WeeklyWorker

13.07.1995

Fight against low pay

Healthworkers and railworkers are just the tip of the iceberg in the fight against the bosses’ full frontal attack on pay. While quango and privatised utility heads award themselves huge pay rises, workers across the board are having their pay slashed. This week Labour jumped on the slashing bandwagon, promising to keep workers’ pay below minimum

AT THE Transport and General Workers Union conference Tony Blair could not even commit Labour to a paltry minimum wage of £4.15 an hour. Labour’s social security spokesperson, Donald Dewar, is apparently toying with a figure between £3.00 and £3.50.

Labour is simply telling workers they must live in poverty and like it or lump it. Even the European Union has a ‘decency’ threshold of £5.87 an hour. This makes Labour’s proposals not only indecent, but downright disgusting.

Of course we should not be surprised. We should not expect anything more from a party which makes no secret of the fact that its job is to protect the bosses’ profits, not workers’ living conditions.

The red herring of protecting jobs is thrown in to justify the pauperisation of workers. If the minimum wage is too high, jobs will be lost. Economically this is a circular argument and ignores the relative success of Western European economies with much higher minimum wages.

But all of this is not our problem. We know the reality behind the attack on pay is the bosses’ drive to ever increase exploitation.

Today the income of those at the bottom of society is not just shrinking relative to the top, but is actually declining. People now are worse off than a few years ago. On top of this hours are longer and more intense. As the bosses’ system flails, workers are paying the price with low paid drudgery.

It is not just a problem for the lowest paid, but all workers, since low pay together with unemployment ensure all workers’ pay is held down. That is why the fight for a minimum wage is a fight for all workers. And that is why not only health and railworkers are moving into action over pay, but British Airways staff, miners, engineers and even passport office workers are threatening to follow suit.

The Communist Party has very different criteria from the bosses’ Labour Party. We fight for what workers need, not what the Labour Party is prepared to release from capitalist profits. Profits gained on the backs of the working class and stuffed into the pockets of the rich, the British Gas chairman, Eastern Electric chairman, South-West Water chairman, health trust directors . . . Who needs them!

Fight for what workers need: