Zero Credibility (03/04/15)

Ed Miliband made a big fuss about zero hours contracts during the general election campaign, but if you ask me the issue is small beer compared to the fight for equal pay which is not a good subject for Labour in Scotland, of course..

Because, as regular readers know, Labour politicians of all kinds (councillors, MSPs and MPs) have a terrible track record on equal pay and have failed to stand up for low paid council workers who have been fighting widespread pay discrimination in Scottish councils for the past 10 years. 

Now the Office for National Statistics (ONS) says that up to 60,000 Scots are on zero house contracts, but the statistics also say that 66% of these people do not actually want to work any additional hours.

So the big fuss being made by Labour over zero hours contracts affects maybe 20,000 workers in Scotland while 120,000 to 150,000 were affected by discriminatory pay practices in Scottish councils.

Yet Labour politicians in Scotland turned a blind eye to the fight for equal pay because this would have required them to stand up to the big Labour councils who were among the worst offenders: Glasgow City Council, North Lanarkshire Council and South Lanarkshire Council all spring to mind. 

The Scottish TUC has joined in the Labour campaign as well, but again the STUC had nothing useful to say on the subject of equal pay even though the workers affected were all employed in the public sector which has a relatively high union density.

Now zero hours contracts have been around for a long time and were in widespread use during the last Labour Government, by Labour councils for example who offer extra, but not necessarily regular hours for evening catering functions.

The logic being that the evening work goes up and down and cannot be guaranteed, so people on these contracts often have a day job as well.

The areas where zero hours contracts are being used in an exploitative way seem to be concentrated in certain parts of the private sector where rogue employers operate and union membership is low.   

So you would think that the trade unions 'led' by the STUC would mount a big campaign to recruit and organise workers in this sector to put pressure on the employers to raise their standards.

Instead what we get is a proposal from Labour for more legislation which sounds crazy when you stop and think that we've had an Equal Pay Act in the UK since 1970, yet that didn't stop Labour councils from operating local pay arrangements that blatantly discriminated against female dominated jobs.  

All of which explains why Ed Miliband and Labour had zero credibility on the subjectas they were both barking up the wrong tree.