Capitalism can’t afford your pay rise
Tim Coal
Until recently, my partner worked as a recruiter at a firm that provides agency teachers to schools.
Like many other minimum wage workers, he was expecting a pay rise in April. Instead, he was called into his manager’s office – to be fired.
The excuse he was given was that he was only 76 percent of the way to his targets for the end of his probation (which was not for several weeks), and so his contract would be terminated with a week’s severance pay.
His manager was as blindsided as he was, with the order coming directly from head office.
To put it plainly, this sacking happened because companies have begun cutting their spending in order to make up for the increase in the minimum wage.
Under capitalism, workers are little more than numbers on a spreadsheet to the bosses – and wages are an expense to be managed.
When the time comes – to protect the bosses’ profits – jobs, pay, and conditions will be the first on the chopping block.
Now my partner is out of work, through no fault of his own. It’s high time that workers made the bosses pay instead!
No country for the old, poor, or unwell
James Foster, NHS worker
I was in the queue at my local Morrisons cafe for a midday lunch when an elderly man approached me.
He told me how this supermarket cafe would be shutting in a few weeks’ time; and how it was the only place – with its deals for seniors – where he could get food for an affordable price.
Without prompting, he told me that Starmer is an enemy of pensioners, and that, if he had a gun and a bullet, he would shoot the PM dead.
He went on to say how Reeves was no better, throwing the poor under the bus while she enjoyed a good salary.
As the queue advanced, he told the cashier how he felt about Starmer. She laughed and nodded.
I asked her about Morrisons closing their cafes. She said they had only found out four days ago, via the news. She feared where she would end up being reassigned to.
After lunch, I’ll go back to my job at the local hospital, where the psychiatric ward is also due to close.
Workers, pensioners, and patients will always come last so long as capitalism remains.
Six-figure salaries, zero pest control
Ava Batten, Anglia Ruskin University
When my university listed the features of my accommodation, they missed one notable aspect: the building is prone to developing cockroach infestations.
As the second trimester rolled around, the insects started to appear.
I had been warned by several flatmates that there had been infestations in prior years, so it appears to be a recurrent issue. When we contacted the university, they set up some traps. Although, if this has been a problem year on year, the problem lies deeper than the surface.
For Anglia Ruskin Uni, it is cheaper to put up a bunch of traps and pray they work than to spend a bit more money to address the point of entry of the infestation and seal it off.
The uni bosses, with their six-figure salaries, would rather we live in rotting accommodation than cut into their precious profits.
Austerity and decline in the NHS
Morgan Maynard, medical student
Across Britain, healthy life expectancy between the most and least deprived areas of the country differs by almost 18 years.
Wes Streeting’s master plan to fix this includes sending ‘crack teams’ of doctors from higher performing hospitals to ‘help out’ struggling areas.
Previously, medical students were ranked on performance, with the higher ranking being more likely to end up in an area they prefer. Now, students are ranked randomly, in order to prevent the worst-performing students ending up in struggling regions.
In other words, the blame for these hospitals struggling is placed on the supposed quality of doctors, rather than decades of austerity and decline.
This is not the only time that senseless proposals are posed as a solution to inequality. This is a trend that starts from day one of medical school.
In one laughable example of this, students at Bristol Medical School are required to make an art project on the importance of intersectionality. As if a simple change of mindset can stack up against over a decade of underfunding and mismanagement!
In reality, these inequalities are the result of the NHS being attacked by consecutive governments, and carved up by profiteering outsourcing companies.
Decades of declining living standards, overwork and burnout, and the gutting of other key public services has only exacerbated this.
This is why waiting lists are stretching into years, and patients are lining up in hospital corridors.
Funding is needed at every level of healthcare: from medical schools to GPs and hospitals. All that capitalism can offer is lip service to health inequality, while continuing to slash funding.
NHS gutted
Kayleigh Hunt, Lincoln
Tory austerity has gutted the NHS and healthcare in Lincolnshire.
On average, there are around 2,000 patients to only one GP in Lincolnshire. With little alternative care patients are turning to expensive private care within their homes just to survive.
A worker in private care told me that if their patient falls in their home during a visit and cannot get up by themselves then, according to their bosses, they need to call an ambulance and go to their next patient. They are not allowed to wait with the patient for the ambulance or else their pay is docked!
This worker said: “I don’t feel good leaving. But I have rent to pay, so I have to leave them. It’s a private company, so what my boss says goes.” Patients are left on the floor alone and waiting for an ambulance that could take anywhere between 30 minutes to 3 hours.
This isn’t ‘care’ by these companies, but a cruel and inhumane attempt to maximise their profits. If workers were in control of healthcare then genuine care could be offered to the most vulnerable in our society.
But the only way we can take control is by kicking out the healthcare bosses, and funding decent healthcare by expropriating the banks of their idle billions. In other words, overthrowing capitalism is good for your health!
