Labour mumbles on sick pay. We need to shout!

In the last week Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves has started to make comments about the UK’s scandalous sick pay system.

Better than saying nothing - just about. The first issue is that a few tweets and comments to the media are not the same as a message argued for and hammered home consistently over a long period – let alone an actual campaign.

Go on Keir Starmer’s Twitter, and you'll see he has not mentioned sick pay in the last month. I stopped scrolling down, but I'd be willing to bet he has not mentioned it for much longer than that.

An internet search about Labour and sick pay finds nothing since reports of the line in Starmer’s TUC speech in September.

Before that, it was the same – back to the start of the pandemic. Occasional isolated comments from this or that person punctuating general silence. This though the issue has repeatedly surged to the surface in society and even into the mainstream media, because it is so urgent.

Left-wing commentator Owen Jones is right to point out that Labour could easily have used the vote on the government's new Covid restrictions, passed only because of Labour's votes, to demand radical improvements to sick pay. This kind of tactic would both put the government under some pressure and help magnify public debate on the issue.

There are many, many things the party could be doing. But even before you get to a serious campaign, mobilising Labour and trade union members, it could have an impact just by speaking out consistently.

The second, connected problem is that when they do occasionally say something, it’s not at all clear what Reeves, Starmer et al are actually calling for.

In September Starmer went no further than saying Labour would guarantee sick pay for all and “increase” it. Reeves’ recent comments are even vaguer, calling on the government to “sort out” sick pay. Her only specific, outlined at more length on Good Morning TV, was a call for reinstatement of the Covid-period subsidy for small businesses to cover Statutory Sick Pay – which has now happened. Since then, silence again.

At Labour conference, Shadow Secretary of State for Employment Rights Andy McDonald resigned after he was told by Starmer to go to a compositing meeting and oppose text calling for “increasing statutory sick pay to a living wage, to be paid from day one of absence; and for the lower earnings limit that means low paid workers are not entitled to SSP to be abolished.”

This from a party that claims to represent “working people” – in a pandemic when it has been more important even than before for people to be able to stop work.

There is widespread support for increasing even among capitalists. It seems pretty clear that Starmer and co. are unwilling to get into specifics because they risk either alienating "business" by offering anything serious or alienating the labour movement by offering very little.

The Labour leadership bears special responsibility for the fact the Tories have not given much ground on sick pay over the last two years. (Changes like funding to cover - in theory - sick pay in care homes, and now allowing self-certification of sickness up to 28 days, go nowhere near tackling the core of the problem.) The context is that the wider labour movement has done much either.

The TUC has called calls for Statutory Sick Pay to be increased to at least £346 a week (as well as for the appalling minimum earnings threshold to be scrapped). That is not enough – workers need to receive 100% of their normal earnings for at least a period, to avoid sudden reductions in income when they get sick – but it’s at least a clear and ambitious demand that would represent a serious improvement from the current situation (£96.35 a week).

The TUC has repeatedly raised the issue in the media and on social media, but it has not organised any campaigning beyond that. And remarkably most unions have been worse, failing even to repeat and amplify the TUC’s demand.

The "left-wing" Unite, for instance, has limited itself to putting out a press release every six months or so with a call for sick pay to be increased, but with no demands at all. This has not changed since Sharon Graham became general secretary.

A few unions have organised energetic struggles to win sick pay for specific groups of workers – for instance the victorious strike by PCS and UVW members in the Royal Parks in London – but only a few unions and a handful of struggles.

And the left has failed to put much energy into this crucial issue too.

We need to push wide sections of the labour movement into action for clear demands, and demand that Labour moves from occasional vague mumbling to loud calls for definite action.