Unite general secretary demands: “Nationalise energy”
Kevin Parslow, Socialist Party in Unite
Unite the Union has called for the nationalisation of the entire energy sector, as the conclusion of extensive research into the industry. [Unite Investigates: Renationalising energy – costs and savings, available on Unite’s website].
The sector more than tripled its profits in 2022 from the previous year, to £45 billion, which has been done by ruthlessly exploiting its workers and customers alike. For example, British Gas fired and rehired its service engineers on worse terms. The GMB held a series of strikes over six months to oppose the plans, which, unfortunately, were eventually accepted by most of the workforce. Workers who refused to sign the new contracts were dismissed.
Inflation
Customers have been subject to some of the worst inflation in the system. Electricity prices in the UK rose by 66.7% and gas prices by 129.4% in the 12 months to March 2023, according to the Office for National Statistics. These increases in charges have fuelled the cost-of-living squeeze facing the working class, and boosted the obscene profits of the energy companies.
Sharon Graham, Unite general secretary, says she has presented the findings to Labour leader Keir Starmer, and has urged him to reinstate energy nationalisation into Labour’s election manifesto. Starmer has dropped this pledge of former leader Jeremy Corbyn, instead proposing the state set up a competing company to attempt to speed up the push to a low-carbon economy. This would leave control of the majority of energy in the hands of the millionaire bosses to continue to extract vast profits, with a state company playing by their market rules.
The Socialist welcomes Sharon’s call for nationalisation. But we disagree with her acceptance of the need to pay a price to buy these companies, between the book value of the energy companies, £90 billion, and the market value, £196 billion! Haven’t these sharks screwed us for enough? Big shareholders should not be compensated any further for their massive gains from exploiting us.
We say, yes nationalise energy, but compensate only on the basis of proven need. For example, any workers who may still hold a few shares given to them when the public companies were first privatised by Tory governments in the past.
But don’t give the industry back to the same managers. Run it under democratic workers’ control and management, as part of a socialist planned economy, which could provide cheap and environmentally friendly energy for all.
This is why Socialist Party members argue for a debate in Unite about how we achieve political representation for Unite members and the wider working class. We need a new mass workers’ party that would implement this programme.
Nationalise BT to save jobs
Prepare to strike
Clive Walder, CWU Midland No 1 branch, personal capacity
The announcement by telecoms giant BT that it plans to become a ‘leaner business’ by axing 55,000, or 42%, of its jobs worldwide by the end of the decade will have sent shockwaves through the workforce.
It is expected that a ‘big chunk’ of those job losses will be in the UK. Ominously, BT says it aims to replace about 10,000 of its staff with Artificial Intelligence (AI), although the company generously reassures us that it will not be replacing humans with AI entirely.
Artificial Intelligence
It says that fewer engineers will be needed once the new full-fibre and 5G networks are built, and that the expansion of digital technology means that jobs such as call handling and network diagnostics can at least in part be replaced by AI.
Anyone who has ever tried to contact a tech company will testify to the frustration caused by not being able to speak to a person. The replacement of more people with computer ‘bots’ will increase this sense of powerlessness.
The response of the BT unions has been timid to say the least. The leaders of the managers’ union, Prospect, say they are concerned about the scale of the cuts. They have only demanded to see the ‘details behind the announcement’ and asked for a meeting with the CEO.
The leaders of the Communication Workers Union (CWU), whose members took national strike action for the first time in decades in a battle over pay last year and forced concessions from the bosses, said that they are not surprised by the announcement and want job losses restricted to sub-contractors – but some of them would be CWU members!
It is essential that the unions prepare now, building on the raised confidence of workers following last year’s strikes, for national action to defend jobs. Prospect members have also been on strike recently in the civil service and Welsh government.
BT made £1.7 billion profit in the last financial year and expects to pay no UK tax for the next three years, as this investment will be tax-deductible.
Unemployment
It is true that some research has concluded that AI can be more effective than people in carrying out some functions. But BT’s plans show that, under privatised ownership, new technology is primarily used to benefit shareholders, while workers can only look forward to unemployment or job insecurity.
AI threatens to cost millions of jobs across the world which will add to the general crisis of capitalism and poverty of workers. The actions of companies such as BT show the necessity for nationalisation and democratic workers’ control of both new technology and major companies.
It is more than urgent that the BT unions demand public ownership. If Keir Starmer pledged this now, and the unions prepared for action, much greater pressure would be applied to the bosses and the Tory government.
Water privatisation failure – rising bills and public anger
Oscar Parry, South East London Socialist Party
The water companies – after more than three decades running a privatised model – apologised for failing to properly manage and invest in water, and for the scale of raw sewage discharges, which have fuelled huge public anger.
Water companies promised to triple funding in pipes, treatment works and infrastructure over the next decade to £10 billion. But all of this overdue work will be paid for by increased customer bills.
Can’t afford to pay
Nearly five million households may not be able to pay their water bills this year. With the already crippling rise in the cost of living, this is a further turn of the inflationary screw on working-class people.
In 2022, raw sewage was dumped into rivers and seas for 1.75 million hours, 825 times a day on average. Untreated sewage contains bacteria such as E.coli, and viruses like hepatitis, that can be harmful to animals and humans. A new study has shown toxic foam is floating on the surface of at least an eighth of Britain’s waterways – a direct result of wastewater and rainwater travelling along the same pipes.
English water companies have handed more than £2 billion a year on average to shareholders since they were privatised by Margaret Thatcher’s Tory government in the 1980s. They have made £72 billion profit.
It’s estimated that it will take £56 billion to overcome the major problems that have developed. So why are they not being forced to take the necessary action?
The water industry regulator Ofwat said: “Poor performance has become the norm”. But the companies have only been fined £142 million for negligence since 2015. Some of their CEOs are paid two, three or four times what they pay out in fines.
Tony Blair’s Labour government was warned about the continued dangers of water privatisation in 2002. Chris Goodall was the author of the report that was ignored by the Labour government.
Goodall has now said that it “created an entity which would prove impossible to regulate. It would prove extremely difficult to ensure that water companies invested enough in sewage control. It helps to show why the last 20 years of increasing private equity dominance of the water industry has proved so disastrous.”
But Goodall’s report was covered up by the then Labour government, and continues to be kept secret by the Tory government today.
Now the Labour Party advocates for “mandatory monitoring [of sewage facilities] and automatic fines”, and “accountability for negligent water bosses”. But not a word about renationalisation and democratic, state planning.
Working-class control
In Scotland, however, water is state-owned. Yet the figure for untreated sewage is rising, and the highest since records began. The Socialist Party argues that the only way to challenge the rampant profiteering of our major industries is to bring them under the control of the working class.
State ownership needs to be accompanied by a system of management and control by elected committees of workers’ representatives. This would mean the services and industries being planned and run in the interests of working-class people.
Labour wants Tories to privatise NHS more
Adam Harmsworth, Coventry Socialist Party
Labour’s shadow health secretary, Wes Streeting, has criticised the Tories for not using enough of the private health sector to tackle NHS waiting lists.
Over 7.3 million people are now waiting for NHS treatment. That is millions of people living in pain with health issues, and even in fear, as untreated health problems worsen. In March, 19,200 cancer patients were waiting over 62 days for treatment.
Labour’s plan is to “use the spare capacity in the private sector to get patients seen faster”. The Socialist Party happily supports making use of vital resources being hoarded by the private sector.
But why should these privatising vultures be allowed to make profit out of patients? Instead, bring them into public ownership, with no compensation to the fat cats.
Labour’s approach is a blank cheque to the private companies. Streeting has praised the Labour governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown for using the private health sector.
Blairite privatisation helped set up the NHS crisis we face today. The NHS still doles out around £2 billion a year to PFI profiteers.
Wasted
Ten NHS trusts spend more than 10% of their income on PFI privatisation repayments. That money should be going to proper wages, decent staffing, and resources and infrastructure that health workers are crying out for.
When the NHS is struggling like never before, Labour’s policy is to set it up for even greater crisis by throwing yet more public money at private health profiteers.
This is the latest move by Keir Starmer’s Labour to try and ‘out-Tory’ the Tories! Starmer wants to make it clear to the bosses that the Jeremy Corbyn era is over, and that Labour is a pro-capitalist party for ever.
Streeting has repeatedly attacked the health unions for their strike action and pay claims. On the junior doctors, he said: “I don’t support the strike”.
Labour is promising more NHS privatisation, and has ruled out the massive increase in investment in healthcare that the NHS needs. Labour refuses to say it would match the pay rise demands of striking NHS workers if in government, which are definitely needed to begin to solve the staffing crisis.
Now, no major party stands up for the NHS. We need a new mass workers’ party that fights for inflation-busting pay rises, fully funded public services, and a fully public NHS run by workers, patients and communities to meet our needs
Nationalise Royal Mail – Reject the deal
Socialist Party members in CWU
Royal Mail posted £1 billion losses in its annual report.
This comes after a national agreement reached by Communication Workers Union (CWU) negotiators, which is to be put to a vote of members, in a type of ‘rescue package’ to save Royal Mail after it threatened it could face administration.
But let’s look at the facts. In the nine years since privatisation, £1.9 billion has been paid out to shareholders and directors.
Covid pandemic
During the pandemic, our members worked, and delivered and collected test kits. There was a big increase in parcels and packets which led to massive profits over this period.
Socialist Party members warned, and Royal Mail workers knew, that this would not last for ever. An economic crisis was expected after the pandemic, which would mean people’s disposable incomes would drop and there would be a slowdown of packet traffic.
But instead of investing pandemic profits in preparation for that, Royal Mail bosses gave hundreds of millions of pounds out to the major shareholders and to the directors in massive bonuses. That includes CEO Simon Thompson, who has just resigned with a package reported to be around £700,000.
Now they want ordinary postal workers to pay for a crisis which the bosses have created, with a three-year real-terms pay cut and a massive reduction in sick pay. If you have more than one absence in a year, you will see your sick pay slashed. This will mean a direct attack on disabled workers. Ill-health retirement will be more than halved.
Bosses are now bringing in a two-tier workforce, with new starters on worse terms and conditions, which will lead to more attacks on all our conditions in the future. We are also going to see a reduction in indoor time and seasonal working hours, which will make it an even more physically demanding job, which many workers won’t be able to manage.
Private leeches
As well as gross mismanagement by the senior directors, this whole situation is a consequence of privatisation: leeching the company dry, hiving off profitable parts of the business, and leaving the ‘loss-making’ essential universal service without subsidy.
The CWU leadership should be demanding of Keir Starmer that he enacts the decision of Labour Party conference, and pledges right now that an incoming Labour government will renationalise Royal Mail immediately, with compensation only where there is proven need.
But we can’t trust the same board or the same top bosses: we need nationalisation with democratic workers’ control and management.
It’s been a real mistake by our CWU negotiators to agree that our members pay for the bosses’ greed. We should say no!
We won’t pay for their crisis, Royal Mail must be brought back into public ownership, and developed as a crucial universal service to society.
