The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
Week commencing 13th September 2024
The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
Week commencing 13th September 2024
The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
The holiday season may be over, but for many workers that was a purely theoretical point. A recent report from the Trades Union Congress shows that over a million workers simply do not get the holiday time they are entitled to. The Holidays With Pay Act was one of the benefits graciously bestowed on the working classes by the Chamberlain Government in 1938. One of the main benefactors was Billy Butlin. whose holiday camps were founded in time to soak up a large amount of workers’ holiday pay.
However, it appears that many bosses have not noticed the change and still think it is 1937. No less than £2 billion was lost by 1.1 million workers (1 in 25 of the workforce, averaging £1,800 per employee). At present UK workers are legally entitled to 28 days paid leave for a five-day week, with pro-rata entitlements for those working less than five days.
Those most affected are largely low paid workers. Predictably those occupations worse affected were 59,000 waiters and waitresses, 55,000 care workers and home carers and 50,000 kitchen and catering assistants. However many were in better paid jobs such as the 46,000 production managers and directors in construction and the 22,000 programmers and software developers. It is no coincidence that these abuses are taking place in those sectors which have low trade union densities.
Black and minority eth- nic (BME) staff were slightly worse off with six per cent BME employees not getting their just desserts compared with four per cent of white employees. However men and women are equally badly off.
The TUC places the blame firmly on bosses who impose brutal workplace cultures where workers fear that requesting paid time off could lead to being treated unfavourably while setting unrealistic workloads which do not allow time to take leave.
According to the TUC this is all going to be put right when the promised Fair Work Agency comes into being which is going to make a massive difference by uniting existing organisations which are clearly not working properly. The fact that lack of action by the unions might at least be a contributory factor seems to have escaped the TUC.
at the same time...
At the same time the gov- ernment’s own Low Pay Commission found that 365,000 workers, about a fifth of those on the wages floor are not receiving the minimum wage, largely due to unpaid overtime or not getting paid for essential travelling time.
In addition, according to the Resolution Foundation, 1,800,000 workers are not even given a payslip – so they do not know if they are paid correctly. In such cases it is highly unlikely that their National Insurance contributions are being paid properly which will mean they will suffer further losses in years to come.
The TUC being the TUC says this is also bad for “decent employers” who are “undercut by those that don’t meet their legal duties”. It has, however, proved impossible to track down any individual bosses or trade associations complaining about corner-cutting “bad employers”.
The TUC expects the Government to recycle fines back into the enforcement system, increase the number of inspectors and inspections and extend the licensing scheme to new sectors. Given Starmer’s attitude to public finances it is highly unlikely that these matters are high on his list of priorities. More vaguely the TUC demands that the Government should “build international links and create a firewall with immigration enforcement to crack down on the exploitation of migrant workers”. The latter point could mean just about anything and could appeal to both Reform and TUSC supporters.
Local Government
Meanwhile beyond the Brighton conference hall the class struggle continues. First in local government Unison are balloting 360,000 members in 4,000 organisations for strike action on the 2024/5 pay offer, which includes school support staff in England and Wales.
The £1,290 flat rate pay offer, which is less than other public sector workers have recently received, has already been rejected by Unison members. In accordance with Unison’s usual practice the ballot will last until mid-October.
Recommending voting “Yes” for strike action, Mike Short, Unison’s head of local government said “Local government finances are in a dire state, but that doesn’t mean staff should be denied a fair pay rise after 14 years of austerity and low wages. Employers still have time to come back with a better offer.
“Central government also needs to assist employers by providing stable, long-term funding settlements that al- low councils and schools to retain expert staff and protect the vital services on which our communities rely”.
Addressing the members, General secretary Christina McAnea chipped in to add that “in real terms, your pay is down by almost a third since 2010”.
Meanwhile north of the Border, there have been mixed results in pay ballots. Unite members working in councils have finally voted by 71 per cent to accept a pay offer from the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities which at £1,292 for the lowest paid workers is almost exactly the same as that which Unison is balloting upon. This is 5.2 per cent for those earning about £25,000. The Scottish local government living wage will also increase by 5.63 per cent. For higher paid workers the increase is 67 pence an hour or 3.6 per cent, whichever is better.
This is a large improvement on the initial offer made in May which amounted to 2.2 per cent running from 1st April to 30th September, and two per cent for a 12-month period running from 1st October 2024 to 30th September 2025. A further 3.2 per cent pay offer was also rejected outright by Unite in July.
Unite’s Scottish local government head, Graham McNab, sagely observed that “time and again we end up in a summer farce over council pay. Unite wants to be perfectly clear that we want council pay resolved at a far earlier stage in the process. It should not take until the cusp of strike action for CoSLA and the Scottish government to come up with a fair pay offer”.
On the other hand, Unison local government staff voted overwhelmingly (86 per cent) against the same offer. This was rejected out of anger at being below the 5.5 per cent for other public sector workers and because it fails to do nothing to reverse the 25 per real terms pay cut over the past 14 years. The resulting strike will be by waste and recycling workers at 13 councils, and for education and early years staff at five councils, some of which just happen to be in ministerial constituencies.
Local government chair Colette Hunter said “CoSLA and the Scottish government need to understand the anger among council staff. They want a fair increase to stop their pay consistently falling behind, and for their wage increase to be in line with other areas of the economy”.
The co-lead for local government, David O’Connor, pointed out that “Councils are in crisis. They struggle to recruit because work ers are expected to deliver even more with fewer staff and lower wages. That puts workers and the services they provide under intolerable pressure. It’s unsustainable, it can’t go on”.
To put these struggles in context it is becoming increasingly obvious that local government in the UK is in an even worse state than expected. Unison states that the black hole amounts to £4 billion. Already some councils have effectively gone bankrupt and more are in the pipeline.
According to the unsentimental Institute of Fiscal Studies English councils effectively imposed cuts of 18 per cent on each resident since 2010. These cuts, of course, hit hardest on those who depend on public libraries rather than Waterstone’s and a municipal sports centre rather than David Lloyd for their intellectual and physical well-being.
One of the worse affected is Hampshire County Council which has proposed withdrawing all spending on homelessness support services from March 2025.
Birmingham City Council, has already approved massive cuts (allegedly nec- essary to settle a long-standing equal pay claim) which sees the loss of 600 jobs affecting libraries, social care and children’s services funding, as well as reduced waste collections.
Further north Middlesbrough Council is spending £3.6 million for redundancies to try to save £21 million by 2026/27. East Riding Council is planning to abolish any post that has been vacant for more than six months.
The £4 billion figure could rise to £8.5 billion in the next four years, according to an analysis of local councils’ own figures and projections.
District councils are also on the brink. Some have funding gaps equal to a third of their budgets. In Hampshire Eastleigh Borough Council takes the dubious crown having an estimated £4.9 million funding gap for 2025/26 equivalent to 37.2 per cent of its £13.1m annual revenue budget. Rushmoor Borough Council and Thur- rock Council are not far behind. The latter issued a section 114 notice in 2022 after a financial emergency caused by a high-risk investments which saw the Government move in its bean-counters, a move which is never good for workers and residents.
Christina McAnea says the collapse of civilisation is nigh “after 14 years of ruthless austerity, the very fabric of local society is under threat. Councils are quite simply the linchpin of local areas, so when services go, many people are left vulner- able, with no one to pick up the pieces”.