Tories Slash Sick Pay

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the harper lovern ent which has received remarkably little attention, Employers Strategy Sick Pay-or ESSP).

If you're lucky enough to have a job you will no doubt see from your pay slip that part of your weekly and monthly deductions go to the National Insurance Scheme.

You probably think that this money is all going towards your retirement pension, your sickness benefit when you are Ill, widows pensions, death grants etc. Well think again!

If the Green Paper's propsals become law, then you will still be pay ing out as much from your wages-but the benefits you're entitled to will be seriously slashed. Thatcher is taking the first steps to break up the National Insurance Scheme as an integral part of the cuts in public spending and the drive to sack civil servants in the DHSS.

The main proposals are as follows. First of all that employers should be responsible for paying sick benefit to workers who are off work for up to eight weeks. There will continue to be no sick pay for the first three days of illness as now.

The bosses will only be obliged to pay a minimum rate and all entitlement to state benefit will be abolished for the first eight weeks.

Working inen and women will have no reductions in their contributions to the state scheme, but employers will have their share of contributions cut!

The DHSS deals with about 10 million claims for sickness benefit each year and 80% of these are for periods of less than a month. So at one fell swoop private enterprise will take over massive portion of state welfare. This means the loss of three out of every four jobs in the sickness benefit sections of the DHSS (at least 5,000 jobs).

What is more, the Tories are proposing to abolish the earnings-related supplement which sick workers are entitled to at the moment. Employers will be expected to pay a flat rate minimum which will be taxed and subject to National Insurance deductions! This will hit all workers-and especially those with dependants.

Your own doctor's opinion will no longer be enough either. A firm's medical officer will be able to over-ride any NHS medical certificates.

Closely related to the ESSP Scheme are the attacks on maternity benefits and industrial injuries payments, both of which look certain to be cut So far the annual conferences of the two main civil service unions, the CPSA and the SCPS, have come out strongly against the Green Paper proposals. This reflects the growing rank-and-file fear about the number of jobs to be cut.

But the union leaderships have been silent on the whole matter whilst Thatcher is allowed to set the necessary wheels in motion for the changes to go through.

The CPSA in particular must be forced to take a lead within the TUC in campaigning against the Green Paper. Any such campaign cannot. be divorced from the wider questions of the attacks on social security.

*No reduction in state benefits!

*For an increase in all basic rates which must then be linked to inflation as assessed by trade union committees!

*Open the books of the National Insurance scheme to reveal how much is collected in and how much is paid out! ECONOMY TOUR

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has been the Green Paper on sickness benefits (known as