All slaves, but Better Together!

Since the beginning of this blog, I have been warning how the governmental elite in this country are introducing new forms of slavery and how this is the future of work unless we do something about it.

Throughout the education system, but particularly in further and higher education, full-time and permanent staff have been, since the last election, getting increasingly replaced by part-time and temporary staff, increasingly on zero-hours contracts. This government brought in the concept of free schools where anything goes with respect to working conditions and salaries. In London the STEM Academy Tech City in Islington, north London, has just managed to avert strike action by its staff over intolerable working conditions. With no unions, and no organized negotiating machinery, after reducing maternity leave to six months, the Academy announced that it

"reserves the right to temporarily lay you off from work without normal contractual pay or to reduce your normal working hours and reduce your pay proportionately. The school will give you as much notice as it can reasonably give of its need to take such action."

Thus, this government has allowed free schools to dismiss their entire teaching staff during the holidays and then rehire them in August at the start of a new term. This of course means that any member of staff is now on a ten month contract of employment and so lose all of their employment rights. It is no surprise that this Academy has a chairman who is an adviser to the appalling Boris Johnson. This announcement comes on the same day that David Cameron again refused to deny that his government were planning to cut the top rate of tax for the wealthiest people in Britain.

Most of the people who work in education of that sort are graduates. If this is the way that the British are prepared to treat their graduates, what chance has any ordinary working person got of fairness and dignity in the workplace? I genuinely despair of the callousness and couldn't care less attitude of the British public towards their neighbours. Nobody seems to either care, or even notice the relentless attacks from our government and its managerial class against its own people. To say that our government has a deep seated hatred and loathing for working people and the poor does not adequately describe these people. Thus, whilst working people and the poor are the victims of cuts, lower wages, slavelike conditions in the workplace, removal of civil and political rights, the wealthy are going to get another lift in the form of tax cuts.

I say again, if this is what you want, then by all means vote that we are Better Together. Indeed if you wish to describe such conditions as being better together, then I am afraid that I do not speak the same language as you. You have been warned

Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat