WORKERS ASK: WHOSE SIDE ARE THE PARTIES ON?

You could be forgiven for forgetting that the working class make up the vast majority of the population, judging by how our interests and aspirations are ignored or trampled on by politicians representing the tiny minority who have grabbed most of the country's wealth - the 1%.
Then the election looms, so mainstream politicians who hold the working class in contempt suddenly spout nice-sounding promises in a cynical drive for votes.
Last week we suffered the spectacle of Old Etonian George Osborne declaiming that "Britain is the comeback country", "Britain is walking tall", "Jobs up, unemployment down, wages up"...etc.
Even this remote, upper-class snob has been advised by his focus groups that jobs and pay are critical factors in how most people vote.

JOBS - REAL JOBS!
Jobs is one of the critical issues to judge the competing political parties on.
The Tory/LibDem Coalition makes hay of falling unemployment. But scratch the shiny surface and you find an ugly reality. Unemployment figures have fallen as a result of 1.5 million new jobs since 2010. But a new wave of self-employed makes up an incredible 32% of these. Far from this signaling a flourishing of entrepreneurial genius and affluence, new research shows 80% of the self-employed are living in poverty! These are mostly people who would rather have a secure job but can't find one and end up self-employed rather than rely on insecure, part-time and temporary jobs - the main types created since 2010.
As the TUC reported, only one in 40 of the new jobs are full-time and permanent. There are still 80,000 fewer full-time jobs in Scotland than before the 2008 recession.
The working class have been plagued by the curse of casualisation over the past 30 years, and this has accelerated with dizzying speed in recent years.
Many of those removed from the unemployment figures are eking out an existence on low-hour contracts, typically of 8-12 hours a week. This gives all the power to the employers, who can tap into this ready-made pool of reserve labour to do extra hours - but with no premium rates of pay for 'overtime' - when busy spells in their business demands it.
Underemployment has become the new variation on unemployment.
All too often workers rely on two or three different part-time jobs to try and pay the bills. They miss out on breaks and mealtimes as they rush from one job to the next, dreading the day they get sick, as they usually don't qualify for sick pay.

ZERO HOURS CONTRACTS - ZERO RIGHTS
The ultimate in casualised labour, the pinnacle of job insecurity and lack of workplace rights, are Zero Hours Contracts.

An estimated 200,000 workers in Scotland alone are living the cruel insecurity of Zero Hours Contracts (ZHCs). This gives all the flexibility to the employers, all the risk and low incomes to those working for them. It means being contracted to work for a particular employer, but with absolutely no guarantee of how many hours of work you will get each week - if any!
Workers on ZHCs have absolutely no automatic entitlements to sick pay, holiday pay or redundancy pay. They are expected to be on call, unpaid, waiting by their phone or emails to find out when they're wanted. And real life experience proves that contrary to the baloney about the flexibility afforded to workers, when people decline a shift offered to them, they frequently aren't offered any more for days or weeks after, as bosses exercise their power to punish them.
These obnoxious forms of modern serfdom are not isolated to the outer fringes of the economy: they are rife and spreading in every High Street and retail park.
Over 90% of McDonalds workers are on them: 82,000 in total. Boots employ at least 4,000; 80% of JD Wetherspoons staff; Burger King; Dominos Pizza; Sports Direct; Pizza Hut; Subway; Next; Cineworld; universities... Social care relies on a vast army of ZHC workers - including the social care wing of the Church of Scotland!

ABOLISH ALL ZERO HOURS CONTRACTS 
The Tories and LibDems have shown in action they are parties that view cheap, casualised, insecure jobs as a virtue.
Labour has belatedly tried to appease the demands of the working class voters they rely on by promising measures on youth employment. And they repeatedly trot out the same two phrases about Zero Hours Contracts, phrases that should be seen for the cruel deceit they are!
Labour promises to "tackle Zero Hours Contracts". What the hell does that mean? Why not say clearly they will ABOLISH them?
Their other phrase, especially used when they are targeting trade unionists for votes, is that Labour will "abolish exploitative Zero Hours Contracts". Unfortunately, that same phrase has also been repeatedly used by the SNP leadership. Watch out for the deceit in that word 'exploitative'. Does that mean they'll keep 'good, non-exploitative Zero Hours Contracts'?!

WHEN ARE THEY NOT EXPLOITATIVE?

In fact, Labour has sometimes elaborated that they will reform ZHCs so that if a worker actually works an average of, say, 15 hours a week over 12 weeks, that should then become their contracted hours. A mild improvement indeed, but one which the experience of new Agency Workers' rights should warn us about; bosses find ways of dodging these averages, or for instance could simply cut the average hours they offer each ZHC worker over the 12 weeks.
The SSP has an honest, simple alternative to the dodgy word-games played by both Labour and the SNP: abolish ALL Zero Hours Contracts. They're ALL exploitative, so scrap the lot and instead offer secure contracts, with guaranteed hours, whether part-time or full-time.

JOB CREATION PLANS
When it comes to job creation, the SSP again stands out a mile compared to the rest.
With 157,000 families on the housing waiting list in Scotland, there's a crying need for a massive housebuilding plan of at least 100,000 new social sector homes over the lifetime of the parliament. Houses for affordable rent, built to the highest environmental standards, thereby tackling fuel poverty and helping combat climate change - as well as creating thousands of jobs and apprenticeships, giving decent wages and dignity to young and older workers alike.

A GREEN SAUDI ARABIA!

Another potential area of vast job expansion is green energy. Scotland's offshore energy potential alone has been rightly described as the Saudi Arabia of green energy.
Osborne's recent Budget handed over £1.3billion in tax cuts to North Sea Oil operators - some of the biggest corporations on the planet. If they'd been taxed at the same level as in Norway, that would have raised an extra £118bn over the last decade for investment in clean green energy.
The SSP unashamedly demands public ownership of all forms of energy, including renewables, to democratically plan investment, job creation and production that would benefit both people and planet.
Another unique policy pioneered by the SSP is free public transport. That would overcome the poverty and social isolation suffered by hundreds of thousands of Scots who can't afford the rising fares in the privatized, profiteering transport system. It would also create skilled manufacturing jobs to build fleets of trains, buses and ferries, as well as direct jobs on an integrated transport network.

BANISH POVERTY PAY 
Jobs are not the only issue working class people need to judge the rival parties on. Pay is equally important.
The much vaunted new jobs are overwhelmingly low paid, as well as insecure. Two-thirds of people who found a job in 2014 are paid less than £7.65-an-hour.
The government - and its allegedly impartial adviser, the Low Pay Commission - have the audacity to boast that a full 1.2 million workers will 'enjoy' the 20p rise on the over-21s national minimum wage next October, rising to the giddy heights of £6.70 an hour. That should be a source of shame, not boastfulness.
But what do the other parties offer?

LABOUR WAGE CON-TRICK
Labour is trying to work the biggest con-trick in modern times with their pledge cards promising an £8 minimum wage. What they coyly hide from the casual reader or listener is that they won't introduce it until 2020!
So what do they expect millions to survive on for the next 5 years? And how much better than today's £6.50 will that be worth by 2020, if any? And what about the fact they make no promises of scrapping the lower youth rates?

SNP OPPOSE £10 - EVEN IN 2020!
The SNP headline their support for the so-called Living Wage, currently £7.85. For workers on or just above the miserly £6.50 minimum wage, this would be a very welcome pay rise. But apart from the fact it is still too low to be accurately described as a 'living wage', it is entirely voluntary, not legally enforceable, which of course allows the SNP to sound good to workers whilst not offending businesses who have no intention of voluntarily paying that rate.

SSP SAYS £10 NOW!
And to underline their stance, for anyone not paying proper attention to the policy of the SNP, they blocked and amended a Motion in the Scottish parliament last week which called for a minimum wage of £10 an hour - not now, but in five years' time, 2020. Even that modest plan, put by the Greens, was far too much for the SNP, as well as - predictably - Labour MSPs.
By way of contrast with all the pro-big business parties, the SSP has persistently demanded a war on poverty pay by the introduction of a living minimum wage - currently of £10 an hour, for all over 16, abolishing the lower youth rates. We call for that £10 NOW, in 2015, not 2020 or some other distant date - based on the modest formula of a legally enforced minimum set at two-thirds median male wages in Scotland.
It's a policy we share with the Bakers' union (BFAWU) and indeed the entire TUC. It's time the trade union leaders fought for this fine policy, instead of handing members' funds - and trying to hand members' votes - to a Labour Party that has neither a track record nor any intention of seriously banishing poverty pay.

WORKPLACE REPRESSION 
This general election comes just after the 30th anniversary of the 1984/5 miners' strike. That defeat for the NUM, at the hands of Thatcher and the entire state apparatus, was a decisive turning point in the fortunes of the working class - a defeat that could easily have been an historic victory if the leaders of other unions and the Labour Party had shown an ounce of the courage displayed by the miners, their families and communities.
It is no accident that the 30 years since have been marked by growing poverty and inequality in the midst of vastly increased wealth for the 1%. One of the chief weapons fashioned and used by the employers and their governments to drive down workers' wages is the battery of anti-trade union laws - devised by Thatcher's Tories, retained by New Labour during their 13 years in government, and added to by David Cameron, Vince Cable et al since 2010.
Where is the hue and cry about this vicious apparatus for keeping the working class in 'their place'?

LAWS TO DRIVE DOWN WAGES
The Tories are increasingly shrill in their threats of making it virtually impossible to exercise the basic human right to withdraw your labour, to strike in defense of wages, jobs or rights at work. They openly talk of legislating for a 50% threshold for the turnout before any majority vote for action is legal. This from the Tories who seized power in 2010 after only 23% of the UK electorate voted for them!
Labour's silence says it all. They have absolutely no intention of repealing the worst, most repressive employment legislation in the western world. They kept it intact for 13 years in office. They have just as much desire to help boost business profits by holding workers in check as the Tories do.
The SNP make welcome statements about embracing trade unionism and 'the benefits of collective bargaining'. But nowhere have they ever unequivocally pledged to repeal all the anti-union laws.

CHARTER OF WORKERS' RIGHTS 
In contrast, the SSP shares the demands of most trade unions for outright repeal of these laws. Laws which price workers out of justice through £1,200-plus fees for Employment Tribunal hearings; make it virtually impossible to recruit openly to the unions in most workplaces; hamper the ability of union reps to function and represent members; and ban united action, including solidarity strikes and those deemed 'political'.
We want to collaborate with workers and their unions to instead demand a Charter of Workers' Rights, including the right to join, be active in and organise unions without fear of victimization; for full, open access to workers for union reps and officials; full legal rights from the first day of employment (not after two years!); the re-establishment of free collective bargaining; the right to strike after a majority vote, including the right to take solidarity action with fellow workers; and ultimately for boards of directors to have a majority of elected workers' representatives on them, for real workplace democracy.

JUDGE THEM BY THEIR DEEDS! 
Jobs, pay and workplace rights are central issues to judge any party by. And on their track record, not just their election-time promises! These issues put them to a central test: whose side are they on? Working people, or the profiteers?
The working class majority population will remain when the general election circus moves on after May 7th. We should put the politicians on the spot, spear their falsehoods and vague words, and resolve to build a mass, working class socialist party that stands up for decent, secure, well-paid jobs and workplace democracy.
Scotland's socialist party, the SSP, is here to stay beyond May 7th, to play our part in that struggle.

RECOVERY: WHAT RECOVERY?

If you believe George Osborne, David Cameron and a chunk of the media, workers are back in the land of milk and honey. We're told our wages are exceeding inflation for the first time since before the 2008 recession. Reality is a bit less rosy for those working to remain poor.

Real wages plummeted by £50 a week in 2014. For the first time since the 1920s, real wages are lower at the end of a government's term of rule than when they seized office.

And a special report by Ernst Young ITEM Club last month punctured the Tories' celebratory balloons. Their chief economist, Martin Beck, wrote:

"Real wages have fallen by nearly 10% since 2008, but workers will finally see more money in their pockets this year. However, this is not a normal recovery. The move towards later retirement and huge increase in the workforce has depressed real wages as workers have priced themselves into jobs. We don't expect a return to boomtime wages any time soon."

ZERO HOURS BOOM

Try telling the 200,000 Scottish workers consigned to the pitiful pay and hellish uncertainty of life on Zero Hours Contracts that things are getting better!

In any case, any workers aspiring to be as well off as they were before 2008 severely lack ambition! This was already one of the most unequal states internationally, with some of the lowest pay, longest hours of work and shortest holidays in Europe.

The SSP campaign against dreadful Zero-hours contracts.

THE BRIBES DON'T WORK

But just in case we're not all convinced to rush off to vote Tory by their claims of rising wages, the Tories hope to bribe the gullible as the general election looms. Osborne's plans have leaked out: to raise the tax threshold "towards £11,000", with bogus boasts that this will rescue the lowest paid. In fact it wouldn't even touch many of the poorest people, because they're paying no taxes right now, due to earning below the existing £10,000 tax threshold.

That includes vast armies of part-time workers, women in particular. It includes hundreds of thousands in retail jobs, the biggest single employer in the country, and also the biggest single sector of poverty pay.

Nor will this minor tax threshold adjustment compensate public sector workers for the increased pension contributions they face next month - so they can work longer and get less in their pensions, if they aren't forced to work 'til they drop.

Very few will be fooled by the Tories' claims. Workers know full well that when VAT, Council Tax and other regressive taxes are added, the poorest 10% of the population pay 43% of their lowly incomes in taxes - whereas the richest 10% only pay 35% of the incomes they grudgingly declare! And of course they systematically dodge tax on an industrial scale, as the recent HSBC scandal confirmed.

SETTING THEIR PALS' PAY

Anger at the way wages make up a shrinking slice of the national cake of wealth is turned into justified rage when you look at the incomes of the giant employers - and of those who decide the salaries of their chief executives.

A recent survey of the incomes and directorships held by what's called the Remuneration Committees of the FTSE 100 top companies makes dangerous reading for anyone with high blood pressure! These bodies decide the pay of company executives. They consist of a narrow pool of directors of other companies, a cosseted elite who might as well be from another planet. The survey found that the average income of the members of these Remuneration Committees was £441,383 last year, 16 times the average worker's wage of £27,200. And the highest paid member of this self-serving clique of capitalists was awarded over £9.2million - an incredible 339 times as much as the average worker's wage for 2014.

OVERPAID LOW PAY COMMISSION

In stark contrast, workers eking out an existence on poverty pay have their very own 'Remuneration Committee' - the Low Pay Commission, which annually recommends what levels of national minimum wage the government should introduce. Their latest report shamelessly boasts of 'inflation-busting increases' for the minimum wage, claiming 'the highest increase since 2007' - because they've recommended a 3% rise on the over-21s rate...wait for it...to the princely sum of £6.70 an hour!

In case such 'inflated' pay might bust the allegedly booming economy, these worthies have proposed £5.30 for workers aged 18-20, £3.87 for 16-17-year-olds, and a slave rate of £2.80 for apprentices.

This Low Pay Commission has one distinct feature: none of its nine members has even the remotest idea what it's like to live on low pay! It's made up of employers, 'independents' and those allegedly from an 'employee background'. One of the two claiming the latter role is John Hannett, general secretary of Usdaw, the biggest union in the retail sector, with 45,000 members in Scotland alone.

STAND UP FOR WORKERS!

But those of us who are Usdaw members, working in retail on £6.50-£7.20 an hour in various firms, don't seem to be our general secretary John Hannett's first consideration; he and the UK leadership of Usdaw actually submitted a proposal to the Low Pay Commission for a £7 minimum wage from next October!

As reported in the Usdaw union magazine, our general secretary isn't on £6.50 an hour, nor even the £10 an hour he voted for at the TUC conference; he's on a salary of £94,514, plus NIC and pension contributions, plus a union car - in-work benefits totaling another £42,408! No wonder he's not storming heaven to mobilize workers in retail and other low-paid jobs to demand a decent living wage.

LOW PAID 'COMMISSION'

Far from feeling that all is glorious and comfortable for millions of workers, people are not seeing the benefits of the much trumpeted recovery in the economy, are struggling to cope with the household bills - and desperately need to become part of a massive campaign for a living minimum wage. We need our own, genuine, 'low pay commission', a force made up of the low paid and their allies, organized and determined to demand decent wages.

The SSP is determined to be at the heart of such a struggle, and are proud to have common cause with the Bakers union (BFAWU) and others battling for £10 now for all workers. We appeal to the leaderships of all trades unions to take up the cudgels in pursuit of the £10 minimum wage which every one of them voted for at the 2014 annual conference of the 7-million member TUC. And we appeal to workers to join us in the fight for union rights in every workplace - as part of the struggle to banish poverty pay, Zero Hours Contracts and the disgusting inequality created by capitalist profiteering.

A TALE OF TWO CLASSES: MPs' and workers' wages

                                             

A tale of two classes; or two planets, more like! 
All that is rotten and unequal about the capitalist economic system is reflected in the accompanying political system and the capitalist politicians, regardless of whether Tory or Labour.
Tory MP Sir Malcolm Rifkind shamelessly asserted this week: "It's quite unrealistic to believe MPs will go through their parliamentary career being able to simply accept a salary of £60,000 a year", as he told us mere mortals that he is "entitled" to earn "far, far more than that."

20p - or far, far more?!
With unfortunate timing for those who want working class people to put up with what we get and shut up from complaining, on the very same day as Channel 4 broadcast the sting operation that exposed Rifkind and Labour's Jack Straw promising favours and access to diplomats and EU officials for cash in their hands, the Low Pay Commission's annual report was published. It recommended a whopping 20 pence an hour rise on the UK's national minimum wage next October! 

That's £6.70 an hour if you're 21 or over; apprentices should be suitably thankful for the 7 pence rise the LPC has proposed for them, to a giddy £2.80! 

And their proposals were headlined in the same media as 'inflation-busting', the 'biggest increase since 2008', and other paroxysms of excitement at the glories on offer to millions of workers!

Artificial Increase?! 

The bosses' Confederation of British industry had no hesitation in telling the working class to shut up and count their blessings. Spokesperson for the engorged rich, Katja Hall, said the CBI "welcomes this balanced approach", adding "Any artificial increase due to political expediency will help no-one and ultimately damage one of the most successful government policies of recent years."
Artificial increase?! If the national minimum wage had increased by the 243% rise enjoyed by company executives in the 15 years since it was introduced, it wouldn't be £6.50, or £6.70, but £18.89 a hour - now!

Great Wages Robbery
These creatures at the heart of big business buy politicians to do their bidding, shaping the tax laws, employment legislation and rampant privatisation that fattens their profits with obscene success. 

Systematically driving down workers' wages as a share of national wealth has been a central mission of successive Tory and Labour governments for the past 40 years. Otherwise, if wages as a percentage of GDP were at the same level today as they were in 1975, a worker currently on £12,000 would be earning £21,300; one on £20,000 would instead enjoy £31,300; and a worker on the current average wage of £27,200 would instead be on £35,931!

Coy Crook
Two former government Ministers who played their part in hampering workers' trade unions, hammering workers' wages and helping boost capitalists' rent, interest and profit are the disgraced reprobates Sir Malcolm Rifkind and Jack Straw. 

Rifkind obviously takes the 'far, far more than £60,000' that he believes he's 'entitled to'. In fact he's on £81,936 as an MP and chairman of a Westminster Select Committee. Not to mention the £800,000 he's grabbed in the last 5 years from the 5 jobs outside parliament that he actually declared.

In the undercover journalists' sting operation, posing as a Hong Kong communications agency backed up by a fictitious Chinese businessman, Rifkind was recorded boasting:

"You'd be surprised how much free time I have. I spend a lot of time reading, I spend a lot walking. I am self-employed. Nobody pays me a salary, I have to earn my income, but when I'm not doing something I can do what I like." 

The coy crook fails to mention his parliamentary salary of £81,936, paid for by those 'nobodies', overwhelmingly working-class and lower-middle-class taxpayers. 

Self-employed or Self-seeking

Rifkind proceeded: "One sensitive issue, but I have to mention it. You mentioned there would obviously be remuneration...I would simply give it as an example, but when I did a series of presentations on the Middle East...it wasn't a whole day, it was usually a whole morning or an afternoon, and that was somewhere in the region of £5,000 to £8,000."

The 'sensitive' Sir Malcolm obviously feels 'entitled' to a damn sight more than the growing band of self-employed people that has sprung up in desperation at the lack of jobs available since the 2008 bankers' crisis. Their median incomes fell by £4,000 - a massive 28% drop - between 2002 and 2012.  

Entitled... Rifkind

Cheap at Half the Price
Labour's Jack Straw admits he earns - in one day - nearly as much as the annual wage of a worker on the £6.50 minimum on a 20-hour contract: "Normally if I'm doing a speech or something it's £5,000 a day, that's what I charge". Cheap at half Rifkind's price!
Up until he was caught on tape boasting about the price he can be bought for, Straw subscribed to Labour's promise of an £8 minimum wage...but not until 2020, making it barely any more than today's pathetic £6.50.

Bloodsuckers
When Tory millionaire David Cameron recently told the assembled business fat cats of the British Chambers of Commerce that "Britain needs a pay rise", you know there's something happening in the real world. 

First and foremost, there's a general election in two months' time. 

Secondly, the ruthless ruling class Cameron is part of are increasingly scared a revolt is growing against the outrageous system of poverty pay these exploiters rely on to make record profits, directors' bonuses and dividends to the big parasitic shareholders. 

That's how the 3 richest families in Scotland own more wealth than the poorest 20% of people, and how Britain's richest family has more in their pocket than 12.5 million people in the UK!
These capitalist bloodsuckers have drained workers dry, leaving one in five workers below the breadline; creating the longest, deepest fall in real wages since 1856; making the average Scottish worker £1,900 a year worse off than in 2010.

Stark Political Choices
One of the central issues in the May general election is poverty pay and galloping inequality. People face stark choices in those seats where the SSP has been able to afford to stand candidates. 

Vote for Labour to continue their obnoxious track record of suppressing workers' wages with the help of the Thatcherite anti-union laws they retained in 13 years of Labour government. 

Vote for their bogus headline of an £8 minimum wage, ignoring the stark reality they are only promising this figure 5 years from now, in 2020, with inflation on life's basic necessities meantime wiping out any meaningful increase this figure would mean.
Vote SNP, with their welcome but extremely limited support for the £7.85 Living Wage. Limited, because the level is still far below what is required to match the mounting cost of living, and limited because it's entirely voluntary, not legally enforceable, left to the whims and fancies of employers.
Or people disgusted by corrupt, careerists politicians can vote for the SSP, and our relentless, determined campaign for a £10 minimum living wage for all over 16 - now, not in 2020 or some other distant date.

Straw:  Usually on £5000 a day...

Socialist MPs on a Worker's Wage
MPs are so divorced from the struggles of everyday life faced by the rest of us that they have no interest in combating poverty pay. 

Their current basic salary is £67,060. That's set to rise to £74,000 after the elections. 

But even that is not enough for these greedy swine. When the body that now sets MPs' salaries - the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA) - surveyed MPs' views on what they thought they should be paid, back in 2013, the AVERAGE response was £86,250!

And in stark, stinking contrast to the CBI's talk about a 20p rise on the £6.50 minimum wage avoiding the pitfalls of "any artificial increase due to political expediency", the chief executive of the IPSA justified the 11% rise for MPs, to £74,000, with the following comments to the Sunday Telegraph:

"MPs' salaries have fallen behind others working in comparable public sector roles. The £74,000 is now seen by some as at the low end. 

Pay needs to be fair to attract good candidates. They are there to represent us - to form laws, to send young people to war. It's not an easy thing to do. We want to have good people doing the job and they need to be paid fairly." 

Dry up your tears of sorrow for these poor, underpaid MPs! Tighten your belts, because 'we're all in this together'. Pity the poor warmongers who send young, working-class economic conscripts to the killing fields of Iraq, Afghanistan or elsewhere, to kill and be killed.

Nice Little Earners - and Day Jobs

Of course MPs from all the 'mainstream' pro-capitalist parties will gladly pocket the full 'rate for the job' - and on top, many of them grab hundreds of thousands more on jobs outside parliament, treating being an MP as their 'day job'.

In fact, just the ten MPs with the highest earnings outside parliament last year grabbed a combined additional income of £3,378,857. That's an average of £33,789 each! 

Top of the pile was Labour's Gordon Brown, who coined £962,516 on top of his MP's salary. 'Gorgeous' George Galloway reached 4th place on the charts with £277,350 on his Commons Register of Members' Financial Interests for 2014. 

The future is not what it used to be!

In contrast, any SSP MP or MSP will only take the average skilled worker's wage, to stay in touch with the working class we seek to represent and help fight for a sweeping redistribution of wealth through socialist measures.

Two classes; two planets! The SSP knows which class we fight for. 

The despicable Malcolm Rifkind once said, in a completely different context, "The future is not what it used to be"! 

Let's make sure of that by organising for a socialist future that banishes poverty, inequality and corrupt

The SSP Podcast

I recorded a piece for this weeks SSP podcast on Council budgets. Councillors who cannot protect their electorate from Tory/ LibDem imposed cuts should stand down and allow socialists to take their place.

CAPITALISM = CORRUPTION IN BREADLINE BRITAIN

There's a gut-wrenching stink of corruption arising from the body of capitalism right now.

The world's second-biggest bank, HSBC, has hit the headlines for providing a tax-dodging service to some of the world's biggest corporations, richest capitalists, and most corrupt crooks.

The public, and public services, have been deprived of £billions in unpaid taxes, in a conscious campaign of swindling on an industrial scale, thereby adding to the savage cuts to wages, benefits, services and the lives of millions. However, HSBC is but one link in the chain of corruption and graft known as capitalism, the system where those in power think all is fair in looting and profiteering.

HSBC

Back in 2007, whistleblower Herve Falciani leaked acres of documents showing how around 130,000 of the globe's wealthiest people, in 203 different countries, were systematically shown how to dodge taxes by the Swiss arm of HSBC.
In France, Argentina, Belgium and the USA these revelations have led to criminal investigations, such is the clamour for action against the bankers and capitalists who brought the world economy to the brink of ruin in the 2008 financial crisis. But in Britain, the self-proclaimed mother of democracy, where HSBC is actually based, a monumental cover-up of criminal tax-dodging has been conducted. Not only the perpetrators at the tops of the banks, but also the heads of HMRC and the Westminster government have been up to their elbows in burying the facts from public view up until now, not even 'naming and shaming' the con-merchants involved, let alone prosecuting them.

ONE PROSECUTION OUT OF 7,000! 

HMRC was handed the leaked documents in 2010, if not earlier. These revealed 7,000 UK citizens who had systematically evaded taxes with the active advice and involvement of HSBC's Swiss operation. Five years on, all the authorities have done is a series of shady out-of-court deals - this week boasting(!!) they have recovered £135m in taxes, interest charges and fines - with a sum total of ONE unnamed individual prosecuted.

Contrast that with the shameless, relentless prosecution - and indeed persecution - of those who falsely claim a few hundred pounds in benefits; it says it all about the class-ridden society we live in.
One stark statistic captures the values of capitalist government in the UK: HMRC employs a mere 300 staff pursuing tax evasion by the fabulously rich and big corporations, whilst they have 3,250 staff in pursuit of benefit fraud, even though the latter only amounts to less than 1% of the money lost to the state by corporate and fat cat tax fraud!

OFFSHORE TAX HAVENS

One of the chief means of dodging taxation is through offshore tax havens. As the BBC blithely states, "tax avoidance is perfectly legal, deliberately hiding money to evade tax is not". But that's precisely what HSBC has helped its rich clients do. Just a glimpse at a few of their methods should make your blood boil, and add steel to your determination to help dismantle the whole rotten edifice of capitalism.

They help advise rich clients on how to stay ahead of the law, such as how to dodge the impact of the European Savings Directive of 2005.

They supply wealthy clients with a foreign credit card so they can withdraw their undeclared cash at cashpoints abroad. For instance, Richard Caring, British tycoon and owner of the celebrity-packed Ivy restaraunt in London, on one day in 2005 thus removed £2.25million in cash in Switzerland - dodging his tax duties in the UK.

In Geneva, HSBC handed out 'bricks' of $100,000 a time, no questions asked, to American surgeon Andrew Silva, so he could then illegally post the cash back to the USA.

Amongst their other clients was Emmanuel Shallop, later convicted of dealing in African 'blood diamonds' - the blood-soaked, illegal trade that has claimed thousands of lives through wars on the continent. They opened up an account for him in Dubai.

Hollywood stars, royalty and heirs to some of Europe's biggest fortunes are on the HSBC list of criminal tax-dodgers. And only one of the 7,000 British citizens implicated in holding an estimated $21.7billion in HSBC's Swiss vaults has been prosecuted!

CAMERON'S SILENCE BOUGHT

But don't be fooled by the huffing and puffing of David Cameron about clamping down on those embroiled in tax evasion through offshore accounts.

For the past five years, the rich have bought the silence of the government on this scandal. When 500 mind-bogglingly rich donors to the Tory party gathered in London's Grosvenor House hotel this week at the annual 'Black and White Ball', forking out £15,000 a head for dinner to raise Tory party election funds, it was money well spent. They were there to buy the next government!

At last year's event, the 570 assembled worthies were 'worth' a combined £22billion in personal wealth. This year's crowd of parasites are likely to be in possession of even more; after all, Cameron and Osborne cut the top personal tax rate on incomes over £150,000 by 5% since April 2013.

More significant still, they've kept quiet about the tax swindling of these leeches on society, since the HSBC revelations in 2007. And the plot thickens.

Stephen Green was chief executive of HSBC from 2003-2006, then chairman from 2006-2010. He wrote books on "reconciling God and Mammon", in his mission as an evangelical Christian who portrayed himself as a saint in sinful times.

He was then made a Tory Lord. Cameron begged and cajoled the saintly Lord to become a government Minister during a trade mission to India in July 2010 - a clear 3 months after Cameron's government had received the leaked documents on the very 'sinful' deeds of Green's HSBC. Lord Green was appointed Minister for Trade and Investment, from January 2011 until December 2013. "To him that hath, more shall be given, tax-free!".

The Astors and the Camerons... corrupt tax dodgers.

CAMERONS' CORRUPTION

Cameron's stinking hypocrisy on offshore tax-dodgers doesn't stop outside the walls of the HSBC banking conglomerate. His wife Samantha enjoys a £100,000 salary as creative consultant to luxury leather and stationery firm, Smythson's. They're the company that advertise what every working class woman needs: python skin clutch bags at £850 a go, and crocodile skin clutch bags at a cool £3,200 each. It makes you puke; it would take nearly 6 months for a woman working 20 hours a week on the national minimum wage to earn what some creatures pay for a glorified purse.

Smythsons... clutching their obscene wealth

Smythson's UK parent company had a £29.9million turnover in 2013/14, helped out by a taxpayer-funded £1.6m National Loan Guarantee, a scheme the Tories devised. But here's the rub: they switched their official headquarters to Luxembourg - a favourite location for many corporate tax-dodgers.

FURNISHING THE RICH TAX-DODGERS

Samantha Cameron's family are already very familiar with such methods. Her mother, Lady Astor, is the founder of luxury furniture firm OKA DIRECT. She has 22% of its shares, in the company with £5.5m assets and £1.6m profits last year. Some of her customers were Tory MPs caught up in the expenses scandal, which revealed OKA was a favourite source of furnishing their second homes - paid for by you and me! But 50% of OKA's shares are owned by anonymous shareholders through accounts in Guernsey - one of Britain's many offshore tax havens.

And to complete the family circle, David Cameron's father-in-law, Viscount Astor, has a family estate of 19,000 acres on the isle of Jura. Up until November 2014 it was owned by Bahamas-based Ginge Manor Estate Ltd (named after the Astor family home in Oxfordshire), but then transferred to a company based in the British Virgin Islands - another British Caribbean tax haven. No cash was involved in the transfer, meaning it was purely a tax dodge.

THE SWINDLE INDUSTRY

The growth industry that is tax-dodging for the ultra-rich is not the sole preserve of one rogue bank, HSBC. On the contrary, they are a small point on the tip of a monumental iceberg. Some experts estimate a quarter of the world's wealth is held in offshore accounts, purely to avoid paying domestic business and income taxes. And over two-thirds of that is in British territories.


Four huge accountancy firms in the UK make a fortune for themselves and their capitalist clients by giving them expert advice on how to avoid and evade tax. One of them, PriceWaterhouseCooper, has promoted this swindle on an industrial scale, amassing a fortune for its owners in the process. They've just rewarded their executive board members with payouts of over £21million - an average £1.83m each. Legalised crime pays!

These accountancy firms are stuffed full of former top brass tax inspectors from HMRC, and the government hires the services of their representatives to help frame tax laws - which they help shape to suit the rich. And the accountancy firms then make money out of advising the rich on how to escape taxes...through loopholes they helped to devise in the first place!

It's not a case of a few rotten apples in the barrel, but of a system that is rotten and class-ridden to its core.

CAPITALISM = THEFT

Capitalism is a systematic swindling of the wealth created by the working class. But the rich don't leave anything to chance. They use accountancy firms, lawyers, tax experts, banks, politicians and the laws they frame to rip the profit out of the rest of us. It's a colossal machine constructed to redistribute wealth - away from the millions to the millionaires. And by god they've had some run of success!

BREADLINE BRITAIN

Whilst the pro-capitalist politicians try to distract our attention from the systemic corruption that is capitalism by chastising a few individuals that get caught red-handed, the latest figures on poverty and inequality reveal the consequences, but get little publicity.

Twenty million people in Britain are now below the breadline! Poverty has doubled since 1983. 3.5 million adults go hungry to feed their children. And an absolute majority of those in poverty - 52% - are in work.

Whilst the wealthiest 1,000 people have seen their obscene wealth virtually double in the last five years, to £519billion, workers' wages have dropped by £50 a week over the same period.

DEMAND £10 AN HOUR MINIMUM

We're told the SSP's demand for a living minimum wage of £10 an hour for all over 16 is 'unrealistic'. But the people preaching this are the ones who have systematically, consciously robbed society of £billions, not only through dodging taxes and buying politicians to keep taxes on big business and the rich at historic low levels, but through the entire system of profit itself.

In reply, the TUC needs to speak out in support of its own unanimously agreed policy of a £10 national minimum wage, and give a lead in demanding closure of the tax loopholes that help engorge the rich, and confiscation of the assets of companies and individuals found to have dodged taxes.

TAXATION - AND PUBLIC OWNERSHIP

Decent wages, expanded public services and new green industry jobs could all be easily funded if the rich were forced to pay proper taxes and the current annual loss of £120billion from tax avoidance, evasion and non-payment was halted. The jaw-dropping mountains of wealth accumulated by the richest 1% - in part through this monstrous international tax swindle - needs to be redistributed, with a wealth tax and vastly increased levels of Corporation Tax.

But taxation alone cannot rid society of the obnoxious inequality that the capitalist economic system is built upon. Why should the banks, accountancy firms, manufacturing and service industry multinationals have the ability to amass vast profits, dividends and bonuses for the owners and directors in the first place - regardless of whether they fancy paying the taxes they are meant to, or not?

CLEANSE SOCIETY OF CORRUPTION & CAPITALISM

This stinking corruption should embolden those of us who think the wealth created by the collective efforts of working people should be collectively owned, through measures such as democratic public ownership of the banks, big business and natural resources. That way the one in three people in Britain below the breadline could be raised to a life of plenty, with socially useful jobs created and decent wages for all, including the guaranteed minimum of £10 an hour. Capitalism equals corruption and cruel exploitation to create profits for the very few. Socialism would cleanse society of this foul system.

My blog pieces appear also in the Scottish Socialist Voice, fortnightly.

BILLIONAIRES - AND BUTTONS FOR WAGES

The crime of poverty pay is becoming even more criminal.

In a cheap stunt to absorb some of the growing fury of working class people at appalling hourly wage rates, even the Tory government has been obliged to 'name and shame' some of the companies not even paying the legally required national minimum wage, the pathetically low £6.50 for workers aged over 21.
The biggest company named, with the biggest number of workers denied even this pitiful hourly rate, is Swedish-owned clothes chain H&M. 

Known for its fast fashion, cheap chic range, Hennes & Mauritz was founded in 1947 by Erling Persson. The current company chairman is his son, Stefan Persson. He is the world's 24th-richest billionaire, with a personal fortune of £16.01billion. He gained from last year's 25 per cent rise in the stock value of his company, H&M.

But he didn't do too badly from his other sideline, land ownership in England. Last year he bought Savernake Estate in Wiltshire: no crofter's strip of land, nor modest family farm, but a colossus of 8,700 acres! And for Stefan's convenience, this latest acquisition isn't far from Linkenholt, a village in Hampshire, which he bought in 2009!

Billionaire Wage Dodgers

In contrast to this mind-boggling wealth, in the hands of Sweden's richest citizen, his company and primary source of wealth, H&M, dodged paying over 500 of its staff the paltry £6.50 an hour that the national minimum wage legally obliges them to pay! 

Billions for bosses, buttons for their workers!

That's just the stand-out example of obscene class exploitation highlighted by the 'named and shamed' list recently published. And it shouldn't hide the more fundamental point: how the hell are workers meant to live on £6.50 an hour even when companies do pay it?

Below the Breadline

As the SSP steps up its street campaigning for a living national minimum wage of £10 an hour, legally enforced, horror stories of working people who can't cope multiply with every street stall. The woman who told me she has five part-time jobs, as a cleaner, and still can't survive the bills.

The 23-year-old hairdresser who told me she works for a major chain but is having to give up and go back to college, as she only gets £4.50 an hour actual wages, topped up to the legal minimum £6.50 through commission - which is drying up as people can't afford to spend as much on hairdos or shampoos... because of low wages!

The proud people who work part-time but still have had to resort to foodbanks for emergency food supplies.

Inequality: the 1% v. the 99%

Obscene levels of inequality in Scotland actually add to economic crises.

Low wages suppress spending power, thereby adding to job insecurity and unemployment. Workers getting a boost to their wages would spend it, investing in the local economy - in contrast to company bosses on unimaginable sums who just squander their wealth on luxury yachts, works of art that they often stick away in a vault...or in buying up a whole village!

But inequality is the ugly twin of poverty. The richest tenth of people in Scotland have 900 times as much wealth as the poorest tenth of the population.

That's in keeping with the global obscenity of inequality: as Oxfam recently reported, the richest 1% on earth own 48% of global wealth, and by 2016 the 1% will own more than the other 99% of humanity!

£10 easily affordable

Fighting for a £10 an hour national minimum wage for all over 16 - with equal pay for women - is hardly asking for the moon and the stars. It's roughly equivalent to two-thirds the median male wage in Scotland. In other words, two-thirds of the income that half of all men already get more than.

It's the minimum wage unanimously voted for at last autumn's British Trades Union Congress, which adds a mighty potential force behind the demand.

The SSP is appealing to people on the streets to raise their chins, raise their sights, and fight for a living minimum wage, legally enforced.

We are appealing to trade unionists to take up the cudgels and seriously campaign for the policy agreed by all unions representing over seven million members.

And we are arguing that such a wage is easily affordable. The biggest armies of low paid workers are massed in retail, hospitality and the care sector. They are employed by retail giants, including supermarkets, who make £billions in profit every year, and could easily afford a decent living wage for those who make them their profits. Likewise the big chains in the fast foods and hospitality sector.

And the battalions of low paid workers in the public sector could be afforded at least £10 an hour if governments radically changed their spending priorities. From squandering £100billion on Trident weapons of mass destruction, and cutting tax workers' jobs whilst the rich dodge £120billion a year in taxes, to investment in well-paid jobs in the likes of care services for children, the elderly, sick and disabled.

Pay Before Profit

We live in a fabulously rich country - with obscene levels of poverty. Wage levels are a prime cause of that poverty, with half a million Scots working to stay below the breadline.

It's time to stand up and demand a share of the growing wealth for the working class that produce it in the first place.

Just as Syriza won power by, amongst other policies, pledging to restore the minimum wage to its 2010 level (double its current appalling level), so too the Scottish Socialists are determined to lead the fight for a decent living minimum wage of £10 now. Join us. 

DEFY ALL CUTS: there IS an alternative!

The SSP held a meeting in Glasgow at which Colin Fox gave an eye witness account about the elections in Greece last week.  Watch HERE

The contrast could not be starker. As the people of Greece give a resounding NO! to austerity, the councillors of Scotland are poised to vote YES to another bout of municipal butchery.
Council budgets are about to be set across the country, for the next 1-3 years. The common thread in all 32 council areas is cuts: cuts to jobs, cuts to vital services, cuts to the conditions of the workforce.
Tens of millions of pounds are being slashed off local public spending - despite us all being told there's an economic recovery.


A litany of slash-and-burn crimes

Glasgow city council - Labour controlled - are hacking another £100m off services and jobs over 3 years, on top of their previous cut of £175m since 2010. Vulnerable people, like those supported by Glasgow Association of Mental Health, are at the sharp end, as GAMH's budget is reduced by 40 per cent.

Edinburgh city council - run by Labour and SNP - boast of "greater efficiency" and "improved customer services" as they lop £67m off spending and plan 1,200 job losses! You couldn't make it up; well, this coalition of cuts councillors have!

North Ayrshire - SNP the ruling party - threatens another £19m over 3 years, hitting education and social services hard. The Labour opposition condemn this in Press Releases, but turn up to budget meetings and vote for the cuts!

West Dunbartonshire - a Labour council - wants to add another £17m to previous cuts in one of Scotland's most deprived boroughs, with school closures and an end to funding for lifeline services through two local Women's Aid Centres amongst the victims.

Dundee - SNP-run - aims to slice £8.5m off services, with school closures thrown into the mix.

North Lanarkshire - one of Labour's last bastions - threatens 1,400 job losses, with £62m in cuts this year, about £73m in the next two years.


TINA: "there is no alternative"

The list goes on; a dreary litany of slash-and-burn by councillors of all the mainstream political parties - Tory, LibDem, Labour, even the SNP.

And they all sing the same background tune to their axe-swinging crusade: "we have a duty to balance the books", and their all-time favourite, "there is no alternative". The latter was also a favourite tune of the late, unlamented Margaret Thatcher as she put the boot into the working class in the 1980s; she even had her own acronym: TINA, 'there is no alternative'.

It seems it never occurs to these services-cutting, jobs-slashing councillors that they should adopt the stance of the Greek people, by saying NO to ALL cuts, defying the cuts handed down from the Tory dictatorship of and for the rich at Westminster, mounting a campaign to win back some of the £billions stolen off Scottish budgets and therefore Scottish councils over the years.

In the last 3 years alone, £3billion has been robbed off Scotland's budgets by the Westminster razor gang. As Unison reported last year, 39,300 council jobs have vanished since 2010, one of the human consequences of 'balancing the books'.

Colin Fox gave his eye witness account of the Greek elections to an audience at the Trades council, Glasgow.   Watch HERE

Strangling Women's Aid Centre funds

And this new round of slaughter to services will hit some of the people most in need of the social support a modern society should guarantee. For instance, 25,000 women in Scotland made their first contact with Women's Aid Centres last year, in desperate need of refuge for them and their children, as they flee domestic abuse. But in at least West Dunbartonshire, North Lanarkshire, North Ayrshire and Fife councils - a mixture of Labour and SNP administrations - funding for these lifeline refuges are being either slashed or entirely stopped - to 'balance the books'.


Putting the CON into CONsultation

The new modern method of implementing such cowardly butchery is to hold bogus 'public consultation' exercises. Councils have spent considerable sums in this charade, this pretense of giving 'choices' to the public.

As well as online voting, they hold public forums, sometimes with hi-tech electronic voting devices, where the elected councillors hide whilst unelected council officials carry the can, putting forward a long-list of cuts, asking people which cuts to carry out.


The councillors then issue glowing Press Releases about "the biggest consultation in the council's history", and effectively pass the blame for their own spineless acceptance of Westminster-inspired cuts to the average Joe or Josephine.

As I said in the recent live Radio Inverclyde debate with the Labour council leader Stephen McCabe, that's like offering somebody the choice of being executed by a firing squad or the hangman - but with no offer of staying alive!

These Labour (and SNP) councils have truly put the con into CONsultation!

People's BudgetsInstead of offering false 'choices' between cutting local schools or community facilities, teachers' jobs or street cleaning, larger school classes or cuts to women's refuges, elected councillors should be initiating genuine forums where People's Budgets could be debated, based on local needs and priorities, but underpinned by an expansion of funding from central government, rather than annual cuts.

Even at this eleventh hour in setting budgets, if Labour and SNP councillors discovered a collective spine they could as a minimum set No Cuts budgets, Defiance budgets which refuse to pass on the cuts issued by Westminster and meekly passed down by the Scottish government. Budgets with not a penny reduction in services, not a single job lost.


No Cuts Defiance Budgets

"But the money would run out if we did that" was the cry of Labour's Inverclyde council leader when we debated this option. Only if the councillors sat on their hands and did nothing!

If they were genuine about standing up for the people they got elected by, Labour and SNP councillors should link up with the council workforces - which constitutes a massive 246,000 workers in Scotland - through their trade unions, alongside user groups, tenants' groups and political parties dedicated to fighting the cuts, and mount a massive campaign to win back the £millions required to 'balance the books' without a single penny in cuts.

If the SNP Holyrood government was serious about standing up for Scotland, they would go beyond ritual condemnation of Westminster's cuts and mount a campaign of mass defiance, refusing to pass on a single penny of the Tory-LibDem Coalition's austerity, appealing to a population awoken by the recent Referendum to take to the streets demanding "Give us back our stolen £billions - bail out jobs and services, not bankers and the rich".

Scrap the Council Tax: tax the rich

And meantime, as a matter of urgency, the trade unions, community organisations, councillors and political parties should thrash out a progressive alternative means of funding councils.

Funds from the Scottish government account for about 80 per cent of all council budgets. The rest mostly comes from the Council Tax. But this is a brutally regressive tax system, where those on lower incomes pay disproportionately far more for local services than the richest do.

The SNP government has insisted on a freeze on Council Tax bills for several years. Families struggling to cope with household bills welcome this - although the richest gain most from the freeze. Labour's response is to demand an end to the Council Tax freeze - apparently so out of touch with working class lives that they're oblivious to the pain of increased bills their option would mean.

Another false choice: added financial pressure to cut jobs and services through the SNP freeze, or an Ice Age of further cuts to disposable incomes through Labour's increased Council Tax bills.

Scottish Service Tax

The SSP has pioneered and campaigned for the outright abolition of the regressive, unfair Council Tax since our founding aims were written in September 1998. We want it replaced by a progressive Scottish Service Tax, based on income, on the ability to pay. An income-based tax with rising bands and rates, making the rich pay their fair share.

The last time we costed this alternative - four years ago - it would have meant 80 per cent of people paying less, the rich minority paying a damned sight more, and the income for local jobs and services almost exactly doubling: £3.5billion a year from the Scottish Service Tax, compared to £1.8billion that year from the Council Tax.


Defy all cuts: imitate the courage of the Greeks

Contrary to the 'TINA' brigade of councillors, there clearly IS an alternative. But it takes a bit of courage, a spirit of defiance, a readiness to give a lead to people in opposition to ongoing assaults originating in Westminster.

It would be foolish to compare the crucifying savagery of the austerity imposed by the Greek equivalents of Tory and Labour - New Democracy and PASOK - with the cuts hammering the Scottish working class. But that does not excuse the cuts here, and in fact makes it all the more shameful that Labour and SNP councillors have yet to display an ounce of the spirit and courage of the Greek people, who have risen off their knees and said "enough is enough, no more cuts".

The SSP held a meeting in Glasgow at which Colin Fox gave an eye witness account about the elections in Greece last week.  Watch HERE

Public need, not private greed

The SSP proudly stands on the side of working class communities and council workers against this butchery, ready to join them in a campaign of defiance of all cuts, and with a fully-costed, progressive alternative means of funding an expansion of council jobs and services. If Syriza and the people of Greece dare to defy the IMF, EU bureaucrats and European Central Bank, surely we can defy and defeat the tin-pot Tory dictatorship of capital around Cameron, win back funding for jobs and services, and start to build a Scotland based on public need, not private greed?