I was talking to a young friend the other day and we got round to wages. He had great difficulty grasping that in my first job as an apprentice farmer my wage was £1 a week and my keep but could see the sense in that as I was a learner. However, when I told him that my first regular wage as a wagon driver was 15p an hour and I got married off that he was completely baffled. How could anyone keep a family and buy a seven acre farm of less than £10 a week! I can understand his bemusement though many of my older readers can tell the same story.
This got me to thinking about wages today and the contrasts with fifty years ago. The first thing that strikes me is that my wages then were controlled by a 'Wages Council', The wages councils were statutory bodies that set minimum rates of pay and other conditions of employment in low-wage industries in the UK for much of the twentieth century. With the exception of the Agricultural Wages Board, they were abolished by the Conservative government of John Major in the early 1990s. The Labour government of 1997 went some way to addressing this by instituting the National Minimum wage but it seems to me that the level at which this was set was well below what we got from the wages councils in real terms. Housing in particular has become far more expensive and there is no way a person on the minimum wage could afford to buy Hey Farm!
There is another problem. I was talking to a security guard and was surprised to hear that all his hours were paid at the basic rate, there was no enhancement for overtime. One of the saving graces of the wage structure fifty years ago was that if we worked overtime we got paid time and a half. If the overtime was outside the statutory working week, we got double time and if this coincided with a holiday we got triple time or a day off in lieu. It seems to me that in many low paid jobs today these benefits are no longer statutory and so aren't paid which leads me to wonder who was better off? I used to have to work cruel hours in those days but at least I knew that any hours over, I think it was 42, I was earning at a better rate. This made it easier to bear and at the end of say a 70 hour week the wage was almost doubled. No such consolation for those workers in our 'modern society' who don't get these benefits. There is more; I learned the other day of a cunning wheeze whereby experienced people can be employed at less than the minimum wage if they are classed as 'apprentices'. If they are 'interns' they can be working for nothing. Call me old fashioned but I can hear the words of my old Sunday School Teacher quoting from the Bible, “The labourer is worthy of his hire”. (1 Timothy. 5:18. The same passage where we are exhorted not to muzzle the ox.) I think it is wicked to employ people at below a living wage. I can still hear the mantra that became common under Margaret Thatcher, “Be grateful you've got a job”, funny how low wages are seen to be the recipe for a healthy economy if you are one of the better earners!
Sorry, I know I'm getting carried away here but it makes me so angry to see young couples struggling to keep their heads above water when they are both working. Even in the 'bad old days' my wife could stay at home and rear our children while I went out and did the bread-winning. My purpose in life was clear and the fact I was succeeding in keeping the family was a great incentive to work the long hours in all weathers. I knew why I was doing it and could see the results. I was talking to a young couple one day, both of them full-time nurses and their biggest worry was if the wife fell pregnant and cut their income as this would mean they couldn't afford the mortgage. This is not fair and in the end it will damage our society.
Of course, in the present recession we are told that “We are all in this together” and unemployment rises. Particularly hard hit are the young and working women. Take one of the better jobs; suppose you work on a low wage for one of the banks, there are many if these low paid workers, and you see reports of the management getting enormous wages and large bonuses. Does this inspire you to work harder or do you gradually become more and more resentful? I know what the effect would be on me!
Fifty years ago worker could see signs of improvement in pay, conditions and the public services. We had the promise of support if we were ill, unemployed or old. We knew about the rich of course but this didn't really bother us, it was how things were. Today the gap between rich and poor increases daily, we are battered with news reports of people getting obscene rewards just for doing their jobs and it seems to be that the wealthier you are and the more able to afford fancy tax lawyers and consultants, the less tax you pay. The irony of the situation is that the way out of our economic woes is to have more people in work producing goods and adding value to raw materials. The present austerity cuts are putting the axe to the roots of that tree of growth. It may be that the capital holders are cutting their own throats by their greed. The problem with this is that if I am right, they are making sure they drag us down with them.
In 1918 when the Labour Party was founded Clause IV in their constitution read “To secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible..... and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry or service.” It was ditched by New Labour in 1995 to aid their appeal to the middle class voters. While I will admit that the original wording was too strong on public ownership but I could never see anything wrong with the general aim. Perhaps we need a modified version today as an aspiration of equality.
The last pay day at Bancroft Shed in 1977. The world of work was changing, and not for the better.
I learnt a lot doing that job.
