This is the first of two articles looking at the decline in the quality of life for working people in Britain today. This first article focuses on the workplace, where there has been relative decline in wages and deterioration in the conditions of employment. The second part looks at the attack on the ‘social wage’. This consists of the services and facilities we access such as health care, education, public transport and local services – all of which contribute towards the quality of life for working people in modern society. They form the provision in society of things working people, unlike the rich, could not afford to buy individually but provided on behalf of people by the State. Together the two elements – direct wages and the social wage – provide our quality of life, but both are now under attack, creating an impoverished life in Britain for working people.
Decline in Wage Levels
The first, and most obvious, experience working people are having today is a decline in the purchasing power of wages. This occurs when prices of the goods and services we need to buy increase at a greater rate than wages. In terms of purchasing power, the wages that working people have received has been declining in Britain over the past few years. The published figures announced by the government hide the true situation by not including items that form a large part of working class budgets, such as rent, mortgages or council tax rises.
However, a more honest measure of real incomes can be gained looking at alternative figures. The ‘take home pay index’ compiled by VocaLink, for example, provides information for the banking industry so that it can know the actual spending going on in the economy. VocaLink’s evaluation for 2006 was that "the growth in take home pay is falling, at a time when households already face higher mortgage and credit card costs from rising interest rates". This loss in wage income was compounded during 2007 when they concluded that "growth of take home pay has been modest throughout 2007, averaging just 3.5 per cent". Yet during 2007, people experienced a real inflation in prices in excess of 6%. This means simply that wages buy less and less, requiring cut-backs in what we can afford or pushing us to work longer hours (assuming, that is, that overtime is available). In terms of our direct wages, we are clearly getting poorer.
This situation contrasts sharply with the bank accounts of the rich and the huge expansion in executive salaries. As the ‘Guardian’ survey last year revealed, executive pay went up by 37%, with an average pay for a chief executive at nearly £3 million – paid out by businesses, and justified by government ministers. Last month, Labour Minister John Hutton stated that huge salaries should be celebrated; and Northern Rock former chief executive Adam Applegarth is being given a £760,000 ‘golden goodbye’. In sharp contrast to this is the attitude taken towards the more modest claims of working people; Alistair Darling says public sector pay is to be limited to between 2-3%, with anything higher condemned as inflationary and unreasonable!
It’s not surprising that this situation has led to an increase in income inequality; the figures clearly indicate this. In 1996, just prior to Labour’s election victory, 10% of the population owned 63% of the wealth (excluding housing); now 10% own 71%. Britain under New Labour has become a more unequal society.
Faced with this situation, it is important for trade unions to fight clearly for wage increases that both match current inflation and make up for lost earnings over the past few years. It shows also the importance for unions and individual trade unionists to work actively in the Labour Party, and not leave the party in the hands of those who are clearly anti-working class, presiding over a decline in our living standards.
Casualisation of labour
Poverty of life in the workplace is not only experienced through declining wages, but also in terms of conditions of employment. In Britain there are some 1.4 million agency and temporary workers, whose ranks are growing year by year, and some of this growth comes directly from the privatisation of the public sector.
As the government pushes marketisation, jobs cease to be managed by government departments or local councils, where there is more security of employment and nationally agreed pension arrangements. In their place private firms take over the same tasks; they then employ staff through employment agencies, rather than direct employment. These workers then experience worse pay and conditions, ranging from lower basic wages and overtime, to lack of sickness benefits, holidays, maternity rights or pensions. Outside of the ex-public service sector, there is also a huge growth in casual employment in the manufacturing and service sectors such as hotels and catering. And this type of employment is not just in backstreet sweat shops. For example the majority of the workforce at BMW’s Hams Hall engine plant in Birmingham are made up of agency workers.
Even in the teaching ‘profession’ casual employment is increasingly being used by management; it is now common to only employ part-time staff through agencies, rather than directly through the school or college. These people lose their employment rights and can be made redundant at the end of a sequence of short-term contracts, even though these contracts may end up running for several years. That is, there is really a permanent job that is being carried out, but the commitment to employment rights and pensions, which the employer should take on board, are avoided by the use of agencies.
While Gordon Brown took the pledge this year at Davos, with global capitalist friends, swearing allegiance to the ideology of the free market, millions in Britain face a poorer quality of life as a result of casual employment and poor working conditions.
Overtime and long hours
The poor conditions of employment that arise out of job casualisation also affect those in more permanent posts. The growth of a casualised workforce is used to help force down wages and demand extra work. In Britain this is particularly reflected in the abuse of overtime working. The TUC pointed out that four million people work more than 48 hours a week on average, an increase of more than 700,000 people since 1992. Full time employees in the UK work the longest hours in Europe – and these long hours are damaging family life and social life. Regular working of excessive hours is a direct contributor to poor health. In the Samaritans 2003 Stressed Out survey, they observed that: "People’s jobs are the single biggest cause of stress… with over a third (36%) of Britons citing it as one of their biggest stressors."
The reality of this overworked culture amounts to people being caught in a squeeze between business pushing workers to work unpaid overtime and strategies adopted by workers to maintain their own living standards, not through higher wages, but longer hours. Both blades of this scissor movement amount to a poorer quality of life.
Last month during a lunch break at work, several of my colleagues reflected that when we were at school our teachers suggested that in the future the problem would not be work, but what to do with our leisure time. The soothsayers of the time were prophesying that technology would bring the working week down to 20 hours or less! New technology has certainly developed (beyond the imagination of our teachers at that time), but we are working longer hours than our parents were 50 years ago. Why is life harder? Why do we have to work such long hours? And, what is happening to all the wealth now being produced?
Marx pointed out that capitalists can make more profits by either: paying lower wages or extending the working day, that is paying us the same for working longer. There is no doubt that both strategies seem to be adopted today. Real wages are dropping as pay rises fail to keep pace with inflation; and we are working longer hours, a lot of it as unpaid overtime. All this is happening whilst the rich are getting richer and inequality in society is growing. Last month the TUC’s analysis of official figures indicated that the number of people working unpaid overtime had increased by 103,000 during 2007, bringing the total to nearly five million.
Need for change
However New Labour politicians spin it, or however much the media might ignore the issue, working families know, from their daily experience, that the quality of life in Britain is declining. The greed of capitalism and the crisis of profits are being reflected in the relative reduction in wages and increasingly harsh conditions in the workplace. Living and working in 21st century Britain is harder and more stressful. It is time to look for clear alternatives. We don’t want the inequality and chaos of the market system, but rather a rational planned society where the value of wealth that is produced is used to improve the quality of all our lives, where the benefits of new technology can be used to reduce the working week, not boost the profits of the few.
