A new report into health inequality by the UCL Institute of Health Equality clearly shows that the health gap between the rich and poor is growing. The report highlights the fact that life expectancy has stalled for the first time in a hundred years, with life expectancy actually falling among the poorest 10% of women. The report also found that those living in the most deprived areas of Britain can now expect to spend more of their lives in poor health.

Last week, the government announced it would resume naming and shaming employers who fail to pay the National Minimum Wage. While welcome, this will do little to deter companies from paying workers poverty wages and getting away with it.

Currently, rule-breakers are allowed to simply repay the wage arrears and fines issued by HMRC can be discounted for early repayment, meaning the average penalty in 2017-18 was only worth about 90% of the wage arrears owed. The availability of self-correction, in effect, means that, in many cases, employers can underpay wages with no financial consequences, even if they are caught. Research shows that, currently, only one in eight companies not paying the minimum wage are caught by government inspectors.

Some optimism in a dark time…

This isn’t about saying “I told you so!” We have close friends and solid comrades who put their faith and energy into Corbyn and the Labour party. We have nothing but sympathy and condolences for them. The loss of hope must feel like a bereavement. We’re sorry, collectively, for the anguish that millions of people are feeling today.

But we can help, and we can offer an alternative. We know now that no-one is coming to save us. That’s OK. We can save ourselves. Solfed and the Anarchist/Libertarian Left have always believed that real power comes from below, not above. We don’t have to wait for another socialist politician to rescue us from the Tories, we can save ourselves. We believe that politics starts at home, in our relationships with our families, friends, communities and workmates. We know that electoral politics is off the cards, at least for a few years. So let’s try an alternative strategy.

Manchester SolFed out leafleting for the Manchester and Salford Anarchist Book Fair this Saturday 7th December at the People's History Museum 10.00 to 1600

Given all the hype emanating from much of the left about the wonders of the Labour Manifesto, it is hard not to get carried away. After watching the latest uplifting interview with Labor’s John Mcdonnell you can suddenly find yourself unconsciously humming “oh Jeramy Corbyn” as you set about washing the dishes. Given all this hype, it is perhaps then worth having a bit of a reality check and assessing what the Labour Party is actually promising should they get elected.

Labour is promising to increase overall public spending from the current level of 38% of national income to 43.3%. Though billed as almost revolutionary, this increase is fairly moderate when compared with much of Europe, for example, in Sweden public spending amounts to 48.4%  of national income, Italy 48.8% and France a wapping 55.7%.

Staff at a call centre where customers were described as “gazelles” to be hunted have been subjecting, low income, elderly people, to dozens of calls a week to sell them expensive funeral packages. The company, Prosperous Life,  based in Stockport, Greater Manchester, sells more than 1,000 pre-paid funeral plans every month. Staff at the company report that they are put under pressure to push people to sign up for schemes with little regard for their income.

Prosperous Life runs a workplace culture inspired by The Wolf of Wall Street movie, as a means to pressurise staff into mis-selling funeral plans to vulnerable people. Staff were encouraged to refer to themselves as “lions” and potential customers as “gazelles”. A life-sized cardboard cutout of Leonardo DiCaprio as the disgraced fraudster Jordan Belfort in The Wolf of Wall Street movie was placed in the office.

This summer, over a dozen G4Lets tenants successfully withheld their final month’s rent payment to claim back their tenancy deposit. G4Lets are notorious deposit thieves, usually taking most or all of a deposit for dubious and inflated charges that take months to challenge through their chosen deposit protection scheme, MyDeposits.

A new survey by the TUC highlights the real problems many workers have in just making ends meet in one of the wealthiest countries in the world. The survey found that:

● 1 in 5 workers (19%) have gone without heating when it was cold;
● 1 in 5 (20%) workers are skipping meals to make ends meet with the number missing out on meals increasing by more than half in two years;
● 1 in 10 (10%) could not pay their rent or mortgage on time;
● 1 in 5 (20%) had pawned or sold something because they were short of money;
● a quarter of respondents report running out of money at the end of most weeks or months, while a further 16% have to cut down or stop spending many times a year;
● two fifths of those polled (41%) say that pay not keeping up with living costs is among their biggest concerns at work.

A track worker killed by a passenger train in south London was on a zero-hours contract, probably fatigued, and left exposed to danger when a colleague failed to turn up for work, investigators have found. The man died when he was hit from behind at 69mph (111km/h) in Croydon, after midnight on 6 November last year.

Inspectors from the Rail Accident Investigation Branch (RAIB) discovered he was meant to be assisted by his brother that night. However, earlier that day his brother had called to say he was too tired to attend as he had been working as a delivery driver and asked him to forge a signature to say he was there. The investigation also found that the man who had died had only 3.5 hours sleep.
The RAIB found the use of staff on zero-hour contracts created conditions "in which it is difficult to manage fatigue effectively" nor “identify or prevented staff absenting themselves from work without being detected”

Two years into the Brighton Solidarity Federation Housing Union, we've had another busy year of working collectively to push back against the city's continuing housing crisis. In this article, we look back on actions and initiatives from the last 12 months and consider our attempts to maintain the momentum of 2017-18 by adopting different strategies and taking on different cases.

The Housing Union in 2018-19

Brighton SolFed started a housing campaign in June 2017, a little over two years ago, in the hope of developing a group of people keen to challenge the poor conditions and high cost of rental property in the city, as well as the dodgy practices of landlords and letting agencies. The problems with rental property have continued to mount up; rental prices have increased 30 per cent since 2011, and the exploitation of renters continues to be a profitable practice for agencies and the property owners that hide behind them.