A WARNING NOTE TOTHE TORIES

SUBMISSION ON 2015 TRADE UNION BILL & ASSOCIATED CONSULTATIONS 

ON BEHALF OF THE SCOTTISH SOCIALIST PARTY 

by Richie Venton, SSP national trade union organiser 

We submit these comments on the Trade Union Bill and associated 'consultations' in the full knowledge that the Tory regime has little or no intention of heeding the submissions of the trade union movement and its political allies, in their pursuit of crushing the power and influence of working people. 

These pretend-consultations are an exercise in deceit; camouflage for a government with no popular majority mandate to impose the most repressive anti-worker legislation for several decades, certainly since the reviled days of Margaret Thatcher, perhaps even since the notorious 1901 Taff Vale Act. 

Taken separately and together, the measures in the Bill - and supplementary legislation being proposed without having to pass primary legislation - should exclude the UK from being signatories to the ILO, European Human Rights and other declarations of democracy.

As the Cameron government is fully aware - and doubtless proud of - the existing tranche of anti-union laws initiated by their 1980s predecessors, already make the UK the most repressive, in terms of workplace rights, of any western state. Now you threaten to add to the levels of dictatorship by capital suffered by the working people who create society's wealth and frontline services.

The proposed threshold of a 50% turnout in any union ballot is an effrontery to democracy, coming from a Business Secretary who only won 38% of the vote in his seat; a parliament with 331 MPs elected by a minority.

The further high hurdle of 40% of all eligible voters in what has now been redefined as "important public services" - plus workers who are "ancillary" to them - flies in the face of the ILO rulings that "only the votes cast should count".  

The two hurdles combined are especially offensive when, if applied to the recent Westminster elections, would have barred 270 Tory MPs and 50% of the Tory Cabinet from office.

The only countries who apply such multiple obstacles to a simple, democratic vote by majority in the unions are Bulgaria and Romania. Are those now the models to be emulated?   

BALLOT RIGGERS' CHARTER

Instead of throwing up such outrageous obstacles to democratic decision-making, laws should be drafted to facilitate workplace union meetings - during working hours - followed by votes, and safe, secure methods of online voting. Maximizing participation by allowing the unions to meet, debate and function would be true progress. The Trade Union Bill is its mirror opposite. It's a charter for ballot rigging.

Stipulations for ballot forms giving "reasonably clear details of the matters in issue in the trade dispute"; "the types of industrial action"; and "the periods within which action is expected" are all designed to earn fortunes for company lawyers who will crawl all over the ballot process to subvert union members' decisions; to clog up the courts with challenges to majority votes; and to give employers an even greater monopoly of power, by giving them time to prepare counter-measures to undermine the impact of workers exercising their human, democratic right to withhold their labour.

Having to give not just 7, but now 14 days' notice of action likewise hands employers the power to neuter any actions by employees, even when they've overcome the outrageous thresholds imposed on them.

In that context, the proposals to repeal the ban on use of Agency workers as replacement labour during industrial action are particularly pernicious. This ban has been in operation since 1973 - including right throughout the Thatcher days! 

It is designed to dragoon some of the most vulnerable workers - those whose numbers have ballooned during the Coalition and now Tory governments - and put a legal gun to their head with the 'choice' of 'scab or be sacked'. All to undermine wages and conditions, and add to the mass precariousness of work in 'modern' Britain.

CRIMINALIZING PEOPLE OF PRINCIPLE 

Tory government proposals on picketing are measures a police state wouldn't be ashamed of. They aim to make criminals of working people with the courage of their convictions and a readiness to defend their communities and work colleagues. 

Your 'Consultation on Intimidation of Non-Striking Workers' is a grotesque exercise in spin and loaded language. The Carr Inquiry was set up in 2014 to dredge up any evidence of picket line intimidation to justify such criminalization. It failed; no evidence was found!

Now the conversion of Codes of Conduct into criminal law on limits of six to a picket line, plus insistence on Picket Supervisers with ID, letters to give the police "or any other person who reasonably asks", and similar heavy-handed regulations have nothing to do with law, order or social justice, everything to do with trampling on civil and human rights. 

Bogus consultation on a new criminal offense of "intimidation on picket lines", and ludicrous demands for details of what loudspeakers, banners or props are to be used on future protests, are equally dangerous attacks on democracy. 

And to cap it all, the Orwellian demand for 14 days' notice of use of social media and "what blogs and websites will set out", are all too similar to the internationally condemned repressive measures of the likes of regimes in China, Russia or Middle East autocracies.

New draconian powers for the Trade Union Certification Officer to interfere in the internal affairs and decisions of unions, including the power to order seizure of union documents and membership lists, and interrogate union officers, are police measures that not even Thatcher dared to try. And with the added sick joke of this dictatorial exercise being funded from special levies on... the unions!

Any state claiming to be modern, or democratic, should have the right to be in a union, and the right of that union to freely function on behalf of its members, inscribed in a written constitution. The attacks on union facility time and other functioning, including the checkoff system of collecting union subs, are anathema to democracy. 

DEVOLVE TO DISSOLVE!

The SSP is the socialist contingent of Scotland's trade union movement. We have a vision of a democracy that is real and concrete, with fully functioning, free trade unions; full recognition and negotiating rights for unions in any workplace, regardless of size, where workers join unions; restoration of collective bargaining across the board; the constitutional right to strike after a simple majority vote at union meetings (supplemented by secure online voting measures); the right to show solidarity with fellow workers; the right to strike against political measures that affect workers' lives; freedom of speech without victimization; the right to peaceful protest and picketing; and a whole package of measures to introduce workplace democracy instead of the rule of fear encouraged by this and previous anti-working class governments.

The SSP unashamedly calls not only for outright opposition to your Trade Union Bill and associated regulations, but for the repeal of all existing anti-union laws.

To that end we will continue to demand devolution of employment legislation - as well as the minimum wage - to the Scottish parliament. That would be a democratic advance on parliamentary dictatorship over Scotland by a Tory government that only won the support of 10% of the Scottish registered electorate.

A WARNING NOTE

We have no belief that a Tory party and Tory MPs with absolutely no understanding of the daily lives and struggles to survive endured by millions of people have any ability or intention of listening to pleas for mercy.

So this submission is in part more of a public notice that we will do all in our powers as trade unionists and community activists to obstruct, defy and defeat any of the vicious, repressive measures proposed by the Trade Union Bill and its subsidiary regulations.

The government has no mandate. There is not a shred of evidence that any of these laws are necessary. The past 30 years of brutal repression of workers' rights in Britain have been instrumental in creating one shocking fact: GDP has doubled in the past 30 years, and the number of people living below the breadline in that same time-span has likewise doubled.

Just as the arrogance of Tory mis-rule stirred up the mass politicization of the Scottish people during and since the Referendum, so too we are confident your attacks on the trade union movement and working people will trigger resistance that will leave the architects of these Tory attacks to rue the day they tried to wipe out workers' rights.

KILL THE BILL: stop Tory wipe-out of workers' rights!

Even before the election of the Tories - by a mere 24% of registered UK voters - Britain boasted the reprehensible record of having some of the most repressive anti-worker, anti-union laws in the western world. Now David Cameron and his Business Secretary, Sajid Javid, have declared a war on workers' rights that exceeds even the worst assaults the hated Maggie Thatcher dared impose.

Their Trade Union Bill - and three accompanying so-called 'consultations' designed to add an additional dose of repression to existing laws without having to pass primary legislation - are potentially the biggest threat to rights at work in at least 50 years, and possibly since the infamous Taff Vale Act of 1901.

The latter came about in the wake of powerful collective action by railway workers, but was aimed at crushing the power of all unions to function, by making them liable for any loss of profits caused by a strike. It triggered a wave of strikes and the formation of what became the Labour Party, to give workers a political arm to fight with. Waves of united action won repeal of the Taff Vale Act in 1906.

THATCHER'S ACTS - KEPT BY LABOUR

Fast forward to the 1980s, where Thatcher's Tory regime imposed six major anti-union Acts. They were a coldly calculated reaction to the growth of workers' militancy in the 1970s and early 1980s, when millions took collective action to defend themselves and their communities from a concerted onslaught by successive governments seeking to restore the profit margins of the capitalist minority.

Thatcher's laws - which are intact to this day, left undisturbed by the 13 years of Labour in government - throw up multiple obstacles to the functioning of unions as a defense force for workers.

They insist on secret postal ballots (with full media interference on behalf of the employers) prior to any industrial action, rather than the fulsome debate of workers mass meetings and a vote on the spot. They incorporate the legal requirement to give employers at least 7 days notice of a ballot and another 7 days notice of any industrial action arising from a ballot.

They tightly restrict the definition of a trade dispute, banning 'secondary' solidarity strikes or any deemed 'political', such as against privatization.

They include multiple legal hurdles on the wording and conduct of industrial action ballots, which employers' lawyers have crawled all over for years, winning numerous injunctions in the Courts to outlaw democratically agreed strikes.

They make unions prey to seizure of their funds and assets, which has made many union leaders quivering wrecks in the face of demands by members to take action when it's the only means of self-defense.

UNION WEAKNESS INVITES TORY AGGRESSION

But now we witness the ultimate paradox; the terrible consequences for workers of the failure of the majority of union leaderships to resist and defy this legal straitjacket for decades. The subsequent weakening of the trade union movement means the state and employers feel far less need to accommodate the unions than if they'd put up a concerted fight. The TUC and individual unions' readiness to embrace 'social partnership' with the employers, instead of independently standing up for workers' rights and distinctive class interests, has reduced the employers' need for social partnership!

They instead feel confident in resorting to brutal, undisguised class warfare. Not because there's been a massive wave of strikes, as the Tories try to tell the more gullible population in their 'justifications' for their new Trade Union Bill; last year saw 788,000 days of strike action across the whole of the UK, which was a rise compared to recent years, but on a puny scale compared with the 11.9 million strike days in the 1980s.
No, this new onslaught is born of a recognition that the unions - with 6.5 million members in Britain, 630,000 in Scotland alone - still represents a powerful foe as the Tories plunge the knife into benefits, jobs, services and pay...provided union leaders stop pussy-footing around with empty rhetoric and apply themselves to a coordinated plan of action to halt austerity.

So the Tory Trade Union Bill is not the result of some public clamour for action against already-existing strikes and protests by organized workers, but rather a savage attempt to cut off that path to working class people who are increasingly furious at the poverty and inequality we face.

BALLOT RIGGING

The measures included in their Bill and accompanying 'consultations' are a full-frontal assault on the human and democratic rights of working class people, and indeed in breach of various European Court of Human Rights articles - which is a core reason the Tories aim to scrap the Human Rights Act of 1998, and seek to negotiate Britain's exclusion from many European legal directives.

In flagrant breach of ECHR rulings that "only the votes cast should count", the Tory Bill insists on a threshold of at least 50% of all who are eligible to vote in any union ballot for action. So those abstaining are counted as a vote against the action.

In a move that goes even further in its attacks on democracy than even those mentioned in the Tory manifesto or subsequent Queen's Speech, they insist on another hurdle of 40% of all those eligible having to vote for the action in the case of what is now dubbed "important public services". This adds to their original list of "essential public services", so it now includes workers in health, transport, education (of all those aged up to 17), fire services, border security and nuclear decommissioning and waste disposal. A pernicious added clause includes workers who are ancillary to such "important public services".

So for the millions thus affected, it's not enough to get a majority of the votes cast, but it must also be at least 40% of all the members eligible to vote, regardless of whether many of them abstained.

This ballot rigging is from a Business Secretary elected by only 38% of his local electorate; in a parliament with 331 MPs elected without a majority; by a Cabinet whose number would be cut by half, and the number of Tory MPs would drop by 270, if they'd had to win the 50% and 40% votes they now want to impose on workers and their unions.

The only other countries with similar outrageous barriers in ballots on the right to strike are Bulgaria and Romania - states not frequently quoted as a model for progress by the Tories!

LEGAL MINEFIELD & ARMY OF STRIKE-BREAKERS

But those outrageous 'high hurdles' are just the start of the effrontery to the free functioning of unions in the Bill.

Ballot forms will have to give "reasonably clear details of the matters in issue in the trade dispute" (so bosses' lawyers can challenge whether they are 'reasonably clear'); "the types of industrial action" when it's not a strike (again, a recipe for legal challenges compared with the current 'action short of strike action'); and "the period or periods within which action is expected to take place" (so employers can plan to undermine its effectiveness, and legally challenge it if dates change because the situation demands tactical changes - and in any case, how in hell are unions expected to know the exact dates of action well over a month beforehand?).
Instead of giving 7 days' notice to employers, 14 days' notice will now be required; again, neutering the impact by giving bosses ample time to plan counter-measures. And among the latter options will be the hiring of Agency workers to do strikers' jobs, as the Tories plan to scrap the ban on that which has been in place since 1973 - including right through Thatcher's years!

So they are arming employers with a legal minefield to stop action, and an army of vulnerable Agency workers issued the choice of 'scab or be sacked'.

ORWELLIAN POLICE REGIME

If, despite all this, a strike goes ahead, new laws on picketing aim to criminalize workers with the courage to fight back. The current Code of Conduct on picketing that limits it to six will become a law, so any more than that would be committing a criminal offense. So the more popular a strike, and the bigger the show of support on a picket line, the larger the number of workers to be branded criminals!
Unions are to be legally obliged to have a Picket Superviser, named to the police, with a badge or other ID, always either on or near the picket line, and in possession of a letter to produce to the police "or any other person who reasonably asks". An outrageous intrusion on the privacy and civil rights of union activists, and a trampling on the autonomy of unions.

Unions will have to inform the government of pickets and protests in advance, and "whether there will be loudspeakers, props, banners, etc"!

And contrary to the loaded language of the Tories' 'Consultation on Intimidation of Non-Striking Workers', these police-measures are not aimed at some rash of threats by pickets in the past. In fact, they set up the 2014 Carr Inquiry to try and find some evidence of this, to justify themselves, but none was found!

It's purely to intimidate workers into not exercising the right to withdraw their labour - a right that should be enshrined in any democracy's constitution. On top of that, they are 'consulting' on a new criminal offense of 'intimidation on picket lines'.

In a further Orwellian outrage, unions will have to give 14 days' notice of intent to use social media during industrial action, and "what blogs and websites will set out", or face fines.

Local authorities are expected to use Community Protection Notices against protesters - a measure aimed at successful pressure campaigns in support of workers in struggle.

INTERFERENCE IN UNION AFFAIRS

A whole raft of other measures likewise not only seek to effectively abolish the right to strike, but are a gross invasion of the internal democracy of unions, and of union reps ability to actually represent members at work.
Public sector employers will be forced to account in minute detail for every hour of union facility time granted to the elected union reps, every penny in wages paid to them, and the government will accrue the power to overrule agreements between such employers and unions, with the power to stop all facility time for union reps. And this will not only apply to shop stewards/reps, but also Learning Reps and Health & Safety reps.
The trade union Certification Officer is to be granted vast new powers to interfere in union affairs - even when not a single member has complained or demanded intervention. These include membership registers; union elections; ballots on mergers; political funds and rules; power to demand handover of union documents; and to question union staff and officers. All on pain of a £20,000 fine for failure to fully comply. All the entire policing exercise on behalf of the state is to be funded by a special levy on the unions!

CATACLYSMIC ATTACKS REQUIRE DEFIANT ACTION

This battery of new measures is a cataclysmic attack on the right to be in a union that is in any way effective as a collective defense of workers' rights and conditions; the right to strike; the right to free speech and freedom of association.

Those union and Labour leaders who spent two years telling workers to vote against Scottish independence and wait for 'justice with Labour' have a lot to answer for. But waiting for independence is not an option either, given the scale of wipeout of workers' rights we face here and now.

Urgent, immediate action in confrontation with the Tories, combined with a clear vision of an alternative future, is the order of the day.

The Tories' bogus 'consultation' ends in early September, followed by a second reading of the Trade Union Bill.

The TUC has promised a day of action when that debate in Westminster happens, and a demo at the Tory party conference on 4 October.

Each trade union, the STUC and TUC need to act with utmost urgency, calling meetings and forums of trade unionists to arm them with the facts, motivate them into taking action with a harsh warning of what is threatened.

They should call a genuine day of action as an opening salvo, with strikes and rallies in every region or city, appealing not only to those workers most immediately in the firing line - those in 'important public services' - but all trade union members, and indeed non-unionized workers, such as Agency staff, who face the horrendous choice of being ordered to cross picket lines to undermine fellow-workers' jobs and conditions, or lose their own job.

DEFY ANTI-UNION LAWS!

Such strikes would often be in defiance of existing anti-union laws, let alone the new additional repressive measures being grafted onto them; so be it! Unless union leaderships have the courage to take such action, the Tories will continue to feel emboldened into pursuing their dictatorial measures against workers. And unless such a lead is given, workers will lack belief in the ability of the movement to defy and defeat the Tories.
On the other hand, bold united action would win widespread support and involvement from working class people not yet even in a union. They need a vehicle to resist austerity.

SCRAP ALL THE REPRESSIVE LAWS

In fighting to kill off the Bill, the trade union movement and its allies need to make two other things crystal clear: a readiness to defy the Bill's measures even if the Tories ignore opposition and implement it; and a call not only to Kill the Bill, but also to repeal the entire package of already-existing anti-union laws that these new measures are being grafted onto.

It's widespread failure by most union leaders to defy the previous 30 years of anti-union laws that has emboldened Cameron et al. In contrast, those groups of workers who have defied these laws have always won huge concessions e.g. oil refinery construction workers.

DEVOLVE TO DISSOLVE!

The battle to confront and finish off the Bill should be combined with the demand for power over employment laws to be devolved to the Scottish parliament. That will unify workers who voted Yes and No in the Referendum. It points to an escape route from Tory Westminster dictatorship. And whilst the SNP leadership have never once publicly pledged to repeal the anti-union laws - the most vicious in the western world - the unions have the potential power to pound Holyrood into traveling that road, with the demand for a Charter of Workers' Rights to be ushered in as an example to the rest of the UK and beyond.

That's what the Scottish Socialist Party has consistently fought for. That's what the 630,000-strong trade union movement in Scotland needs to take decisive action in pursuit of.

TORY THIEVES AND LIARS TURN 'LIVING WAGE' INTO PAY CUTS

It should come as no surprise, but Tory Chancellor George Osborne is not only a thief but a brazen liar.
He unleashed naked class war on the working class in his Emergency Budget on 8 July, whilst conjuring up a contrick that a master magician would eat his heart out for.
The headline-grabbing talk of a 'National Living Wage' is a cynical attempt to throw dust in people's eyes, to blind them to the Tories' theft of incomes from low-paid workers, young people and parents with the audacity to have more than two children.

CLASS WAR UNLEASHED
This Budget was a bloodcurdling awakening to anyone who thinks 'class' is an outdated, ante-diluvian concept: from behind all the recent bullshit about the Tories being 'the party of working people', One Nation Tories, leaps out a Budget that makes the bankers, billionaires and big business even more bloated in their opulence, by robbing the rest of us. It's undiluted class war, disguised by the confusing guff about 'a National Living Wage'.

WINNERS...
Before dealing with the issue of wages, let's glance at a few features of this first Tory Budget since 1996.
First, some of the winners. Corporation Tax on big business was 28% in 2010, when Osborne first took up his rent-free residence in No 11 Downing Street. Now it's set to plummet to 18%, the lowest business tax in any country in the western world. By contrast, for example, German corporations are taxed at 30%; those in France 33.3%; and 40% in the USA.
Even before this bounty to big business, analysts at the University of York have shown that in 2012-13 the government gifted big business £58.2billion in subsidies, grants and Corporation Tax benefits - whilst only getting in £41.3billion in Corporation Tax that year. Now Osborne's openly capitalist government is set to give big business an obscene £93billion in such handouts. That means every household has been forced to pay - without even being asked their leave to do so - an average of £3,500 in subsidies for big corporations. And the winners include many Corporation Tax-Dodgers.
Another major set of winners are those in receipt of inherited properties worth £1million without having to fork out any Inheritance Tax. One figure quoted is that 26,000 such estates gain a giant £2.5billion.
The Tory warmongers didn't want to make their pals in the City of London feel left out in their handouts to the rich: contrary to the headlines, they'll gain from the replacement of the bank levy by the less 'punitive' (?) 8% bank profits tax. And those profiting from war and death can sleep peacefully in the knowledge Osborne has agreed to jack up defence spending to the 2% of GDP demanded by NATO.

...LOSERS: workers, young people, the disabled and children
A small minority are winners, but they gain £billions. In contrast there are millions of losers - overwhelmingly the 'hard-working families' we hear such repeated, hypocritical prattling about from Tory (and Labour) politicians, especially pre-elections.
Whilst handing out £93billion to big business, the Tories are stealing £35billion from working class people in benefits - especially in-work benefits.
Over 5.3 million public sector workers - half a million of them in Scotland - have suffered pay cuts since 2010. According to UNISON, a 3% pay rise in the past five years, whilst inflation rose by 17%. Now they are condemned to another four years of a 1% pay cap.
That's not a decade of suffering a Pay Freeze, it's a modern Ice Age for workers in the NHS, councils, education and the likes.
Disabled people deemed fit to work stand to lose £30 a week. Young people will have all their benefits withdrawn if they decline unpaid work placements. Grants for working class students are to be scrapped in favour of loans. Housing benefit is to be wiped out for people aged 18-21. Council and housing association tenants are to be given a miserly 1% cut to their rents, but if their household income is above £30,000 (and the official average wage per person last year was £27,200, don't forget) they will have to pay the full market rent.
Nearly all working age benefits are to be frozen until 2020, despite forecasts of rising inflation by then. The household benefit cap is to be slashed from £26,000 to £20,000.

OSBORNE OUTSTRIPS KING HEROD
In a measure that King Herod would have blushed and baulked at implementing, the multi-millionaire Gideon Osborne is to deny any additional housing benefit, Tax Credit or Universal Credit for any more than two children. As the Children's Commissioner, Tam Baillie, was moved to comment, "Parents and carers must feed and clothe all of their children, not just the first two. This is denying millions of children their basic human rights."
An estimated seven million children face savage cuts to their families' incomes from the overall Budget. And Osborne's rule about 'two kids only' smacks of class hatred and a form of eugenics; only the rich are allowed to breed, it seems.
One of the biggest component chunks of cuts is that suffered by low-paid workers through attacks on Tax Credits, including Working Tax Credits. A horrendous £4.5billion is to be robbed off some of the poorest-paid this year alone.

OSBORNE STEALS OUR INCOMES - AND OUR LANGUAGE
But that's where Osborne the ruthless thief becomes Osborne the shameless liar. To distract and confuse those outraged at his daylight robbery of the incomes of workers, students, disabled people, young people and parents, he perpetrates the monstrous lie that "Britain needs a pay rise and Britain is getting a pay rise". Stealing not only our incomes, but also our language, he then plays dirty, disgraceful tricks with the term 'Living Wage'.
To unmask his lies, it's useful to recap a few simple facts - which even some who hate the Tories with justified loathing don't always remember or make plain for all to see and understand.

A FEW VITAL FACTS
The current National Minimum Wage is £6.50 an hour - once you're aged 21. It's set to rise to £6.70 this October. And, crucially, it's legally enforceable.
The current Living Wage Foundation figure for a Living Wage is £7.85 an hour. It will be uprated in November. It's a huge deal better than the legal National Minimum Wage, and therefore very welcome. But it has two crucial flaws.
The best known weakness is that it's entirely voluntary, optional, not legally enforceable, left to the whims and fancies of employers. Which helps to explain why only 200 employers in Scotland have volunteered to sign up to be Accredited Living Wage Employers, most of them smaller employers, affecting only a tiny minority of workers. That's why the SSP has always fought for a legally enforced living minimum wage.

£7.85 IS NOT A REAL LIVING WAGE!
The second profound weakness of the current Living Wage is known by hardly anyone! In fact it's an admission that £7.85 is not a genuine Living Wage at all. Because the figure calculated for the Living Wage Foundation is based on a very important assumption: it assumes the full uptake of all forms of in-work benefits, including Tax Credits and Housing Benefit. Otherwise, its own authors admit, it would have to be far, far higher. To give one example of this: if it wasn't for the top-ups assumed in the Living Wage figure, today's London Living Wage would not be £9.15 but almost exactly £12-an-hour.

GIDEON GIVETH, GIDEON TAKETH AWAY!
There's the rub, the essence of the God almighty lie perpetrated by Osborne and the Tories. It's a Biblical case of Gideon giveth, and Gideon taketh away!!
Osborne manufactured media headlines - in a masterly distraction ploy from his slaughter of benefits and wages - by talking of 'a National Living Wage' of £7.20 by April 2016, with "an ambition of this rising to £9 by 2020". None of the media seems to mention that weasel phrase "an ambition".
But leaving that for now, one key point is that £7.20 next April is a mere 50p up on the impending National Minimum Wage, in itself derisory.
Furthermore it is well below the current 'Living Wage' of £7.85, even before that is uprated this November.
Perhaps most telling of all, it disguises the theft of Tax Credits which will mean low-paid workers will lose, not gain, from Osborne's sham 'National Living Wage'.
To quote a few initial calculations by various economists in the wake of the Budget baloney about "Britain getting a pay rise".
A couple, with two kids, both working full-time on the current £6.50 minimum wage would gain £1,560 in wages, but lose £2,200 in Tax Credits.
Two workers, both earning £9.25 an hour, with two kids, would be £850 a year worse off.
A family with two at work, currently earning £20,000, would have a fall in their income of £2,057 a year.
A single parent now earning a pathetic £10,000 would lose £1,455 of that under Osborne's deceitful package.

DON'T DARE BE UNDER 25!
And those are just sample figures for workers who qualify for his grossly misnamed 'National Living Wage' by dint of being aged 25 or more! Over two million workers under the age of 25 are to be denied the Tories' bountiful 'increase' - but will be hammered, like older workers, by cuts to Tax Credits.
Far from being a recipe for 'a high wage economy', this Budget is amongst other things a recipe for replacement of older workers by those under 25 as a source of dirt-cheap labour.

£10 NOW! - FOR ALL AT 16
The SSP has never favored a pathetically low, legal national minimum wage. Nor have we restricted our fight to support for a voluntary, unenforceable 'Living Wage' - especially one which is not actually a genuine living wage at all, since it depends on top-ups, which in turn come out of the pockets of workers' taxes.
Since our formation, the SSP has demanded a decent living minimum wage, legally enforced, based on the formula of two-thirds male median earnings. I've expanded on this case in many previous articles. In 2015 figures that means we demand a national minimum wage of £10, here and now.
And critically, the SSP's demand has always been that this applies to all workers and apprentices aged 16 and over. Not the over-21s as applies now. Not the over-25s as Osborne plans. And not accompanied by cuts to in-work benefits.
The fact is, a £10 minimum, right now in 2015, not five years hence, would constitute a genuine living income, and is the level required to remove reliance on state top-ups, which constitute a £30billion annual subsidy to bosses who pay their workers peanuts in pursuit of ever-higher profits.
The trade union movement and socialists need to cut through the crap perpetrated by the Tories on this issue, and mobilize workers in struggle for a living minimum wage of £10 now, for all over 16, with equal pay for women.
The Budget is enough to make anyone's blood boil in anger at the bitter class war by the rich it represents. But it should also put fire in our bellies and steel in our resolve to fight back.

CALMAC FERRIES: SOLD DOWN THE RIVER?

CalMac ferry workers - members of the Rail, Maritime and Transport workers' union (RMT) - are taking industrial action in defence of their pensions, jobs, conditions of work - and against privatisation by the Scottish government, who seem set to hand the publicly-owned CalMac ferries over to the private, profiteering Serco.

They start with an overtime ban, followed by a 24-hour strike.

The workers run lifeline services to remote communities on the Clyde and Hebrides CalMac ferries.

These RMT members deserve and need the solidarity of every worker in Scotland.

They are themselves often members of the island communities who depend on these lifeline services. They are dedicated and hardworking, going out in all weather, and have only resorted to this action because of the threat to the services they provide as well as the jobs and conditions they've gained through collective union efforts.

SWEEPING MAJORITIES FOR STRIKE

They decided on this course of action by sweeping majorities in a ballot of RMT members, who make up about 680 of the 1,400-strong workforce. In a decisive 60% turnout, on a two-question ballot, 98% of them voted in favour of industrial action short of strike action, and 92% in favour of strikes. Even if the Tories' vicious hurdles against the right of workers to withdraw their labour had already been made law, there would still be a legal majority for the action!

That in itself illustrates the strength of feeling of a workforce that has tried every other option to get guarantees on their pensions and against compulsory redundancies. 

PAWNS IN PRIVATISATION PLANS

They feel they are pawns in a completely unnecessary exercise by the Scottish government, who say they are obliged to put the contract out to tender under European Union rules. 

As the RMT rightly say, it appears the SNP government hasn't even tried to challenge these EU regulations, let alone confront them head-on in defence of the vital public services these ferries provide to the island communities, or in defence of the workforce. So much for 'a strong voice for Scotland'!

PRIVATISATION OF NORTHERN ISLES FERRIES 

And the same SNP government, for all its talk of 'standing up for Scotland', has form.

Back in May 2012, the Northern Isles ferry service was privatized by the Scottish government, who handed the £350m contract to private company Serco, in preference to the bid by public sector CalMac. 

Now, the Shetland Times has revealed that CalMac's tender, which was believed to be cheaper than Serco's, was returned unopened by Transport Scotland, an arm of the Scottish government!

The SNP government boosted the public subsidy to Serco by about £40m, a 20% increase. 

The Serco contract led to redundancies, and a threat to workers' pensions, which was only withdrawn after RMT members voted overwhelmingly to strike. 

BEHIND VOTERS' BACKS 

Now the £1billion contract for Clyde and Hebrides CalMac ferries has been put out to tender by the same government - seeking a contract for eight years from October 2016.

The RMT and the other ferry unions are deeply concerned, and suspicious that this amounts to plans to privatize that ferry service too - but with the announcement delayed until after the May 2016 Scottish elections! A cynical attempt at backdoor privatisation, behind the backs of voters.

And workers' conditions are again threatened, which has provoked the RMT members' strikes.

RMT STRIKER SPEAKS OUT

Three weeks ago, I spoke to an RMT member with the Clyde and Hebrides ferries about the issues at stake. 

"Since last December we've had meetings of the STUC and the four trade unions involved - RMT, Unite, Nautilus and TSSA - with the government and sought guarantees on job security, conditions of service and pensions off the companies tendering for the Clyde and Hebrides ferry service. 

"We thought we'd reached an agreement we could live with, but then we were told the Scottish government would only underwrite our pensions if the Pension scheme was reformed by the end 2015. 

"We had written to CalMac earlier, insisting on written guarantees on job security through no compulsory redundancies, defence of conditions and no change to the pensions without union agreement. They gave no guarantees, and on the back of that we met with Keith Brown and Derek Mackay from the Scottish government - we are meeting them again this week.

"We will be telling them the demands on us are totally unacceptable. 

"One big issue is pensions. They've given us only 6 months to reform the pension scheme. And the reforms they are demanding are that our contributions increase from 6% to 9.5%; that the pension is tied to the state retirement age, meaning we could be working until we're 68; and that it is downgraded from a Final Salary to a Career Average scheme. So we're being asked to pay more, work longer, and get less when we retire! 

"Against our better judgement, the CalMac ferries were put out to tender. The government hoped for at least five companies bidding for the tender, but nobody is interested because there's a clawback of some of the profits to the government. So the only two companies tendering are CalMac and Serco. 

"We don't think Serco are fit to bid for a public service contract, given their financial state and their track record with the Northern Isles ferries and Caledonia sleepers. 

"It looks to us as if CalMac is being set up for privatisation. Because both CalMac and the unions had a gun put to their heads, giving us just 6 months to reform the pension scheme, so that when that doesn't happen they can claim CalMac is not fit to run the service. 

"And CalMac at the moment seems to be run by consultants on £1,400 to £1,500 a day - overruling directors on over £100,000 a year! Something's not right. 

"This doesn't add up to the alleged Memorandum of Understanding between the Scottish government and the STUC!"

MESSAGES OF SOLIDARITY 

Send messages of solidarity to the Calmac strikers via richieventon@hotmail.com and I will send them to the workers striking back for all of us.

BUILD MASS DEFIANCE OF TORY CUTS

The thousands who join the Scotland United Against Austerity rally this Saturday, 20 June, in Glasgow's George Square will be united in sending a simple, stark message to the Tories: you have no mandate to rule and ruin Scotland, and we're not going to lie down and accept your butchery!
Only 10 per cent of Scotland's voters backed the Tories. Yet Cameron, Osborne and their Old-Etonian bootboys plan an assault on our lives that surpasses even the Dark Ages of Maggie Thatcher. 

SHOCK AND AWE
They plan a 100-day blitzkrieg on benefits, public spending and workers' rights. Virtually every day they declare another attack on yet another section of the working class, including the poorest and most vulnerable. 

details of the STUC rally HERE

They clearly hope to imitate the methods of George W Bush - who infamously deployed his 'shock and awe' military onslaught on Iraq - seeking to overwhelm resistance to their savagery by its sheer scale and speed.

Tory plans include £30billion cuts to public spending, £12billion of it from welfare.
An estimated £5billion slashed off in-work Tax Credits, hammering the lowest-paid, part-time workers, whilst making stomach-churning claims to being "one-nation Tories, party of the blue-collar worker".
Abolition of young people's housing benefit. A 40 per cent reduction of those getting Carers' Allowance. Cuts to child benefits.
The list marches on, mercilessly.

WORKPLACE DICTATORSHIP
The same government that only gained a derisory 24 per cent of all UK voters is hellbent on wiping out workers' rights, imposing near-impossible thresholds of a 50 per cent turnout, plus at least 40 per cent of all actual union members voting for industrial action, before it's legal.
Plus they plan to rip up facility time for elected union reps - to make them impotent in the face of escalating employers' attacks on workers - and to remove the ban on conscripting Agency workers to scab on strikes.
They want to impose workplace dictatorship, in pursuit of even bigger profits, lower wages and fewer jobs.



UNIONS HOLD THE KEY
With such brutality coming down the track at us, the STUC and the unions that together organise 630,000 Scottish workers have a pivotal part to play in resisting the Tory onslaught.
The 20 June rally must not be a mere token gesture, but the launchpad for a concerted, determined course of further action, building an alliance of trade unionists, people on benefits, communities, and socialists prepared to defy and defeat the Tories. 

No time should be wasted over the summer months; as the Tory blitzkrieg unfolds, the unions should prepare the grounds for united, militant action to halt Cameron's juggernaut.

BUDGET DAY
On Tory Emergency Budget day - 8 July - the SSP plans protests to highlight opposition to the butchery that Osborne will announce. How much more significant it would be if the STUC coordinated events across Scotland that day to give notice of the resistance that will be built over the next few weeks and months.

Potentially the STUC has unique power to spearhead a movement to stop austerity, raising concrete alternative policies at the same time as coordinating militant action.
Embracing 630,000 worker-members, it also has the advantage of not being officially tied to either the sinking ship of Labour, nor the SNP - which won a landslide by claiming to be anti-austerity, but has a real-life track record of passing on Westminster cuts at both Holyrood and council levels over the past four years. 

MAKE HOLYROOD DEFY CUTS!

The STUC and its affiliated unions need to call further mass events to bombard the Scottish government with demands to implement the mandate the SNP won for being anti-austerity, by refusing to implement a single penny of the budget cuts Scotland faces from Westminster.
They should demand the Scottish government set out spending plans this Autumn that, as a bare minimum, save all jobs and public services, and boost workers' pay - and build a mass Scots rebellion demanding the funds off Westminster for these plans, rather than devolve Tory cuts to councils, FE colleges, schools and other vital services.

ANOTHER £2-3billion IN CUTS
This is critical given the eye-watering scale of cuts forecast in new Scottish government spending projections. They expect a further cut of £2billion to Scotland's budget over the next 3 years; maybe even £3billion. At least half of that will hit councils.
As Professor John McLaren of Fiscal Affairs Scotland wrote, "Scotland, like the UK, is only about half way through the cuts to public services initiated by the UK government. Unlike earlier years it's expected to be day-to-day budgets, rather than capital budgets, that take the hit. At over 5 per cent in each of the next two years, the cuts could be more than double the average seen in the past four years."
Others have calculated the councils' share will mean the equivalent of losing 9,700 secondary teachers, plus 8,900 senior social workers, plus 16,000 cleansing department workers.

DEFY - OR DO TORIES' DIRTY WORK
So not only Holyrood, but local councillors, face a stark choice: stand up and defy the Tory cuts, building a mass movement of workers and communities to win back the stolen £billions off Westminster - or be forever condemned for carrying out the Tories' dirty work.

The STUC needs to launch a plan of action to push politicians into resistance, to make it politically unviable for the Tories to impose their plans. A whole nation in rebellion couldn't be ignored.

More "Defy the Tories" Demo pics here

At the first sign of any group of workers being blocked by anti-union laws, the STUC should build support for defiance of these laws. It's better to break bad laws that allow the Tories to break workers' backs!

WORKERS IN ACTION
Several sections of workers are courageously taking action already: Dundee hospital porters; Glasgow homeless caseworkers; Calmac ferry crews against attacks on pensions, conditions and the threat of privatisation. 

How much less painful would these workers' struggles be if the laws were scrapped that ban solidarity action by fellow-workers?
And neither Labour nor the SNP can lay claim to being on these workers' sides.
Glasgow city council is Labour, but has kept strikers out on picket lines for 12 weeks, as well as refusing to reinstate sacked UNISON rep Robert O'Donnell at the SECC, which the Labour council owns 91 per cent of!
The SNP government is heading towards privatisation of the Clyde and Hebrides ferries, as they did the Northern Isles ferries back in 2012.
The unions need to spearhead an independent political alternative that defends workers' rights and incomes. They should stop funding Labour's anti-working class lost cause; they should instead stand on the socialist principles of labour movement pioneers.

SCRAP THE COUNCIL TAX & DOUBLE THE MONEY!
The SSP has pioneered proposals that the STUC should take up and popularise; a fully-costed alternative way of funding councils, scrapping the unfair Council Tax, replacing it with an income-based Scottish Service Tax that would make 77 per cent of Scots better off, and literally double the funds for local jobs, wages and services. 

This proposal has the potential to help shield Scotland from austerity, especially as councils employ 247,000 workers and provide vital services.
Councillors - Labour, SNP or Green - face the stark choice of helping to build centres of resistance to the Tory austerity plans, building alliances of workers and communities to win the necessary funding, or they will be cursed for being central to the savagery of job losses and service decimation.

POWERS TO PROTECT WORKERS
But the issue of austerity cuts goes far beyond the boundaries of councils. The SSP appeals to trade unionists, community activists and their organisations - including the STUC - to join our campaign for powers to protect the Scottish working class to be devolved to the Scottish parliament. 

In facing the cataclysmic Tory attacks on jobs, wages, benefits and workers' rights, we demand devolution of the powers to reverse all welfare and benefits cuts; to defy pay cuts by implementing a Scottish £10 minimum wage for all aged 16 and over; to repeal all the anti-union laws and establish full workplace rights; to take all services, banks, energy and big industries into democratic public ownership, so as to create well-paid, secure jobs and begin to build a society that matches the needs of the millions, instead of the millionaires.

Join the SSP; help commit your trade union, your community group and your family to defiance of the Tories, and to the pursuit of socialist measures that could eradicate any and all excuses for cuts.
We live in an immensely rich nation: demand use of that wealth for the working-class majority population, not for the profits, perks and privileges of the stinking rich and their Tory henchmen.

BETTER TO BREAK BAD LAWS THAN THE BACKS OF WORKERS!

In an ancient ritual harking back to medieval times, the unelected monarch delivers the Queen's Speech on behalf of a Tory government elected by only 24.4 per cent of all eligible voters. And in the case of Scotland, a government supported by a minuscule 10.5 per cent of registered voters! 

But the Queen's Speech is saturated with hellish plans to butcher benefits, wipe out workers' rights and slaughter services - class warfare on the millions by a government of the millionaires with no mandate.

That perfectly captures the undemocratic nature of capitalist rule through Westminster. It truly is Tory dictatorship. And it must be defied by a united mass movement of resistance, or generations to come will suffer the consequences.

NO TORY MANDATE

Osborne could not stop the smirks as anti-union measures announced by unelected monarch 

With callous disregard for the facts, David Cameron declares: "We have a mandate from the British people, a clear manifesto and the instruction to deliver. We will not waste a single moment in getting on with the task".

They plan to forge ahead with a blitzkrieg on workers' rights, human rights, and the incomes of millions already struggling to survive.

Scrapping the Human Rights Act threatens the attempts by tenants to challenge the brutal Bedroom Tax, which of course will continue, with rumours of the bills being increased.

Extending the Right to Buy to housing associations will add another twist to the spiraling housing crisis, as the best public sector stock is sold off and virtually no new social sector homes for affordable rent are built, especially as Westminster slashes funding to local authorities.

Shameless, racist measures designed to whip up division amongst the victims of Tory rule include new immigration laws that amount to 'deport now, appeal later' - which in many cases would mean appealing against deportation after death in the war-torn countries people have fled from.

WORKERS' BENEFITS TARGETED 

The core of the Tories' class warfare is directed at the working class majority population. A blitz on benefits and wipeout of workers' rights.

Of their total £30billion cuts, an additional £12billion butchery of benefits is planned. And even the far-from-socialist Institute of Fiscal Studies has analyzed these plans, concluding that it will especially be the working poor, particularly those with children, who will suffer the most severely.

Reigns over us: Benefits scrounger announces measures to impoverish the rest of us...

They point out that the much-trumpeted benefits cap, being cut from £26,000 to £23,000 for a household, will hammer families with several children and high rents, cutting about 24,000 families' incomes by £3,000 a year. 

But as fewer than 100,000 families across the UK will be impacted, this will only meet about £0.1billion of the Tories' total £12bn target, leaving far greater numbers prey to their assault.

A TORY SLAUGHTER OF THE INNOCENTS

Abolition of housing benefits to jobseekers aged 18-21 may therefore be extended to all those under 25; an outrageous attack on those starting out in life.

As Tax Credits (£30billion a year) and Housing Benefits (£26billion a year) make up more than half of all 'unprotected' public spending, and Disability and Incapacity Benefits a further third of the total, the IFS rightly forecasts that the bulk of the cuts will target these people.

"Of COURSE I care..." 

As they put it, "About 80 per cent of entitlements to benefits go to working age families, and a large majority of these benefits are means-tested, so it will be very difficult to avoid hitting low-income families - especially those with children - hardest." And they add that 75 per cent of benefits go to families in the bottom half of incomes.

Maybe for us that is stating the bleedin' obvious, but it underlines the tsunami of cuts about to hit the working class and poorest, unless we build mass resistance.

Slashing the numbers entitled to Carers' Allowances by 40 per cent; cutting £3.8billion off Tax Credits, by hounding part-time workers with impossible new targets on additional hours of work; slaughtering an estimated 1.3 million public sector jobs by 2019: these are some of the appalling measures leaked out before Her Majesty even got round to announcing the Tory Butchers' plans for the people who never gave them a mandate.

SMASHING THE UNIONS 

Pivotal to this class warfare are plans to virtually abolish trade union rights. The government that won a grand total of 36 per cent of all votes cast, and a mere 24.4 per cent of eligible voters, is imposing rules that demand a 50 per cent turnout and support from at least 40 per cent of all eligible voters before a union can take any form of legal industrial action in defence of jobs, services or workers' rights.

"Cut, cut, cut! More, more more!"

So in a workforce of 200, at least 100 would have to vote, and at least 80 of them vote for the action - an almost impossible set of hurdles designed to stop effective resistance by the organisations that are the first and last line of defence for workers - their unions.

Their manifesto homed in on introducing the 40 per cent threshold first in "those essential services - health, education, fire and transport"; services they regard as far from essential as they slash their funding! But of course they will spread their legal poison to every sector if they get away with it in the 'essential services'.

CONSCRIPTING SCABS

On top of that, the Tory election manifesto made it brutally plain what to expect if workers dare defy their dictatorship, which is the dictatorship of capital, of the rich, in pursuit of profit maximization at terrible human cost. To quote the Tory statement of intent: 

"We will repeal nonsensical restrictions banning employers from hiring agency staff to provide essential cover during strikes."

So they plan to scrap the current ban on use of Agency workers to scab on strikes, so they can conscript desperate and insecure people into further undermining fellow workers' wages, jobs and conditions.

"The plebs haven't caught us ... yet!"

BUILD 20 JUNE DEMO

The Tory dictatorship must not be allowed to walk all over us. A massive campaign of resistance needs to be mounted, in the parliament, in the workplaces, on the streets, in our communities. 

It is therefore extremely good news that the Scottish TUC has called the 'Scotland United Against Austerity' mass demo in Glasgow on Saturday 20 June - an idea the SSP pushed for from the day after the election outcome. We all need to build that into a mammoth show of unity against all forms of cuts and attacks on workers' rights.

BUILD MASS DEFIANCE

And it needs to become the platform to launch an ongoing resistance. 

This to include a concerted demand for powers over the minimum wage to be devolved to Scotland so we can fight for a Scottish £10 minimum wage for all over 16, with equal pay for women. 

A campaign to win devolution of powers over employment laws, so as to repeal the lot and usher in a Charter of Workers' Rights instead. 

A campaign to win power for Holyrood over business taxes - but not so as to reduce taxation of big business, as the SNP wish, but to restore Corporation Tax to its 50 per cent pre-Thatcher level, as demanded by the SSP.

BREAK BAD LAWS

Whilst fighting for such powers to protect the Scottish working class from Tory dictatorship, the STUC and union leaderships also need to square up to the fact that submission to the anti-union laws means accepting literal destitution and starvation for big sections of working class people. The unions literally wouldn't exist if our predecessors had meekly accepted the 'laws of the land', written and imposed by an upper-class minority hell-bent on squeezing the last drop of profit and privilege for themselves out of the sweated labour of the real wealth-creators.

Nobody would light-mindedly hand over union assets - accumulated from workers' union subs - but unless union leaders are prepared to defy these anti-union laws, workers will have no chance. It's better to break bad anti-union laws than allow the Tories and profiteering employers to break the backs of workers.

Join the SSP in defiance of Tory dictatorship. Help build the STUC demo on 20 June. Resolve to resist the slaughter of jobs, services, benefits and workers' rights by a government with no popular mandate to rule and ruin. 

United in determined action we can defeat the Tory dictators.

LAY SIEGE TO SCOTTISH TORIES AS THEY DECLARE BUTCHERY!

JOIN SSP DEFIANCE DEMOS AGAINST TORY DICTATORSHIP ON DAY OF TORY QUEEN'S SPEECH

Wednesday 27th May

Several locations - at TORY offices across Scotland - including Glasgow, Ayr, Hamilton, Edinburgh, Arbroath, Inverurie, Paisley 

The SSP is staging a coordinated series of protests outside Tory party headquarters and Tory MSP's offices across Scotland this Wednesday, 27th May, as the new Tory government announces its Queen's Speech.

The Tories have absolutely no mandate to announce their butchery of benefits, slaughter of services, and wipe-out of workers' rights with an effective ban on the right to organise unions or strike. 

Across the UK, 63% of people voted against them. 

In Scotland, only a minuscule 10% of registered voters actually voted Tory. 

Yet they plan (amongst other butchery) to slash Working Tax Credits, young people's housing benefits, Carers' Allowances, 1.9 million public sector jobs, and impose dictatorial obstacles to workers' unions, to prevent working people fighting back.

The SSP appeals to local people to join us in a show of defiance against Tory dictatorship. 

Join our peaceful protests on Wednesday to send the Tory butchers a clear message: hands off our benefits, jobs and workplace rights - we refuse to bow down to your dictatorship!

And we appeal to the trade union movement to defy the Tories head-on. It's better to break bad anti-union laws than let the Tories break workers' backs!

Scotland has just witnessed a landslide vote to fight Tory austerity. The SSP is demanding powers for the Scottish parliament to halt and reverse Tory welfare cuts; introduce a Scottish £10 minimum wage for all over 16, and repeal all anti-union laws.

Wednesday's protests are just for starters! 

Let the defiance of Tory dictatorship begin as they declare vicious class war in Westminster on Wednesday in their Queen's Speech.