Rebranding efforts will fail until the Tories prove they truly want to make work pay
In an interview with The Sun today, the Conservative party’s deputy chairman Rob Halfon suggests that David Cameron should consider the name ‘The Workers’ Party’. Insisting that the Tories are ‘the party of the ladder’, Halfon says:
“If you’re in poverty, we’ll get you into work. If you’re in work, we’ll cut your taxes… Labour, on the other hand, are the party of dependency and the Welfare State, and that’s why they didn’t get in.”
The appointment of Halfon to deputy chairman may be part of a wider bid by David Cameron to rebrand the Conservatives and shed their elitist image. The MP for Harlow campaigned tirelessly to cut fuel duty for motorists, saying it was unacceptable that the average family in his Essex constituency spent more on fuel than on their weekly shop.
But he’s wrong. The Conservatives will never be the party of workers. Here’s why.
Firstly, after less than two weeks in government the Tories have already made it clear they are on the side of the bosses by carrying on with their bonfire of workers’ rights. Last week the new business minister Sajid Javid, who also voted against increasing minimum wage, proposed tough new anti-strike laws. The introduction of a 40 per cent ballot threshold before a strike is possible has caused alarm among trade unions, with some legal voices saying the proposal would violate international law.
This is the latest display of contempt for workers rights in a long list which includes under the Tory-led coalition:
- Introducing tribunal fees in 2013, pricing many victims of discrimination or unfair dismissal out of justice. In the first six months since the introduction of fees (£1,200 to have a case heard, £1,600 to appeal, no expenses for witnesses), claims fell by 55 per cent.
- Cutting the civil legal aid budget in 2013, putting legal advice and representation out of the reach of much of the population. Between 2012-2013 and 2013-14, legally aided employment law cases fell from 16,154 to just six.
- Reducing the amount of time employers need to consult on collective redundancies from 90 days to 45 days. This has made it easier to sack employees, and eroded job security in an already-fragile labour market.
Secondly, under the coalition the number of people working in low-paid, unstable jobs increased. According to the TUC, four in five jobs created between 2010 and 2013 were in low-paid industries, such as retail, waiting and residential care.
New data released by the ONS today has shows that house prices are rising four times faster than wages. TUC analysis released in April showed that 2010 to 2014 was the worst five-year period for living standards for half a century, based on real disposable income per head.
The Tories have also let down temporary workers, by failing to properly implement the Temporary Agency Workers Directive. The Directive was designed by the European Commission to protect agency workers, who are supposed to be entitled to the same pay as permanent staff after 12 weeks. The TUC lodged a formal complaint with the government for failing to make this the case, and allowing employers to take part in a ‘race to the bottom’, squeezing as much profit as possible from already poorly paid workers.
Meanwhile 700,000 UK workers report being on zero-hours contracts, as well as 820,000 UK employees who report being underemployed on between zero and 19 hours a week.
This list of stats could go on – it is suffice to say that in Conservative Britain, being in work does not, as Halfon claims, guarantee being out of poverty. It is little wonder that over 100,000 people say they have been forced to take second jobs since 2010.
You might think then, that things were hard enough for UK workers. But TUC analysis has shown that the majority of welfare cuts between 2010 and 2016 hit working families hardest. Cuts to in-work benefits such as tax credit, child benefit and housing benefit meant that ‘working people saw an unprecedented squeeze in their incomes’ over the last parliament.
This data from the TUC shows how, far from rewarding work, by 2016-17, 67.3 per cent of cuts will hit working families:
(Click to enlarge)
And with the Tories back in power, workers are facing a two-year benefits freeze across the board.
All this is to say nothing of a system which, far from being a ‘ladder’, essentially locks most people out from the top through creating tax breaks for the super-rich and perpetuates inequality by making the biggest cuts in the poorest areas. Halfon’s claims today are just empty rhetoric until the Tories can offer a convincing explanation for why they have made the above decisions – or repeal them altogether.
Ruby Stockham is a staff writer at Left Foot Forward. Follow her on Twitter
50 Responses to “Why the Tories will never be the workers’ party”
Torybushhug
‘it is sobering to realise that the vast majority of self-employed people in the UK today live below the poverty line’,
Steve I provide specialist services to the self employed. Literally none I’ve dealt with in all these years has a tax return that reflects anything like their true income.
All the time I see people showing no income / a loss, that in fact lead prosperous lives, staying at Centre Parcs all the time, massive Audi Q8’s with a boat on the back, a villa in Spain, a number of buy to lets.
Yesterday I had a common example, guy shows £22k net profit (income) on his SA302. In fact he owns a house worth £1.5m, another worth £160k with no mortgage and is buying land to use ostensibly for his skip hire biz, but in fact he will develop into houses. He already has permission to build houses on some of the land on his main home, so there too will make a killing. This sort of thing applies to masses of people, many of whom have few / no qualifications.
Don’t for a second think this is some fringe rarity. Many SE for example put say 40% of their income into spouse’ name to reduce taxes.
I get Firemen on their usual employed income of £32k (London) but on the side they tend to run a business. One the other week has a pond business, he takes home £5k pm from this but his taxable income shows as only £17k pa.
I have agency Nurses, SE making £58 pa, but time their Accountant has done his work, these Nurses show a personal income of halve this.
Honestly you guys on the left need to get out there, true incomes are much higher than official stats reflect.
stevep
First of all, good on you if you are helping the self employed. In my own way, so am I.
I am an unapologetic man of the left, not because I believe in woolly liberal values and despise the rich but because, despite suffering with faults and hypocrisies all of us possess, I truly believe that human beings can aspire to and achieve greater things than we currently think possible, if we want to.
I`ve been “out there” too, working for 35 years and for a short time, owning and running my own business. That`s why I respect your point of view . I too have seen tax fiddles, people who could be gainfully employed choosing to rely on benefits instead and people playing the system for what it`s worth. That`s their choice. It`s not mine, or yours, I suspect.
I believe also that whoever is government should limit benefits and other handouts to people who truly need them and that includes the wealthy. But first, any government doing this would have to create full decently-paid employment so people can actually live on what they earn and induce the wealthier amongst us to contribute more via progressive taxation to help the vast majority of less capable and fortunate souls amongst us. I`m not daft, I realise that some people would still try to buck the system, but with a fairer, more affluent society within the reach of all of us, there would be less incentive to do so.
Everyone should be encouraged to be creative and enterprising, but in a more enlightened society it wouldn`t be for vanity and greed but for how far their talents could take them and how it would benefit society as a whole.
There are many current examples such as Sir Tim Berners-Lee who invented the World Wide Web, who had he chosen to patent it, could now be the richest man on the planet. He chose instead to give it freely to the world. Linus Torsvalds, the Finnish-American software engineer who invented the Linux kernel for computer operating systems which is used in most secure government computer installations, millions of private PC owners prefer it to windows, and a version of which is used in every android-based phone on the planet, They gave their ideas and inventions freely, for the benefit of humanity. That`s what contributes to a better, fairer society and if we choose to live by such examples we will a little further along the hard, rocky road to achieving one.
Kryten2k35
Oh, right, how do you work that out, then? 38% isn’t most people. 62% is most people. Most people did not want the Tories.
The Tories “plan” to recover the economy is failing hard. We should’ve been well into a growth period by now, but austerity has been kneecapping any growth we’ve had, and they’re still carrying it on. Economists agree and the IMF agree – austerity is wrong and is it damaging the economy.
Kryten2k35
And your comments about spending other peoples taxes have nothing to do with this article, which is about how the Tories are fucking people who work, by handing out huge tax breaks to corporations and allowing them to pay a pittance to their staff, which has forced an increase in the amount of working people requiring welfare from 28% to 38%… 38% of working people are on state benefits.
blarg1987
How do you know they are lefties?
You can;t say people on the right are not as bad if not worse. I have noticed and observed people who are right wing in orientation, demanding less government, less regulation etc.
However demand the state takes on all their liabilities and leaving them to pick up the profit quite literally.
Yet they are framed as striver’s etc.