I’d no idea why there’s a bin strike in Leeds

The strike began in early September, in protest at Leeds city council’s attempt to equalise the pay of their male and female employees. Rather than raise the wages of its female workers, the council elected to reduce the salaries of its male counterparts, which translated as cuts of up to £4,500 on salaries of £18,000. Laura Barton, The Guardian.

No wonder there’s a strike – Leeds City Council a Tory and Liberal Democrat coalition in action – a taste of what a Tory victory at the General election will bring.

Do our morals such as they are, desert us during a recession? The increasing profits at Primark would suggest so – it seems when times are harder we couldn’t care about sweatshops – yet we all know in our hearts how Primark makes its clothes and profits – by squeezing its supply chain in developing countries – when that happens then the living-standards of overseas workers suffers.

We’ve no excuse – there’ve been numerous exposé, High price paid for cheap UK clothes, The abandoned generations: how child labourers suffer as India ignores the law or Exposed: Primark’s fashion sweatshops that pay children just 60p a day – in fact go to any news website you fancy: type in “sweatshop” in to their search box and see what stories you get back – see you’ve no excuse.

Still avoiding Primark won’t help a lot as pretty much every business is at it. War on Want wants us to join their Love Fashion Hate Sweatshops – I can’t say I love fashion but I certainly hate sweatshops and believe workers should be paid a living wage, so I’ve pledged my support.

It’s always difficult to treat anonymous postings seriously – you never can be sure of their veracity, but then again how sure can you be that journalist’s have done their homework? Sadly the answers not very. Roy Mayall (say it out loud), the pseudonym of a postal worker who’s written an essay for the London Review of Books – here’s an extract (OK a big extract).

According to Royal Mail figures published in May, mail volume declined by 5.5 per cent over the preceding 12 months, and is predicted to fall by a further 10 per cent this year ‘due to the recession and the continuing growth of electronic communications such as email’. Every postman knows these figures are false. If the figures are down, how come I can’t get my round done in under four hours any more? How come I can work up to five hours at a stretch without time for a sit-down or a tea break? How come my knees nearly give way with the weight I have to carry? How come something snapped in my back as I was climbing out of the shower, so that I fell to the floor and had to take a week off work?

So who’s right? Are the figures down or aren’t they? The Royal Mail couldn’t lie, could it? Well no, maybe not. But it can manipulate the figures. And it can avoid telling the whole truth.

One thing you probably don’t know, for instance, is that the Royal Mail is already part-privatised. It goes under the euphemism of ‘deregulation’. Deregulation is the result of an EU directive that was meant to be implemented over an extended period to give mail companies time to adjust, but which this government embraced with almost obscene relish, deregulating the UK mail service long before any of its rivals in Europe. It means that any private mail company – or, indeed, any of the state-owned, subsidised European mail companies – is able to bid for Royal Mail contracts.

Take a look at your letters next time you pick them up from the doormat. Look at the right-hand corner, the place where the Queen’s head used to be. You’ll see a variety of different franks, representing a number of different mail companies. There’s TNT, UK Mail, Citypost and a number of others. What these companies do is to bid for the profitable bulk mail and city-to-city trade of large corporations, undercutting the Royal Mail, and then have the Royal Mail deliver it for them. TNT has the very lucrative BT contract, for instance. TNT picks up all BT’s mail from its main offices, sorts it into individual walks according to information supplied by the Royal Mail, scoots it to the mail centres in bulk, where it is then sorted again and handed over to us to deliver. Royal Mail does the work. TNT takes the profit.

None of these companies has a universal delivery obligation, unlike the Royal Mail. In fact they have no delivery obligation at all. They aren’t rival mail companies in a free market, as the propaganda would have you believe. None of them delivers any mail. All they do is ride on the back of the system created and developed by the Royal Mail, and extract profit from it. The process is called ‘downstream access’. Downstream access means that private mail companies have access to any point in the Royal Mail delivery network which will yield a profit, after which they will leave the poor old postman to carry the mail to your door.

So if ‘figures are down’ that doesn’t mean that volume is down. Volume, at least over that last few miles from the office to your door, is decidedly up. But even assuming that Mandelson was telling the truth, that volume really is down by 10 per cent, the fact is that staff levels are down even more, by 30 per cent. That still means each postman is doing a whole lot more work. Roy Mayall, London Review of Books.

Mayall writes a lot of sense, whilst its easy to believe that a strike by Royal Mail workers is nothing suicide, the reality is all together different – if they don’t do something then their jobs are gone – a Hobson’s choice.

Mayall also goes on to explain how that supposed dip in mail is a fabrication.

Hat Tip: Lansbury’s Lido.

Jamie Leigh Jones alleges that she was drugged and raped by seven American contractors working for KPR then a subsidiary of Haliburton in Baghdad in 2005. Jones was prevented from having her day in court as:

Halliburton/KBR used a clause in her contract requiring disputes to be settled by arbitration to block legal action – a policy which, her lawyer says, has encouraged assaults by creating a climate of impunity. Chris McGreal, The Guardian.

Jones accusations are pretty horrifying

In legal papers Jones, who was 20 at the time, says she was fed a knockout drug while drinking with KBR fire-fighters.

“When she awoke the next morning still affected by the drug, she found her body naked and severely bruised, with lacerations to her vagina and anus, blood running down her leg, her breast implants ruptured and her pectoral muscles torn‚ which would later require reconstructive surgery. Upon walking to the rest room, she passed out again,” the papers say.

Jones was treated by a US army doctor who gave forensic evidence to company officials. She says the firm placed her under guard in a shipping container and she was released only after her father asked the US embassy to intervene. When the forensic evidence was handed to investigators two years later, crucial photographs and notes were missing. Chris McGreal, The Guardian.

As well as losing evidence

KBR has sought to discredit Jones’s account by saying she was seen drinking and flirting with a fire-fighter before leaving the gathering with him, and that the man claims to have had consensual sex with her. Chris McGreal, The Guardian.

Since when has drinking and flirting been an invitation for rape? Still

The firm denies that Jones was held prisoner, but not that her injuries indicated serious sexual assault. Chris McGreal, The Guardian.

However

KBR defended arbitration as a “fair process”, saying: “Most large companies have a dispute resolution programme which is mandatory and is designed to address employee complaints quickly and efficiently. Under KBR’s dispute resolution programme 95% of all employee complaints are resolved quickly to the employees’ satisfaction without a mediation or an arbitration.” Chris McGreal, The Guardian.

Still if that’s true what about Mary Beth Kineston

Who drove lorries in Iraq and survived a bloody ambush, has alleged that she was sacked after complaining of sexual assaults by several fellow workers. Chris McGreal, The Guardian.

Or Linda Lindsey

Who worked for KBR in Iraq for three years, has said that male supervisors regularly offered promotions and other benefits in exchange for sex. Chris McGreal, The Guardian.

Or the 40 other calls that Jones’ lawyer Todd Kerry has received?

Still one piece of good news for Americans

US defence firms are to be barred from lucrative government contracts if they refuse to allow employees access to the courts. Chris McGreal, The Guardian.

However it might be a good idea to get legal advice before signing an employment contract – which sadly puts more money in to the pockets of fat cat lawyers – and don’t think because you live in the UK you’ll be immune from such underhand tactics by employers.

Another thing troubling me – these cases show there are too many men willing to rape, haven’t we learnt that no means no – we don’t have a right to sex.

Good News

Under the legislation, companies will no longer be able to use tips or service charges to make up a minimum salary.

In the past, some companies had paid workers below the minimum wage and used tips to make up the difference. The British Hospitality Association estimates that up to 20% of all restaurants were doing exactly that. BBC.

Bad News

Many restaurants add service to bills as a supposedly “discretionary” charge for service – a practice that can add 10%-15% onto your bill – although in practice, diners hardly ever refuse to pay this, even if they are unhappy with the service.

From now on, workers will not automatically be granted a share in any service charge. While tips must be passed to staff, under the law, an establishment can opt to keep the whole service charge for itself. BBC.

As always if you want to make sure staff get your tip – leave cash and don’t pay the service charge.

Employers will still be able to force workers to retire at 65 after a high court judge today turned down campaigners’ attempts to have the UK’s default retirement age (DRA) scrapped.

Mr Justice Blake said the rule, introduced in October 2006 as part of age discrimination laws, did not breach EU regulations and that it was “legitimate and proportionate” for the government to bring it in. Hilary Osborne, The Guardian.

Personally I’m going to hate having to work past 65, put the way things are panning-out I’m not going to have a choice not just to work past retirement but on until I drop dead – if I don’t starve.

I don’t know what Mr Justice Blake sees as “legitimate and proportionate”, you’d hope it wasn’t abject poverty – sadly Blake has just put many pensioners at risk of a having a very meagre retirement. Of course it would be preferable that pensioners didn’t need to work – unfortunately for most of us that’s a luxury we can’t afford.

Staff at Swindon’s Great Western Hospital face possible dismissal after posting online pictures of themselves taking part in the Lying Down Game.

Seven hospital staff have been suspended for their part in the game, played in mid August.

The game involves being pictured lying down with arms by your side and toes pointing towards the floor.

A hospital official said: “Disciplinary hearings are yet to take place and we cannot predict the outcome.”

The images, since removed, were posted on the social networking site Facebook under the title Secret Swindon Emergency Department Group.

In the spirit of the game, extra points are awarded for being pictured in unusual settings.

It is understood staff were pictured lying down on the hospital’s resuscitation trolleys, ward floors and the Wiltshire Air Ambulance helipad.

Great Western Hospital medical director Dr Alf Troughton said: “A number of staff were suspended following allegations of unprofessional conduct while on night shift duty in the hospital during a weekend in August.

“This did not involve patients and we are satisfied that at no time was patient care compromised.

“The Great Western Hospital sets high standards for staff behaviour at all times and therefore takes any such breaches extremely seriously.

“The allegations have been thoroughly investigated and seven members of staff remain suspended pending formal disciplinary hearings.” BBC.

Formal disciplinary hearings seems an over the top reaction for a group of staff who work long hours in a very stressful environment – if a few photos help them relax and do a better job – what’s the problem.

When the campaign for a High Pay Commission first crossed my radar I ignored it as a bit daft and unimportant, then it crossed my radar again and I realised a few of the names that had signed.

Don’t get me wrong there’s a point when the amount of wealth you have becomes immoral – what that level might be is hard to decide and here’s the problem, government won’t be able to determine what’s high pay let alone what to do about it.

Now here’s a much better idea put the workers in charge.

There is, though, an alternative to a government commission – workers’ control. Workers, far more than any ragbag of state-appointed “experts”, have an idea whether their high-paid bosses are clueless gobshites or genuinely good managers. And they have an incentive to distinguish between them. Rational workers would want to retain a talented manager, as he is best able to secure their jobs and improve their wages. And they have every need to get rid of the bad boss, as it’s their jobs that are threatened by his greedy incompetence.

So, high pay should be curbed (or not) not by the state but by workers themselves. Chris Dillow, Stumbling and Mumbling.

And as Paul Cotterill points out Compass would do better to concentrate on dealing with low-pay. Raising the poorest employees wages makes make high-pay less of a problem.

And for those of you who believe the National Minimum Wage (NMW) has solved the problem need to consider two points firstly the NMW is holding pay down and secondly unscrupulous employers are coercing employees to become self-employed contractors which are then paid less than the NMW.

So like Chris Dillow and Paul Cotterill I won’t be adding my support to the campaign.

Top professions such as medicine and law are increasingly being closed off to all but the most affluent families, a report into social mobility has said.

Former minister Alan Milburn has chaired a study for the prime minister on widening access to high-status jobs.
The report warns that people entering careers such as medicine, law and journalism are increasingly likely to be from more affluent families.

Currently 75% of judges and 45% of senior civil servants are privately educated.

The report does not only focus on the poorest part of the population – but suggests that many middle-income families are also missing out in an increasingly polarised jobs market. BBC.

As I said tell us something we don’t know.

Major companies which set up and funded a secret blacklist to deny work to thousands of trade unionists will escape prosecution.

A judge fined a private investigator who operated the covert blacklist but said he was not the only person responsible but was financed by big “high street” companies. Major firms in the construction industry will be officially warned that they will be prosecuted if they set up a new blacklist.

Affected trade unionists said they were disappointed that companies which had wrecked workers’ lives had appeared to get away with it. They angrily confronted the private investigator, Ian Kerr, who hid his face as he was driven away.

Kerr, 66, was fined £5,000 at Knutsford crown court, Cheshire after admitting keeping a clandestine database of 3,000 workers for the past 15 years.

The court heard that more than 40 construction companies had given £600,000 in the past five years to Kerr’s agency to record personal and employment details of allegedly troublesome workers.

About 90% of the information came from the companies so that it could be shared with other firms to vet workers before they were employed. The firms include Balfour Beatty, Sir Robert McAlpine, Costain and Laing O’Rourke. Rob Evans, The Guardian.

So that’s it firms get off Scott-free – British law what an absolute farce.