No money and no rights, that’s the Tories plan for the working poor says Marienna Pope-Weidemann

Tory ministers have vowed to slash working tax credit (WTC) for Britain’s lowest paid workers if they go on strike, in what UNITE has described as a gesture ‘aimed at putting fear into vulnerable, low-paid workers to stop them from standing up for their rights against poor working conditions.’

Those receiving WTC currently remain fully entitled for the first ten days of a strike. Under the new proposals these workers, already earning under £13,000 per year, will no longer receive any extra cash to tide them over when deteriorating working conditions drive them to take strike action.

Though WTC payments fall far short of compensating strikers for lost income, Ian Duncan Smith claims they create ‘perverse incentives.’ The use of that phrase in the midst of a national row over capping executive pay, with corporate bosses raking in millions in bonuses for presiding over epic economic failure, was poorly timed to say the least.

The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions also added: ‘Striking is a choice, and in future benefit claimants will have to pay the price for that choice… we no longer will.’

Such is the double standard of industrial action: when workers withdraw their labour in response to deteriorating working conditions, it is a ‘choice’. But when the bosses withdraw their capital, through downsizing, offshoring or wage cutting, it is dismissed as nothing more than ‘the machinations of a market’ beyond human control.

Even the TUC’s general secretary, Brendan Barber, called the proposals ‘petty and vindictive. Workers are always reluctant to strike, depriving their families of benefits will leave low-paid workers even more vulnerable to bad treatment.’

The proposed reforms will have HM Revenue and Customs identify workers who sacrificed wages to strike so that their payments can be docked. The right to those payments is rooted in old Labour’s National Assistance Act of 1948.

The act was designed to provide a social safety net for the most vulnerable members of society. Of course many such post-war gains have been attacked by the Coalition government, from the exploitation of workfare schemes to the generation of an artificial petrol crisis to weaken unions and break the back of Labour as they relentlessly pursued one of their many ‘Thatcher moments’.

Counterfire’s John Rees said: ‘This is just one more Tory attempt to deprive people of the elementary democratic right to withhold their own labour if they choose… in other words to reduce trade unionists to the position of slaves.’

These proposals are a reaction to the wave of industrial action that struck in 2011, costing 1.4 million work days and involving over a million workers.

So the cycle continues: the government’s choice to impose austerity, weakening workers’ rights, incites defensive reactions from the unions, whose ability to safeguard those rights must then itself be undermined.

But legislation has not been enough to put out the flames in Spain, Greece or Quebec; and doubtless that with 80 per cent of the cuts still to come, the sparks in this country are only just beginning to fly.