Fighting Poverty Pay!

Newsletter of the Fight Poverty Pay Campaign. No.13
June 2001

 
In the run-up to the election Labour is cranking up its crusade against the unemployed. Apparently we've got a duty to work for low wages or starve. While the economy may have boomed the labour market certainly hasn't, and their electioneering new minimum wage (£4.10 as of October) won't make a big difference.

Greater Manchester Low Pay Unit has just released its annual survey of JobCentre vacancies, 'Jobwatch 2000', which reveals just what crap jobs the unemployed are being pressured into taking. Ashton-U-Lyne and Bury are the worst. The average weekly pay in Ashton was £113.02, down 17.2% from last year, comparing with a Greater Manchester average of £141.03. The average hourly wage was £4.31 in Ashton, down 3.3% from last year, the Greater Manchester average being £4.59.

40% of jobs on offer in Greater Manchester were part-time, in Ashton this was 54%. Part-time jobs are usually significantly worse paid than full-time, as well as giving workers fewer rights. This illustrates the 'new economy' that has brought in so much additional wealth for the rich while condemning workers to take flexible jobs, meaning they can lay you off all the easier, with low rates of pay.

More than half of all jobs on offer in Greater Manchester paid less than a couple with two children under 11 could expect to get on Income Support, in Ashton it was 71.7%. A quarter of all jobs paid below the Lower Earnings Limit of £67, meaning that workers earn too little to be entitled to the higher rate of Jobseeker's Allowance, statutory sick pay, maternity pay or a state pension. In Ashton 40% of jobs were below the limit. Even if your total earnings from several jobs is above £67 a week, you still won't qualify for these securities, as the Lower Earnings Limit only applies to one job at a time.

65.9% of jobs didn't pay enough to make it worth your while taking out one of the new 'Stakeholder Pensions', which are supposed to be aimed specifically at the low-paid. In Ashton and Bury it was 77%.

Most of the jobs on offer pay poverty rates. The proposed rise in the Minimum Wage will bring it to a level far short of these low average wages, ensuring that it continues to act as a drag anchor on wages generally. That Labour say they 'might' raise it by 10p next year, but not again, shows that it is an election ploy. They've basically given us the 10p a year increases of the 4-5 years till the next election in one go.

The Low Pay Unit only covers the JobCentres. While doing our stalls and dole-pickets in Preston, Blackburn and Ashton, we get to hear of much worse. At a Spar supermarket in Preston schoolkids are employed on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays for £1.30 an hour. Streetwise sports pays its young full-time workers £3.12 an hour and part-timers, who sometimes work more than 40 hours a week although 30 hours is the part-time limit, get £2.50.

The Minimum Wage regulations discriminate against these young workers. There's no minimum for under 18s and 18-21 year-olds only get £3.20 an hour. This rate will not be going up in October. Under 18s are excluded from Benefits, so they have very little bargaining power.

Another group with limited bargaining power are Asylum-Seekers. They are banned from working for the first 6 months in Britain and get less Benefits, which are paid in the form of food vouchers. This makes them vulnerable to exploitation. At a farm in Lancashire, for example, British workers were being paid £4.16, while Asylum-Seekers only got £2 an hour. At a similar farm in Gloucestershire, the workforce downed tools and refused to work until the Asylum-Seekers were paid the same rate as them. The farmer had to give in.

It is in the interest of all workers to support the struggles of the unemployed and low-paid. When the bottom end of the labour-market is weak, it affects the bargaining power of those who get more pay. When the boss can get people to do the job for less, why should he listen to your demands?
Class solidarity, not racist division!



Securicor scares (part II)

The security and repression business has seen a huge boom over the last ten years or so. The rich and their middle-class lackeys are worrying about their possessions. From the well-known variant of guarding cash in transit, Securicor and a flurry of similar firms have branched into escorting prisoners, prison management and other private prison related industries. Just imagine all that cheap labour behind bars. Very lucrative. Securicor even have their own Employment Agency, which is fitting, considering most Agencies offer terms of employment with as much freedom as a stretch inside.

We mentioned in the last FPP that Securicor pay their cash in transit guards £5.48 an hour. More evidence of working conditions in the security business was on display last month courtesy of Manchester's Fountain St JobCentre, who were staging a recruitment drive for security companies complete with an exhibition highlighting the stylish brown uniforms awaiting successful candidates. Some of the prime placements: security officer for £5 an hour, commissionaire for £1224 a month, working a 51 hour week, a security officer for £4 an hour 48 hours a week and a mobile store detective working a 40 hour week for £5 an hour 'apprehending shoplifters'. No wonder a lot of these security-guard types are so bad-tempered! And those were just the jobs advertised in the window exhibition, supposedly the pick of the bunch!

The Low Pay Unit's survey of job vacancies in Manchester revealed that security workers were being offered an average hourly wage of £4.11 and weekly pay of £180.75. Some 90% of them offered less than £4.72 an hour. 66% worked more than 40 hours a week, the average working week being 44.2 hours

According to Price Waterhouse Cooper Corporate Register the average director's pay at Securicor was £212,800 a year in '97, must be quite a bit more by now. The highest paid director clocked in at £369,998. Might that not be the (unelected) chairman of the board of directors, Sir Neil Macfarlane, former MP for Sutton and Cheam and minister of sport, who has also been a director of Bradford and Bingley Building Society since 1986? Securicor ran up total profits after tax in '98 of 54.5 million, in '99 it was 78.4 mill. That's a good 45% increase in one year. The average pay for their private army of 46,000 employees was £10,286 a year in '97!

Another firm doing well from the security boom is Securitas, ultimately a subsidiary of Pinkerton's Inc in the USA. Apart from the usual cash in transit security etc, these twats have detectives running round supermarkets spying on the check-out workers, to see if they are inspecting peoples' trolleys energetically enough. Closely related are Group 4, an immediate subsidiary of Group 4 Securitas Holdings Ltd, in turn owned by the Dutch Secom Investments NV. The latest available figures give Group 4's various prison, court and other operations some 12,000 employees in Britain alone.

Across the board society is developing in a very repressive direction. CCCTV, electronic tags, loss of bank privacy and data protection rights. With new technology the atmosphere at work is more controlled than it ever was. The rich are obviously scared shitless that the powder keg called capitalism is going to blow up in their faces. The state is handing over its monopoly of force to the private sector, and, as we all know, companies aren't exactly known for their democratic principles. The future looks fascistic.




Even Newer Deal

A further extension of the New Deal targeted at 50,000 long-term unemployed and lone parents was announced by Education and Employment Secretary Blunkett on April 11. This time they're working hand in hand with major high street stores such as Sainsbury's, Marks and Spencer and Boots, who are supposed to be providing training for careers in retailing. Blunkett claimed that retailing accounted for 11% of all workers but 15% of all job vacancies and emphasised that the government wants to help 'retail businesses ... solve their recruitment problems.'

They have these problems because the jobs they've got on offer are crap. We reported in the last FPP on how Kwik-Slave treat their workers under the age of 18 (£2.53 an hour). Older people are already sent by the JobCentre in Ashton, without using New Deal, to work at Asda for £4.01 an hour. New Deal candidates will be sent either to work while being trained under the Training and Education 'Option' of the scheme, which means the company pays nothing and you get Benefits + £10, or into the Subsidised Employment 'Option', which means you get the minimum wage or thereabouts and the company receives a substantial wage-subsidy from the JobCentre. Both so-called 'Options' last 6 months. Either way it's cheap labour for the company and a crap job for you!

New Deal conditions are different for 18-24 year olds, who go on it after 6 months or get chucked off Benefits, and over 25s, for who the 'options' were supposed to be voluntary after 18 months, but who will now be facing cuts in Benefits if they don't choose one. The latest figures reveal that of the young people leaving the New Deal by Dec 2000 39.1% had found unsubsidised employment for 3 months, 11.4% were on other Benefits, i.e. back on the dole or on the sick, 19.9% had transferred to other training or moved abroad, and 29.6%, that's 142,800 18-24 year-olds, had gone to an 'unknown destination'. That's 142,800 young people who've either been forced into relying on their parents, working in the shadow economy or onto the streets. Furthermore it seems that even those who get (usually low-paid) jobs, often don't keep them for very long, but get trapped in the low pay/no pay cycle, short-term crap jobs followed by periods on the dole. For the over 25s, 267,000 had left New Deal, of whom 62,570 had got jobs, 80% of them for 3 months or more. So, by far the majority were back on the dole or had disappeared. (Figures from 'TUC New Deal Briefing' no. 52, for more on New Deal see FPP no.11).

At the same time as announcing tougher sanctions for over 25s who refuse a bout of New Deal slave labour, the government says it will be dragging all single parents in for an Employment Service interview as of April 2002. Previously it had only been single parents with children over 5.
On another level it is interesting that Labour has sprung to the aid of the ailing Marks and Spencer corporation, by feeding them with slave-labour. M&S have deep-rooted ties with the Labour party, they've been involved in many plans to privatise social security, and they support the state of Israel and its murderous war against the Palestinians with £240m a year. A friend in need ....



Labour's campaign against the unemployed

Like the rest of his Party, the Labour MP for Oldham East and Saddleworth, Phil Woolas, is gearing up for an election campaign on the backs of the unemployed. Targeting the jobless for a crack of the whip has always been a good ploy to win the middle class votes they depend on. Woolas has been blowing off in the national papers about a private member's Bill he wants to introduce in Parliament, that the unemployed be forced to sign the electoral register as a precondition for getting Benefits. This is supposed to be a measure 'against voter apathy' as well as being a good way of countering fraud. Furthermore, the unemployed are supposed to have a moral duty to vote, because they're receiving Benefits. He admits that there may be a slight problem with civil liberties, but that's never been a problem before!

Behind all the rhetoric lie social prejudices, e.g. the unemployed are socially irresponsible because they don't vote, the unemployed are criminals and need observation, the unemployed are scroungers and owe society a debt. Suitably, Woolas lives in a posh house in a leafy dell between three of the poorest council estates in Manchester, Alt, Glodwick and Holts.

So, if the poor won't vote, force them. Not being on the electoral register is a criminal offence anyway and giving the Benefits Agency the job of ensuring people are on it is just a way of tightening the screws. It means more forms to fill out, more conditions attached to getting Benefits and more social control of the population. Woolas' worrying about unemployed voting habits shows one thing: neither Labour nor any of the parties represent our interests, and they are well aware that many of us won't be voting. It would be socially irresponsible to do so!
Fight Labour's Social Fascism!



Mayday in London

Fight Poverty Pay campaigners were in London for the anti-capitalist protests on Mayday. Our newsletter was well received as was our controversial banner with the motto 'Work is shit, Abolish it!', which provoked a good deal of hilarity and some debate.

A general lack of strategy and communication among the protestors led to the media-hype turning out to be a damp squib. A procession of around 1,500 people from Euston station early in the morning was quickly surrounded by police and penned in for 3 hours. A planned (?) occupation of the roundabout at Elephant and Castle by around 400 people failed due to indecisiveness and ignorance of what the organisers had in mind. Oxford Circus was occupied 2 hours before the arranged time and the protestors penned in by the police for 7 hours, thus preventing any further activities planned or otherwise on that terrain. Frequent, strategic visits to the pub ensured that the Fight Poverty Pay Campaign did not get penned in anywhere.

There were meant to be autonomous actions happening all over the city addressing different topics all day. It is only to be hoped that the others had more success than the ones we saw. At the very least the huge amount of negative press coverage and excessive police attention ensured that diverse views and activities of the anti-capitalist movement received exposure through the distorting lens of the mainstream media. But was it really worth 92 arrests?



Britain's growing wealth gap

The Office for National Statistics released data in April that confirmed the growing wealth gap between rich and poor under Labour. Their figures show that inequality between rich and poor was the highest in 1999-2000 than at any time since they began to keep figures. Allied to this they found that the poorest households are paying a higher proportion of income in tax than the richest. While the proportion of income paid in tax has risen for the majority of households since 1997-98, for the richest 20% it had actually fallen! This helps to account for the more than doubling of the numbers of millionaires in Britain over the last 5 years. In 1995 there were 33,063 millionaires in this country, in 2000 there were 73,990.



A Living Wage?

On Saturday April 28 the trade-union UNISON held a 'march for a living wage' in Manchester, which was attended by about 600 people from all round the country, half of who were demo stewards, so they'd obviously expected a lot more. It was a bit grotesque, as UNISON were on the Low Pay Commission that set the Minimum Wage at £3.60 an hour in the first place. Now they want £5 an hour, itself a pathetic rate. The demo was lifeless and the speakers at the final rally had nothing to say. In a petty piece of lefty in-fighting, stewards tried to prevent demonstrators carrying placards from the 'Socialist Alliance', another bunch of Labour party sops, into Albert Square.

The trade union leadership is hand in glove with big business and the Labour party. If they're asking for £5 an hour then that's what their boss pals have suggested. The one way to achieve better pay and conditions for workers is through struggle, but this is where these unions are incapable of delivering the goods, especially now that their mates are in the driving seat. 1999 saw the lowest strike rate in the UK for decades: 10 days per 1,000 employees, down from 83 in 1990 (see Labour Market Trends, April). This practical irrelevance was reflected in the pathetic turn-out at the march. Nobody's listening.
ZERO TOLERANCE FOR LOW WAGES



Big Issue – Big for Capitalism

The Big Issue, the magazine supposedly fighting for the interests of the homeless has announced plans to set up a lending bank. The magazine with a turnover of over £ 3.5 m, is having talks with the Royal Bank of Scotland, Apax Partners and the management consultancy McKinsey about starting a £ 30 m lending bank to fund businesses and retrain the homeless.

It is thought the project will be a big part of the magazines 10th anniversary in September. No doubt dressed up in liberal humanitarian phrases about ethical capitalism and giving opportunities to young people, the homeless and unemployed.

The reality is that for financial institutions the bottom line is profit. It is the banks and the economic system they represent that is driving millions of people across the world into poverty and homelessness. The Big Issue's embracing of these self-same institutions is no real surprise. Its whole ethos far from challenging this corrupt system, has been to promote the ideas of individualism, standing on your own two feet and the cult of the small business.

The real Big Issue is the fight against capitalism and imperialism for socialism.



More Habitual Residence Test

In FPP no 10 we reported on the racist Habitual Residence Test which is used to refuse Benefits to citizens of EU member states and British citizens returning from a period abroad. It particularly affects Asian citizens going to the Indian sub-continent on their return.

In 1997 a European Court of Justice decision made it illegal to apply such a test to European nationals, so it is now mainly applied to British nationals who've either worked abroad or visited and stayed with relatives. However, in our experience it is also still applied to European nationals.

The following tale reached us from Brighton:
'Jennifer Stacey came to us (i.e. Brighton Unemployed Centre) at the end of last year She had fled abroad 18 years ago because of domestic violence, met someone in France, settled down and had a child. Their relationship broke down and she has come back here with her son. When she returned she was declared ëhabitually resident' and put in temporary accommodation by the Council. The Council then declared she was ëintentionally homeless' and gave her notice. After being advised by various agencies that the Council and Benefit Agency were within their rights, the Unemployed Centre took up the case. The Council backed down after they were threatened with Judicial Review!

On April 19th the Social Security Appeal Tribunal reversed the decision of the Benefits Agency and said Jennifer Stacey was habitually resident.... One reason they backed down was because we submitted 25 pages of evidence that the Habitual Residence Test is illegal under European Law.'
(Source 'Where's My Giro?' issue 12, Brighton&Hove Unemployed Workers' Centre, 4 Crestway Parade, Brighton BN1 7BL)



A Letter from Blackburn:
Halifax says X to Benefit Payments

Claimants wishing to have their benefits paid direct into a bank account especially the Halifax – beware! The 'new rules' now disallow withdrawals of any amount under £10. This is specifically aimed at people on benefits as banks apparently see claimants as non-profitable customers.

After paying my bills, I was left with £9.60 in my Halifax account. As I could not withdraw the money from the cash dispenser, I asked at the counter to withdraw £9. I was promptly told I was unable to do so because of the 'new rules'. This meant that I would be unable to buy some food for the next 2 or 3 days! I immediately complained to the manager that it was my £9 and I wanted it. They refused. I then threatened that if they did not give me my money they would be breaking the law and I would take them to court. I got my £9 eventually and so was able to eat that day. This is just another example of how we on Benefits are treated by mercenary, profit-driven organisations.
Charlie



Racist Britain
Recent Government statistics for Spring 2000 show that the unemployment rate for white males was 6.9%. The rate for ethnic minorities was nearly double, at 13%. The highest male unemployment rate was 20.4% for Bangladeshi men. The unemployment rate for white women was 4.7%. The unemployment rate for all ethnic minority women was 12.3%. Bangladeshi and Pakistani women have the highest unemployment rate of all at 23.9%.

These figures are hugely under-estimated. The government claims that there are just under a million unemployed. The International Labour Organisation, who the Labour party relied on for information while they were in opposition, estimates that there are closer to 1.5 million unemployed. Even this does not take into account the large amount of hidden unemployment which affects women and people from ethnic minority backgrounds in particular.



Parasite bar bosses

The millionaire owners of the Montpelier chain of pubs in Edinburgh have told their workers to rely on tips to bring their wages up to the minimum wage. After informing their more than 70 staff they will only receive a basic £ 2 an hour their parasite bosses Ruth and David Wither and Rob and Wendy Elliott rewarded themselves with £ 50,000 bonuses each last year.

They are exploiting a loop-hole in the law which means they can include tips paid to their staff to make up the minimum wage rate. While the young bar staff are being super exploited the trendy middle-class patrons are swigging champagne at a £ 120 a bottle.
Time for the boss-class to be behind bars!



American Nightmare

The New York City Coalition Against Hunger found the demand for emergency food assistance rose in the city by 28% during last year. In February the unemployment rate stood at 5.3%. Yet over 2 million New Yorkers, or 38% of the population, lived below the official poverty line. Nearly 7o% of those who eat hot meals at the soup-kitchens are working, but earn too little to make ends meet. The city's food pantries and soup-kitchens can't handle the growing hunger emergency and turned away nearly 48,000 people during January 2000 alone. Children comprised almost half of those turned away and elderly people made up almost 17%. The proposed state budget includes a $2 million cut in funding for both emergency food and summer meal programmes. In March this year the mayor of New York announced preparations to cut nearly $500 million in social programmes from both this year's and next year's city budget. The crisis facing the poor is heading for dire straits. Over 500,000 people have been pushed off public assistance by welfare reform. In a few months hundreds of thousands will have exhausted their 5 year eligibility. They will never be eligible for assistance (Benefits) again in their lifetimes. It was also announced that infant mortality rates had reached 15 deaths for every 1,000 births in Harlem and several other city neighbourhoods.
(Source: Peoples Weekly World, March 31, 2001)



SEND YOUR INFO ON DODGY BOSSES, DOLE HARASSMENT, LABOUR AND TRADE UNION CORRUPTION AND YOUR LETTERS :

FIGHTING POVERTY PAY!
Order bundles of the newsletter– £7.50 for 50 copies.
Join the campaign: £2 unwaged, £5/£10 waged, £25 orgs

Send all correspondence to:
Fighting Poverty Pay,
PO Box 22, Alford,
Lincolnshire

Cheques/PO's to Fight Poverty Pay Campaign.
E-mail: fightpov@freenetname.co.uk