Category Archives: Wage Slavery

Operations at Pick N Pay Kafubu mall in Kitwe were today briefly interrupted.

This was after over fifty unionized workers downed tools demanding improved salaries and other working conditions.

The workers employed by the South African retail outlet are demanding for a marginal pay rise adding that the current collective agreement they signed with management expired last year.

The workers have accused their employer of paying them slavery wages.

They assert that their salaries are far below the minimum wage.

Management at the Kitwe outlet has refused to give their side of the story to Znbc News and have instead elected to remain mute over the matter.

And Kitwe District Commissioner Binwell Mpundu has told Znbc News that his office has received the complaint raised by Pick and Pay employees.

Mr. Mpundu said he will soon meet management of Pick N Pay in Kitwe to discuss grievances raised by unionized workers.

He said Government appreciates all foreign direct investment coming into Zambia but that such investment should fully benefit the locals.

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Pick N Pay workers interrupt operations - ZNBC

If asked what freedom is, most people would say freedom is doing what you want, when you want to do it. Consulting a dictionary on this subject, we find freedom expressed as self determination for an individual, and self governing for a community.

Among other words used to define freedom are liberty, immunity, privilege, along with exemptions from things like taxes, slavery, bondage, despotism, tyranny and the like. There is something shrouded between these words something that is very important for us to understand if we are concerned with keeping our rights and freedoms.

The founders shared this concern. They wrote it into the Declaration of Independence when they said, We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

We were created by the Almighty God. He gave us our rights. Our rights come from God, not from government! Governments are instituted among men to secure our God-given rights.

Governments must protect the people, and be guided by the principles of justice, given to us in the pages of the Bible by the same one who gave us life.

Any government exceeding this becomes the tyrant the enemy of the people and must be altered or abolished. The founders understood this as absolute truth.

The reason for government is obvious to most. If individuals, in our sinful state, were to act out on our own desires, without any restraint of law, we would be much worse off than a culture war. It would be complete anarchy. And Americas founders understood this; rejecting democracy, as it would be too similar to mob rule; and preferring a republic a government based on laws and not run on the whims of men.

There are many things written and available on the subject of the discussions of our founders as they endeavored to establish this republic. I urge you to study our history. Hopefully, you can see that the founders understood that self-determination had to be held in check by respect for others and laws to that effect. And the same would also be true of the pursuit of happiness.

Even though most people would give self-determination as the first (and most prominent) definition of freedom or liberty, the founders were more concerned with the other aspects: Self-governing, no taxation without representation, and tyranny for example. These are the reasons they stated for entering into the Revolutionary War.

Lets engage in a practical example to effect their Safety and Happiness. For your community, you would say that you have a safe and happy community if there were no muggers or bandits in it; that you are safe from harm from muggers while you walk along your streets; and your home is safe from harm from bandits while you are out.

Sounds simple enough, except the muggers and bandits are also exercising their self-determination; their freedom to act out on their own desires; their desire to take what they want just because they want it. They act upon their own whims without respect for others. This brings us back into conflicting ideas of who should be free to act upon his whim.

When we remember that our rights come from God, then we should also remember that He gave us His moral laws to govern our actions because He knows that fallen man cannot find peace, safety, or happiness outside of His moral law. But in our fallen state we dont like to hear that. We want to think that what we want, what we think, what we feel, is the relevant measure of what is right. And that is what the mugger thinks, wants, and feels.

In this is nothing but anarchy, where might makes right. Meaning, that whoever has the most power to force his will upon others, becomes the dictator, tyrant, or gang lord. This is why our founders did not want to be governed by the whims of a king, nor the mob rule of a democracy. They established a constitutional republic and hoped that the people would live in the moral law of the God of the Bible.

A few of many examples of this belief include:

The general principles on which the fathers achieved independence were the general principles of Christianity. I will avow that I then believed, and now believe, that those general principles of Christianity are as eternal and immutable as the existence and attributes of God. (John Adams letter to Thomas Jefferson, June 28, 1813).

I am persuaded that no civil government of a republican form can exist and be durable in which the principles of Christianity have not a controlling influence. (Noah Webster letter to James Madison, October 16, 1829).

[T]he religion which has introduced civil liberty is the religion of Christ and His apostles This is genuine Christianity and to this we owe our free constitutions of government. (Noah Websters 1832 History of the United States).

The Declaration of Independence laid the cornerstone of human government upon the first precepts of Christianity. (John Quincy Adams, July 4, 1837 speech).

If we wont live by the moral principles that God teaches us, then we are subject to whims of sinful humans, whether of self or of tyrants. For only God can define what is right, what is moral. Any other definition is subjective, based upon the whims of fallible humans. And ultimately this leads to slavery the loss of freedom.

It is an irony and shows the fallibility of our human founders that while they were fighting for their own freedom from British tyranny, they allowed the slavery of other humans here.

Since slavery is the ultimate loss of freedom, lets consider slavery in opposition to freedom. The slave cannot go where he wants; cannot do what he wants. He cant decide for himself how to live, nor pursue his own dreams. The slave is always subject to the whims of his master. The work of his hands is not his own, it belongs to his master. In short, the slave works and the master eats the fruits of his labors.

So, the opposite, we should understand, is freedom. The work of my hands is mine; and I eat the fruits of my labors; I enjoy the product of my efforts; and no other has claim upon what is mine. This is the shrouded part of freedom that we dont usually consider, but it really is the most important part.

The Mayflower Compact established a communist government for their colony. The colony as a whole owned the land. And the fruit of their labors the crop harvest was also the property of the colony as a whole and was to be shared equally. So, no one had claim to the fruits of his own labor; the colony owned it. Everyone was a slave to the colony and no one was free.

This system failed! The colony nearly starved to death that first winter because those who were able to do more work did not see any reason to work harder than the man doing the least work. As both would share equally in the eating, why not put in the same effort in the working?

The colony leaders saw that the system of communism was the problem and ended it. The second year each man had his own plot of land, it was his to do with as he pleased. And the produce of his labor was his own to eat, trade, or give as he saw fit. This is where they gained the abundance that we now remember as the first Thanksgiving.

Freedom gave them the prosperity for which they had hoped as each man could see that the more he worked, the more he would have for himself. This simple system of encouragement pushed each to endeavor to excel, to do more, to accomplish more, to gain more. And the colony prospered because of freedom with each man owning the fruits of his own labors!

So, why do tyrants, kings, communist, and dictators want to enslave others? Simple. They want freedom for themselves while living off of the fruits of the labor of others. The only difference between these and the bandit is that as a king, they make their whims the law of the land while the bandit has no masquerade of law supporting his whims.

One missing component, before we can bring this to our present circumstances. Lets look at the plantation slave. Even though he had no money, he was paid for his labor. Granted, his condition of life was far from equitable. Still, he had to have food, clothing, and shelter to keep living and working.

The condition of living requires the basics for life to continue. Hence, some of the product of the slaves labor was given to him. The pay he received was far from what his labor was worth. Between free men, we consider a fair days pay for a fair days labor while the slave master wants to keep the bulk of that fair days pay for himself.

Now lets put this into our time. Instead of plantations, substitute corporations. Not slaves under chains and whips, but exploited, underpaid workers living in very difficult conditions.

During the Atlantic slave trade, the rich people were the ones supporting the slave trade. Subsistence farmers and most family farms did not have slaves they simply could not afford them. Most people did not have house slaves the rich folks wanted and could afford it. Most people could not, did not and did not want to enslave others.

Now the rich corporation owners and million-dollar estate owners are often the ones who want an open southern border and lax immigration laws. They are the ones hiring the illegals and importing lower-wage legal immigrants (e.g., H-1B and H-2B visas) to work in their factories, businesses and homes in conditions no one else would or at lower pay rates than anyone else can. So, they can gain the labors of others without paying a fair wage.

How many times have you heard of construction companies and lawn maintenance companies hiring illegals? And doing those jobs for less money than anyone else? Or how about companies like Disney laying off American computer programmers and engineers after forcing them to train their foreign replacements?

Not all of the illegals are coming here for welfare. Many are still coming for jobs. And since they cannot complain, nor ask for aid from the police for fear of extradition, they are paid far less than what is fair so some rich guy can live off of other peoples labors. How is this different than the slave trade that was ended more than a century ago?

Lets end the modern-day slave trade by putting up a border wall!

PAUL FROWNFELTER of Henry County is a member of the local Volunteers for Freedom Tea Party. His email address is paul4of6@aol.com.

Originally posted here:

Today's illegal immigration issue is a modern-day version of the Atlantic slave trade - Paris Post Intelligencer

The lesson from Animal Farm, by George Orwell, is spot-on for neoliberal Nicaragua of recent years.

By Oscar Rene Vargas (Confidencial)

From Animal Farm by George Orwell

HAVANA TIMES In 1943, the British writer George Orwell (1903-1950) wrote his famous novel Animal Farm. This satirical allegory synthesized the transformation process of the initially inspiring Russian Revolution led by Lenin and Trotsky into Soviet totalitarianism embodied in Stalin.

A man of the Left, George Orwell fought in the Spanish Civil War with the Republicans to be more exact, on the side of the Workers Party of Marxist Unification, which was opposed to Stalinist communists, as their idea was to liberate people. According to him, this was inseparable from a basic demand: the peoples real democratic freedom and socialism.

From this perspective, the events that unfolded during the Spanish civil war and, particularly, the killings in Barcelona, filled him with absolute horror of those in favor of authoritarian methods. Returning to England, he published his testimony in some newspapers and also enshrined his conclusions in his two most famous books, Animal farm and a few years later 1984.

Orwell invents a prophetic fiction in his books, which he uses to develop a great description, inspired greatly by Stalinist or authoritarian regimes, about what could happen to the human race in a dictatorship. 1984 is the book where terms such as Big Brother, Thought Police (Thinkpol) and Newspeak appear for the first time.

Orwell tells us that an authoritarian regime creates a power machine which is the Ministry of Truth or the only official spokesperson, which is essential to consolidate that regime (it simply records events or criticizes journalism for trying to explain events). Then, the Thought Police is organized (making critical thinking dangerous) and Newspeak is created to impose a universal truth on everyone. In order to do this, its necessary to pare language down to a few words which are enough to establish past, present and future events.

If real historic events arent in line with the only official Truths dogma that they want to disseminate, all they have to do is deny this reality and invent new alternative facts and fake news, so as to impose the authoritarian or dictatorial States institutional lie as real and true events. The Ministry of Truths aim is to make citizens degrade their trust for real events and to accept these alternative facts and fake news.

Cover of the 1st edition of Animal Farm.

Many people get angry because they feel they are being mocked, undervalued for their intelligence; others laugh and jokingly celebrate the Ministry of Truths vulgar remarks. But, there are some people who see beyond the farce and discover the threads of political manipulation, the hidden intention to distract people, diverting people as much as they can from their valid and daily worries.

It has to be made clear that the Ministry of Truths goal is to maintain control over the electorate so that they dont hear about news that is counterproductive for the government; thats why they manipulate the reality of what is really happening and censor critical voices.

Going beyond the historical particularism which inspired the book, Animal farm has become a metaphor for the universal perversions that the practice of authoritarian, corrupt and anti-democratic power creates, when rulers from a minority promote themselves as the saviors of the governed when in reality theyre their executioners.

The so-called second phase of the Nicaraguan revolution is made up of a political bloc founded on secret negotiations, individual interests among the old oligarchy and the newer ruling classes, where the people are called upon to rule a country which has been co-opted by a political elite which is smaller in number, more exclusive and more selective every day.

Parochial mindsets have monumental breakthroughs from time to time and cover themselves in a veil of rural messianism which, the victims of wishful thinking, confuse greatness with mere spectacle. Parochial discourse succumbs to the eagerness for greatness and blinded by the temporary shimmer of hope, it combines tragedy with comedy.

Unrestrained capitalism inevitably brings about the widening of gaps between the wealthy and the poor. This isnt a distortion or an economic fault in this system, but is rather one of the inevitable trends of capital accumulation in its historical path.

The lesson of this story for neoliberal Nicaragua in recent years is spot-on. During this time, we have experienced the most scandalous robberies in our history, inexplicable and uncontrollable enrichment of a few, the most perverse cons and the greatest generational disappointment with the moral defeat of the Sandinista revolution and the failure of the so-called democratic transition process.

Oscar Rene Vargas. Photo: Roberto Fletes / laprensa.com.ni

As wealth continues to accumulate and productive working forces develop, two extreme poles are being established. At one pole, that of the owners of capital, wealth is accumulated; while at the working class pole which produces this wealth with their work, there is increasing poverty, poor working conditions, wage slavery, despotism, ignorance and deterioration.

In order to achieve the perfect and joyous state of civic submission, Stalin (or the dictator of the hour) and his clique of stalwarts took advantage of five powerful tools: betrayal, repression, corruption, propaganda and the short-term memory of those below. Authoritarian power doesnt have a steadfast nucleus of advisers; they are always walking on a tightrope.

We have also seen the rise of an elite regime founded on corruption and immunity deals which have thrown out the window the distinction between organized crime by members of the hegemonic sector, and members of the public sector of different governments. This has thereby reduced societys ability to react as it becomes accustomed to humiliation and it continues to accept, bit by bit, the system of a never-ending government.

Excerpt from:

Nicaragua a Mirror of Orwell's Animal Farm? - Havana Times

Outside contributors' opinions and analysis of the most important issues in politics, science, and culture.

Consider some facts about how American employers control their workers. Amazon prohibits employees from exchanging casual remarks while on duty, calling this time theft. Apple inspects the personal belongings of its retail workers, some of whom lose up to a half-hour of unpaid time every day as they wait in line to be searched. Tyson prevents its poultry workers from using the bathroom. Some have been forced to urinate on themselves while their supervisors mock them.

About half of US employees have been subject to suspicionless drug screening by their employers. Millions are pressured by their employers to support particular political causes or candidates. Soon employers will be empowered to withhold contraception coverage from their employees health insurance. They already have the right to penalize workers for failure to exercise and diet, by charging them higher health insurance premiums.

How should we understand these sweeping powers that employers have to regulate their employees lives, both on and off duty? Most people dont use the term in this context, but wherever some have the authority to issue orders to others, backed by sanctions, in some domain of life, that authority is a government.

We usually assume that government refers to state authorities. Yet the state is only one kind of government. Every organization needs some way to govern itself to designate who has authority to make decisions concerning its affairs, what their powers are, and what consequences they may mete out to those beneath them in the organizational chart who fail to do their part in carrying out the organizations decisions.

Managers in private firms can impose, for almost any reason, sanctions including job loss, demotion, pay cuts, worse hours, worse conditions, and harassment. The top managers of firms are therefore the heads of little governments, who rule their workers while they are at work and often even when they are off duty.

Every government has a constitution, which determines whether it is a democracy, a dictatorship, or something else. In a democracy like the United States, the government is public. This means it is properly the business of the governed: transparent to them and servant to their interests. They have a voice and the power to hold rulers accountable.

Not every government is public in this way. When King Louis XIV of France said, L'etat, c'est moi, he meant that his government was his business alone, something he kept private from those he governed. They werent entitled to know how he operated it, had no standing to insist he take their interests into account in his decisions, and no right to hold him accountable for his actions.

Like Louis XIVs government, the typical American workplace is kept private from those it governs. Managers often conceal decisions of vital interest to their workers. Often, they dont even give advance notice of firm closures and layoffs. They are free to sacrifice workers dignity in dominating and humiliating their subordinates. Most employer harassment of workers is perfectly legal, as long as bosses mete it out on an equal-opportunity basis. (Walmart and Amazon managers are notorious for berating and belittling their workers.) And workers have virtually no power to hold their bosses accountable for such abuses: They cant fire their bosses, and cant sue them for mistreatment except in a very narrow range of cases, mostly having to do with discrimination.

Why are workers subject to private government? The state has set the default terms of the constitution of workplace government through its employment laws. The most important source of employers power is the default rule of employment at will. Unless the parties have otherwise agreed, employers are free to fire workers for almost any or no reason. This amounts to an effective grant of power to employers to rule the lives of their employees in almost any respect not just on the job but off duty as well. And they have exercised that power.

Scotts, the lawn care company, fired an employee for smoking off duty. After Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-NJ) notified Lakeland Bank that an employee had complained he wasnt holding town hall meetings, the bank intimidated her into resigning. San Diego Christian College fired a teacher for having premarital sex and hired her fianc to fill her post. Bosses are dictators, and workers are their subjects.

If efficiency means that workers are forced to pee in their pants, why shouldnt they have a say in whether such efficiency is worthwhile?

American public discourse doesnt give us helpful ways to talk about the dictatorial rule of employers. Instead, we talk as if workers arent ruled by their bosses. We are told that unregulated markets make us free, and that the only threat to our liberties is the state. We are told that in the market, all transactions are voluntary. We are told that since workers freely enter and exit the labor contract, they are perfectly free under it. We prize our skepticism about government, without extending our critique to workplace dictatorship.

Why do we talk like this? The answer takes us back to free market ideas developed before the Industrial Revolution. In 17th- and 18th-century Britain, big merchants got the state to grant them monopolies over trade in particular goods, forcing small craftsmen to submit to their regulations. A handful of aristocratic families enjoyed a monopoly on land, due to primogeniture and entail, which barred the breakup and sale of any part of large estates. Farmers could rent their land only on short-term leases, which forced them to bow and scrape before their landlords, in a condition of subordination not much different from servants, who lived in their masters households and had to obey their rules.

The problem was that the state had rigged the rules of the market in favor of the rich. Confronted with this economic situation, many people argued that free markets would promote equality and workers interests by enabling them to go into business for themselves and thereby escape subordination to the owners of capital.

No wonder some of the early advocates of free markets in 17th-century England were called Levellers. These radicals, who emerged during the English civil war, wanted to abolish the monopolies held by the big merchants and aristocrats. They saw the prospects of greater equality that might come from opening up to ordinary workers opportunities for manufacture, trade, and farming ones own land.

In the 18th century, Adam Smith was the greatest advocate for the view that replacing monopolies, primogeniture, entail, and involuntary servitude with free markets would enable laborers to work on their own behalf. His key assumption was that incentives were more powerful than economies of scale. When workers get to keep all of the fruits of their labor, as they do when self-employed, they will work much harder and more efficiently than if they are employed by a master, who takes a cut of what they produce. Indolent aristocratic landowners cant compete with yeoman farmers without laws preventing land sales. Free markets in land, labor, and commerce will therefore lead to the triumph of the most efficient producer, the self-employed worker, and the demise of the idle, stupid, rent-seeking rentier.

Smith and his contemporaries looked across the Atlantic and saw that America appeared to be realizing these hopes although only for white men. The great majority of the free population in the Revolutionary period was self-employed, as either a yeoman farmer or an independent artisan or merchant.

In the United States, Thomas Paine was the great promoter of this vision. Indeed, his views on political economy sound as if they could have been ripped out of the GOP Freedom Caucus playbook. Paine argued that individuals can solve nearly all of their problems on their own, without state meddling. A good government does nothing more than secure individuals in peace and safety in the free pursuit of their occupations, with the lowest possible tax burden. Taxation is theft. People living off government pay are social parasites. Government is the chief cause of poverty. Paine was a lifelong advocate of commerce, free trade, and free markets. He called for hard money and fiscal responsibility.

Paine was the hero of labor radicals for decades after his death in 1809, because they shared his hope that free markets would yield an economy almost entirely composed of small proprietors. An economy of small proprietors offers a plausible model of a free society of equals: each individual personally independent, none taking orders from anyone else, everyone middle class.

Abraham Lincoln built on the vision of Smith and Paine, which helped to shape the two key planks of the Republican Party platform: opposition to the extension of slavery in the territories, and the Homestead Act. Slavery, after all, enabled masters to accumulate vast tracts of land, squeezing out small farmers and forcing them into wage labor. Prohibiting the extension of slavery into the territories and giving away small plots of land to anyone who would work it would realize a society of equals in which no one is ever consigned to wage labor for life. Lincoln, who helped create the political party that now defends the interests of business, never wavered from the proposition that true free labor meant freedom from wage labor.

The Industrial Revolution, however well underway by Lincolns time ultimately dashed the hopes of joining free markets with independent labor in a society of equals. Smiths prediction that economies of scale would be less important than the incentive effects of enabling workers to reap all the fruits of their labor was defeated by industrial technologies that required massive accumulations of capital. The US, with its access to territories seized from Native Americans, was able to stave off the bankruptcy of self-employed farmers and other small proprietors for far longer than Europe. But industrialization, population growth, the closure of the frontier, and railroad monopolies doomed the sole proprietorship to the margins of the economy, even in North America.

The Smith-Paine-Lincoln libertarian vision was rendered largely irrelevant by industrialization, which created a new model of wage labor, with large companies taking the place of large landowners. Yet strangely, many people persist in using Smiths and Paines rhetoric to describe the world we live in today. We are told that our choice is between free markets and state control but most adults live their working lives under a third thing entirely: private government. A vision of what egalitarians hoped market society would deliver before the Industrial Revolution a world without private workplace government, with producers interacting only through markets and the state has been blindly carried over to the modern economy by libertarians and their pro-business fellow travelers.

There is a condition called hemiagnosia, whose sufferers cannot perceive one half of their bodies. A large class of libertarian-leaning thinkers and politicians, with considerable public following, resemble patients with this condition: They cannot perceive half of the economy the half that takes place beyond the market, after the employment contract is accepted, where workers are subject to private, arbitrary, unaccountable government.

What can we do about this? Americans are used to complaining about how government regulation restricts our freedom. So we should recognize that such complaints apply, with at least as much force, to private governments of the workplace. For while the punishments employers can impose for disobedience arent as severe as those available to the state, the scope of employers authority over workers is more sweeping and exacting, its power more arbitrary and unaccountable. Therefore, it is high time we considered remedies for reining in the private government of the workplace similar to those we have long insisted should apply to the state.

Three types of remedy are of special importance. First, recall a key demand the United States made of communist dictatorships during the Cold War: Let dissenters leave. Although workers are formally free to leave their workplace dictatorships, they often pay a steep price. Nearly one-fifth of American workers labor under noncompete clauses. This means they cant work in the same industry if they quit or are fired.

And its not just engineers and other knowledge economy workers who are restricted in this way: Even some minimum wage workers are forced to sign noncompetes. Workers who must leave their human capital behind are not truly free to quit. Every state should follow Californias example and ban noncompete clauses from work contracts.

Second, consider that if the state imposed surveillance and regulations on us in anything like the way that private employers do, we would rightly protest that our constitutional rights were being violated. American workers have few such rights against their bosses, and the rights they have are very weakly enforced. We should strengthen the constitutional rights that workers have against their employers, and rigorously enforce the ones the law already purports to recognize.

Among the most important of these rights are to freedom of speech and association. This means employers shouldnt be able to regulate workers off-duty speech and association, or informal non-harassing talk during breaks or on duty, if it does not unduly interfere with job performance. Nor should they be able to prevent workers from supporting the candidate of their choice.

Third, we should make the government of the workplace more public (in the sense that political scientists use the term). Workers need a real voice in how they are governed not just the right to complain without getting fired, but an organized way to insist that their interests have weight in decisions about how work is organized.

One way to do this would be to strengthen the rights of labor unions to organize. Labor unions are a vital tool for checking abusive and exploitative employers. However, due to lax enforcement of laws protecting the right to organize and discuss workplace complaints, many workers are fired for these activities. And many workers shy away from unionization, because they prefer a collaborative to an adversarial relationship to their employer.

Yet even when employers are decent, workers could still use a voice. In many of the rich states of Europe, they already have one, even if they dont belong to a union. Its called co-determination a system of joint workplace governance by workers and managers, which automatically applies to firms with more than a few dozen employees. Under co-determination, workers elect representatives to a works council, which participates in decision-making concerning hours, layoffs, plant closures, workplace conditions, and processes. Workers in publicly traded firms also elect some members of the board of directors of the firm.

Against these proposals, libertarian and neoliberal economists theorize that workers somehow suffer from provisions that would secure their dignity, autonomy, and voice at work. Thats because the efficiency of firms would, in theory, drop along with profits, and therefore wages if managers did not have maximum control of their workforce. These thinkers insist that employers already compensate workers for any oppressive conditions that may exist by offering higher wages. Workers are therefore free to make the trade-off between wages and workplace freedom when they seek a job.

This theory supposes, unrealistically, that entry-level workers already know how well they will be treated when they apply for jobs at different workplaces, and that low-paid workers have ready access to decent working conditions in the first place. Its telling that the same workers who suffer the worst working conditions also suffer from massive wage theft. One study estimates that employers failed to pay $50 billion in legally mandated wages in one year. Two-thirds of workers in low-wage industries suffered wage theft, costing them nearly 15 percent of their total earnings. This is three times the amount of all other thefts in the United States.

If employers have such contempt for their employees that they steal their wages, how likely is it that they are making it up to them with better working conditions?

Its also easy to theorize that workers are better off under employer dictatorship, because managers supposedly know best to govern the workplace efficiently. But if efficiency means that workers are forced to pee in their pants, why shouldnt they have a say in whether such efficiency is worthwhile? The long history of American workers struggles to get the right to use the bathroom at work something long enjoyed by our European counterparts says enough about economists stunted notion of efficiency.

Meanwhile, our false rhetoric of workers choice continues to obscure the ways the state is handing ever more power to workplace dictators. The Trump administrations Labor Department is working to roll back the Obama administrations expansion of overtime pay. It is giving a free pass to federal contractors who have violated workplace safety and federal wage and hours laws. It has canceled the paycheck transparency rule, making it harder for women to know when they are being paid less for the same work as men.

Private government is arbitrary, unaccountable government. Thats what most Americans are subject to at work. The history of democracy is the history of turning governance from a private matter into a public one. It has been about making government public answerable to the interests of citizens and not just the interests of their rulers. Its time to apply the lessons we have learned from this history to the private government of the workplace. Workers deserve a voice not just on Capitol Hill but in Amazon warehouses, Silicon Valley technology companies, and meat-processing plants as well.

Elizabeth Anderson is the Arthur F. Thurnau Professor and John Dewey Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy and Women's studies at the University of Michigan. She is the author of Private Government: How Employers Rule Our Lives (and Why We Dont Talk About It (Princeton University Press, 2017).

The Big Idea is Voxs home for smart discussion of the most important issues and ideas in politics, science, and culture typically by outside contributors. If you have an idea for a piece, pitch us at thebigidea@vox.com.

Link:

How bosses are (literally) like dictators - Vox

MODERN slavery, human trafficking and illegal immigration are among the key targets of the biggest operation of its kind launched in the region this morning.

Law enforcement agencies across the North-East are mounting a crackdown on foreign national offenders in an operation which will including raids on premises, joint patrols and other activities over the next fortnight.

Operation Kestrel involves the regions three police forces Durham, Cleveland and Northumbria working alongside Immigration Enforcement, Border Force, the North East Regional Special Operations Unit, the Department Work Pensions and HM Revenue and Customs.

It is aimed at developing a template to be used for future operations across the country, while at the same time building up intelligence on the scale of the problem.

Speaking ahead of the operation, Northumbria Assistant Chief Constable Helen McMillan said: It is a targeted operation which is looking at the harm caused by foreign national offenders across the region.

Normally we do all cooperate and go about our business when we come across foreign national offenders.

But this is a much more co-ordinated approach towards foreign criminality and its victims. We hoping to develop a model fully integrated collaborative working.

She added: Some of the activity well target is modern day slavery and human trafficking offences, which would include labour exploitation and the safeguarding of victims.

Its fair to say that some foreign nationals who are here legally will be victims of exploitation sometimes by foreign national offenders and sometimes by UK nationals, who are seeking to exploit a vulnerable community

The victims may well not be aware of the labour laws, the minimum wage and health and safety.

Sometimes they will be targeted by unscrupulous employers or landlords who will seek to take advantage of them. Well be taking action against those people too.

ACC McMillan said: We are not carrying out this operation because we have had a rise on foreign national offenders or because we have a particular issue in the North-East - because we dont.

This is about trying to be much more efficient and effective at what we do in a much more multi-agency collaborative way.

Immigration Enforcement director Eddy Montgomery said: Illegal immigration cuts across the work of a number of Government agencies. It impacts not just on the community but economy as well.

This will enable us to us to develop a wider intelligence picture.

He added: Our key priorities will be illegal working, rogue landlords, modern slavery and identifiying those who have no right to be in the UK, ranging from from low-level offenders to serious criminality.

Illegal working encourages illegal migration, undercuts legitimate businesses, by illegal cost cutting activity and is often associated with exploitative behaviour like tax evasion and harmful working conditions.

He said every landlord had a legal responsibility to rent only to people who had a right to be in the UK.

ACC McMillan said Operation Kestrel was driven by the Chief Constable Steve Ashman who was the National Police Chiefs Councils lead in international criminality.

She said: He is very keen to drive the agenda and try and co-ordinate increased capacity and capability across the the services across the UK.

One of the things he wanted to do as that was to try and develop a template that can be used across the county by forces and services to co-ordinate better. It makes sense for us to do it here.

Originally posted here:

Law enforcement agencies join forced across region in crackdown on "foreign national offenders" - The Northern Echo (registration)

The so-called communists in the SACP, who were deployed in government, are nothing but careerist cowards and opportunists with no capacity to introduce anything leftward. Instead those like Jeremy Cronin and Secretary-General Blade Nzimande are stumbling blocks to progressive proposals in government.

When presenting the South African Communist Partys leadership view on its relationship to electoral politics and state power, the recently outgone First Deputy Secretary General remarked that perhaps it is difficult to find intelligent people in the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF). Jeremy Cronins shallow and decidedly incorrect view is not a surprise because for a very long time now, this liberal airhead masquerading as a communist has thought of himself as the paragon of political virtue, a messiah and intellectual par excellence, only rivalled by Joe Slovo. Intelligent people to him are only those who are sub-controlled by white people, and no African child or collective can ever be considered intelligent.

In his unsubstantiated remark about the lack of intelligence (revolutionary intellectual capacity) of EFF, he fails to ideologically, intellectually and politically pinpoint unwise and unintelligent ideological, political and intellectual mishaps of the EFF both as an organisation or otherwise. He cannot do so because in all forms and shapes of measure, the EFFs ideological, political and ideological perspectives represent superior logic and that is evidenced by its upward qualitative and quantitative development. As a matter of fact, the EFF is the biggest (qualitatively and quantitatively) socialist political movement on the African continent that is not under the ideological control of white people, now and in the future.

Cronin will not admit to this fact because, despite claiming to be a scientific socialist, Cronin is an undercover white supremacist whose participation in the Communist Party leadership was aimed at sanitising the radical manifestation of Marxism-Leninism in a country that is defined by white political, economic and social domination. Cronins role (and perhaps that of his ideological father Joe Slovo) in the National Liberation Movement has always been a sophisticated form of white entryism because uncompromising implementation of the NLMs original vision would lead to the complete destruction of his kin and kiths absolute dominance over society and the economy. Entryism refers to the infiltration of a political party by members of another group, with the intention of subverting its policies or objectives, and that is exactly what Jeremy Cronin has been in the liberation movement.

The task of revolutionary leaders in South Africa and all over the world is to constantly provide thorough diagnosis of societal challenges and provide durable solutions. Since Cronin was elected as part of the SACP leadership he has never provided any substantial and clear ideological and political guidance that unsettled white minority control of SAs wealth and got to benefit the black majority and Africans in particular.

His role has been to correct the grammar, prose and form of emerging revolutionaries who in the process of development will objectively make some theoretical and superficial mistakes in their application of Marxism to the South African problem as it can be expected. Of course, Jeremy would understand English (the language) better than other African leaders in the and society because thats the only language he knows and its his birth language. This is a leader of the so-called vanguard of the working class, who has not bothered to understand the language of the people he is vanguard of, and always ready to belittle them when they make genuine semantic errors in their attempts to explain society through the Marxist-Leninist telescope.

On several occasions, Cronins role has been to suppress its understanding of society better. Here are some of the examples: When the decidedly neoliberal Growth, Employment and Redistribution(GEAR) economic policy was adopted, the SACP issued a statement to welcome it, and only somersaulted when Cosatu opposed the macroeconomic strategy. The SACP verbatim said, The South African Communist Party welcomes the governments Growth, Employment and Redistribution Macro-Economic Policy. We fully back the objectives of this macro-economic strategy and note, in particular, the following key features: Contrary to certain attempts to use the macro-economic debate to shift government away from its electoral mandate, the strategy announced today firmly and explicitly situates itself as a framework for the RDP.

Despite the many justifications and exonerations of GEAR, it represented ideological and global economic dynamics naivet on the part of the liberation movement, which had been in political power for two years. As a so-called vanguard of the working class, the SACP should have foreseen that neoliberal trade liberalisation, lowering of tariffs, taxation and fiscal reform would destroy industrialisation and the state's capacity to deliver services. The so-called vanguard of the working class should have foreseen that loosening of exchange controls would lead to massive capital flight, outflow of capital necessary for industrialisation to destinations that did not play any meaningful role in its generation.

In the 2000s, Cronin and the SACP forgot that when GEAR was adopted, the SACP fully back(ed) the objectives of this macro-economic strategy. They then conceptualised what they termed the 1996 class project, which was loosely defined as an ideological trend that forced GEARs adoption, in pursuit of a neoliberal crisis and therefore responsible for all South Africas developmental and economic problems. The defeat of the 1996 class project was then mixed with the removal of Thabo Mbeki as the Godfather of the class project. The ANCs 52nd National Conference was the theatre upon which the class project would be defeated and succeeded by a progressive reconfigured alliance. This, the intelligent Cronin argued, would lead to a permanent solution to our problems.

Hindsight reveals the simple fact that the SACP and its lead ideologue, Jeremy Cronin, the intellectual, misdiagnosed the South African problem, and history proves that the so-called 1996 class project does not have any scientific basis. The 1996 class project, conceptualised by Cronin, was nothing but a factional hogwash of the Communist Partys (an organised faction in the ANC) bid for its leaders, not its ideas, to be accommodated and mainstreamed in the ANC as ministers and deputy ministers. This is evidenced by so many statements made by SACP leaders that they are tired of hunting for nogwaja (rabbits) alongside the ANC, and the ANC leaders eat alone.

The deepening crisis of the ANC-led liberation movement which will lead to its total destruction and ruin of all its component parts reveal that the SACPs unscientific characterisation of the South African post-1994 problem as a problem of the 1996 class project was not only scientifically lousy, but was totally wrong. The socio-economic crises facing South Africa today reveals the fact that the so-called communists in the SACP, who were deployed in government, are nothing but careerist cowards and opportunists with no capacity to introduce anything leftward. Instead those like Cronin and Secretary-General Blade Nzimande are stumbling blocks to progressive proposals in government. Government under Jacob Zuma is directionless, the most corrupt, confused and self-contradictory, but the communists are there. Where is the intelligence of the Cronin and the SACP collective to rescue the situation?

When there were problems in Cosatu, Jeremy Cronin was part of a factionalist perspective that justified why Numsa and subsequently Zwelinzima Vavi should be expelled from Cosatu.It is not a secret that the SACP played a central role in fomenting the divisions that led to the split of the trade union movement. What is intelligent with a Communist Party that splits a workers movement and constantly banishes progressive forces into many components that do not speak in one voice? Isnt the role of the vanguard party to unite all working-class forces?

Perhaps one of the most misleading things about the Communist Party was Jeremys concoction of pure lies about the leadership of the ANCYL, the Economic Freedom Fighters generation of the Congress Movement, which advocated for land expropriation without compensation and nationalisation of mines. There is no doubt that one of the greatest opportunities to radicalise the ANC-led liberation movement into a decisive, principled and ideologically steadfast Left movement was during Commander-in-Chief Julius Malemas leadership of the ANC Youth League. Instead of rallying all progressive forces behind the radical calls for socialist economic freedom in our lifetime, the SACP through Jeremy Cronins lies and conspiracy was at the centre of driving a wedge between progressive workers and youth movements.

Sophisticated and intelligent revolutionaries always know when to maximise on revolutionary unity for a common socialist cause. The nature of Leninist movements in the world is their ability to gather immediate interests of different groups in society and consolidate them into a strategic vision and path towards socialism. Instead of playing this role, the SACP has always been at the centre of fomenting divisions in the liberation movement and casting aspersions on the true nature and character of socialist demands. The SACP and subsequently Cosatu was misled (lied to) by Jeremy Cronin that the then leadership of the ANCYL wanted to rescue some BEE deals in the correct and genuine call for nationalisation of mines. This has been proven to be conspiratorial hogwash promoted to protect Cronins kin and kith because black peoples ownership of mines in SA is less than 5%.

Parliament recently underwent a process of drafting an Expropriation Bill, and Jeremy suspended all his ministerial responsibilities and went to camp in the portfolio committee on public works every day to prevent an insertion of a clause that would have secured expropriation without compensation. Ministers and deputy ministers (executive) draft legislations and submit them to Parliament (legislative body) to deliberate and conduct public hearings. After this process, Parliament adopts the bill and sends to a president of accession, and the bill becomes law, an Act of Parliament.

During the process of deliberating and conducting public hearings on the Expropriation Bill, Jeremy Cronin, the intelligent Deputy Minister of Public Works, was camping in the committee to specifically prevent expropriation of land without compensation, something which he successfully managed to achieve. It is not surprising because in the course of pretending to be revolutionaries, the majority of white political activists in the Congress movement and other formations are inclined towards defending the true interests of kin and kith at the expense of principle.

In all the parliamentary debates led by the EFF and recently the NFP, Jeremy self-appointed himself as the defender of the status quo. He always comes to debate that the constitutional and therefore land status quo should remain because anything else will disrupt and disturb his kin and kith. This is the intelligent communist who struggles to find intelligent people in the EFF, and the reason they are not intelligent is because EFF leaders and members are demanding the land without compensation. To white supremacists, the legitimate demand for land to be returned to its rightful owners is of course unintelligent.

Jeremy Cronins other role in the SA Communist Party has also been to suppress internal organisational democracy. In the SACP 12th congress in Port Elizabeth, Jeremy is the one who changed the majority of congress view on state power and drafted something called a reconfigured alliance. We are aware of this because we were part of the resolutions committee and know that the majority of SACP members wanted SACP to contest political power independently from the ANC. SACP members might be wrong or right in their demand that their party should contest elections, but their intellectual contributions always get undermined by Jeremy Cronin, who has no regard for organisational democracy, in particular the view that the views of the majority must dominate over the minority views.

He seems to have done the same thing in the 14th Congress, because the reports point to the reality that if the question of the SACPs relationship to state power was voted on, the majority would have voted that the party should contest independently. Like they did in the SACPs 12thNational Congress, the leadership duped their membership by cutting and pasting resolutions on the partys relationship to state power.

In 2007, the SACPs resolution on its relationship to state power and electoral politics read as follows:

That the SACP contests state power in elections in the context of a reconfigured Alliance.To mandate the incoming CC to actively pursue the different potential modalities of future SACP electoral campaigning. These modalities could involve either:

An electoral pact with our Alliance partners, which could include agreement on deployments, possible quotas, the accountability of elected representatives including accountability of SACP cadres to the Party, the election manifesto, and the importance of an independent face and role for the SACP and its cadres within legislatures. OR,

Independent electoral lists on the voters roll with the possible objective of constituting a coalition Alliance agreement post elections.

In 2017, in their 14thNational Congress, the SACP resolution on state power and its relationship to electoral politics reads as follows:

The SACP must actively contest elections. That the modality through which we contest elections may, or may not be within, the umbrella of a reconfigured alliance.

The declaration of the 14thCongress says,

TheSACPremains committed to strengthening and consolidating our ANC alliance. This will require a significant reconfiguration. Whether the ANC has the capacity to lead its own process of renewal, and whether it will be able to once more play the critical role of uniting itself and its alliance remains uncertain.

Many newspaper and television headlines ran front-page and leading stories announcing that the SACP will contest elections in 2019 independently, and such represents a dismal failure to understand the SACP and particularly Jeremy Cronins ideological misguidance.

As a matter of fact, the SACP is not planning to contest any elections because of principle issues, but instead is waiting for the outcomes of the ANC elective conference in December 2017. When the leadership outcomes favour the careerist and factional interests of the Communist Party leaders, they will re-assert their loyalty to the ANC, and when the outcomes are not favourable, they will try to cobble up some broad front to contest elections. If the latter is the case, the SACP will encounter its rude awakening that boardroom politics are not the same as groundwork. They will evidently not achieve even a fraction of what the EFF achieved in less than 12 months.

The SACP resolutions are drafted, justified and presented by Jeremy Cronin because, like a large number of the so-called communists, he lacks principled Marxist-Leninist discipline of not sacrificing principle on the altar of political convenience. The fact of the matter is that Jeremy Cronin is a liberal airhead masquerading as an African communist. He does not have the lived experience of blackness and does not understand the pain of landlessness and hopelessness that black peoplehave suffered and continue to suffer 23 years after democracy.He has misled on many occasions. Under his leadership, the SACP has been used as an instrument of causing disunity among progressive working-class forces in and outside the Congress movement.

As a deputy minister of public works, Jeremy Cronin never came up with any innovative solution to the reality that the state is largely a tenant of white property owners in the capital cities for administrative headquarters, functional and service offices and even police stations. When Jeremy was appointed deputy minister of public works, he found the state renting offices and he will leave it like that. There has never been an intelligent solution he provided as a deputy minister of public works. Government is occupying rented property all over South Africa, and the Department of Public Works he leads and led with a fellow communist does not have a plan out of such. The Department of Public Works is instead renowned for justifying the patently illegal construction of the Nkandla private residence of Jacob Zuma. The Department of Public Works is also known for the creation of lousy underpaying jobs called expanded public works, which converts youth into cheap and easily disposable labourers for rapacious and callous contractors who loot state resources.

Blade Nzimande, who is overstaying his welcome as the General Secretary of the Communist Party, is Minister of Higher Education and Training, and yet the Communist Party has never provided any substantial and intelligent solution to the need for fee-free quality education. This is despite the fact that the ANCs 52ndNational conference resolved to introduce free education for the poor until undergraduate level. Amid the #FeesMustFall struggles, the SACP of Blade Nzimande and Jeremy Cronin chose to concoct conspiracies around the activists, and never proposed any intelligent solutions. The Communist Party deployees have illustrated beyond any doubt that they will never do anything different from the neoliberal ANC even when they are given political power.

The EFFs leadership collective has on the contrary produced creative and innovative and groundbreaking exact diagnosis of the SA problem, and constantly provides durable solutions. All the 15 diagnoses and analyses contained in the EFF Founding Manifesto are an exact reading of South Africas political and economic landscape. The EFFs policyproposals are trendsetting, and always influence a discourse previously ignored or suppressed by the capitalist establishment. The EFFs submissions on how multinational capital steals wealth through tax avoidance and illicit flows has led to SARS establishing andstrengthening the internal units that deal with transfer pricing and aggressive tax avoidance.

The EFF's submissions on land has placed the land question on the agenda, even of the confused ANC. The EFFs qualitative analyses and interventions have translated into quantity, leading mass protest actions and securing votes. The Communist Party has never organised or led a mass protest action that is even 10% of the protest action organised and led by the EFF. The Communist Party lacks relevance in society, and yet there is no sane political analysis and understanding of South Africa that can exclude the EFF.

The EFF is also able to build a dynamic relationship between the mass struggles and effective parliamentary work. We have made substantial and impactful transformative submissions on the transformation of the financial sector, and despite having taken up a campaign in 2002, the SACP has not made any substantive and impactful submission anywhere, let alone in Parliament.

The EFF has achieved in fouryears what the Communist Party could not achieve as an organised faction in the ANC. The SACP under the intelligent leadership of Jeremy Cronin does not have comprehensive policies on many key areas of society. The EFF has. Policy in SACP is the feelings of its leaders, and not scientific diagnosis of societal problems and solutions, hence the entire recent conference discussed only state capture that was introduced by the EFF.But well, Jeremy Cronin will never acknowledge the success of the EFF nor its potential because its policies will overturn his kin and kiths economic dominance.

The EFF will never be diverted by liberals masquerading as communists because in 2013 we adopted a Founding Manifesto that inter alia diagnosed that, the Congress-aligned left-wing formations have been swallowed into reform politics of patronage and will never regain integrity to pursue real working-class struggles any time soon. The organised Left has been swallowed by the state, and is currently at the forefront of justifying the rapacious and callous theft of public funds by the incumbent president of the republic. That is what the SACP has become under the intelligent leadership of Jeremy Cronin. Let us see what will be of a Cronin-less Communist Party, will they unite working class forces, and stop the blind loyalty to the corruption-ridden and captured ANC?

All of South African society knows and now understands that the true voice of the working class and the poor, the vanguard movement for socialist economic emancipation, is the EFF, and not Cronins SACP. The SACPs relationship to state power and electoral politics is dependent on whether its preferred faction in the ANC wins elections. The SACP fails to internalise the most basic Leninist observation that, Whatever guise a republic may assume, however democratic it may be, if it is a bourgeois republic, if it retains private ownership of the land and factories, and if private capital keeps the whole of society in wage-slavery, that is, if the republic does not carry out what is proclaimed in the Programme of our Party and in the Soviet Constitution, then this state is a machine for the suppression of some people by others.

The only movement that understands this in South Africa is the EFF through lived experience and once again, there are no white messiahs who will define the contours of our revolutionary struggles. DM

Floyd Shivambu is EFF Deputy President

Original post:

Jeremy Cronin's shallow and decidedly incorrect view is not a surprise - Daily Maverick

Matthew Taylor seems more concerned to preserve the gig economy business model than worried about the resultant exploitation, writes Simon Diggins. Photograph: Charles Platiau/Reuters

Rafael Behrs commentary on Matthew Taylors gig economy report is too kind by half (The gig economy can be exploitative but there is no easy path to Good Work, 12 July). Both in the report and in interviews, Taylor seems more concerned to preserve the gig economy business model than worried about the resultant exploitation. Thebusiness owners excuse, that they couldnt run their business otherwise, is exactly the same old excuse used right back to the slave owners.

If the only way the business model can work is by denying workers rights, rights hard-won by generations of struggle, then that flawed model has no place in any kind of decent, fair society. The Orwellian rebranding of the workers title dependent contractors, or some such nonsense, should tell you all you need to know about how flawed Taylors proposals are. It really is that simple. Simon Diggins Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire

Rafael Behr agonises over the trade-off facing the gig economy, between having a flexible labour market and guaranteeing a minimum hourly income for people who work flexibly.

The Taylor review posits that people in the gig economy who choose to work at off-peak times should not necessarily be entitled to the minimum wage. Butwhen I raised this in the House of Commons, the minister could not have been clearer in her assurance: Minimum wages rates are sacrosanct. There will be no trade-off when it comes to ensuring that everybody is paid at least the minimum wage.

This is a clear undertaking from the government. The Houses job now is to ensure that undertaking is honoured in any subsequent legislation. If gig companies are required by law always to abide by the minimum wage, even if that means a loss in flexibility, they will need to regulate the supply of labour or pay from their profits the minimum wage when there is not the level of demand to pay all workers at that rate. Frank Field MP Labour, Birkenhead

Theresa May doesnt need to introduce new laws to protect workers in the gig economy: British employment law is fair and robust already. But what she could do is ensure that the basics of the law and economics are explained to everyone before they start working, preferably at school, so they can assess the viability of an offer themselves.

Most of these workers are actually not self-employed, so are entitled to holiday pay, statutory sick pay and the other benefits of payrolled employment, while the rates their employers offer are not economically viable as a sole income.

A properly self-employed worker has to charge many times more per hour than their waged colleagues in order to achieve parity of income. Until this is explained to school leavers, this type ofexploitation will continue. Michael Heaton Warminster, Wiltshire

Can you be self-employed if you only have one employer? The taxman once had a rule that you couldnt. Whochanged that? Ian Davidson London

The Guardian has been conducting investigations into the gig economy over the past few months. The publication last Tuesday of the Taylor report into the same topic therefore ought to have justified more than the usual level of coverage. Instead, what did we get? Theresa May, Rebecca Long-Bailey and the GMB offer their reactions to the report, Robert Booth gives us a critical summary of the report, we get another two tales from the gig economy, and there is an editorial along with a comment piece by Rafael Behr.

What we do not get is a proper report of the report itself, its main recommendations, its findings and some key excerpts from it. When the facts of the matter are supplanted by a flurry of opinions from all and sundry, you do your readers a disservice. Id like to know what Taylor says, after which opinions can be aired. Roderick MacFarquhar Edinburgh

Wortley Hall, the self-styled workers stately home on the outskirts of Sheffield, is a wonderful monument to the co-operative movement and the trade unions and has been lovingly restored to its former glory. Is there any need for it to hire staff on zero-hours contracts? Malcolm Smith Pwllheli, Gwynedd

In defence of freelancing stewards at Lords (Letters, 12 July), while I appreciate the reasons that led Rick Hall to resign his Tate membership in sympathy with the staff on zero-hours contracts, the case at Lords is rather different. The Tate has a permanent exhibition and therefore a relatively constant need for a certain number of staff, but the number of stewards required at a Test cricket ground varies vastly. While crowds of over 20,000 can be expected to enter Lords on up to 15 days of the year, there will seldom be a 20th of that number for the other 350 days. For at least five months of the year there will be no spectators at all. To expect the MCC to employ full-time staff on that basis is maybe a little exaggerated. Juan Carlos Escandell Bonn, Germany

I am a chef and a father of four children. Today in the world of UK hospitality, working hours laid down in our contracts are 48 per week, but we are bound by signing an extra clause to our contract that commits us to work more as required by the establishment which usually means a working week of between 55 and 60 hours.

This evidently leaves little or no room for any quality life. Of course, you feel obliged to sign this clause as this is part and parcel of the job offer but you soon realise that it is a trap. You live a life of modern-day slavery in which you dont see your family, you have poor quality sleep and you never get enough rest. In short, you are exploited to the maximum. Needless to say, turnover is extremely high in the hospitality business among chefs.

In our job we know when we start our shift, but not when it ends. Why do we have to be different from any other profession that has reasonable eight-hour shifts?

The hospitality industry currently receives recognition in the form of star rankings from various reviewing bodies depending on the quality of menus, their creativity and presentation, prices, the excellence of service and so on.

But who is taking responsibility to ensure that cooks and chefs have a balance between work and family and living any sort of quality life? Surely, we are more important than the star rankings? Many people in this industry are suffering and they have no other choice as no law is protecting them. Jose Cacn Christchurch, Dorset

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Workers' rights need more protection in the gig economy - The Guardian

PUBLISHED: 13:30 13 July 2017 | UPDATED: 14:51 13 July 2017

Frankie Crossley

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Welcome to Hornsey!

Situated between Crouch End and Muswell Hill on one side, and Wood Green on the other, locals joke that Hornseys reputation as a poor neighbour really depends which neighbour youre comparing it to.

Hornsey village was first recorded in 1202 and remained a rural area until the late 1880s when seven railway stations opened nearby, leading to mass house building and turning the area into an archetypal Victorian suburb. Today most agree: this is a cosmopolitan area on the up, with a great sense of community and a wealth of independent cafes and shops.

There has been a church on the site of St Marys Hornsey since the 13th century. The original tower is still standing today and stands in the ancient graveyard of the village.

One of the most intriguing tombstones in the graveyard marks the grave of Jacob Walker with the inscription In America the faithful slave, in England the faithful servant. Walker was a native of Virginia, US, and had been the slave of the Longs, an English family. When the family returned to England in 1824, Walker came with them and, since slavery was illegal in the UK, became their wage-earning servant. It is believed that Walker died of a broken heart a month after the death of his employer, Harriet Long, who is buried on the same site.

Shopping and culture

Hornsey Library is a Grade II listed building that is home to the Community and Youth Music Library, one of the countrys leading archives of musical scores. The collection was started almost 100 years ago and they have everything from choral arrangements to concert band music and they are available for schools and amateur music groups.

Shopping in Hornsey is a dream for homeowners, particularly those with renovation projects and a taste for the items of yesteryear. There are also numerous spots to help with home renovations including upholsterer John Lawler Muswell Hill Joinery and Garden Transformations.

Best for vintage... Mishka sells vintage clothing from the Victorian era to the 1980s.

Best for flowers Bloomers Florist on the high street is the go to spot for bouquets, and also includes a cafe.

Food and drink

There is a sense in the air that Hornsey is up-and-coming and the mixture of businesses on and around the High Street refelcts this.

Best for lunchOlive is best for Middle-Eastern inspired caf lunches.

Best for a coffee Italica is a delicatessen and caf popular with local parents for post-school run coffee.

Best for pizza Tomos is a family run pizzeria who promise to only use ingredients that theyd serve their own children.

Best for healthy eating Away from the High Street the Teapot Caf on Tottenham Lane is a cosy spot for healthy juices and coffee and The Harvest is an organic food store.

Best for a pint The Great Northern Railway Tavern is set in a Grade II listed neo-Jacobean building. Its a top local choice for drinks and puts on regular blues, rock n roll, jazz and ska nights.

Best for quiz night Up the road the Three Compasses in a bright, freshly renovated pub serving food. They often have sports matches playing and hold regular quiz nights.

Sports and leisure

Gym membership at the north London YMCA includes access to the Fitness Centre and a range of classes. Classes are also accessible on a drop-in basis and include swiss ball, yoga, pilates, circuit training, spinning with static bikes and aerobics. The YMCA also offers a crche on weekday mornings for parents attending the gym.

Things to do with children

The Haringay Club at the YMCA offers an extensive range of childrens activities, from baby massage and pre-school ballet to Irish dancing and kickboxing for older children. The Club lays on an additional programme during school holidays. Adults will appreciate the New River Caf, a charming refreshment spot attached to the centre.

Primary and secondary education

The North London Rudolf Steiner School provides mixed gender Steiner education for children between the ages of 0 and 7 via a parent and child group, playgroup and kindergarten.

St Marys C.E. Primary School is a very popular local primary school, which is becoming increasingly over-subscribed as the surroundings move up in the world. It is rated Good by Ofsted.

Hornsey School for Girls is a girls secondary school also rated Good by Ofsted and well-regarded by parents.

Greig City Academy is a large mixed gender academy with a specialism in technology rated Good by Ofsted. It is the only state school in Haringey to offer a classics course and an array of extra-curricular activities, including a rocket club.

Transport

The Great Northern rail link is the areas main connection to the train and tube network, with overground services to Finsbury Park, Highbury and Islington and Moorgate in one direction and all the way north to Stevenage and Welwyn Garden City in the other. The nearest tube station is Turnpike Lane in Zone 3 on the Piccadilly Line. There are also some good bus routes including the 91 to Trafalgar Square and the W3 to Finsbury Park and Tottenham.

Property Guide

Postcode

Hornsey is situated in the London Borough of Haringey within the N8 postal district. It is in the Hornsey and Wood Green parliamentary constituency.

Band A properties will pay 1016.19 council tax; properties in the average Band D will receive a bill of 1,524.27; and homes in Band H will pay 3,048.54.

Housing Stock

Homes are predominantly late Victorian and Edwardian terraced properties although there are several modern developments in the area too, including a large housing complex overlooking the New River and luxury apartments at Smithfield Square.

House Prices

Two-bedroom flat 524,390

Terraced House 1,067,671

Semi-detached 1,316,250

Detached 1,228,998

The rest is here:

Hornsey area guide: shops, restaurants, pubs, library and schools - Hampstead and Highgate Express

SLC UNIFORM FIASCO

Cricbuzz StaffLast updated on Thu, 13 Jul, 2017, 02:35 PM

Many of groundstaff were reported to have been paid only after the trousers were returned following the completion of the 5th ODI between Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe, leaving them stripped down to their underwear. Getty

Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) on Wednesday offered cash and new clothes to temporary groundsmen, who were forced to handover their uniforms after the fifth One-Day International between Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe.

The groundsman at Hambantota's MRI Cricket Stadium, who were daily wage workers of the region, were given uniforms to wear during the match. This practice of giving uniforms to the local workers, who are called in to put covers on the entire ground in case of a rain was started recently. But on Monday (July 10), they were asked to return their clothes before leaving the venue. Many of them were reported to have been paid only after the trousers were returned, leaving them stripped down to their underwear.

One of the groundsman, who was stripped off his trousers, told Hiru News, "They only paid us for our three days worth of work after taking our clothes."

Another one added: "They hadn't told us to come prepared with another set of clothes. They asked us to hand over the trousers, so we had no choice but to do that."

In the aftermath of the incident, SLC formally apologised to "those subjected to this ignominy".

"That was a very low thing that happened," Thilanga Sumathipala, SLC president, said. "These people come to the ground because of their love of cricket, and to do a service while watching the match. They aren't just there for the money. If rains come, they close up the whole ground within minutes, and then take the covers off again.

"They are our colleagues, not our slaves. The board didn't know anything about this. We had sent that clothing out to our provincial associations, but hadn't taken a decision to get that clothing back.

"The way they were treated is unacceptable and I have ordered that they be given a new set of clothes plus an extra day's wages. It is inhuman and slavery."

Cricbuzz

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SLC offers Hambantota groundstaff cash, clothes after uniform fiasco - Cricbuzz

by Kerry Shakaboona Marshall

On Aug. 19, 2017, the city of Washington, D.C., will host a Millions for Prisoners Human Rights March to draw attention and national support to amend the 13th Amendment of the United States Constitution for its ratification of modern day slavery within the U.S. prison system.

The 13th Amendment has spawned various forms of penal slavery since its ratification by the then all-white U.S. Congress, such as the convict leasing system, the chain gang labor system, the prisoner agricultural workers system and the modern day prison slave sweatshops that are euphemistically called correctional industries corporations. Today, the prison systems correctional industries corporations generate hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue from prisoners free labor and slave-wage labor.

Arguably, the 13th Amendment is the most evil, contradictory, controversial, deceptive and despicable part of the U.S. Constitution, because the 13th Amendment runs neck-to-neck in terms of depravity with the U.S. Constitutions decree that considered Black people who were enslaved as three-fifths of a human being for purposes of increasing Southern slave holders voting power.

All arguments aside, the duplicitous double-speak of the 13th Amendment regarding the abolition of slavery in the United States of America harkens to a time when after the Indigenous peoples of this continent had been decimated by Caucasians practice of Manifest Destinys genocidal wars and pronouncements of coming in peace and war in the same breath Native peoples reached a profound truth, that the white man speaks with a forked tongue.

The 13th Amendment is a prime example frozen in time for all to see of the white man speaking with a forked tongue, of an all-white U.S. government having no intention of truly emancipating Black slaves, of their Machiavellian designs to re-enslave Black people within the U.S. prison systems under the guise of crime.

In the first clause of the 13th Amendment, the U.S. government firmly abolished chattel slavery in the U.S., whereas in the second clause, it retained and transferred chattel slavery into its prison systems as punishment for those convicted of crime.

With a stroke of the enemys pen, America went from chattel slavery to prison slavery, from mass emancipation of Black peoples to mass incarceration of Black, Brown and now poor white peoples. Brought to you by America, from the Land of the Beast and the Home of the Slave.

Let us make America know its sins against Black and Brown peoples. Lets struggle to amend the 13th Amendment and to abolish prison slavery and for-profit prisons by attending or supporting the August 19th Millions for Prisoners Human Rights March on Washington, D.C. For additional information, go to Amendthe13th.org.

From the belly of the beast, at Prison Radio, I am Shakaboona.

Thank you for listening. Learn more at Iamweubuntu.com/millions-for-prisoners-human-rights.html.

Send our brother some love and light: Kerry Shakaboona Marshall, BE-7826, SCI Rockview, P.O. Box A, Bellefonte PA 16823.

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Millions for Prisoners Human Rights March coming to Washington DC Aug. 19 - San Francisco Bay View