A week is along time in politics - and a lot has happened in the last one. In France the government fell... again, ostensibly over an austerity budget and its refusal to tax the rich... Over here, Starmer lost his deputy, due to her failure to tax herself, and pay stamp duty on her 3rd home.
Meanwhile, the conference season opened with Nigel Farage promoting Reform as the pro-business, bosses' party (telling the truth for once) - while the Trades Union Congress raised the spectre of a "diluted employment rights Act", as a result of Rayner's demise... as if it wasn't already diluted!
And while some politicians and far-right agitators chose to scapegoat boat-refugees and hostel dwellers, with Labour ministers following hotly on their heels, it's obvious to the rest of us that the longstanding economic and social problems originating within the decrepit capitalist system have nothing to do with those fleeing even greater, earth-shaking problems, in Afghanistan, Africa, in devastated Gaza - or beyond.
Indeed, pollsters reveal that what most workers are concerned with right now, is the still-rising cost-of-living, deteriorating working conditions, and the on-going difficulty in accessing public services, starting with the NHS.
So the strikes on London Underground this week called by the RMT union are - of course! - fully justified. Indeed all workers in other sections of the working class would do well to join them, and for the very same reasons. Because it's not just a below inflation 3.4% pay offer that Tube workers are refusing, in a context where the Retail Price Index topped 4.8% last month. No, they're also demanding shorter working hours: they want a 32-hour week!
It's about time!
As workers well know, the "trick" of the bosses in whichever industry or service - in fact the measure which most shows up their greed - is their attempt to operate with the smallest possible workforce and on the lowest wages possible. Of course this makes conditions for the workforce well-nigh impossible!
But it also means that overtime becomes virtually mandatory: the bosses are obliged to offer it and the workers are obliged to work it. So today it's again becoming "routine" to work 12-hour shifts, if not longer - whether as contractual working hours, or to top up low wages by adding hours of work in the same job or a second or third one.
In the NHS there may be 120,000 vacancies in theory, but in fact NHS Trust managers can only be trusted to keep these vacancies vacant! Blaming underfunding, they expect doctors, nurses and other staff to cover gaps by doing extra overtime - yes, in excess of their already far too long, "routine" 12 hour-shifts! How did that happen? Quite obviously, it's neither safe, nor healthy, and these cynical penny-pinchers who're in charge of running essential public services, know it!
Long, consecutive hours can kill
Worse, is that for many years now, some union officials themselves have presented the 12-hour, "144" shift pattern as a "perk" because it allows 4 days off in the shift-cycle - a supposed double weekend. Never mind that you lose at least 2 off-days trying to recover from lost sleep!
Because yes, most of these shift variations include consecutive 12-hour night shifts, despite the fact that health experts have been publishing research for at least 50 years about - in particular - the harmful effects of consecutive night-working on shifts which are longer than 6 hours max!
How did such long shifts become the norm? How come union leaders, across the board, signed up to them? It has laid open workers and passengers in many of today's public transport companies - whether the tube, the buses, the trams or the railways - to the danger of fatigued workers making mistakes! And yes, the individual worker pays with his or her life - or a jail sentence - for the lethal accidents which result.
Nevertheless, bosses in the essential services continue regardless to cut labour costs by cutting jobs and conditions. And never mind that the context is rising unemployment with the youth unable to find decent, permanent, skilled jobs and training!
Some years back the 12-hour-144-shift was actually promoted by UNITE union officials in the car industry, where they argued without any shame at all, that it would save the company (in this case, Ford at Dagenham) the cost of labour of a whole extra shift!
So "unions" whose role is supposedly to protect workers from over-exploitation actually promoted over-exploitation, knowing full well the impact of night shifts/long working hours on health.
Today, should anyone be working such hours? And of course, if hours are to be cut to say, 30 or 32 a week, or fewer, we need higher hourly rates (until the wage system itself is overthrown!). Double, or nothing! Tube workers have started the ball rolling. The rest of us need to help kick it into goal.