Get a Life not just a Living Wage

I spent Saturday at a conference on the living wage organised by the regional TUC. It seems sad that you need to campaign for the right to earn enough money to live on but this is the reality of the living wage campaign. It was easy for me to agree with it since the Green party's policy is to raise the minimum wage to living wage of 60% of average earnings (currently around £8.10 per hour). The representatives from the Conservative and Labour parties present similarly supported and the living wage, although their parties do not have it as part of their national policy platform.

The idea that paying workers reasonably is good for everybody in the economy is neither new nor radical. It was the idea that enabled Ford's Detroit workers to buy the cars they were manufacturing, and forgetting this important lesson about capitalism is part of the explanation for the disastrous state of Detroit today.

My own presentation was focused on the living wage as a first step towards the end of wage slavery and needless to say I ranged rather more widely than the idea of bringing wages up to a liveable minimum. The beginning of my story was the way the Empire of Capitalism struck back at the end of the 1970s and the huge impact this had on the income dispersion. This is illustrated in the graphic taken from the work of Danny Dorling, which shows the share of total income going to the richest 1% of people between 1918 and 2005. The impact of trade-union activism and increased worker expectations is clear, as is the counter-effect of the Thatcherite ideology and attacks on union power.

My next graphic, based on ILO data, demonstrates clearly the importance of the Tina narrative in persuading workers not to ask for higher pay. It shows the clear indication of productivity increases on a global basis and the fact that the value generated by these workers working harder has been paid in profits rather than in wages. The argument around globalisation was used to persuade workers that they must compete with those in the lowest-paid economies in the world, and that asking for higher wages would destroy their own jobs. The inevitability of a race to the bottom when this ideology is played out is illustrated clearly in the graphic showing wage rates in different countries.

The great disparity of wages across EU countries which are part of the same single market is surely an issue that requires political debate. Why do we accept the very low pay offered to workers in central and eastern Europe? The deal we are offered is cheap goods rather than well-paid jobs, encouraging us to focus on our role as consumers rather than producers. The political economy underpinning this is not discussed but should surely be open for democratic debate.

The gains in wages illustrated in the earlier graphic were the result of solidarity across industries within a market. Globalisation undermined this but if we are to return to international solidarity in a globalised economy then surely a global minimum wage must be our ultimate demand, rather than a low wage, even if a living wage, subsidised by corporate welfare in the form of tax credits.

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When is A Free Market Not a Free Market?

We have a joke in the South-West Green Party along the lines of the Monty Python sketch about the Romans but ours revolves around the question 'What has the EU ever done for us?' As someone who is critical of Europe, although not a Euro-sceptic, I am glad to be reminded that Europe has constrained the worst excesses of neoliberalism in Britain, and that much of this results from the actions of the powerful Green Group in the European Parliament. Now it looks as thought the EU is the last hope to stop the dangerous decision to build a new nuclear station at Hinkley Point in Somerset.

An article in the Guardian last month suggested that the EU Commission looks set to set up a full-scale inquiry into the massive government subsidies that are needed to encourage EDF to build at Hinkley Point in Somerset following the disastrous planning decision gave the new station the go ahead last month. Ironically, it is the hugely destructive single market regulations that this time might delay or even scupper the project, since that mythical 'level playing-field' must be ensured for all energy generators and, although EDF is not a UK company, if the UK government offers it financial incentives to build at Hinkley Point that could still contravene what is considered to be free competition.

The comment from Doug Parr, policy director for Greenpeace, is most pertinent: 'The government wouldn't need state aid approval for nuclear if it wasn't trying to subsidise a risky technology that could wind up costing more than the renewable alternative'. The misguided policy to give life support to a dying and obsolete industry is also a dangerous diversion from the urgent investments we need to make in the energy generation of the future, the renewable forms of energy generation such as windpower, wavepower and solar that are clean and do not damage the health of current and future generations.

Meanwhile, South-West MEP Graham Watson has told the somewhat ironically titled Business Green that he supports subsidies for nuclear in the South-West. Following the change of direction of the party, led by Energy Secretary Ed Davey, Watson 'defended the UK government's right to offer hefty state aid support for new nuclear reactors'. He argued that the nuclear industry has a fair case for subsidies because fossil fuel suppliers also receive generous government support. To which we can only suggest that two wrongs do not make a right, and when the risks are as high as they are with nuclear any price is too high a price to pay.
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Embracing the Yoghurt Culture

I have it on the best authority that Bulgaria is being overrun by migrants. My authority is Maria Nedeva, a sociologist of science at the University of Manchester and author of the authoritative Money Principle blog. Maria has grown understandably tired of having her country and her countryfolk run down by the right-wing press and has put me straight on a few matters.

First, the Bulgarians who are already in this country are a highly skilled bunch. Like Maria herself many are academics, working in universities to enable the sort of global education that prepares young people for a globalised world. Bulgarians also thrive in the world of computer programming, using their skills to clean up as consultants, since they are not yet permitted full freedom to work here. Their skills in this area is unsurprising given that the first electronic computer was invented by the son of recent Bulgarian immigrants to the US, John Atanasoff.

Far from desperate Bulgarians seeking to escape dreary post-Soviet lives and failing public services, they are in fact experiencing a wave of inward migration from those who have grown tired of life in the UK. The Telegraph reports (while simultaneously advertising) the excellent quality of life offered by a rural Bulgarian existence: the article suggests a sort of late-middle-aged Good Life in a country where land is not the preserve of red-coated, red-faced men chasing red-furred wildlife.

A website encouraging elderly Brits to retire to Bulgaria explains how the strength of community and pace of life might remind immigrants of life in their own country BT, i.e. before Thatcher. On another Bulgarian blog, You'll Like it Here, the author welcomes the British government's attempt to make the UK seem unattractive to potential immigrants, a position he is pleased to endorse:

'They do make a valid point however – Great Britain is indeed a grim, dangerous place with glaring economic difficulties. Therefore the only responsible thing we Bulgarians can do as Europeans is to extend a helping hand and invite all Brits who’ve had enough.'

Given their relatively small population of 7.5 million people it would be understandable for the Bulgarians to feel swamped by the high rates of immigration from Britain in recent years. So many British ex-pats now live in Bulgaria that they have their own support website Brits in Bulgaria. And this is really the point, because rather than pulling up the drawbridge and repelling borders the Bulgarians are welcoming economic migrants who would appreciate the splendours of their fertile soils and excellent climate. The hateful xenophobic articles in the Daily Bigot are a strong incentive to make one up sticks and explore the opportunities for a life of skilful self-reliance.
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Osborne Offers Dodgey Deal on Employment Rights

A surprising article from the Financial Times identifies 'cash upfront on the road to serfdom'. It describes how plans announced by George Osborne offer employees the chance to sell their birthright for a mess of pottage, or in this case to voluntarily relinquish their employment rights in exchange for shares in the company they work for. This is taking the idea of self-exploitation to new depths.

This is surely unlikely to be legal, and a letter from an employment lawyer in the same edition of the paper suggests that this is more ineptitude on the part of Osborne, or what he calls a 'car crash of a policy'. His argument relies on the precedence on European law, however, and the defence we have from European human rights and employment law is clearly the target of the 'renegotiation' with the EU that Cameron is calling for. Tweet