Yvonne Cook's blog

Do you get a living wage? Would you pay one? John Sentamu, the Archbishop of York, wants to hear your views.

Millions of people across the country will get up today, leave their families and travel to work to carry out jobs that we all depend on. They will care for people, serve us food, clean the spaces that we all use and share. They will do more than a fair day's work, but they won't get a fair day's pay.

The scale of low pay in Britain is a national scandal. Come pay day, nearly five million people in this country won't have been paid at a rate high enough to live on. Just think about that. Nearly five million people give their time, their skills and their energy to perform jobs – many of which we all depend on – but don't get paid enough by their employers to even get by. That means not enough money to heat their homes, or feed their families, or plan for a rainy day.

The consequences for so many people and their families are devastating. Women, as the majority of low-paid workers in this country, are hit particularly hard. Low pay threatens the great strides that have been made in gender equality in recent decades because it undermines women's economic independence. This is a huge loss for them and for society as a whole.

So far, all governments have been merely applying a sticking plaster to the crisis of low pay. The holes in millions of pay cheques are being plugged by in-work support to the tune of £4bn a year.

But why aren't those who are profiting from their workers paying up? Why is the government having to subsidise businesses which don't pay their employees enough to live on? These are questions we need to answer and act on – fast. The cost of living is rising but wages are not.

In the rush for profit, and for high pay at the top, too many companies have forgotten the basic moral imperative that employees be paid enough to live on. So how do we resurrect that imperative?

The living wage: three words that provide hope of an alternative. Championed by community groups across the country, it is a deceptively simple idea. A wage rate set to ensure a basic but acceptable standard of living.

Over the past decade, workers, trade unionists and campaigners at Citizens UK and the Living Wage Foundation have seized on this idea and driven it into mainstream Westminster policy debates.

Because of their tireless efforts, 284 businesses have adopted the living wage, which is currently set at £8.55 an hour in London and £7.45 throughout the rest of the UK. (The minimum wage required by law is £6.19). Around 45,000 people have seen their pay cheque boosted as a result.

Politicians have started to sing the praises of the living wage, too. Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, called it "an idea whose time has come". Boris Johnson, the mayor of London, said: "A fair and decent wage for Londoners is critical if the capital is to remain diverse, inclusive and prosperous", while the prime minister, David Cameron, has described it as a "good and attractive idea".

I agree. At the end of the day, though, what workers really need is pay, not platitudes. The reality is that despite these warm words, too few companies have stepped up to the mark. For the vast majority of low-paid people in the UK, the living wage remains an abstract concept, not a description of their pay rate.

That has to change. But how is change to be achieved? That is what the Living Wage Commission, which I will be chairing over the next 12 months, will set out to uncover. With colleagues from business, trade unions and civil society, we will investigate the future of the living wage.

What is the full potential of the living wage to both change people's lives and change the way we do business? What are the barriers to companies adopting the living wage – and how could we surmount them?

To answer those questions, we need to have a national conversation about low pay in Britain. If you are paid less than the living wage, I want to hear from you. If you are a business which is considering the living wage, or which thinks it would be untenable to adopt, I want to hear from you, too.

By mapping the potential of the living wage, and facing the challenging questions about implementation head on, I believe that we can not only build fairer workplaces but also help build a just and good society.
John Sentamu

This article originally appeared in The Observer on July 21 2013.  It is reproduced here with kind permission.

More information

• John Sentamu, the Archbishop of York, launched the Living Wage mission on July 22. You can find out more on the Archbishop of York's website. 
• For more information on the living wage see the Living Wage Commission. 
• For previous Society Matters posts on the living wage see The new working class and Minimum wage declines.

 
The views expressed in this post, as in all posts on Society Matters, are the views of the author, not The Open University.

Cartoon by Catherine Pain

In the first of three posts, Meg Barker examines how romance is explored in the movie Ruby Sparks.

Recently I got round to watching last year's movie Ruby Sparks on DVD. I'd been looking forward to watching this film for some time because it is a meditation on what would happen if we could create our perfect partner. The film was everything I'd hoped for. However, when I gushed about it on Facebook, several people said they had felt let down by the ending. Here I want to present my take on the film, and to explain why I think the ending needed to be the way it was.

In the film an isolated writer (Calvin Weir-Fields) has writer's block, having published one highly successful book when he was pretty young. His therapist encourages him to write a brief account of a positive encounter with another person. He invents a scenario where he meets his perfect girlfriend in the park. Soon he is writing more and more about her because he enjoys imagining her so much. He describes her to his therapist:

'Ruby's first crushes were Humphrey Bogart and John Lennon. She cried the day she found out they were already dead. Ruby got kicked out of high school for sleeping with her art teacher... or maybe her Spanish teacher. I haven't decided yet. Ruby can't drive. She doesn't own a computer. She hates her middle name, which is Tiffany. She always, always roots for the underdog. She's complicated. That's what I like best about her. Ruby's not so good at life sometimes. She forgets to open bills or cash checks and... Her last boyfriend was 49. The one before that was an alcoholic. She can feel a change coming. She's looking for it.'

Spoiler alert: Don't read on if you want to watch the movie without knowing what happens.

During the time that he is writing about Ruby, Calvin starts to find bits of women's clothing around his house and things in his bathroom cabinet that don't belong to him. Then one day he returns home to find that Ruby exists and is living with him. She believes that everything from their first encounter to her moving in with him has actually happened.

After initial confusion Calvin is delighted and throws himself into a real relationship with Ruby. The two enjoy a perfect honeymoon period captured in a movie montage of dancing, beaches and running around town. But things start to sour when Calvin introduces Ruby to his family whom she loves whilst he finds them problematic. He begins to become grumpy with the very things that he created Ruby to be.

Calvin's brother, Harry, has suggested that Calvin should continue writing about Ruby in order to make her into whatever he wants. However, even when she is getting on his nerves Calvin refuses to do this. Then Ruby begins to pull away for some independence: wanting to start a job, hanging out with her friends, and deciding to spend one night a week back at her own flat to give them some space. Calvin panics and returns to his typewriter. He writes that Ruby was sad whenever she wasn't with Calvin. Ruby then becomes needy and tearful, unable to be parted from Calvin for a moment. Calvin writes that Ruby was effervescently happy all of the time, in order to try to keep her with him but not so demanding. This also backfires because constant happiness is hard to take, and because it is clear that Ruby isn't choosing to be with Calvin at this point, so he writes her back to normal.

The couple return to bickering and fighting when Ruby doesn't do what Calvin wants her to do. There is also the sense that the constant changes have taken a toll on Ruby emotionally. At a party she is left alone and flirts with Calvin's agent. At this point Calvin explodes and tells her what she is, forcing her to do things by typing them out as she stands in front of him. Finally he stops and she runs to her room. He is struck by the horror of what he has become and leaves all of the pages that he has ever written about Ruby outside her room with a final line saying that Ruby is no longer bound by the past and that as she leaves the house she is set free.

The following morning Ruby has disappeared and Calvin is left alone to mourn. Eventually he pulls himself together and buys a computer instead of a typewriter. This was a relief to me because the main problem that I had with the film was understanding how somebody could write a perfect first draft into a typewriter! Calvin writes the story of his time with Ruby, anonymised, and it is a great success.

At the end of the film – which my Facebook friends found so problematic – Calvin bumps into Ruby in the park. She is reading his new book but clearly she has forgotten everything that happened due to being set free. They have some banter similar to the first time that they met and it seems that Calvin has been given a second chance at the relationship, but this time having learnt his lessons in love.

There are probably many different readings of this film, and perhaps the way in which you read it affects how you view the ending. Two readings particularly struck me: we could understand the film as an exploration of gender in relationships (and wider society), and/or we could understand it as an examination of how people relate to each other more broadly. We don't have to discard one reading in order to accept the other as both are possible through the same situations, and indeed the way we relate to each other is generally infused with gender. However, the latter reading perhaps invites a more sympathetic understanding of Calvin: and one in which we might be more likely to wish him the redemption he receives in the final scene.

To be continued...
Meg Barker 23 July 2013

Meg Barker is an Open University lecturer teaching mainly on counselling modules, and is also a therapist specialising in relationships. Find her other blogs here. 

The views expressed in this post, as in all posts on Society Matters, are the views of the author, not The Open University.

Cartoon by Catherine Pain

This week's reduction in unemployment was hailed as a sure sign of the green shoots of recovery. But to grow them, households have to keep spending, writes Alan Shipman. 

After the longest convalescence since (recorded) recessions began, the UK economy is showing clear recovery signs. Year-on-year national output (GDP) growth doubled to 0.6% in the second quarter, according to estimates by the widely respected National Institute of Economic and Social Research.  The International Monetary Fund has upgraded its full-year growth forecast to almost 1% while downgrading the rest of the EU. On top of this, the Office of National Statistics recently revised its national output data to show that the widely lamented ‘double dip’ recession never actually occurred. 

Even more remarkably, the recovery is being led by consumer spending. Households that shunned the shops after 2008, to cope with falling real incomes and reduced credit options, are starting to splash out again. Although strong second-quarter retail sales growth helped online channels more than embattled High Streets, upbeat buyer-intention surveys suggest it will be more than a warm-day wonder. 

This isn’t quite the promised ‘rebalancing’ recovery, which was meant to be driven by exports and investment. Businesses are still refusing to invest despite large cash piles and record low interest rates, and the current-account deficit is at its widest for almost 25 years as consumer spending draws in imports with which UK producers still can’t compete. But whatever is driving it, this change of fortune should be celebrated. When debts are too high in relation to national income, growing the income is a better route out than unlashing inflation to shrink the debt. 

More than a baby boom?
New royal arrivals and sporting heroes have done something to revive the ‘feelgood factor’. But there are more objective reasons for thinking that a corner has now been turned. After house- and share-prices crashed in 2008, households responded by paying down debt and building up savings. More loans were paid off, and many fewer were taken out.  As a result, the UK’s household debt has dropped back down to pre-recession levels as a proportion of household income. The government can claim to have helped this improvement with pro-poor measures, including a rise in tax-allowances that raised post-tax income for some of those most heavily in debt.

Although households’ debt-to-income ratio is still above 120%, compared to less than 80% when the long boom began in the late 1990s, other changes may mean they can sustain this and still spend again. In particular, the recovery in share prices and (over the past year) house prices means households have more assets to offset those liabilities. Their ‘net worth’ (the difference between the two) is back to healthier pre-2002 levels on some counts. And while debt is still higher, the cost of serving it has been brought down by low base lending rates, which new Bank of England governor Mark Carney won’t want to abandon any time soon.

Inevitably, some economists don’t see this as a solid foundation for recovery. Although falling, the household debt ratio is much higher (over 140%) on measures that use a tighter definition of post-tax income. Because real incomes have fallen since 2008 (as prices rose faster than average wages), leaving them no higher than a decade ago, all the improvement has been due to debt reduction, which gets harder as refinancing and consolidation options are exhausted.  Present low mortgage costs can’t last for ever – and when interest rates rise, many households will find their debts are still too large to handle, as a new Resolution Foundation study reveals. Some are already struggling, and sinking further into high-cost debt through the use of payday lenders, whose rapid expansion is, like that of food banks, one of the gloomier contributors to that rising GDP.
Any reversal of the house-price recovery could, likewise, push many households back into negative equity (meaning negative net worth for some) despite their lower debts. And further price rises for fuel and other essential goods and services – which could result from a weakening of the pound made necessary to revive exports – would undermine the still fragile revival of disposable income. On this basis, some economists believe belt-tightening must continue until household debt drops below 120% of income, which could mean the recession has several more years to run. 

A deeper problem is that, while UK households may have reduced their debts (or de-leveraged, as the jargon goes), the UK as a whole has not. Continued borrowing by government and banks means that total UK debt has gone on rising since 2008, despite many large businesses also boosting national saving by sitting on large cash piles. This contrasts with overall debt reduction in the US and most other parts of Europe, and means the UK now vies with Japan as the world’s most-indebted large economy.  Many economists doubt that this is a solid foundation for recovery, especially as some banks may still be too weak to absorb a widespread write-off of household and business debts that have become unrepayable. But with the government desperate to reduce its own debt, and main Eurozone markets still sinking, the better alternative – an investment-led recovery – is unlikely to happen unless households can somehow keep spending. 
Alan Shipman 19 July 2013 

Alan Shipman is a lecturer in Economics at the Open University. He is responsible for the modules You and your money:personal finance in context and Personal investment in an uncertain world,  part of the foundation degree in Financial Services.

The views expressed in this post, as in all posts on Society Matters, are the views of the author, not The Open University.

Cartoon by Catherine Pain