Socialist Party Wales Socialism In Wales
By Rhys Davies
Power company SSE is threatening to cut 2600 jobs, including 300 in Wales, after being taken over by OVO. The company, which became the UK’s second-biggest energy supplier after buying rival firm SSE last year, is using the pandemic to slash the workforce and drive up workloads for the rest while paying bumper dividends to its shareholders.
OVO took just nine months to betray the commitment it made when it took over SSE that there would be no job losses. Profit-obsessed private companies can’t be trusted to do what is best for workers in the industry or the wider working class: the whole energy sector should be nationalised and run under democratic workers’ control and management.
Ovo plans to close SSE offices in Glasgow and Reading as well as a third that belonged to Spark Energy, which it swallowed in 2018. SSE’s 870 Welsh employees, spread over four bases, are waiting to hear whose jobs are on the line in Wales.
The company has blamed the pandemic, but at most most the virus has sped up the company’s slash-and-burn plans, which are purely driven by profit-seeking. Unlike retailers, housebuilders and telecoms firms, many energy companies have not halted dividend payments. SSE paid investors over half a billion pounds in dividends.
The public statements by the company have attempted to disguise this move as simply an acceleration of necessary changes brought about by the current crisis, such as digitisation and a change in demand. Customers are being told to read their own meters as a way of cutting workers. They also try to win public sympathy by using customer service and the environmental emergency to justify their decision.
Union leaders have so far fallen short of what is necessary to defend workers’ interests. Unite has called for the company to furlough workers rather than cut them but has not announced plans for action if the company refuses, and Unison has limited its demands to voluntary rather than compulsory redundancies. Expressing regret and pressing for explanations: unions must demonstrate that they are prepared to take bold action to defend every job that faces the chop in the period ahead. Any productivity gains from the introduction of new technology should translate into shorter working hours and more pay for the workforce and shorter bills for customers, not bumper profits for big business investors.
Unite successfully negotiated for nearly 500 EDF Energy workers to be furloughed on 100% pay during the coronavirus pandemic. The agreement covered meter installers, meter fixers and revenue collection workers in London, the south east and south west regions. Energy workers across the sector should fight for the same deal.
Capitalism is a system that prioritises the accumulation of wealth over workers’ interests, and has been shown again and again to be unable to provide the necessities of life to the vast majority of people. By paying out shareholder dividends and making mass redundancies, SSE have demonstrated this yet again.
Any big company which threatens job cuts in this period should have to open its books to trade-union inspection and should be nationalised to save jobs if it genuinely couldn’t afford to pay its workers. The energy sector as a whole, along with all other big firms currently profiting from basic human needs, should be nationalised under democratic workers’ control and management in order to guarantee secure employment and save the environment.
