A revolutionary thought: What if the government stood up for working people?
Transformation: What if a new government used job centres to stand up for working people and ensure that they didn’t have to take any job where they weren’t paid a respectable amount for the work they were asked to do? That would certainly be a plus!
How many employers get away with paying substandard wages – putting workers into poverty and making them struggle to pay for the basic requirements of life – because the Department for Work and Pensions forces benefit claimants to take those jobs, even if they are worse-off as a result?
Labour has said it will reform the benefit system. If so, one of the major changes must be to ensure that no claimant is forced to take a job that does not pay the actual living wage (not the fake Tory version – the actual amount calculated as necessary to avoid having to claim benefits). Am I right?
There can be no compulsion for people to refuse such work; everyone must have the right to free choice.
But I wonder how much the situation would change if employers were suddenly faced with the prospect of having nobody to do their drudge work for them on the pitiful rates they offer.
I reckon these fat cats – who plead poverty when asked for wage rises because they know there’s no way anybody can compel them to pay more – might suddenly find the cash.
Don’t you?
I know what you’re probably thinking: it will never happen.
But isn’t that because you have been conditioned to believe that, after nine long years of Tory coercion into whatever the latest fly-by-night spiv or dilettante fancies will make them a fast buck?
Labour is offering a better way. It hasn’t offered the possibility I’m raising here, but it should. So why not get in touch with Margaret Greenwood and direct her to consider it?
You have nothing to lose.
Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.
Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:
Here are four ways to be sure you’re among the first to know what’s going on.
1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the left margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.
2) Follow VP on Twitter @VoxPolitical
3) Like the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/VoxPolitical/
Join the Vox Political Facebook page.
4) You could even make Vox Political your homepage at http://voxpoliticalonline.com
And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.
The Livingstone Presumption is now available
in either print or eBook format here:
Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:
The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:
Bosses get away with all sorts of exploitation these days. I saw a job advertised just the other day, via an agency of course, that stated that overtime would be paid after 50 hours worked. Another place, a massive warehouse in South Yorkshire, expects workers to hit targets that involve walking 10 miles on each shift whilst pushing a loaded cart as quickly as possible and with no tea breaks, just a half hour lunch break, and a water dispenser where you can grab a quick gulp of water whilst working, but not a proper tea break where you sit down and rest for 15 mins. and eat a sandwich. The ambulance is in attendance pretty much every day, stretchering away workers who have collapsed of exhaustion. It’s like the 19th century, just how the Tories like it.
Tories always knew that “trickle down economics” was a myth and produced not even a drip whilst enriching the top percentile of businesses.
Laws had to be created to force employers to pay more as they refused to budge.
Voting for more of the same would just encourage smug Tories to squeeze us all further to fill the pockets of themselves and their friends/donors.
I haven’t donated yet Mike but will do. Just waiting until I can balance the books and have a little over. I really want you to win this. As for what you say in your article, yes it is a good idea and I hope it will happen anyway as a consequence of JC’s much gentler Department of Social Security he means to set up.
This is one reason why I want us to leave the E.U. I’m with Tony Benn. Have you ever thought why all of our political Parties have begun to look the same?
They don’t. They looked the same in 2010, and also in 2015. Now they have diverged markedly – and you know this. Otherwise you would have far more allies in the Commons than you do.
Note, I didn’t say that they do look the same, I said, have begun to and I’m talking over decades, though I did not make that point explicit. Jeremy Corbyn is breath of fresh air but he is still fighting the Blairites from within his own ranks. They may be relatively quiet for now but don’t think, for a moment, that this battle is over. Those in the Commons are united on a single issue but what else and when they achieve that end, what then? The European issue is skewing our politics, as well you know. Don’t get me wrong, I want a radical £abour Government but outside the E.U.
I understand what you’re saying, but I’m saying that the parties were at their closest in 2010 and certainly Labour and the Conservatives have been moving apart ever since.
Why have people fell for the establishment rhetoric that anything bad that’s been happening for the last ten years is the EU’s fault. It’s the Cons who have been in charge & made the decision to starve the poor and disabled.