Osborne’s 20p insult to low paid

Fight for £10 an hour now!

Helen Pattison, Fast Food Rights campaign, argues for a minimum £10 an hour wage, photo Paul Mattsson

Helen Pattison, Fast Food Rights campaign, argues for a minimum £10 an hour wage, photo Paul Mattsson   (Click to enlarge: opens in new window)

A 20p an hour pay rise – so much then for the government’s “giveaway” pre-election budget!

What an insult to the lowest paid – a paltry rise in the minimum wage from £6.50 to £6.70 an hour, by next October. And 18-20 year olds will only be entitled to an unbelievably low minimum of £5.30 an hour.

As the BBC’s journalist Robert Peston dryly pointed out, the rise “would allow the recipient of that wage to rent a one-bedroom place in a dowdier part of London, so long as he or she didn’t eat, use power, pay council tax or wear clothes.”

Tory Chancellor George Osborne claims the economy and our living standards are on track for a sustainable recovery. Yes, the super-rich have grown wealthier under this government. But the reality facing most workers, and in particular young people, could not be further from Osborne’s claim.

A recent report by the Resolution Foundation found that during the capitalist ‘great recession’ of 2009 to 2014 young workers experienced the highest drop in average wages – 12.5%. The situation facing many today is one of low pay and casualised jobs, with zero-hour contracts. So where exactly is our recovery Mr Osborne?

On top of this, young people leaving university are weighed down by a mountain of debt most will never pay off.

An inaccessible housing market means we’re stuck in accommodation rented from rip-off private landlords or stuck living with parents. When housing costs are factored in, living standards for young workers are 18% lower than their equivalents five years ago.

Osborne’s budget will do nothing to alleviate any of these problems. On the contrary, the Tories intend to make things worse by introducing ‘slave labour’ workfare jobs and axing housing benefit for young people.

But the ‘official opposition’ to the Tory-Lib Dem government is no better.

The Labour Party says it will match the Tories’ austerity plans for further spending cuts on jobs and public services (see pages 6 and 7). It refuses to condemn the use of zero-hour contracts outright. It has pledged to raise the minimum wage, but to £8 an hour and only then by 2020. An increase of just 30p a year!

Most people across all ages are worse off since the start of the economic crisis. When Osborne talks about ‘liberating’ pensioners savings he is only talking about a wealthy minority – some 1.6 million pensioners are in poverty in the UK.

With the Tories, Lib Dems, Labour and Ukip signed up to continue a programme of austerity, attacks on the living standards of young people will only continue.

That’s why we need to get organised and fight back. In the workplace, we need to fight for a minimum wage of £10 an hour now and for decent working conditions.

But we also need to build a socialist political alternative to capitalism in order to deliver the living standards and public services we need and to end poverty and inequality. Join us in that fight!

Mark Best