$15 nmw USA
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Plenty of discussion on fb about this. Recently IDS, was happy for the nmw here to rise to £9. 00 by 2020.
Marxists want the “abolition of the wages system", but I am wondering the line to take on this?
A pipe dream, all to end in tears?!
This is only a first victory for us in a long war against greedy corporations and their republican servants. Good job New-York! One day every state will raise minimum wages for everyone!
Quote:This is only a first victory for us in a long war against greedy corporations and their republican servants. Good job New-York! One day every state will raise minimum wages for everyone!According to this report, the rise to £9.60 equivalent is not coming in till the end 2018 for those in New York, and not till 2021 for those in the rest of NY State. The current mimumum there of $8.75 is the equivalent of £6.35 (it's now £6.50 in Britain).http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-33631609Here's what Osborne has promised:
Quote:Mr Osborne said the new minimum wage would be set at £7.20 an hour in April 2016 and rise to 60 per cent of median hourly earnings by 2020, which will be about £9.35. This means the effective minimum wage for the over 25s will be more than 13 per cent higher in 2020 than would otherwise have been the case.Looks as if he has stolen the Democratic Party's clothes as well as Labour's (and some of those of the Trotskyists).
over here. Budget 2015: tax credit claimants will be up to £1,000 a year worse off, says IFS http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/jul/09/living-wage-will-leave-tax-credit-claimants-1000-worse-off-says-ifs
Seattle is the high profle reference to the minimum wage struggle with Kshama Sawant but even there , the reality is not what it seems
Quote:This is a lesson in how frustrating advocating and achieving a reform can be. Seattles $15 is “a minimum wage plan so complicated reporters can’t understand it,”Workers will fall under one of four classes depending on the size of the business they work for, whether they get tips and whether the employer provides healthcare.The proposal gives big business—defined as those with more than 500 employees nationally—three years to raise wages to $15 an hour, and four years if they provide healthcare. “Small” businesses, which cover more than 99 percent of businesses in Seattle and 70 percent of full-time workers, have seven years—until 2021—to get to $15 an hour if they only offer wages. If the employer offers healthcare or the worker earns tips, then those dollar amounts will be added to wages so their “minimum compensation” is $15 an hour by 2019.What will happen to workers’ wages if a business adds or cuts healthcare that changes its schedule? Could a Burger King manager put out tip jars for employees and claim the tips count toward the minimum compensation? Given that fast-food corporations indemnify themselves from any legal responsibility for workers in their outlets, what if McDonald’s franchise owners claim they are independent small businesses and hence fall under the seven or even 11-year schedule? How will Seattle enforce these provisions? After the city criminalized wage theft in 2011, it failed to prosecute a single case for two years, despite City Council hearings last year where workers exposed “pervasive” wage theft in the fast-food industry.Why the plan is so complicated, labor leader, David Rolf, a committee co-chair and president of Service Employees International Union Healthcare 775NW tells In These Times, "Our goal was to negotiate something that had business and labor support and the highest chance of moving through the City Council." Asked why profitable megacorporations like McDonald's can't afford to pay workers $15 an hour immediately, Rolf says that, "They undoubtedly could," but "a purist position" would not have gotten a supermajority of committee support.50 percent of the mayor’s advisory committee represents Seattle businesses, including two Chamber of Commerce representatives. Through the Chamber, Starbucks got a seat at the table, but the workers of Starbucks didn’t get a seat at the table.Kshama Sawant, elected to the Seattle City Council last fall on a platform of a $15-per-hour minimum wage, says the proposal is a step forward but also that the committee “watered down the proposal as much as they could.”Having struggled to get a reform passed, the struggle is now to get it implemented, and then another struggle in the future to keep it from being rescindedhttp://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-problem-with-reforms.html
jondwhite wrote:Why stop at $15 (or any other amount)?The standard of living at the USA is above $95.00 dollars and hour, or maybe more, everybody in the family is working, there is not any fair price for the labour force. Wages are just the neccesary means to keep the slave alive and returing to the point of production every day.workers live in order to work. Like a friend of mine used to say: The wage slaves at the developed countries need to drive a car because they must be on time at the point of production to produce free wealth for their masters, in reality, most workers work for free. As socialists we do not want any wages at all, we want the elimination of the wage system
A comrade has found this article on the activities of Seattle City Councilmember Kshama Sawant and “Socialist Alternative”, the organisation she belongs to (the equivalent in the US to SPEW here).
It confirms that Trotskyist tactics are the same the whole world over. Of course a socialist councillor would be responsible to the socialist party outside the council. The difference is that “Socialist Alternative” is not organised on a democratic basis but run, as all Leninist organisations are, by a self-perpetuating elite.
Rule 27 of our Rulebook reads:
Candidates elected to a Political office shall be pledged to act on the instructions of their Branches locally, and by the Executive Committee locally.
So, from our point of view, there is no problem with councillors being instructed by non-councillors. But there are two differences with “Socialist Action” in Seattle. First, Sawant was elected on a programme of reforms not on a straight socialist ticket. Second, all of meetings, including those to instruct socialist councillors, will be open to the public.
In the internal document “Socialist Alternative” acknowledge the tensions between their councillor elected by reform-minded non-members of their party and their local and national executive committees who want to prioritise their wider aim of “building a vanguard party”. Since a socialist councillor would also be elected by non-members even if on a straight socialist programme there could well be a tension about who the councillor was answerable to: the socialist-minded but non-member workers who elected them or the members of the party locally?
This is a less remote practical problem than dealing with a socialist MP, as what if ex-comrade Colborn had been elected for us to Seaham Town Council as opposed to for a group of anti-Labour independents?
ALB:
Isn’t this just a really good reason not to do elections? It’s all very well saying that a socialist representative would be answerable to the party, but, in real life, there are two problems. 1. Any representative is ultimately responsible to h** constituents, not just those who voted for h** – they are not party delegates. 2. It would be totally impractical for h** to constantly refer back to the party on every issue.
This would be a really good reason for doing the Sinn Fein tactic (recently rejected – I keep my hand in lad!). If the representatives are only elected for the purpose of closing the place down (I could go for that) then these sort of problems are completely meaningless. And surely that’s what they are, really, for.
ALB, I find that this article is more or less a hatchet job from someone who is committed to representative democracy and not delegatory form.
But even KS does legitimately raise the issue of micro-management.
His model of political parties is not ours and we would also be heavily criticized by him on much the same grounds as he accuses SA/KS of. I wonder what he would make of our knowledge test before any applicant is accepted, for instance.
I have a strong feeling that for the author, that our claims of Party control of our elected members and SA’s would be a distinction without a difference for him. For him it is his smoking gun.
The lesson is that we ourselves will have to face similar attacks. As would the overlap in the general politics when we share the similar language as SA.
I had little complaint about KS’s letter to AOC, a letter AOC totally ignored going against KS advice and endorsing Pelosi.
We also had experience of Trots in politics, the SSP at Holyrood. Also Militant in control at Liverpool and Lambeth(?). Our issues was less about Party procedures and processes but much more about policies (plus questions over personality over-riding Party rules.)
Although we are all speculating here, I think it is safe to assume on the basis of past and present experience that, as long as the vote exists (and there’s no reason to suppose that it won’t continue to) then people will use it even if without illusions. So, when the movement for a stateless, classless, moneyless, wageless society begins to take off it will express itself, among other ways, electorally, despite what anarchists and other abstentionists might be advocating from the sidelines.
So the question of how a minority of revolutionary councillors and MPs should do cannot be avoided. They could in theory decide to abstain on everything, but insofar as concessions and mitigations can be obtained I can’t see this position being maintained (except in the last days of capitalism when there’s about to be a socialist majority). That’s just not how people react — if they can see that things can be made slightly better or less worse they go for it. Ironically perhaps, the anarchist organisation to which KAZ belongs doesn’t just go for revolution and refuse concession,s as he says socialist councillors should, but devotes most of its activity to trying to get concessions.
Of course there will be dangers if the situation of being a minority in a local council or parliament becomes semi-permanent. The movement has to go on growing. If it stops then the same problem that the German Greens faced will risk happening — “realos” will emerge to challenge the “fundis”. “Possibilism”, or going for what you think you can realistically get in the immediate, is unfortunately the default position.
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