‘Sector bodies’ to negotiate wages leaving some workers on less pay, dressed up by Starmer as meaningless ‘gradual return of collective bargaining’ – as if a Starmer promise means anything anyway
Keir Starmer’s Labour plans to introduce a variable minimum wage – with workers considered less worthy receiving only a basic amount. The party is disguising this move as a ‘gradual return to collective bargaining’, but the ‘fair pay agreements’, applicable only in certain sectors, would be set by ‘sector bodies’, not negotiated collectively by workers themselves.
This is being presented, to cosy up to employers, as a return to the ‘no-strike’ days of Tony Blair. According to Sam Coates, who was briefed by the party, this:
could mean some sectors could have a higher minimum level of pay than the minimum wage… this will not be right for many bits of the economy.
‘Could… could… not right’ – so nothing guaranteed, of course – and a Starmer promise isn’t worth the fetid air it takes to speak it.
In plain languages, Starmer is offering lower pay for workers he doesn’t think merit a proper living wage – and just possibly better rates for other occupations according to which way the wind is blowing at the time.
In other betrayals leaked as supposed change, Starmer plans to “give employment rights from day one’ to workers – but admits that he will not stop bosses from imposing any length of ‘probation period’ on workers, which could easily be used to recreate the current two-year qualifying period for protections.
The promised ‘ban’ on zero-hours contracts is in fact a ‘right’ for employers to ‘request’ a contract for more hours than zero – but workers would ‘have a right to decline’ the right to request, leaving them in susceptible to employer pressure through threats of no job at all.
And Starmer may announce a better ‘promised’ minimum wage than the weasel £10 an hour he promised last year – only to be outdone by the Tories simply increasing the minimum wage to a pathetic £10.42 just after he promised it.
Starmer constantly betrays the working class and his promises are meaningly. This latest exercise is as thin and vaporous as it looks and does no more than expose the utter political and moral emptiness of his faction.
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The answer to all this Starmerite nonsense is STRONG TRADE UNIONS.
Nothing new about that.
Starmer’s promises are just wind-and-piss.
Is it really such a surprise that some employment sectors will end up effectively having a higher starter salary than others?😕
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Who are you asking, wee nonsense?
The ones on here you said voted tory?
See what happens when he’s called out, folks.
He called YOU Tory voters. Won’t say exactly who, mind.
So all you need do is ask just who he’s referring to, and he buggers
children/goatsoff.Tatty-bye, wrong’un. 🖕😁🖕
Birmingham City Council took a similar approach.
Worked out well for them did it not?
Dave – Did they really, are you quite sure that is what they did? 😕
No wonder you are struggling steveH.
The base principle upon which equal pay is constructed is equal pay for work of equal similarity and value.
With multinational conglomerates operating across different sectors using standardised procedures and processes this offers some interesting legal potential.
You really should make some effort to keep up with the grown ups steve. We can’t be expected to Janet and John everything for you indefinitely.
Dave – Oh dear, if only we were all as clever as you like to think you are. 🙄
Which is just another way of conceding how lacking in gorm you are steveH.
Its not a grown up response to the issue of you being called out on yet another childish and pathetic attempt to redefine the issue to a totally different one in order to suit your convenience because your delicate little psyche cannot cope with the real issue.
Come back when you’ve grown up, if ever.
Dave – I gave your comment the reply that I thought it warranted. Please feel free to carry on trying to prove to yourself how clever you are.
…..which singularly failed to deal with the issue raised because you were more focused – as you always are steveH – on playing the man rather than then the ball in order to deflect from your inability to cope with anything which contradicts your slavish devotion to The Official Narrative.
johnsco1, the trouble is we don’t have any “STRONG TRADE UNIONS” that represent the working class. They have sold out to the Establishment. They only represent the people in charge.
johnsco1 is right.
No if or buts, there should be a Living Wage for all. And fragmented negotiations are the antipathy of the trade union ethos of worker solidarity.
Even Blair’s sham Minimum Wage – below subsistence jobs of which was used as an excuse to exclude people from unemployment benefits – acknowledged there should be basic minimums and across the board collective action.
Only the entryist free market troll scum of the earth, would make the arguments that certain sectors deserve poverty pay.
Bernie – I suggest you listen to Angela’s speech.
https://www.tuc.org.uk/speeches/deputy-labour-leader-angela-rayners-speech-tuc-congress-2023
Labour’s New Deal for Working People looks like a vote winner.
“Even Tory voters support Labour’s New Deal for Working People, a new poll for the Trades Union Congress (TUC) has found, which includes policies such as banning fire and rehire and zero hour contracts as well as protecting all workers from day one from unfair dismissal.
The polling, conducted by Opinium for the TUC, shows large-scale support across the political spectrum for Labour’s flagship workers’ rights programme.
https://leftfootforward.org/2023/09/even-tory-voters-support-labours-new-deal-for-workers-new-poll-finds/
What’s not to like?
“Labour’s New Deal for Working People looks like a vote winner.”
Unfortunately that is not the relevant criteria on which to assess the issue.
The relevant criteria being; will it do what it claims on the tin?
Or will it, like so much before it, be yet another example of the process identified by the Who?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDfAdHBtK_Q
But what else, other than such sloppy reasoning, can you expect from someone who regularly self-identifies as a cross between Walter Mitty and Don Quixote.
Sadly this part of Blairite underminings of workplace standards is also being augmented by proposals to reintroduce Clinton’s workfare working poverty strategies, which as in Blair’s era, are again misleadingly being labelled ‘New Deal’.
The cr*p Rayner spouted at the TUC must have been with Starmer’s approval.
If only we were getting Roosavelts real ‘New Deal’ instead of Clinton/Blairite working poverty strategies.
APART FROM THE FEW JC YEARS:
‘Oh Dear what can the matter be?
A 40 Year Tory/RW Lab Neo-Liberal Cheap Labour Strategy.’
Thatcher after being sat in a room & taught Neo-Liberalism used the profits of North Sea Oil to break the strongest unions to herald in The Tory/Lib Dem/Right Wing Lab Neo-Liberal Age of Cheap Labour.
Norway used its oil profits for a Trillion dollar Wealth Fund for its citizens.
We could have modernised the economy, Greened it up, avoided Austerity & would have been better prepared for Covid.
Some argue Neo-Liberal capitalism is in a crisis of over production, “Too much entry, not enough exit” (FT) and capital is sat on £950b it will not invest (New Left Review) when what the world needs in every country is a Corbyn type transformation – state led public investment, public ownership, end pay freezes, better pensions+benefits-put pounds in peoples pockets to boost the economy as well as addressing poverty, A Green New Deal, massive social housing programme etc.
Whilst Right Wing Lightweight Labour offer only the status quo and crumbs, left wing democratic socialists offer a transformation, but hundreds of thousands of us are currently in an unorganised movement at present.
Need 620 JC Independents or Peace & Justice as a Party?
We can still make history but if only some with a brand name seize the initiative.
Bazza – Given that ‘the left’ have already spent the last 50 years trying to organise themselves into something that resembles a cohesive movement when can we expect to see any consistent and meaningful progress, another half century?
Take it that @Bazza’s not one of your supposed tory voters then, seeing as you’re dismissive of his anti-thatcherite, sovereign wealth fund-spunking factual statement?
Scratch one…
‘Bazza – Given that ‘the left’ have already spent the last 50 years trying to organise themselves into something that resembles a cohesive movement when can we expect to see any consistent and meaningful progress, another half century?
As soon as significant parts of it separate themselves from the Labour party, which, as you know only too well, is RW, acquiescent to the establishment, economically neoliberal and pro-capitalist. (RW anti-socialist enterists like Blair, Clinton and starver all facilitate this)
This is where the Starmer Junta and his coterie of useless idiot sycophantic cheerleaders want to keep us:
https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2023/09/13/wealthy-capitalist-accidentally-makes-great-argument-for-revolution/
““We need to remind people that they work for the employer, not the other way around. We need to see unemployment rise, unemployment has to jump 40–50 percent. In my view, we need to see pain in the economy. I mean, there’s been a systematic change where employees feel the employer is extremely lucky to have them as opposed to the other way around.”
– Tim Gurner: Australian property developer and 154th richest man in Australia.
“It’s not often that you’ll see a member of the ruling class reveal their hostile, slave-master attitude toward the working class so transparently. ”
– Caitlin Johnson – Australian Journalist.
That’s the model which the Starmer cheerleaders insist is the only ‘viable’ option and which they want to shove down our throats.
Dave – Do you have any credible evidence to support your assertions?
Yes.
Christ.
On.
A.
Stick.
And you thought dummkopf-schmitt & fester mcvile were complete qunts…
But nevermind…keef’s got a green paper…
… what’s not to like
You’re right (for once)
What’s not to like
Will you be watching Angela Rayner’s speech at the TUC conference tomorrow
What’s not to like?
It’s as empty as your list of supposed tory voters, noncecase.
The OP being as case in point.
Enlighten us O paedophobe, as to what we can expect the snake charmer rayner to say?!
No need. It’ll be about promising this, that, and the other….Until keef says otherwise by the beginning of next week.
Toffee – You can watch and/or read Angela’s speech to the TUC here.
https://www.tuc.org.uk/speeches/deputy-labour-leader-angela-rayners-speech-tuc-congress-2023
Toffee, do yourself a favour and watch Rayner’s speech in front of the lamentable TUC idiots.
Then ask yourself a question….”How is she deputy leader of the Labour Party?”
The watch Paedo Protector Starmer and ask yourself the question…..”How is this moron leader of the Labour Party?”
What times we live in.
Back to Dickensian times with begging bowls and all, pees-smog and co will be smugness personified. It is sickening. The whole scenario of people allowed to vote, voting in people who brazenly sell them down the river. It’s a perverse situation to be in.
Backwards in time indeed. Sector based negotiating bodies have a whiff of the old Whitley Councils about them.
Dave – Given that the Care Sector is now fragmented across numerous private companies and that you appear to be ruling out negotiating sector wide agreements on minimum pay and conditions what is your plan?
Already covered steveH:
https://skwawkbox.org/2023/09/11/starmers-labour-to-introduce-variable-minimum-wage-leaving-many-behind/#comment-248728
But enlighten us; which bit of the principle of equal pay for work of similar nature and value regardless of sector are you struggling with?
That’s the problem with making assumptions based on confirming your own biases. You’ve made an ass of yourself. Again.
steveH,
a) so you are claiming that the Equal Pay Act has no relevance to the issue
because
b) you have unilaterally redefined the issue to suit your convenience.
I take it this week you are mostly self-identifying as Walter Mitty.
Dave – Unfortunately a load of waffle isn’t a plan. 🙄
Ah, well done. You’ve rumbled Starmer at last.
The minimum wage legislation was brought out to suppress wages. In 1990, before legislation the average unskilled hourly wage was £5. Today, that’s £11.72. minimum wage is £10.42.
This is yet another attack on workers. If you vote labour, you deserve EVERYTHING you get.
Let business vote them in!
Watering down one of the few good things New Labour did, a policy too right wing for the Tories.
Anyone watch the rayner interview on gmb this morning?
I only caught abar 45 seconds or so. Reid asked rayner why she (rayner – spouting the smarmerist shite about public finances and “growing the economy”) appeared to be a completely different rayner than she used to; rayner went on about being on free school meals for a couple of sentences before that serial house-flipper, media whore and monumental weirdo ed balls** opened his cave to rescue the snake charmer.
…I switched over in contempt. Wee paedophobe thinks there may be something to look forward to in watching Rayner’s TUC speech later on.
I very much doubt it. I’d hope rayner’d be booed off the stage, but that’s as likely to happen as keef becoming interesting.
**balls – What the flying feck is he doing on our screens morning, noon and night? I’ve got more talent and personality than that fat-tongued twunt what looks like nookie bear after being fired from a howitzer into a 30 foot thick solid concrete block…. Where’s mine? Fook my life 😒
Toffee – I forgive you for mentioning the revolting Balls.
Greater love hath no man (for himself) than to sacrifice the career of Sharon Shoesmith to save his own.
Aye.
Greater love have no man for a few nicker than when he *ahem* appropriated the hotel discount for his wedding guests to offset the cost of the event.
(See below)
Oh, and Rayner trotted out the “really, really working class and so very, very poor” stock response again, did she.
These neo-liberals all seem to have their stock responses – obviates the need to think, I suppose.
Indeed, Goldie.
I suppose weirdo balls was empathizing with Rayner’s poverty stricken childhood.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-2040049/Ed-Balls-Yes-I-wore-Nazi-costume-friends-decided-I-dictator.html
We were accused of charging our wedding guests, but that’s unfair.
The Eastbourne hotel said, ‘The normal room rate for a weekend off-season would be £50 a night bed and breakfast – but given that you’re going to have the whole wedding here, we’ll reduce the price to £20.’ We said, ‘Well, in that case, the reasonable thing for us to do is to reduce the room rate to £29 for guests and use the other £9 to help us pay for this expensive wedding.’ We sold all the rooms. We were hard up and we had to make it work. I don’t regret it for a second.
Yes, the weirdo and his mizz were on a pittance when they took their nuptials. So much so that they had NO choice BUT to (indirectly) charge their guests for the privilege of attending their union.
And times must’ve continued to have been hard for a good while, too, seeing as they flipped their homes that many times to make up for the paltry wages they were on while BOTH were serving MPs.
Aye, ’tis a hard life…😟
May I propose a motion for the Labour Party Conference next month entitled ‘Performance Related Pay for Members of Parliament’, perhaps Unite could adopt? A starting salary based on the minimum wage, to ensure that a few MPs may have some understanding of what it’s like to exist on such a limited income; but (being generous) with bonuses based on the rising standard of living of the British people, particularly those who live in the perpetual poverty of unemployment and casualised labour.