The Socialist 27 January 2016

Housing: smash the Tory wrecking bill

Housing: smash the Tory wrecking bill

Davos summit: a broken capitalist system

Google pays pittance for avoiding £2bn tax

Red doors and wristbands scandal

Steelworkers may face benefit cut-off for not seeking bar jobs

Oscars snub black artists: fight racism and austerity in the arts

Labour councillor smears TUSC policy as 'BNP'

Them & Us

Top tweets: #TraditionallySubmissive

Teaching: a perfect storm is brewing

Teachers need national strategy for a national struggle

A day in the life of a teacher and mother

New wave of protests in Tunisia

India: student death exposes caste oppression

Tories 'Prevent' civil liberties

Labour councillor suspended for fighting cuts

Dave Nellist's byelection appeal to Jeremy Corbyn: 'let's discuss how to fight the cuts'

Labour election post-mortem: nothing to report!

The dark arts of Labour's right

Councillors must fight to defend our services

'People's budgets' and local democracy

Lewisham: no backsliding in council cuts fight!

"I have left work many times in tears" - a council worker

Trade union bill will stretch resources and limit action

Birmingham teachers strike to resist academy attack

24-hour tube strike suspended

Care services under threat in Haringey

Workplace news in brief

The end for deep coal mining jobs in Britain

Obituary: Dean Meehan 1962-2016

Letters

Protesting against closure of Huddersfield A&E

Coventry children's services closure protest

New Socialist Party branch fights against St Austell austerity

Socialist Party discusses the fight for socialism

Socialist Students bake-off

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Them & Us

Image Suzanne Beishon (Click to enlarge)

Pensioners freeze, energy firms profit

Half of Britain's pensioners were due to turn down the thermostat during January's cold snap. Meanwhile, big energy firms are posting record profits - the big six will make over £1 billion for the first time.

A study reported in the Times found that five million over-65s were planning to risk their health - and lives - by sitting in the cold.

Energy prices have remained stubbornly high for consumers. Bosses are pocketing the difference of two years' falling wholesale costs.

Sicko bosses sicken sick workers

One in four bosses now demands to interrogate you on your illness before granting sick leave. That's pretty sick.

And one in ten workers is forced to make up the lost time, with similar numbers made to use annual leave for medical appointments.

The survey by a health insurer also found that even 30% of bosses who claim to be more sympathetic are "frustrated by the working time lost" to sickness.

Bullying, low pay and job insecurity are becoming normal. Have bosses considered that workers might just be sick of them?

Worker told to pay boss

A worker in London was outraged when a prospective boss asked her to pay £44 to attend an interview.

The Socialist has received copies of email correspondence between the prospective employee and a tutoring firm. After approving her CV, the boss instructed her to pay a £44 "registration fee". This was apparently to pay for a DBS criminal record check - with no promise of a job.

The worker rightly declined the boss's kind offer to pay his firm for an interview. She wrote to him that "I believe your company's policy of making potential applicants and your own workers pay for their own DBS check is inappropriate and approaches the immoral."

In this issue

Socialist Party news and analysis

Housing: smash the Tory wrecking bill