Issue 91:
Coronavirus special 9
May 2020
the bulletin of
‘NON-ESSENTIAL’ RETAIL TO RE-OPEN -
ORGANISING AT WORK IS ESSENTIAL
Ryan Aldred, Plymouth &
Districts Usdaw branch
secretary (personal capacity)
On Monday 25th May Boris John-
son announced government plans
to relax lockdown further with the
opening of outdoor markets and
car showrooms from June 1st and
a wider opening of non-essential
retail on June 15th.
The mood among many workers in
retail at this news will understand-
ably be very mixed. There will be
those who are keen to get back
to work as quickly as possible as
they can’t afford not to. Most retail
workers in these sectors will have
been inflicted with a 20% pay cut
as the government has only provid-
ed 80% of pay through the job re-
tention scheme. Considering wag-
es in the retail sector are low with
many on minimum wage, coupled
with the abundance of zero and
low hours contracts, retail workers
will have been hit disproportion-
ately hard during the pandemic.
Likewise, with the ever-growing list
of recognised names disappear-
ing from the high street altogether
there will be apprehension among
some to get back to work to avoid
the risk of a looming redundancy.
With the government already an-
nouncing plans to buy stakes in
some ailing companies union
NO RETURN TO ‘EXPLOITATION AS USUAL’
The drive of the government to re-
open the economy as rapidly as
possible, regardless of whether
the Covid-19 virus is being con-
tained, is also being mirrored in
the retail sector by companies
wanting to return to ‘Business As
Usual’.
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leaders should push for compa-
nies that have fallen victim to the
pandemic to be brought into public
ownership to save jobs.
Many will be worried and rightly
so with new transmissions even in
lockdown still totaling 2,000 per
day. Already some supermarket
bosses have recklessly scrapped
policing social distancing meas-
ures and have quickly moved away
from limiting the number of cus-
tomers in store despite the contin-
ued lockdown.
Non-essential retail bosses will un-
doubtedly try to get away with rush-
ing to return to business as usual
as they try to catch up on rent ar-
rears for the last quarter as well as
clawing back lost profits. The Tory
Government has released plenty of
guidance, but guidance is the key
word as none of it is enforceable
leaving things massively open to
abuse by bosses.
Paddy Lillis, general secretary of
shopworkers’ union Usdaw, com-
ments in a press release on Tues-
day 26th May that businesses will
“pay little attention to Government
advice” will add to workers worries.
Usdaw’s leadership should make it
abundantly clear that it will not tol-
erate unsafe working practices.
Workers should be encouraged to
join a union and challenge unscru-
pulous employers. Workers should
While social distancing measures
in stores are necessary to keep
workers and the public safe to re-
duce the chances for the Covid-19
virus to spread, they are a hinder-
ance to the profits of the big retail
companies most Usdaw members
work for, despite them cashing in
members in
also take note that even govern-
ment guidance has conceded
that “No one is obliged to work
in an unsafe work environment.”
Where workers are put at risk,
they should organise walkouts un-
der Section 44 of the Employment
Rights Act 1996. As the risks can-
not be completely mitigated work-
ers should demand higher wages
and a hazard bonus.
Workers and health and safety
reps should emphatically insist
on conducting risk assessments
to guard against corners being
cut and to ensure that safety is
put firmly before profits. Work-
ers should also consider putting
forward reduced opening hours
to ensure price changes, restock-
ing, merchandising and stock
checks can be done safely. Any
non-essential tasking should be
scrapped along with performance
targets until the pandemic has
passed.
As much as coronavirus is a glob-
al pandemic it is equally a work-
place issue. It is vitally important
that workers in non-essential
retail take up these issues and
strengthen workplace organisa-
tion to prevent bosses endanger-
ing lives to protect their bottom
line; their wealth is not worth our
health.
on the unprecedented levels of
demand in the early weeks of lock-
down.
For retail giants, ‘Business As Usu-
al’ means ‘Exploitation As Usual’,
squeezing every last drop of profit
out of their workers. Although
>continued on back
Join the union and help us
organise for
•Full pay for all workers self-isolat-
ing or laid off from day one - no to
forcing staff to use holidays
•35 hour working week with no loss
of pay
•£15 an hour minimum wage and
hazard pay
•Increase staffing levels in store to
carry out any necessary cleaning &
hygiene duties, bring back in house
outsourced cleaners. Full time con-
tracts to all those who want them
•Scrap the 2 year qualifying period -
Full employment rights from day one
• Scrap performance targets
•Time and a half for all overtime
worked over contracted hours
•Reinstate lost paid breaks and
premium payments, double pay on
Sundays and time and a half on
Saturdays. No extension of Sunday
trading
•Trade union control over changing
staff duties, hiring and firing, and
opening time changes
•No lifting of any social distancing
measures without agreement from
elected local health and safety com-
mittees/reps
•Open the books to trade union in-
spection if companies say they can’t
afford these measures
•Democratically elected committees
of workers and consumers to control
prices and rationing policies at all
levels
Join Usdaw - usdaw.org.uk/join
Join the fightback
JOIN THE
SOCIALISTS
Visit socialistparty.org.uk/join
or call
020 8988 8777
or text your
name and
postcode to
07761 818 206
to find out more
about joining us today
 theActivist
>continued from front
many companies and business
leaders claim that profits come
from their innovation and ingenu-
ity, the truth is that all profits come
from the hard graft of ordinary
working people.
It is workers who produce and dis-
tribute all the goods and services
in society – all the items that prof-
its accrue from the sale of. It is
the work people do with an item,
whether that be producing a par-
ticular good, through concrete ac-
tions such as cooking, baking, cut-
ting, slicing, packing; or through
transporting it these actions all
make an item more useful to peo-
ple and add value to it.
The advancement of technology
has made our labour incredibly
productive. Items that would have
taken hours to be made by hand
can be made in minutes or even
seconds en masse by machines
that require few human opera-
tors. We produce and sell far more
value in goods than we ourselves
need to cover our costs of living –
this extra value beyond covering
our living costs, or surplus value,
is where profit comes from.
Apart from a few departments like
bakeries, retail companies merely
sell items rather than produce
them. Instead of the manufacturer
taking the whole of the surplus val-
ue, they allow retail companies to
take a cut of it too for saving them
the hassle of directly selling to the
customer. Work such as operating
a checkout don’t add any new val-
ue to a product, but they are vitally
necessary in collecting the money
to pay for the good’s production
and the profit of those involved in
the sale, as well as keeping track
of the stores inventory.
The profits of the retail companies
comes from taking a slice from
the overall surplus value embed-
ded the goods they sell, but social
distancing measures mean a slow-
down of the rate through which
customers get through the tills
and hence realise those profits.
Limiting the numbers in store at
any one time means a greater
gaps between customers check-
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the bulletin of
ing out, whilst the reductions to
only one in every pair of check-
outs being open to allow for social
distancing mean less people can
check out at any one time.
On the other hand, workers doing
the necessary work to ensure so-
cial distancing is adhered to and
cleaning is carried out, such as
co-ordinating queueing, cleaning
down door and trolley handles,
takes workers away from filling
shelves which limits the particular
products any particular customer
may have access to buying.
Likewise there have also been
more direct costs, such as fitting
screens, and funding sick pay
from day one. All these things cuts
into the profits of the retail compa-
nies, which is why they are keen to
do away with them as soon as they
think they can get away with it.
We’ve already seen companies
testing the water by ‘accidental’
relaxing social distancing and
then reinstating it under pressure.
But with the government’s current
‘re-opening’ rhetoric, these inci-
dents are increasing.
Some companies are trying to
push further, like the blatant
breaching of Sunday trading regu-
lations by Morrisons. Lengthening
the working day creates more op-
portunities for retailers to sell.
To protect retail workers the power
over when such measures should
be relaxed should not be in the
hands of those who wish to max-
imise profits, but instead in the
hands of retail workers and their
unions, to priorities keeping work-
ers and the public safe.
Undoubtedly, there are some
measures that workers would
want to keep permanently – such
as sick pay from day one, as
recognised in Usdaw’s New Deal
for Workers, but also things which
aren’t like providing the staffing
level to keep shops safer gener-
ally, including regular cleaning
and increased security staff to
deter the increasing levels of
retail violence.
But this poses a different way of
running society, a socialist plan to
meet the needs of all.
members in
DEBENHAMS IRELAND - JOBS
STRUGGLE ESCALATES
The heroic struggle of the Deben-
hams workers against the des-
picable move of the Debenhams
parent company to liquidate it’s
Irish subsidiary has now escalated
with workers at the store in Cork
blocking an attempt to remove
stock from the store., following an
overwhlemingly supported ballot
for industrial action through their
union, Mandate
In submitting the company for liq-
uidation, the Debenhams parent
company claimed both the stock
and fittings in the stores, and the
online business belonged to the
UK company, in a ploy to both
preserve these assets and push
the costs for redundancy onto the
Irish state. According to the liq-
uidators own valuations, around
£12m of stock remains in the
stores, whilst fixtures account for
another £9.5m.
Earlier protests have seen at-
tempts made to intimidate protest-
ers, with protesters details been
taking by the Garda, the Irish po-
lice, despite organizing protests to
ensure social distancing. But the
reason for the workers having to
protest in the first place is the dis-
graceful actions of the company in
throwing the Debenhams workers
under the bus, and the Irish gov-
ernment of standing by and refus-
ing to intervene to save jobs by
nationalising the company.
To stop the removal of stock, fix-
tures and fittings, then an almost
permanent presence will be re-
quired outside the stores – not
just of the Debenhams workers
themselves, but drawing on the
local trade union movement on a
Mandate members in Cork picketting on Tuesday 26th May, stopping a
van removing assets from Cork Debenhams store - photo mandate.ie
rota basis.
Solidarity with the Debenhams
workers has been a key feature
of their campaign, with a 400+
strong online public rally in April,
and messages of support within
Ireland and internationally coming
to the workers, including from sup-
porters of the Activist. We encour-
age Usdaw members to send mes-
sages of support to us that we will
pass on to Debenams workers, by
contacting us at usdawactivist@
gmail.com, and directly to Man-
date at dgibney@mandate.ie.
But the best support that Usdaw
could give to the Debenhams
workers is to conduct a struggle
against the companies closures
programme here too – where more
stores are currently threatened
with closure. The policy adopted
by Usdaw after the collapse of
BHS, of raising the issue of public
ownership when companies are in
crisis must be brought to the fore
not only to save the jobs of Deben-
hams workers both in Ireland and
the UK, but also the many other
retail companies likely to end up
in a similar crisis as a result of the
current crisis of capitalism.
Instead of remaining under the
mis-direction of the representa-
tives of the capitalist class, the
company should be run by the
workers – not just the Debenhams
workers themselves, but also the
wider working class represented
through their trade unions, which
could input into other products
and services which could be pro-
vided through any such publicly
owned retail companies.