YESTERDAY the TUC revealed in its ‘Commission on Vulnerable Employment’ report what everybody already knows.
This is that low pay and slave labour often for as little as £1 an hour, in jobs where there are no annual holidays, and no limit to the working day, where the employers’ words have to be obeyed, and where workers are open to physical and sexual assault are huge issues in 21st century Britain, where a Labour government has spent the last 10 years pandering to the rich and the powerful and working might and main to destroy all real regulation of the bosses and also destroy the Welfare State.
The TUC report states that two million UK workers are ‘trapped in a continual round of low-paid and insecure work where mistreatment is the norm…’
The Commission, set up by the TUC and involving supposedly ‘progressive employers and independent experts as well as trade unionists’, says government, unions, employers and consumers must now all play a part in ending exploitation at work.
The reason why the employers were brought on board by the TUC is obvious. It was to make sure that the commission did not come to any serious socialist conclusions of how to really rid the UK of the scourge of low pay and dictatorial employers.
TUC General Secretary and Chair of the Commission Brendan Barber said: ‘All the Commissioners – whatever their backgrounds – were shocked at just how vulnerable some workers are in today’s Britain. Their treatment is a national scandal, and we need urgent action.’
The solution, the ‘urgent action’, is limited to appeals for more legal employment protection, which the bosses already ignore or get round, or the Labour government has already abolished in favour of ‘light touch regulation’.
The commission however, states its support for casual labour, marshalled by gangmasters, by urging that the ‘Gangmasters’ Licensing Authority (GLA) regime should apply to other sectors where agencies use vulnerable workers as there is evidence of exploitative treatment in sectors that are not currently regulated such as care homes or construction.’
It urges ‘Changes in immigration law to reduce the vulnerability of migrant workers who raise complaints to losing their jobs and thus facing destitution’ and that ‘Vulnerable workers should be helped to move into better jobs, through more training – including ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) for migrant workers – and a more flexible benefits system.’
The TUC is dodging the issue. As is well known, in this period that bourgeois economists call globalisation, the employers as a class are setting out to drive wages down as low as they can, and also to increase the intensity of labour as much as possible, otherwise they say, they will move elsewhere where the pickings are richer, ie where the wages are lower.
They want what trade unionists call ‘a race to the bottom’ between different sections of workers, for the benefit of the bosses.
The Labour government has given this policy its support. They have legalised gangmasters and have cut the funding of the Health and Safety Executive, bringing in what they call the ‘lightest touch regulation’, even stooping as low as abolishing the 10p rate of taxation for the lowest paid workers!
The TUC’s Barber supports this government as do all the TUC leaders, as do most of the employers.
The TUC’s current clamour about the plight of the lowest paid is simply to try to cover up the fact that they have allowed this situation to develop in the UK. We call on all workers up and down the country to fight pay cuts, low pay, and dictatorial bosses.
The way to do this is to make a major political change, by organising a general strike to bring down the Brown government, to bring in a workers government that will expropriate the bosses and the bankers, abolish the gangmasters and casual labour to bring in a socialist Britain.
