G1 group: fight the bosses’ jobs slaughter

By Oisin Duncan, Young Socialists, Glasgow

For the second time since the lockdown began, the G1 group (Scotland’s largest hospitality employer) have sacked large numbers of staff, just two weeks before many of their venues were set to open. While G1 maintain that redundancies were suffered at all levels of their businesses, Unite the Union’s Hospitality section has been contacted predominantly by less experienced staff. 

Unite is also in the midst of another dispute, as their members in the IHG Hotel and Resort group are refusing to accept mass redundancies and preparing a legal challenge in the event that management continues with their rash compulsory redundancies. YS fully back this effort. We support the union and its members drawing up a protest plan of action to build support for their cause. We also demand the bringing into public ownership of companies like G1 who are implementing massive job losses.  

Unite Hospitality have correctly condemned these actions, and are calling out G1 for these veiled cost-cutting measures. With hotels, restaurants, pubs and cinemas in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen and elsewhere, G1’s CEO and owner Stefan King is a multi-millionaire, and those millions he enjoys are really the product of the labour of thousands of workers since the company was founded over 25 years ago. But of course, the logic of capitalism dictates that King can continue to hoard his wealth, even in the midst of an unprecedented pandemic. 

His staff, on the other hand, have been sacked via email on the pretence that the chain “had no choice”. YS completely reject this, because the 5% growth in profits G1 made last year didn’t just vanish into thin air; these were taken out of the business itself and fell straight into the pockets of the fat cat owners. For months, King and G1 have happily taken government money to pay their wage bill (after preparing to lay off staff), but now they have cynically grasped the opportunity to reduce costs by cutting off staff with under two years’ experience. 

And now what impossible choices will those sacked workers be faced with? Some, given their lower level of experience, will likely be students, and thus ineligible to claim Universal Credit. This poses genuinely sickening choices for those young people, such as whether they can continue to remain in education or whether they’ll have to drop out just so they can keep the lights on. 

Their older colleagues are no doubt in similarly horrific circumstances; more likely to have dependents in the form of children, they may be forced onto Universal Credit, which is linked to higher levels of every negative outcome from rent arrears to suicide rates. 

brutal capitalism

The timing of this announcement truly exposes the brutal character of Scottish capitalism, as less than two weeks ago a report commissioned by the Scottish Government recommended a jobs guarantee scheme targeted particularly at protecting young people from the ‘scarring’ effects of unemployment. 

Welcomed by the SNP’s Economy Secretary Fiona Hyslop as “ambitious and far-reaching”, the report also stated the grim facts of a possible one-third reduction in Scotland’s GDP and the need for the country to create jobs at an “unprecedented” rate to prevent an unemployment crisis. 

While the Scottish Government have promised a detailed reply to the report before the end of July, the recent job losses in the hospitality sector but also in higher education and elsewhere in the economy demonstrate that now is the time for action, not words.

Regardless of what the SNP propose before the end of the month, Young Socialists is clear it will not go far enough. Companies threatening jobs cuts must open the books for inspection and democratic oversight of the workers and trade unions. Public ownership to save jobs is also essential. Sturgeon et al’s pro-capitalist outlook prevent them from putting forward such radical solutions. We believe that any jobs guarantee scheme led by the SNP government will be completely inadequate and exploitative while subsidising the bosses’ profits. 

With the SNP in government, alongside Boris’ vicious Tories in Westminster, young people could be heading for the worst unemployment crisis in generations. The Labour Party, too, under Starmer and Leonard refuse to fight for working people, choosing instead to present to the bosses as a safe pair of hands in government. This poses the pressing need for a new party of the working class who can fight for their own interests.

Such a party should be based on the trade unions, young people, socialist activists and community organisations to fight for these demands; 

• Fight the jobs slaughter – decent paying jobs for all! The pandemic was bundled at every stage by the bosses’ political lapdogs, we will not let workers pay for their mistakes! For a massive programme of public investment to create jobs on a minimum wage for at least £12 an hour and trade union rights from day one. 
• Power to the unions! Every worker should be in a union; this is the most effective to improve your conditions at work. Repeal the anti-democratic trade union laws and open the books of employers threatening sackings to workers’ scrutiny!
• Nationalise the top 150 companies in Scotland and Britain! Capitalism is a system run in the interests of a tiny minority in society, the bosses; Young Socialists calls for the taking over of the major sectors of the economy under public ownership, run according to a democratically agreed plan by the working class plan to serve all of society’s needs!