The SSP is a party of workers and trade unionists. We stand shoulder-to-shoulder with workers fighting for better pay and conditions, and put forward the most progressive platform for change.
After the peak of the COVID-19 crisis, with profiteering driving unaffordable inflation and Tory government pressing on with more cuts to jobs, conditions, and services, workers are under enormous pressure. Anger at years of wage stagnation while profits climb higher and higher is real and justified.
The Scottish Socialist Party has always stood in solidarity with workers in struggle. Our guiding principles are struggle, solidarity, socialism.
The SSP is a party of workers – working-class people engaged in class struggle. We are proud of the role we have played in standing up for workers, defending worker’s rights, building solidarity with strikers, and uniting common issues around socialist demands. We have a proven track record unmatched by anyone.
And the need for a party of Scotland’s working-class fighters is greater than ever before.
Fighting For Pay, Conditions, Jobs, Rights
Scotland has a crisis of poverty pay, stagnant wages, and precarious employment. The SSP is fighting for secure contracts, higher pay, and better conditions for workers to end poverty pay conditions.
The Scottish Socialist Party fights for the needs and rights of working-class people, including in their working life. Workers have faced years of wage stagnation; rising living costs; loss of jobs, services, and pensions; worsening working conditions, and attacks on their right to strike.
We have a crisis of poverty pay and precarious employment in the UK. Millions of workers are living in precarious, hand-to-mouth conditions with little to no savings. Even before the pandemic, 21% of people in Scotland had no savings at all. Millions of households are under extreme pressure as living costs like rent, energy bills, and shopping costs run out of control.
As well as bringing living costs down, we have to bring household incomes up with secure jobs and better pay. The wealth exists to end poverty pay and precarious employment.
The SSP is a party of workers and trade unionists. We stand shoulder-to-shoulder with workers fighting for better pay and conditions, and put forward the most progressive platform for change.
The SSP fights for:
- The repeal of anti-trade union laws, and resisting the threat of new anti-strike laws.
- Pay rises for workers that beat inflation – backdated to compensate for years of wage stagnation.
- A new minimum wage set at two-thirds the median male earning, rising with inflation – equalised for all workers over 16, and with equal pay for women.
- A guaranteed minimum hour contract for every worker who wants one, with a minimum of 16 paid hours of work a week to end casualisation, the ‘gig economy’, and poverty pay employment.
- A four day week on five-day pay – a 35 hour working week without loss of income.
- A total ban on “Fire and Rehire”, and justice for workers who have been the victims of “Fire and Rehire”.
- A ban on blacklisting, and justice for the victims of blacklisting. We call for abolishing all fees for Employment Tribunal hearings and extending Legal Aid provision to include workplace disputes.
- Full funding and protection for pensions, to make sure that everyone has the benefit of a long and dignified retirement.
- Full average wages for sick workers, and worker control of workplace health and safety through elected shop stewards and safety reps.
- Democratic public ownership of key sectors, with full public funding for jobs and services with worker-led leadership – a country run for people, not for profit.
building united Mass Action
Workers have shown they are determined to fight for better pay and conditions. The SSP takes a proactive role in unifying struggles and putting forward socialist solutions.
Millions of workers in the UK have taken strike action in recent years, and trade unions have become bolder and more determined to fight on behalf of workers. More and more young workers and women are taking charge of the fight. And lasting success is in uniting these fights into mass, class-based action across workplaces and trade unions.
The SSP takes a proactive role in raising workers’ demands to unify struggles into one: drawing out socialist conclusions to the issues that working-class people face, rooted in day-to-day real life. We’re building greater class awareness between working-class people – the platform for real, transformative change.
We work with trade unionists across sectors to call for a 24-hour general strike to unify and escalate the fights for fair pay, secure jobs, better conditions, and the defence of our rights as workers.
We’re proud of our successes in convincing Scottish TUC leaders to stage a united mass demonstration that helped win a 10% pay increase for local government workers. Now, we need to expand that to win more victories for the working-class as a whole.
resisting Anti-Trade Union laws
“take collective, agreed industrial action to stop the relentless assaults on jobs, pay, workplace health and safety, and indeed the quality of services provided to the public”
Richie Venton, SSP National Workplace Organiser
The UK has some of the most repressive, anti-democratic anti-trade union laws in Europe. The SSP campaigns to resist and repeal anti-trade union, anti-strike laws.
Anti-trade union, anti-strike laws are intended to undermine the effectiveness of any attempts by any workers to stand up for themselves against pay cuts, job losses, slashed working conditions, dangerous safety levels, and decimation of public services.
The Tories and the bosses want to pass these laws because strike action is so effective. Trade unions are the largest civil society organisations in Scotland, and have shown that they can give workers the power to force meaningful social and economic change.
The SSP was at the forefront, shoulder-to-shoulder with the RMT union, in responding to the ruthless sacking of almost 800 P&O Ferries workers – a deliberate, calculated, illegal act against workers.
We’re standing with workers and trade unions to:
- Restore full, free collective bargaining in all sectors and workplaces, including on wages, conditions, training, equalities, and health and safety.
- Protect the right to join and organise a trade union without fear of victimisation, and ensure that reps have the right and facilities to represent members during working hours.
- Guarantee a trade union presence beside every worker in contract negotiations, and strengthen access to trade unions for short-term and precarious workers.
- Protect the right to strike by simple majority vote, remove outdated and obstructionist rules about postal-only voting, and scrap the requirement to inform employers before a ballot takes place.
- Build fighting trade unions that put the needs of members and workers first, without compromise.
Cut Profiteering, Not Pay
“There’s a growing mood of outrage at this Grand Canyon separating the pay rates of bosses and ‘their’ workers“
Richie Venton, SSP National Workplace Organiser
Despite years of stagnant wages, the lasting effects of the COVID-19 crisis, and global economic disruption, profits for Britain’s biggest private firms are soaring. Research by Unite has shown that profit for Britain’s 350 largest companies has increased by 89% on pre-pandemic levels.
At the same time, real-term pay for workers has fallen relative to runaway inflation. Higher wages don’t cause inflation – profiteering is the cause of runaway inflation in the UK. Workers in the UK are more productive, but our share of the wealth is shrinking as more and more of it is redistributed to the wealthy and the powerful.
Pay for FTSE 100 chief executives grew by an average of 23% in 2022, while worker pay fell in real terms.
Working-class people create the wealth of society, and Scotland is a wealthy country. The SSP fights to put the wealth that workers create back into the hands of the workers. We have to cut profiteering, not pay.
We’re fighting to:
- Direct revenue into jobs, wages, pensions, and better services, not private profit.
- Expand and restore democratic public ownership of key sectors, resources, and utilities, to run Scotland’s economy for the benefit of the working-class majority – for people, not profit.
- Renegotiate, and where necessary scrap, rip-off PFI contracts to free up billions for jobs, wages, and public services.
- Lift the tax burden from working-class people and implement progressive taxation scaled to the ability to pay; for taxes on pandemic and fuel poverty profiteers.
- Pass No Cuts Budgets in the political and class-based fight to end discredited austerity and increase public spending, to fund public services and wage increases, and to redistribute wealth from private profiteering to the working class.
- Implement a maximum hourly income at a ratio of 10:1 with an increased minimum wage, to curtail obscene inequality and incentivise reinvesting in higher worker wages.
