Chapter 5

Newcastle-upon-Tyne. October the same year.

“Surely they’re not serious?” Dorothy Trenton was talking to one of her people.

“That’s what they’ve told us. They’re gonna cut our salary, and put us on a zero-hour contract.”

Dorothy shook her head. As the local leader of USDAW, the shop workers union, she knew she had, and would always have, very little true influence. USDAW was a relatively weak union, its usually unskilled members easy to hire and fire. In a way it was this very weakness that had drawn her towards the union, hoping to make a small impact.

“But you’re already on the legal minimum wage aren’t you?” The legal minimum wage in the UK had been unchanged for almost six years, despite many and varied promises to update and uprate it.

Her visitor nodded. “Yeah.”

“Do you know by how much they plan to cut it?”

“One pound twenty five an hour, about twelve percent.”

“Down to eight pounds something an hour?”

“Uh huh. Just over nine.”

“Flamin’ hell. Is it just this one store, or all of them?”

“Within Tesco’s it’s all of them. Couldn’t tell you about other stores though.”

“All right, leave it with me.”

Her visitor, the union representative for one of the larger Tesco stores in Newcastle, nodded and left.

“Oh hell,” she murmured. Looking down her list of contacts, she quickly found numbers for the equivalent in some of the other larger stores.

An hour later, to her dismay, she found that a number of the other stores were also planning on cutting wages. Aldi and Lidl had already done so, but because they refused to recognise the unions, the information had only just got out; Sainsbury’s hadn’t, yet, but it was widely believed they would; Morrisons were going to, but no date had been set; ASDA, still owned by the American Walmart company, had announced they were seriously looking into it, but again they hadn’t yet done anything; Marks&Spencer had said they wouldn’t; while Waitrose had merely said that it was down to the shareholders. Since the staff were thirty percent of the shareholders, no one quite knew what was going to happen.

Dorothy was exhausted. She’d done the supermarkets, now onto the other department stores. M&S fell into this category as well, so that was probably good. John Lewis were the other seventy percent of Waitrose so that was a difficult call, while the top stores like House of Fraser, Selfriges, Fortnum and Mason, and Harrods were keeping their cards very close to their chests. Most of the smaller high street stores, especially the independents, were reducing wages. In part, she knew, it was down to difficalt tradimg because of on-line business taking business, but politics, and in particular the current governments vehement anti-union stand, also played a big part.

She decided that rather than try and speak to the manager of her favourite low cost fashion store on the telephone, she would visit him in person. Even if she didn’t get the answer she hoped for, she hoped she would get a feel for what was happening on the high street.

“Missus Trenton, so glad to see you.”

Dorothy knew the man was lying, but it never hurt to be polite, so she merely nodded and shook the man’s hand.

“Mister Graham, thank you for seeing me.”

“How can I help you?”

“I’m after information.”

“Oh? What sort?”

“Pay. Salary. Shop floor wages to be precise.”

“I don’t believe it’s any of your business Ms. Trenton.”

“It’s missus, and as the local USDAW union leader, it is very much my business when my members start getting stung.”

“We don’t recognise USDAW, nor indeed any other union.”

“Maybe, but you cannot stop your staff belonging to the union. Doing so is illegal and you know it.”

“That’s as may-be, but as I personally don’t recognise your union, I also don’t recognise your right to ask this information.”

Dorothy nodded her head. “Many of the supermarkets are deliberately starting to pay below the national minimum wage. In the past you have always paid a few percent above it, which is one of the reasons we have never worried too much that you don’t recognise a union. All I’m asking is that you keep to that promise, even if it is only an implicit one, and we’ll stay out of your hair.”

“What I pay my staff, or plan to do so in the future, my staff will find out as and when I decide. Not you. In fact, part of the staff contract is that no member is permitted to discuss their wages with anyone except their line manager or the payroll department. If anyone does tell you, then they will have broken their staff contract, and I will dismiss them.”

“That is an illegal clause which could invalidate the whole contract. You cannot force staff not to tell their union.”

The manager grinned wolfishly. “And who’s going to enforce it? Who’s going to stop us? If we don’t use it, there’s nothing to sue us on, and if we do, by the time it comes to a court case, we will have broken you, and there will be nobody to stop us.” Dot was slightly confused by the man’s rantings, but she understood his basic meaning. He believed the illegal clause couldn’t be opposed.

“We,” she said heavily, “are not the law. We would not be the ones taking you, or rather that contract, to court. I can and indeed will, report you to the appropriate authorities. It is they, as part of the legal system, who will take you to court. Now. Since neither of us want that to happen, and since, so far, you have indeed kept your wages slightly ahead of the legal minimum, I am merely asking you to carry on doing that.”

“How do you know we have kept ahead? For you to know, someone must have told you, and that means when we find them, they will be dismissed.”

Dorothy gave a slightly smug smile of her own. “You obviously weren’t aware of it, but I worked in this very store for four years when I first left school.” She nodded. “So I know from personal experience that you kept ahead. Your staff contract of the time said you would try to keep doing that. Have you changed your contract since I worked here?”

“Contracts get changed and updated almost every year, Missus Trenton, as you would have been well aware. That means someone must have shown you a recent one. Pass it over please.”

She shook her head. “You don’t seriously think I’m that idiotic do you? I have indeed seen a copy of a recent contract. More than one in fact. When our legal eagles went through them, they noticed they were all subtly different. As such I have no intention of letting you see the copies I have. I suspect that at the very least they will lead back to a very small number of people.”

Hugh Graham did indeed want the contracts for that very reason, and his fury at her denial showed briefly in his eyes. In fact any individual contract did not lead to an individual person, but it did lead to a particular department in a particular store. It shouldn’t be that difficult to then narrow it down to an individual employee.

“And if the contracts are changed tomorrow, what will you do about it?”

“Well I suppose I could pull my members out on strike,” she began.

“And I will sack any member of staff who does,” he interrupted before she could go on to say that she didn’t want to do this.

Unfortunately his interruption had ensured what she had been about to say was no longer worth saying. It would appear as if she was back pedalling under his threat. She changed tack.

“You could, but that too is illegal, and once again I would have to inform the authorities that you are breaking the law.”

He burst into laughter. “The authorities don’t care. In fact not only do they not care, they actually support us.”

“Support you?” she scoffed, but Dorothy was now concerned. Hugh Graham seemed supremely confident. Too confident for her comfort.

“They support us because we support them.”

Dorothy gasped, but ploughed gamely on, knowing she had, in reality, already lost.

“The Revenue won’t be impressed. If you cut wages, then they lose out on their tax take. That will influence the exchequer and through them the government. The chancellor is the second most important person in the cabinet, he will have to tell the prime minister, and next thing you know they will be investigating, and when they find you...” She left her threat unsaid.

Mr. Graham frowned slightly. That he hadn’t thought about. But then he remembered the promises he’d been given and his faint worry evaporated. He shrugged. “I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. In the mean time...”

It was her turn to interrupt.

“I could just persuade your customers to go elsewhere. Marks And Spencer are not cutting their wages.”

Graham laughed uproariously. Dorothy frowned slightly.

“I fail to see what’s so funny,” she stated in an irritated tone.

“M&S won’t be around much longer.”

“They won’t? What makes you think that? They seem to be currently both popular and profitable. I can’t see them going out of business just like that.”

Mr. Graham stopped laughing and thrust his face towards her, his fury and hatred now plain to see. “M&S are run by fucking Jew boys. Jews,” his face screwed up with hatred and disgust as he said it, “won’t be allowed to own property or businesses very soon, nor will they be allowed to manage or run them.” He pointed a finger at Dorothy Trenton. “You, Missus Trenton, are about to get a very sharp shock. Now fuck off out of MY office.” It had been a long held belief that Marks and Spencer only allowed jews at the highest level of their management team. It had never been true, but it was still believed by many.