Tag Archives: Minimum wage

LITTLE BOXES

Cherry-picked prisoners (checked for ‘good behaviour’ and most already with the skills) will be ‘employed’ to build pre-fab ‘eco’ homes ‘for the vulnerable’, built from… erm, recycled milk cartons!

This public/private project, promoted by an ad-hoc mishmash of council, probation/reoffending bodies, eco-charities, churches and quangos, is an ‘experiment’ to employ prisoners in ‘useful activities’ to ‘learn skills’ for employment after release.

Nauseating middle class PR guff about an amazing ‘win win’ for prisoners, ‘the community’, social housing, churches, building companies and landowners accompanies the plan. Bristol’s ‘Green’ council is among the talking heads. Taking over where the Reverend left off.

A ‘minimum wage’ for prisoners is mentioned but not whether it’s the statutory minimum wage. Theoretically it might be a ‘minimum wage’ of £5 an hour!

A dystopian vision of this public/private partnership ‘win/win future’ would see prisons becoming 21st Century workhouses. An aristocracy of labour drawn from compliant prisoners with skills would be conditioned to accept a ‘minimum wage’ as the norm. The rest of the undeserving poor could be employed to do shit for free.

Free labour for the ticky tacky milk carton houses of the future

STAND UP TO MENCAP!

Protest for care workers to keep the minimum wage!

Saturday October 27 12.00 – 4.00pm, College Green

All welcome.

Hello comrades!

We are Bristol Care Workers Network. We an autonomous collective of healthcare and social care workers. We are contacting other organisations in Bristol to ask for help.

The charity Mencap have gone to court to demand that the government overturns it’s recent ruling on sleeping shifts counting as work for the purposes of calculating workers’ entitlement to the minimum wage. Because of Mencap, millions of low-paid workers will now be denied the minimum wage for their sleep shifts.

This has come at a time when non-payment of the minimum wage is at it’s worst ever level. The care sector is already one of the worst affected. Even for workers who are paid legally, studies have shown that it is almost impossible to make a living on the minimum wage. And now, Mencap want to make it even harder for workers to get the minimum wage.

The social care sector is a precarious sector where workers are routinely denied their rights and where union presence is very low. Although the situation for care workers is dire, this makes it an ideal sector for grassroots organising. We’ve found our campaigns around home care workers pay to be very successful and popular, and we’ve generated a lot of support by fighting this issue.

Precarious workers in other sectors are getting organised in an unprecedented way recently but at the moment the care sector has not caught up with what’s been happening among couriers, hospitality workers and other precarious sectors of the economy. The law around home care is changing rapidly and the TUC unions can’t keep up, so there is a real need for grassroots and DIY organising in the care sector. The home care sector is reaching crisis point due to austerity and Brexit will make this worse, so now is the time to start focusing on this sector. This is also an intersectional issue, as home care workers are overwhelmingly women, and a high proportion of care workers are people of colour and/or migrants, so as well as being an issue of class struggle, this is also a feminist issue and an anti-racist issue. This is why we think it’s important to start fighting this.

We are a small organisation with limited capacity and influence, so we need other organisations to help make this event a success. You can help us by attending on the day, bringing your banners, and making a lot of noise, and/or publicising and sharing our event on your social media.

Thanks,

BCWN

Useful links:

BCWN website: bristolcareworkersnetwork.org

Stand up to Mencap event: https://www.facebook.com/events/1974568829267337/

BCWN’s critique of Unison and the TUC, and our arguments for grassroots organising in the care sector: https://bristolcareworkersnetwork.org/2018/08/26/unison-social-care-seminar-report-and-actions-the-workers-respond/

Background info on the Mencap court case: https://www.unison.org.uk/news/press-release/2018/07/sleep-shifts-judgment-huge-mistake/

Article about non-payment of NMW: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-45608993

A NEW LOW?

2 Replies

Before they “hold power to account” perhaps THE BRISTOL CABLE should try holding themselves to account? Because, as well as the media, they also seem to be “redefining the minimum wage as we know it”.

In an attempt to get their newspaper out beyond the overpriced artisinal coffee shops of West Bristol and a readership of beard strokers, the paper has now employed a large DISTRIBUTION TEAM on the minimum wage.

Except it’s not the minimum wage. This team receive only 80 PER CENT of the minimum wage and are required to “donate” the other 20 PER CENT of their crap wage to the ‘democratic cooperative’.

Not only is this not legal, the ethics of this from a self-styled ethical organisation are extremely dubious. Who do they think, beyond daddy’s boy TRUSTAFARI, can afford to work for 80 per cent of the minimum wage? Ordinary Bristolians who have to pay their own bills CAN’T, that’s for sure.

But who wants the plebs near the media anyway?

The BRISTOLIAN

“Smiter of the High and Mighty”