Zero hours shows how capitalism works for the 1%

Job anyone? Yes? Good! Wait by the door with your cap in you hand and we’ll call you when we need you. If we call you we’ll pay you. Maybe. A bit. Not much though, times are hard. We’re all in it together.

Better than being on benefits, isn’t it. This way we’re not obliged to give you a cent, a penny, a dime. And we don’t have to worry about all that expensive red tape, bureaucracy. Things like sick pay, holiday pay.

Buckingham Palace, the National Trust, and the Tate Galleries use the same zero hours approach to employment as Mike Ashley billionaire owner of Sports Direct and Newcastle United.  

Some 90%  - 20,000 of the people employed by Sports Direct - are on these contracts. The remainder are in line for big bonuses, if they keep their noses clean and don’t upset the boss.

But if you DO upset the boss and get sacked there’s always the Employment Tribunal. Or at least there was. Now they’ve changed the rules so you have to pay a fat fee to even think about lodging an appeal. Good people in the Coalition.

The percentage of employers in the UK with more than 100 staff offering zero-hours contracts jumped from 11% to 23% between 2004 and 2011.  

They include most workers in the care industry, and a high proportion working for hotel, catering and leisure companies. No customers means no shifts, no hours and no pay.

Austerity programmes cutting spending in the public sector meant that NHS trusts began to issue zero-hours contracts to professional staff and make them fight it out for shifts.

Radiologists, psychiatrists and heart specialists found themselves in staff "banks" that trusts could draw on when demand peaked.

This trend is part of a universal, worldwide downward pressure on jobs and real incomes resulting from the 2007-8 crash.

You can see it behind the news that the number of jobless in the eurozone fell for the first time in more than two years in June, but the unemployment rate stayed at a record 12.1%. 

The total number of unemployed people in the wider EU fell by 32,000 to 26.42 million. But just like in the United States, part-time, and no-time jobs are increasing.

Even so, the youth unemployment rate is now at 58.7% in Greece and 56.1% in Spain.

The US Federal Reserve has just announced that it will continue adding to the $2 trillion dollars of credit it has pumped into the economy since the crash. Jobs are increasing by 200,000 a month as a result yet are failing to close the gap of 8.7 million lost as a result of the crash.

But, as Daniel Alpert, former merchant and investment banker, turned financial consultant points out, over 69% of the jobs created in April-June 2013 and over 57% of all the jobs created in the first half of 2013 were in the three lowest wage sub-sectors of the economy.

About half of the jobs created during the first half of 2013, and a large majority of the jobs created in April-June, appear to have been part-time jobs that offer employees as little as one hour of work per week, and up to 35 hours of work.

And the number of people saying they are working part time because they can’t find full time work crept back up to 8.2 million – double pre-recession levels.

Alpert now specialises in bankruptcy and restructuring – “thinking outside the box” to provide “novel and workable solutions to unique financial challenges”.

He’s got a new book out next month: The Age of Oversupply: Overcoming the Greatest Challenge to the Global Economy.

Just can’t wait to find out what new ideas he has for the huge numbers of people made surplus to requirements by the crisis of capitalist production.

 

Gerry Gold

Economics editor

 

In memory of Brian Haw

A World to Win salutes the uncompromising determination of Brian Haw, who became a symbol, not only for the anti-war movement, but for the basic democratic right to demonstrate and protest. His death from cancer at only 62 robs us of an unbending voice and symbol of resistance to the state.

Haw began his vigil directly outside the House of Commons on June 2, 2001 to protest against the UN-NATO sponsored sanctions on Iraq on June. He said he would stay there “as long as it took”. The carpenter from Essex, also a father of seven, used a megaphone to denounce war-mongering politicians. He survived on donations from supporters.

His campaign against what he termed the genocide of Iraq’s children took on a new meaning after the September 11 twin tower attacks in New York. New Labour joined the United States to invade Afghanistan not long after. In March 2003, Britain and the United States attacked Iraq, a war which ultimately led to hundreds of thousands of Iraqi deaths, with many more fleeing into exile to avoid the ensuing violence.

Over the years, Haw was joined by supporters and campaigners including the Global Peace Strike, Democracy Village and fellow camper and hunger striker Maria Gallastegui, who was arrested for reading out the names of dead British soldiers outside the Cenotaph. Embarrassed by the vocal protests, Blair’s government sought to change the law to end Haw’s protest.

In 2003, House of Commons procedure committee recommended the law be changed to prohibit “unlicensed” protests in the square. The committee’s proposals were incorporated in the 2005 Serious Organised Crime and Police Act (SOCPA) which, despite its name, gave the police vastly increased powers to remove protesters.

On one occasion Haw was injured by a police officer who shoved Haw’s camera into his face and then forced him to the ground. In 2006, 54% of Channel Four television viewers voted Haw the most politically inspiring figure of the year. Haw used the prize-giving ceremony to demand support for his campaign to put an end to the genocide and the looting. “It’s about oil, it’s about the arms industry,” he said.

In 2007 police removed all of Haw’s placards but one and arrested him under SOCPA. He was acquitted under a technicality a year later, but continued to be harassed by not only the police, but by the Greater London Authority under Mayor Boris Johnson. At the time of his death, Haw was still battling the authorities for the right to stay in Parliament Square.

Haw inspired artist Mark Wallinger who recreated his array of banners and placards and installed them in the Tate Gallery. Wallinger went on to receive the Turner Prize for his “State Britain”, which pointed to the severe restrictions imposed on the right to demonstrate in Westminster.

Haw sought to name and shame the successive Parliaments which approved the decisions made without reference to any democratic procedures to go to war. He hoped that his moral stand would inspire others to put an end to wars for profit, oil and political careers

The truth is that attacks on sovereign states by major capitalist powers are endemic to the economic and political system we live under and are used by desperate leaders of all parties. Yesterday’s admission by NATO that they bombed a residential area in Tripoli killing nine civilians provides more evidence if any is needed.

Haw’s marathon protest and sacrifice should be not only make us to mourn his passing and celebrate his achievement. It must be an incentive to unmask the sham façade that is misnamed democracy and create in its place a real alternative based on the needs of ordinary people.

Corinna Lotz

A World to Win secretary