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The
most recent incarnation of a demand for a living wage
movement started in the USA – in Baltimore the
early 1990s – and it has since spread to many
cities in the USA, before coming to the UK in the early
2000s. For the latest calculations about the impact
of the living wage on workers and employers across the
UK, please go to the 'numbers
and money page'.
There are important historical legacies of the demand
for a living wage which go back to miners in Britain
during the 1870s and as Sidney and Beatrice Webb argued,
the early trade unions started to challenge the ‘doctrine
of supply and demand’ with the ‘doctrine
of a living wage’. A living wage bill was actually
proposed in the House of Commons in February 1931 by
James Maxton MP, and - with remarkable contemporary
resonance - Maxton located the policy within the context
of the curse of under-consumption. At a time of economic
crisis and high unemployment, and in the wake of the
general strike, Maxton and his ILP colleagues sought
to focus on the politics of consumption. A living wage,
they argued, would allow the population to consume ‘the
essential things of life … food, better housing,
better furnishing, equipment inside their home, better
illumination of those homes, and better sanitation.’
This, in turn, would stimulate growth, jobs and prosperity
for the nation at large: putting money into the pockets
of poor people was argued to be a way out of decline.
Following
the development of the welfare state after WWII, the
demand for a living wage subsided until its most recent
manifestation in London, since 2001.
London Citizens – a broad based alliance of faith
organisations, schools, trade union branches and community
groups – launched the call for a living wage in
April 2001. They made an argument that low pay had costs
for the whole community, impacting on health, educational
achievement and parenting, family life and civility.
Since that call, the campaign has spread from hospitals,
to the finance houses of Canary Wharf and the City,
to Universities, local government and shops. Given the
excitement about 2012, the campaign has also secured
agreements that all the new jobs at the Olympic site
will be living wage, making sure that the benefits of
the massive investment reach at least some of London’s
working poor.
For
a chronological history of the campaign, please click
here.
Since 2005, The Mayors of London, Ken Livingstone –
followed from 2008 by Boris Johnson – have put
resources into a living wage unit at City Hall. A team
of researchers establish the living wage figure for
London each year. This table shows the gap between the
National Minimum Wage and London’s living wage
– and the GLA calculate that about 1 in 5 workers
in London fall into this gap.
Mapping the gap between the National Minimum
Wage and the London Living Wage
| Year |
NMW* |
LLW** |
Difference |
LLW w/o benefits |
| 2003 |
4.5 |
6.40 |
1.90 |
|
| 2004 |
4.85 |
6.50 |
1.65 |
|
| 2005 |
5.05 |
6.70 |
1.65 |
8.10 |
| 2006 |
5.35 |
7.05 |
1.70 |
9.00 |
| 2007 |
5.52 |
7.20 |
1.68 |
9.15 |
| 2008 |
5.73 |
7.45 |
1.72 |
9.60 |
| 2009 |
5.80 |
7.60 |
1.80 |
9.85 |
| 2010 |
5.93 |
7.85 |
1.92 |
10.15 |
| 2011 |
6.08 |
8.30 |
2.22 |
10.40 |
| 2012 |
6.19 |
8.55 |
2.36 |
10.70 |
* set by the Government funded Low Pay
Commission (http://www.lowpay.gov.uk)
** calcuated by the GLA from 2005
(http://www.london.gov.uk/mayor/economic_unit/workstreams/living-wage.jsp)
In
2006, Queen Mary pledged to be the first living wage
campus in the UK and the story of the cleaning service
and its move back in-house has been the subject of a
short report that you can access here:
The
business case for the living wage: the story of the
cleaning service at Queen Mary [PDF 1.52 MB]
In 2011 Queen Mary was proud to become a founding partner
of the new Living
Wage Foundation which seeks to disseminate the concept
of, and commitment to paying, the living wage across
the UK.
For a summary of the key developments and estimates
of the money redistributed, click
here.
For the past decade, I have been researching the development
and impact of the London living wage.
These
are some of the documents that summarise the work that
I’ve done:
The first project aimed to map the numbers and characteristics
of the workers falling into the gap between the newly
calculated LLW and the National Minimum Wage in 2001.
This project, funded by UNISON, produced the report
called Mapping Low Pay
[pdf, 364kb].
As part of the ESRC’s Identity and Social Action
programme I then explored the links between cleaning,
cleaners and political mobilisation. A short leaflet
summarising the findings of this research can be downloaded
here. The final
research report submitted to the ESRC is also available
and you can download a press
release related summarising this work.
Working
with colleagues, I have also located the demand for
a living wage in the context of London’s low paid
economy, the significance of subcontracting and increased
volumes of immigrant labour supply. This ESRC-funded
research has been published in a book called Global
Cities at Work: New migrant divisions of labour
(Pluto, 2010) and you can find out more from the project
website.
The following papers make the argument that the living
wage campaign has successfully prosecuted a traditional
labour demand (for increased wages and better conditions)
via unusual means – through a broad-based coalition,
operating at the scale of the labour market, deploying
the authority of official government and using the media
to increase the pressure for change.
Photos © Chris Jepson
A global workforce
in a global city: The skills, experiences and aspirations
of a group of contract cleaners in London, UK (April
2007) reports the extraordinary diversity and labour
market histories of the 105 workers cleaning one building
at Canary Wharf.
Making class politics possible: Organizing contract
cleaners in London International Journal of Urban
and Regional Research, 2008, 32, 2, 305–24.
Subcontracted
employment and its challenge to labour. Labor
Studies Journal, 2009, 34, 4. NB: you have
access to this paper as a special concession from the
journal as it was the most downloaded article in 2009
and 2010.
The living wage. Soundings:
A journal of politics and culture, 2009, 42, 33-46.
[pdf, 180kb]
Religion at work: The role of faith-based organisations
in living wage campaigns for immigrant workers in London.
Special issue entitled Transforming Work, The Cambridge
Journal of Regions, Economy and Society 2009, 2,
3, 443-62. (Written with Kavita Datta, Yara Evans, Joanna
Herbert, Jon May and Cathy McIlwaine).
A Living Wage Olympics
Prior to London winning the bid to host the Olympic
Games in 2012, London Citizens (LC) secured an agreement
to make this the first ever living wage Olympics. In
2012, LC worked with LOCOG to ensure that local unemployed
people get to the front of the hiring queues for the
living wage jobs. LC set up a pioneering community-led
job brokerage to identify local talent and organise
recruitment meetings with the Olympic contractors.More
than 1200 local people got living wage jobs through
this work.
This work is summarised in this short
editorial:
Wills, J. London’s Olympics in 2012: The good,
the bad and an organising opportunity. Political
Geography, 2013, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2012.12.003
Our undergraduate students were commisssioned
to evaluate this initiative and the four best reports
- written by Sakera Begum, Nadine Clokey, Poppy Coppins
and Jackie Mong - can be downloaded here:
Bringing
the Olympics to East London - Nadine Clokey
The
London 2012 Olympics: Local Jobs for Local People? -
Investigating a communityy-led employment initiative
- Jackie Mong
London
2012 Olympics: bringing a new flame to the East End?
- Poppy Coppins
Olympic
jobs for local people: Investigating a community-led
employment initiative - Sakera Begum
The living wage campaign is also outlined in these
chapters available in edited books:
Campaigning for low paid workers: The East London
Communities Organisation (TELCO) Living Wage Campaign,
in W. Brown, G. Healy, E. Heery and P. Taylor (eds)
The Future of Worker Representation. Oxford: Oxford
University Press. 2004 p.264–282.
Organizing labor in London: Lessons from the campaign
for a living wage, in L. Turner and D. Cornfield (eds)
Labour in the new urban battlegrounds: Local solidarity
in a global economy. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press, 2007, 211–23. (written with Jane Holgate)
Faith in Politics, Urban Studies, 2008, 45, 10, 2035–2056.
(written with Lina Jamoul). And for an earlier version
of this paper, please click here:
[pdf, 240kb]
The London Living Wage in A. Kumar, J. A. Scholte,
M. Kaldor, M. Glasius, H. Seckinelgin and H. Anheier
(eds) Global Civil Society Yearbook 2009: Poverty and
activism. London: Sage, 176-182.
The
ESRC also commissioned the photographer Chris Clunn
to work with a number of the Identities research projects
and you can see some wonderful pictures that reflect
the range of tasks involved in cleaning a large office
building, the skills involved in the work and the ethnic
diversity of the cleaners doing the work by going to:
http://www.geog.qmul.ac.uk/cleaners/.
Photo © Chris Clunn
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