24.08.1995

The fight for a minimum wage: £4.15 is not enough

The Fire Brigades Union and Ucatt, the building workers’ union, have forced the issue of a minimum wage onto the TUC agenda. But their £4.15 is woefully inadequate

£4.15 AN HOUR is not a living wage. When the Communist Party calculated its minimum wage demand, it was based on the very least that workers need to live. This includes not just food and housing, but being able to take part fully in society, which should be an obvious right for all workers.

Therefore a minimum wage must include money for leisure and culture and the full development of our children. We calculate that at present it costs about £275 a week to provide a modest but real living wage - over 66 hours’ work at £4.15. How many workers will have the energy to enjoy their life after such long hours? Our minimum wage demand is £7.86 an hour for a 35-hour week.

The whole minimum wage argument is a cynical attempt by the Labour Party and trade union bureaucrats to circumvent the fight for a living wage in favour of a low wage economy.

Even the European Union’s minimum standard of ‘decency’ requires an hourly rate of £6, a figure Militant Labour is campaigning for.

However this has not stopped ML from throwing itself behind the campaign for £4.15. The Socialist Workers Party is calling on its supporters to lobby the TUC conference on September 12 for the same figure.

The left is allowing itself to be dragged behind the rightwing agenda of the Labour Party. We know the TUC, for all the hype in the papers, will not seriously challenge Labour on its lack of commitment to setting a minimum wage figure.

Equally, even the revolutionary left is prepared to throw its weight behind some shoddy compromise. A figure that a few union bureaucrats calculate capitalism should be able to afford.

The revolutionary task is to raise the expectations and confidence of the working class to where we become an alternative ruling class, not cheer-lead for those that would make us into a slave class.

The demand for a minimum wage of £275 a week must be linked to the fight against unemployment which keeps wages low.

The Communist Party demands a minimum income of £275 a week for all - whether on benefit, pension or student grant. Why should workers dumped by capitalism be forced to live on the fringes of society, unable financially to take part fully?

Farcically Socialist Worker calls on its readers to ensure that £4.15 is adopted as Labour’s policy too, because “it would be massively popular” (August 19).

Year in, year out, the SWP exposes the anti-working class nature of Labour and TUC leaders. Why on earth strive to make them popular!

Sadly the left is taking no independent revolutionary role. It is caught on the coat tails of the Labour Party. In its heart it believes that anything must be better than the Tories, and it would be infernal impudence to ask for more. Oliver Twist had more ambition.