‘Get a job!’ is the constant refrain of privileged Tory ministers and vicious right-wing tabloids. A million unemployed young people are the subject of a relentless campaign of smears and lies.
But what about the people who have ‘done the right thing’? What about those who’ve been lucky enough to find work, despite the fact that, on average, five jobseekers chase each vacancy? According to the politicians and the media, everyone’s on their side.
Claire Laker-Mansfield – Youth Fight for Jobs
The toils of the low-paid worker are frequently invoked by Cameron and his ilk – usually as a supposed justification for benefit cuts. But is this sympathy genuine? Are the Tories really ‘making work pay’?
Despite waxing lyrical about hard-work being the ultimate test of a person’s moral fibre, the government’s policies are really ensuring it’s far less rewarding. Real wages have fallen by 10% since 2008.
Yet, big business’s demands for a more ‘flexible’ and ‘competitive’ labour market are continually indulged.
At the behest of the multinationals, the Con-Dems gleefully attack employment rights and give the green-light for further squeezes on terms and conditions.
Their workfare schemes represent the ultimate expression of the race to the bottom. Taxpayers fund paltry dole payments for the unemployed, while companies are offered their labour power for free. Profits soar. Misery deepens.
Insecurity
So for workers, finding a job can be a happy occasion. But it’s a happiness often short lived. Because signing-off at the jobcentre rarely heralds the start of a new, stable period in a person’s life.
The opportunity to settle into relatively secure living – confident that bills can be paid, rent supplied and that a regular pattern for work and leisure can be established – is a ‘luxury’ few are allowed.
Insecurity is the name of the game for huge numbers of workers. It’s no wonder ‘precariat’ has become something of a buzzword.
Over 2.5 million people are unemployed including one million young people. Young people are also suffering severe underemployment.
Studies have found that underemployment has dramatically intensified since 2008. In fact the disparity between the number of extra hours people would like to work and those people would like to give up has almost doubled since the onset of the crisis.
But rather than sharing out the work – redistributing hours to those who want to work more (without loss of pay, as socialists demand) – capitalism reinforces this.
Older workers are told they must work more and retire later, meanwhile a ‘lost generation’ is left out altogether.
Zero-hour contracts are now almost ubiquitous. These represent the ultimate deal for employers. Workers are required to be ready to work on demand, whenever the company deems it necessary, but the employer is under no obligation to provide any hours at all – nor any wages.
People on these contracts live in a state of perpetual insecurity, never knowing whether next week will bring enough hours to pay the gas bill, to pay rent or even buy food.
Once hours are given, they’re usually rewarded at minimum wage or close to it. Breaks are rarely paid, shift patterns changed at the whim of the boss and being bullied is a normal part of working life.
In fact, despite the rhetoric coming from the Con-Dems, many of these workers are actually dependent on state benefits for survival; benefits which are being capped, cut and scrapped altogether, ostensibly with ‘making work pay’ as the aim.
It’s because of this that Youth Fight for Jobs has launched the ‘Sick Of Your Boss?’ initiative. We are aiming to work with trade unions and young workers to fight for a better deal.
It’s only by fighting collectively that there’s any hope of improving the lot of the ‘precariat’.
Unionise
As a starting point that means protesting, highlighting how workers are being treated, naming and shaming the bosses responsible.
But it’s also necessary to get organised within the workplace itself. Trade unions can channel the potential power workers have and, through organising industrial action, fight for and win improvements.
The ‘logic’ of capitalism means that the interests of workers and the bosses are in fundamental opposition.
Put simply, the smaller the wage bill for the boss, the larger the profit margin for the shareholder.
It’s only through working people being organised, and in particular, workers exerting economic power through withdrawing their labour – striking – that we have at times been able to secure increasing wages, greater security and other improvements.
‘Liberalisation’ of the labour market really means loosening all constraints placed on bosses – freeing them to pay workers as little as possible. It’s an attempt to reverse the rights won by previous generations.
‘Sick Of Your Boss?’ aims to take the fight to some of the most exploitative employers in the business.
Many casualised young workers are left feeling isolated. Our campaign aims to give workers confidence from knowing they’re not alone – the confidence that comes from organising and fighting alongside others facing similar problems.
We call for decent breaks that workers can take without being ‘clocked off’. We’re demanding pay that provides enough money to live on, without people needing benefits to act as a top-up.
And we’re demanding an end to the ‘zero hour contract’ – proper contracts and full employment rights.
Unreasonable?
Some would say that, in this time of austerity, it’s unreasonable for young workers to be demanding a better deal.
They would say that we should be grateful we’re not stuck in the dole queue like so many others.
But surely it’s far, far more unreasonable that, in this time of austerity, the bosses are demanding a still greater share of the pie.
You’d think that they might be a bit more grateful for the billions they’re already sitting on. You’d think that, in hard times, what we really can’t afford, is to further swell the purses of the fat cats.
After all, theirs is money we’re unlikely to ever see again. Because not only do the multinationals avoid and evade billions in tax, they are not even investing their money.
That’s why fighting for a better deal for young workers is more than just dealing with bullying managers and nasty companies.
It’s also about challenging a system that demands the super-exploitation of the many to satiate the greed of the few.
If, while in private hands, companies can’t provide young workers with basic security and enough money to live, it’s time they are placed in public hands.
And if capitalism – a system where the accumulation of private wealth is the only universal goal – cannot provide a bright future for the 99%; then we need a system that can.
We need to fight for jobs, for decent pay, for security, and for a system that will provide these to all – a socialist system – one run for us, not the bosses!
Sick Of Your Boss demands:
- Decent tea and lunch breaks
- Give us proper contracts, guaranteed hours and full employment rights
- Pay us enough to live on
- End ‘fire at will’
- We won’t be used as cheap or free labour
- We have the right to get organised at work
- Scrap the anti-trade union laws
- Build democratic campaigning trade unions
- No to benefit cuts
- Fight sexism and discrimination in the workplace
