wage', especially in the context of the Tory slaughter of Working Tax and Child Tax Credits.

The idea that the Tories' £7.20 is a 'national living wage' is a sick joke - made sicker still by excluding workers aged under-25.

£10 NOW!

The SSP is fighting for a national minimum wage, legally enforced, of £10, for all aged 16 or over. Here and now, not in 2020 or some other distant date. 

That's the level required to have a decent, if modest, standard of living. It's the level needed to remove workers from reliance on tax-funded top-ups like Tax Credits. And it's the hourly rate the TUC agreed to campaign for over a year ago.

I'd appeal to anyone reading this to join us in fighting for this living minimum wage, on the streets, through your union, in your workplace. Help banish poverty pay in this rich country.