So what did the trades unions ever do for you?

I hear so many people making comments about trades unions, about how they cause problems, about how they disrupt people's lives by going on strike, and so forth, and it makes me incredibly sad.

"Why so?" you may ask. Because it is thanks to the trades unions that we as working people can enjoy the protections and rights that we have in work, and and that we have much of the legislation that protects us as a society.

You might think that is a pretty big call. But let me explain what I mean...

Without the trades union movement, and the pressure they brought to bear on the governments of the day, these are the things anyone working for someone else would not have:

A contract of employment

A working week of 40 hours or less, aka the 8 hour working day

The weekend, aka a five-day working week

The ability to negotiate your pay and increases

Children's employment age and work restrictions

The right to collective representation

Paid holidays of up to 5.6 weeks per year

Parental leave after a child's birth

Workplace pensions

Paid holidays

Equal pay and equal rights

Discrimination on the basis of colour, creed or gender rules

Health and safety protection

Unfair dismissal protection

Rights at work (allowed to marry or have a child without being sacked)

Sickness protection

Injury compensation 

Tribunal representation

Disciplinary mediation and representation

Redundancy provisions

There may be a few things I have missed out, but even if I have, the list above is pretty impressive.

As a former trades union organiser I know the value that trades unions have for working people. I know the help that is given when needed by their negotiators or their legal teams. I know of cases where redundancy offers have been improved significantly by the intervention of a trades union; where early retirement has been negotiated when a worker has domestic demands which prevent them working; where frustration of contract cases due to illness have been brought to a satisfactory conclusion; and many more similar cases where trades unions have been able to help individuals and groups of workers, and I know the security and support that being a trades union member can bring.

So when you next hear some scare story about a trades union, or something in the media about how trades unions are bad for the country, please stop and think, and give thanks for all those benefits we as workers enjoy as a result of the tireless work  of trades unions across more than 150 years. Even better,, if you are not a member of a trades union, why not join the one which covers your type of work and help continue the protections that we have enjoyed so they will be there for future generations?

Further reading:

History of Working Time
The history of European working time regulation 1784-2014
Some of the key events that have shaped the development of working time measures in Europe:http://www.fedee.com/labour-relations/history-of-working-time/

The Union Makes Us Strong: TUC History Online

Trade unions have played, and will continue to play, a decisive role in shaping economic and social developments in Britain - yet much of their history is at present unknown and inaccessible to the public. http://www.unionhistory.info/

Winning Equal Pay: the value of women's work

A part of The Union Makes Us Strong website containing filmed interviews with women who fought for and won equal pay, hundreds of digitised images and documents from the TUC Library Collections, plus contributions from historians and other experts.http://www.unionhistory.info/equalpay/

Striking Women
An educational site about migration, women and work, workers' rights, and the story of South Asian women workers during the Grunwick and Gate Gourmet industrial disputes.http://www.striking-women.org/

"And Labour are putting 11 candidates up for election."

Readers might wonder at the curious title of this post, but it is a quote from that august local newspaper, The Westmorland Gazette, which is published in Kendal and has been reporting Westmorland news since 1818.

I was interested to read on its About Us page, that it says,

The Westmorland Gazette, first published in 1818, is independent of political parties, private interests and government.

as that was not the impression I gained whilst looking back through coverage of the run up to the 2015 local council elections.

The article in question, entitled Lines drawn in local battle goes into great detail  about the seats held by the Conservative party, the dominance of the Liberal Democrat party, the strength of the field of the Green Party and the decision of one candidate to stand as an independent. But of the Labour Party candidates not a whiff, not a mention, not a hint, until the very last line, which reads like a last-minute addendum along the lines of, "Oh bother we forgot to mention Labour, just stick it on the end, no-one will notice!"

Guess what, Westmorland Gazette? It was noticed! So if you really mean what you say on your About Us page, would you please give equal billing to all parties in future elections?  After all, you would not like to be considered biased in any way, would you? Would you???

Does the Labour Campaign for the Self Employed give us a glimmer of hope?

The creation of the Labour Campaign for the Self Employed has given hope to many sole traders and micro-businesses that their concerns may at last find a champion. I am hoping that the Campaign will address the issues that face us in respect of VAT changes affecting digital cross-border sales. This is the message I have sent to the campaign today: 

The imposition of impossible EU regulations such as the VAT scheme for digital cross-border sales that came in on 1st Jan 2015 is a problem for us. It is impossible to comply with in many cases and is putting sole traders and micro-businesses at a huge disadvantage and driving trade back to the big guys like Amazon, as the smaller traders simply cannot meet the requirements of the rules at any price!

The EU has accepted that small traders being hurt was an unforseen and unintended consequence of the new rules, and that it was never the EU's plan to affect us, as according to the EU they simply did not know that we would be affected at all. The assumption appears to have been, "Don't you all sell via Amazon or eBay anyhow?" - No we do not!

For any sole trader or micro-business that sells cross-border digital products directly from its own website the initial costs of the changes required to the website are anything up to £4,000 to make the website capable of collecting the proof needed, and even then we cannot guarantee the data that we have to collect from the buyer.

The change was intended to prevent the big guys like Amazon and eBay from routing their sales via the country with the lowest VAT rate (i.e. Luxemburg mainly).  The irony is that the new rules are forcing many of us to sell via the big guys now as they can meet the new rules, whereas we cannot.

Whilst previously we would have had to charge VAT on digital cross border sales at the UK rate only if our turnover exceeded the £81,000 VAT threshold for domestic sales, now we have to charge VAT at the rate in the buyer's country and there is no threshold for digital cross-border sales, so even if we sell a music mp3 or an ebook or a knitting pattern for less than a £1 we have to register under the scheme and collect the VAT and pay it on to the buyer's tax authority.

To do so we have to *prove* where the buyer is based and calculate the VAT rate for that country and charge the buyer the relevant rate for the goods purchased (one of 70+ rates in 28 countries), and then remit the VAT to that country either directly or via one of the MOSS schemes that has been set up by different country tax authorities.

The proof we can accept includes an IP address, but this is not reliable evidence of geographical location in many cases and can be spoofed by buyers or reported incorrectly depending on how the buyer is connecting to the website to buy.

The UK government could unilaterally suspend the new rules until the EU gets the issue sorted and brings in the promised small turnover threshold but despite being asked to do so it has not. The threshold could take a couple of years to arrive as it has to be discussed and agreed by all EU member states, meanwhile we are struggling with trying to comply, or we can simply refuse to sell outside the UK (which also falls foul of another EU requirement about free trade across the EU!)

Meanwhile, you can keep up to date with progress of the threshold over on the website of the EU VAT ACTION CAMPAIGN

50 broken Tory promises - how many more to come?

Since the election of Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the Labour Party my previously politically passive husband has become politically vocal. I think he finally has hope that we will see a change for the better once we can get rid of this Tory Govt. and replace it with a proper real Labour one!

This is one of the posts that he shared recently on Facebook - it sums up more succinctly than I can why the Tory Govt. needs to go!

Here are 50 more broken Tory promises from the first five years of failure in Downing Street:

We will balance the books by 2015
THE TRUTH: Britain still has a budget deficit of £90billion

We will pay down Britain’s debts
THE TRUTH: George Osborne has borrowed over £500billion in five years - more than Labour did in 13

We will get net immigration down to the tens of thousands
THE TRUTH: Net immigration is almost 300,000 per year

No more top-down reorganisations of the NHS
THE TRUTH: £3billion wasted on the biggest reorganisation in NHS history

We will improve your living standards
THE TRUTH: Families £1,600-a-year worse off than in 2010

We will deport more foreign criminals
THE TRUTH: The number of foreign crooks on our streets soars 20%

We will keep our nation’s defences strong
THE TRUTH: Army hacked back by 20,000 troops to its lowest level since the Napoleonic wars

We will not raise VAT
THE TRUTH: VAT hiked to 20%, costing the average family £450-a-year

We will protect the vulnerable from the cuts
THE TRUTH: Cruel welfare sanctions force one million people to use food banks

We’re all in it together
THE TRUTH: Millionaires get a £100,000-a-year tax cut - the poor get the £15-a-week Bedroom Tax

GP access promised 12 hours a day, seven days a week
THE TRUTH: Patients face a 10-day wait to see their family doctor

We will get tough on illegal immigrants
THE TRUTH: Home Office loses track of 174,000 illegal immigrants

We will get tough on tax avoidance
THE TRUTH: The Treasury is still missing out on an estimated £34billion a year

We will stop the closure of A&E and maternity wards
THE TRUTH: Dozens closed or downgraded since 2010

We will cut the number of MPs by 10%
THE TRUTH: Not a single MP has been cut

We will get Britain building again
THE TRUTH: Lowest level of house-building since the war

We will have more small schools with smaller class sizes
THE TRUTH: Number of infants in oversized classes up 200%

We will protect front-line policing
THE TRUTH: 17,000 cops get the boot

We will support families through the tax and benefits system
THE TRUTH: The average family loses £1,100 through tax and benefit changes

We will be the Greenest Government Ever
THE TRUTH: Cameron tells his Ministers to “cut the green cr*p”

We will work towards ending child poverty by 2020
THE TRUTH: 300,000 more kids plunged into poverty

We will enhance the status of teachers
THE TRUTH: Teachers’ pay cut in real terms year after year and their status publicly attacked from Michael Gove

We will revolutionise cancer care
THE TRUTH: The key cancer treatment waiting time target missed for the past four quarters

We will cut the number of highly-paid special advisers in Government
THE TRUTH: Number of special advisers soars by 50%

We will support and improve Sure Start
THE TRUTH: 763 Sure Start centres closed and many more scaled down

We will break down barriers between health and social care
THE TRUTH: Social care funding slashed by £3.5billion as part of attack on town hall budgets

We will restore trust in politics
THE TRUTH: The Tories trouser £30million in donations from hedge funds – which were given a huge tax cut in 2013

We will protect our NHS
THE TRUTH: 40% of NHS contracts handed to private health firms

We will revolutionise prisoner rehab
THE TRUTH: Prison escapes, assaults and suicides all soar as inmates are locked in overcrowded cells for 23 hours a day

We will increase spending on vital flood defences
THE TRUTH: Flood defence spending cut by £247million – and thousands of homes are flooded

We will fight for the union
THE TRUTH: Cameron talks up the SNP to punish Labour and unveils plans to downgrade Scottish MPs at Westminster

We will tackle inequality
THE TRUTH: The richest 1% of Britons now own the same amount of wealth as 54% of the population.

We will treat white collar crime as seriously as other crimes
THE TRUTH: 90% of cyber-crime is allowed to go undetected

No more winter crises in hospital
THE TRUTH: A&E departments in meltdown with one in five patients not seen within the four hour target.

We will invest in our schools
THE TRUTH: Plans to build more than 700 new schools across Britain brutally axed

We will help the disabled into suitable jobs
THE TRUTH: Remploy factories shut down and disabled people subjected to cruel Atos tests

We will make our borders more secure
THE TRUTH: Customs checks for dangerous drugs and weapons scaled back dramatically

We will keep supporting our young people
THE TRUTH: More than 2,000 youth workers axed and at least 350 youth centres closed

We will create security for British businesses
THE TRUTH: HSBC is amongst a raft of UK firms unsettled by Cameron’s EU referendum pledge.

We will not means-test child benefit
THE TRUTH: Child benefit means-tested and then cut for better-off families

We have no plans to get rid of the Education Maintenance Allowance
THE TRUTH: Six months later it is axed completely

We have no plans to get rid of Labour’s Future Jobs Fund
THE TRUTH: Six months later it is axed completely

We will improve Britain’s productivity
THE TRUTH: Productivity is 21% lower than the G7 average

We will deal with long-term unemployment with our ‘Work Programme’
THE TRUTH: More than 650,000 people are left off work for more than a year.

We will bring in 3,000 more midwives
THE TRUTH: Cameron misses his target by almost a third

We will create the “right sort of jobs” to spread prosperity “for the many not the few”
THE TRUTH: 1.7million zero hours contracts handed out in Cameron’s low-pay Britain

No-one will be made homeless by our welfare cuts
THE TRUTH: Rough sleeping up 55% since 2010

We will not allow cuts to front-line services
THE TRUTH: Services are cut across the board, from nearly 500 public libraries to over 1,000 lollipop ladies

We will not cut the NHS
THE TRUTH: The NHS is forced to find £5billion of ‘efficiency savings’ – cuts by any other name

We will have head-to-head TV debates like in 2010
THE TRUTH: Cameron was too chicken to take part

And there will no doubt be more of the same. If you think this is wrong, please join the Labour Party today and help us put things right. https://join.labour.org.uk/

Why we need to rethink how income, employment and the benefits system works

As the Tory Government continues its attacks on working people, and those who cannot work due to disability, illness or other incapacity,  with its swingeing cuts to the Tax Credit system, and the constant derision and stigmatisation of those claiming benefits by both the government and the media, it has made me question the validity of the notion that everyone has to be in paid employment all their adult lives to be a useful member of society.

The Labour Party has always been the party supporting working people, and will always do so. But  we do need to rethink how employment works, as we no longer have the need for those vast employers of the past. Gone are the days of industries employing 20,000 30,000 people. Smaller businesses have become the norm, which has led to a huge pool of people with skills who are no longer able to find employment that utilises those skills.

New technology has changed the whole employment market in the same way as the Industrial Revolution changed it in the 19th century.  The mechanisation of agriculture and of industries such as cloth production caused massive changes from labour-intensive production to a few workers and a lot of machinery.  That machinery required a huge workforce to manufacture the parts and construct the whole. The mechanisation of transport meant we needed vast steelworks, loco works, vehicle construction plants and more to satisfy the ever-increasing demand for boats, trains, buses and cars.

But there is no longer a market for many of the products which were produced in massive factories in the UK. Either they are made more cheaply elsewhere or they are simply no longer required, having been superseded by new products, for example, as the humble typewriter has been replaced by computers, tablets and even smart-phones.  

Expecting every person to be in full employment or working for someone else throughout their life is now unrealistic. Many people no longer work for others but are self-employed, often providing small scale or niche market products or services. According to the government's own Business Statistics, (PDF file) as of  2014, there were 5.2 million businesses in the UK, of which more than 99% are small- or medium-sized businesses  employing  fewer than 249 people. A more surprising figure though is that 5.0 million (96%) were micro-businesses employing 9 people or less. Micro-businesses accounted for 33% of employment and 19% of gross business turnover in 2014. These figures show the huge change in the way in which people are employed in the 21st century, and there is nothing to suggest that the percentage of micro-business employment will not continue to increase. 

The service industries accounted for 73% of businesses, 79% of employment and 70% of turnover whilst the manufacturing sector accounted for only 5% of businesses, 10% of employment and 16% of turnover. 

The Report on Small Firms, 2010-2015 (PDF) , by the Prime Minister’s Advisor on Enterprise, Lord Young, published in February 2015 stated,

"In 2013 there were 2.9 million homebased businesses; an increase of nearly half a million since 2010. They contribute £300 billion to the economy."

These figures also indicate the flaws in the government's Tax Credit changes. They simply do not seem to understand that they are no longer dealing with employment within large-scale industrial employers!  It is this change that needs taking into account by government, instead of sticking to a model of employment more suited to the 1900s than the 2000's. 

Sole traders and self-employed people actually get very little in the way of support from the state benefits system despite paying Income Tax and National Insurance contributions like people in "traditional" employment. There is no provision for sickness or injury benefit or unemployment benefit for self-employed people.  The only provisions are through private insurance policies, so self-employed people pay into the state system and have to pay extra privately to have any safety net and many simply cannot afford to do this.  Tax Credits and Housing Benefits are available to self-employed people on low incomes, but the forthcoming changes to these benefits mean that many will fall outside of the support system provided by Tax Credits and Housing Benefits and will struggle to remain in business and earn enough to provide a level of income commensurate with their housing and living costs. 

It is not good enough that the Chancellor of the Exchequer says that the shortfall will be made up for by the new National Living Wage.

"From April 2016, the government will introduce a new mandatory National Living Wage (NLW) for workers aged 25 and above, initially set at £7.20 – a rise of 70p relative to the current National Minimum Wage (NMW) rate, and 50p above the increase coming into force in October. That’s a £1,200 per annum increase in earnings for a full-time worker or the current NMW.

"The adult NMW rate is currently £6.50. It will increase to £6.70 from October 2015. From April 2016 the premium will come into effect on top of the NMW, taking the National Living Wage to £7.20. The NMW will continue to apply for those aged 21+, with the premium added on top for more experienced workers taking the total hourly rate to the National Living Wage."

The National Living Wage, like the National Minimum Wage, simply does not, and cannot, apply to self-employed people!  There are also concerns that by introducing a new National Living Wage that there will be an increase in job losses and a decrease in working hours, which is counter-productive to the government's stated (but unrealistic) aim of getting everyone into work! 

"It will give a pay rise to six million workers but is expected to cost 60,000 jobs and reduce hours worked by four million a week, according to the Office for Budget Responsibility."

In practical terms, what will happen as the Tax Credits cuts slice into people's incomes, is that there will be less to spend on non-essential buying. The priority of many will have to be paying for housing and food, followed by transport and clothing. Many of those 5 million micro-businesses will be hit by the downturn in their sales which, combined with the National Living Wage, will result in many of them ceasing trading. Those people running micro-businesses and those whom they currently employ will be unemployed, which will simply reduce further their disposable income, that downward spiral leading to mass unemployment and severe hardship for many families. That's austerity in action!

What we need is a radical rethinking of the way in which living is funded, in how employment is created, in how taxes and national insurance are paid, and how the whole benefits syetm is configured.  We need to understand that an economy can only grow and that businesses can only prosper and create more employment if people have sufficient income beyond the essential level needed to cover housing, food, transport costs. We need to consider if a Citizen's Wage as proposed by The Green Party is a viable option. We also need to address the costs that we are faced with - it is no use just tackling unemployment or wage rates without addressing the cost of housing - whether for sale or rent, the cost of transport - whether by public transport or private vehicle, and the cost of energy - whether gas, electricity, or renewable sources. If all these remain high it means that no matter what the National Living Wage is set to there will always be a shortfall and less disposable income to help grow the economy through the myriad of small and micro-businesses this country currently has. 

Creating a sustainable economy capable of creating growth and maintaining incomes depends on a whole integrated package, so that the majority of people in this country benefit instead of just the few at the top of the economic system. It is not going to happen under a government that slashes welfare benefits and laughs whilst people suffer.

Don't lose your right to vote!

The changes to the way the Electoral Register (voters roll) is created could see up to 2 million people losing their right to vote from as early as December this year. Individual Voter Registration is being rushed through so everyone needs to ensure they are actually on the Electoral Register.

It's very simply to do, all you need is your National Insurance number, and then go to the Government website https://www.gov.uk/register-to-vote and fill in the online form.  If you do not know your National Insurance number go here to find it. 

Please make sure that everyone in your household does it for themselves too, as it is no longer the responsibility of the head of the household to complete the return on their behalf!

Now which party is undemocratic, remind me again!

It's interesting that Zac Goldsmith was elected as Tory candidate for London Mayor in an election in which the turnout was just 9,227, of which he polled 6,514 votes. The Tory contest was open to anyone on the electoral roll (presumably in the London area) whether Tory party member or not, although non-members had to register for £1 to be able to cast their vote.

Compare that with the Labour candidate for London Mayor election turnout, which was nearly 90,000, which saw Sadiq Khan polling 48,151 votes. The Labour contest was open to Labour Party members, registered supporters, and affiliated supporters within the London area.

The mainstream media had a field day, shrieking that the Labour Party contest was undemocratic as anyone could sign up as a £3 supporter and vote. Not a critical word was said by that same media about anyone being able to sign up for £1 and vote.

Interesting eh? Now which party is undemocratic, remind me again!