Clap for carers but don’t give them the right to organise, say the SNP and Tories

Philip Stott

The Scottish National Party-led government at Holyrood disgraced themselves this week. In doing so they exposed, not for the first time, their slavish pro-business ideology.

Trade unions and care workers have been denied the right to national collective bargaining in the privatised care sector. Unbelievably, it was the combined alliance of SNP and Tory MSPs that killed the amendment from the left Labour MSP Neil Findlay that would have given this basic right to some of the most exploited workers in Scotland.

Moreover these are the same care workers who have had to battle on the front line of the Covid-19 pandemic, often with little PPE and no access to testing until this week. 50% of all coronavirus deaths in Scotland have been in care homes.

Support for a hardship payment for care workers who are forced to go off sick with coronavirus was eventually won from the government, via an amendment from a Labour MSP and GMB member Monica Lennon.

This at least will allow workers to avoid the catastrophe of losing hundreds of pounds when, as is the case just now, they are forced to drop to £95 a week when on statutory sick pay.

But this is a absolute minimum that workers should expect, Care workers who are employed by councils already have trade union negotiated agreements for 100% full pay when off sick. Why should workers in the private sector not have the same protection?

The right to national collective bargaining would, of course, have opened up the potential for a mass trade unionisation campaign to end the scandalous exploitation in this sector.

As Brian Smith, secretary of Glasgow City Unison, told us: The long term scandal of the private care home industry has been exposed more than ever in recent months. Poor crisis planning, inadequate PPE, awful pay and employment conditions, huge pay packets for the chief executives and big profits for the shareholders. Add in that some pay no tax on these profits as they are registered in tax havens and it’s easy to see why working-class people are getting angrier by the day.

“The fact that the Scottish Government with the help of the Tories voted down a modest proposal for Scotland-wide trade union bargaining on workers’ pay and conditions is not surprising but is a disgrace. Overall, this model of care provision based on profit should be dumped and private care homes taken into the public sector.”

SNP back landlords not tenants

It this was not bad enough, the SNP and Tories also kicked out amendments to the emergency coronavirus bill that would have given extra protection for tenants during the pandemic. Andy Wightman, a Scottish Green MSP, proposed a two-year rent freeze and disallowing rent arrears built up during the pandemic as a factor in any future eviction.

Not surprisingly landlords opposed the amendments, claiming it would have been “catastrophic” for their incomes. But with the biggest ever increase in applications for Universal Credit in April to 75,000, and hundreds of thousands of workers on furlough facing a cut of up to 20% of their wages, these Green party amendments were actually very modest.

What the SNP did ensure, with the backing of the Tories, was the exemption for landlords who provide student accommodation, many of which are based in tax havens, from the need to pay council tax if they have no students resident.

Socialist Party Scotland demands national rent controls to enforce affordable housing and a massive programme of building of quality council housing.

This pro-landlord, anti-tenant approach underlines the need to build a real political alternative in Scotland to the pro-capitalist SNP leadership. The Scottish Greens also need to draw conclusions from their consistent support for SNP budgets at Holyrood which have cut funding of local government and education etc.

Fight for class interests

At the beginning of the Covid-19 crisis, the STUC signed a joint declaration with the Scottish government that declared: “We need a partnership, working in the national interest, to get through the next few months”. And that: “Scotland’s success as an economy is built on a shared endeavour between workers, unions and employers and this approach will help us get through the current health and economic crisis.”

But it has been clear all the way through the crisis that there is no “national interest”, only class interests. The interests of care workers in need of PPE and testing are separate and apart from the profiteering care owners such as the largest care company, HC-One, who haven’t paid corporation tax since 2011 but have paid out £48 million in dividends to shareholders. Tenants interests, many of them young people in precarious employment, clash decisively with the landlords. The fact the Scottish government have made clear whose side they are on should make the STUC change tack.

Workers and trade unions can only rely on their own strength and power. As the Communication Workers’ Union have proved by forcing out the anti-union Rico Back as CEO of Royal Mail. At the same time as defeating bosses’ plans to tear up the universal service obligation.

Another example is the huge and already partially successful campaign being waged by teachers in England to resist the back to school by June 1 diktat by Boris Johnson.

The STUC and its new general secretary Roz Foyer should make clear that there is no “ shared endeavour between workers, unions and employers”

Trade unions and their 600,000 members in Scotland must ensure no going back to work unless safe. Demand public ownership of the care sector with full trade union and collective bargaining rights. A £12 an hour minimum wage and workers’ control of workplace safety.

Above all, workers need a political voice in the form of a genuine workers’ party, based on the trade unions, that fights for socialist change.