The May Day McDonald’s strike built on the late 2017 successful action and now the workers’ union is demanding £10 an hour.

Bakers and foodworkers union leader Ronnie Draper told the Morning Star: “Pay is still unacceptably low. We have members at McDonald’s who are literally homeless, a member from Cambridge is sofa-surfing because he can’t afford anywhere to live.
Contrast that with McDonald’s boss Steve Easterbrook on £11million a year.

“His pay packet equates to an astonishing £5,700 an hour,” Draper points out.

Two hundred years after Karl Marx’s birth, his analysis of capitalist exploitation is borne out by the daily experience of millions of workers.

Real wages are still lower than before the capitalist bank crash in 2008 and three million workers are stuck on zero-hours contracts, in agency work and in low-paid self-employment.

Public service workers haven’t had a proper pay rise for eight years. Our NHS is near breaking point with the pay freeze and untold unfilled vacancies.

The Office of National Statistics reports that 901,000 workers are on zero-hours contracts, with workers forced to work more than one.

According to the Trades Union Congress (TUC) half of zero-hours workers had shifts cancelled at less than 24 hours notice while a third were threatened with cuts in their hours if they turned down work.

This is the reality of big business Britain where workers are forced into precarious work by bosses who put profits before people.

Zero hours means second-class citizenship in the workplace. Only one in eight zero-hours workers gets sick pay. Only one in 14 gets redundancy pay and 40 per cent don’t get holiday pay, while 50 per cent have no written terms and conditions.

This Sunday May 6 at the Marx Memorial Library, the Communist Party of Britain (CPB) and the Young Communist League (YCL) trade union day school Capitalism Today, Low Pay and Zero Hours will address the above issues and focus on organising to win decent employment conditions and pay instead of zero hours and low pay now faced by so many.

There are still a few places left, so if you are interested in attending phone 07771 612 592.

On Saturday May 12 Jeremy Corbyn will speak in London at the TUC rally for the alternative, starting at Victoria  Embankment (between Hungerford Bridge and Blackfriars Bridge) from 11am and move off at 12 noon to Hyde Park, finishing at 4pm.

Andy Bain is the Communist Party trade union organiser and former TSSA president