Article from the Jan 2005 issue of the Socialist , newspaper of the Socialist Party, Irish section of the CWI

scrooges of the year award

By Daniel Waldron Socialist Youth organiser

THIS YEAR'S Scrooge of the Year Award, run by Socialist Youth in the North, has certainly attracted some worthy nominees, and the chosen winner well deserves the title!

This year's winner of the booby prize is Barry Gardiner, the NIO Minister in charge of education. He gets the award for forcing brutal cuts upon our schools and libraries. Schools face deficits of millions of pounds, and it is set to get worse when New Labour cuts a further £40m from our education service in the next budget! These cuts include cancelling all but emergency maintenance, slashing the school meal provision and sacking all temporary and agency staff.

Runners-up are Securicor Group 4 Guarding. This profitable company has refused to give their workers the four weeks annual holidays they're entitled to, allowing them only half this time off. Also, this Christmas, they told employees working on the Xmas and Boxing Day bank holidays they would not be getting the double pay their contracts include, and those who refused to work would "have made themselves unemployed".

In third place is TK Maxx in Belfast, who cheated a young employee out off 3/4 of her pay over a three-month period because of a technical fault with their clocking-on system. These disgraceful examples are not the exceptions and Socialist Youth will continue fighting for workers rights!