A PROPER CORNISH WAGE

The Resolution Foundation and Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) have produced an informative study of the likely financial effect of moving to a living wage on various sectors of the economy. This shows that while in some sectors it would be very difficult to move to a living wage in one move, getting there over time is realisable.

I believe that the gradual approach is right for Cornwall to move to a living wage.

I think Cornwall Council should lead here. It should state that its aim is to have all its employees on the living wage, currently £7.20 an hour. By the way, that £7.20 assumes that people claim all the benefits and credits they are entitled to; without those extras I think the wage outside London would be around £9 an hour.

It is time the political parties in Cornwall, well at any rate those who describe themselves as progressives, unequivocably argued for the living wage and began to press Cornwall Council. The national organisations in Cornwall such as banks and supermarkets should be pushed too. Companies here advertising work at less than the living wage should be encouraged to think how they could get to pay it.

As we see the mandatory national minimum wage erode and the cornishing of pay, it is more important than ever to campaign for a decent living wage. It’s a question of social and economic justice. It makes some of the preoccupations of local politics seem small beer.

Earlier posts on the living wage
The pro-Cornish wage 31 August 2010
A living wage for Cornwall 17 May 2011
Progress to a living wage 29 June 2011

And on low pay in 2011
See Working for nothing – the truth about low pay in the UK in the Observer for 2 October 2011
Here’s the research from the Resolution Foundation Low pay Britain September 2011.

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ERODING THE MINIMUM WAGE

In October 2012 the minimum wage for adults is raised from £6.08 to £6.19 an hour. That is a rise of below 2 percent, less than current inflation and perhaps less than it turns out to be in October. The unofficial benchmark of the living wage in Cornwall is £7.20 an hour.

The adult minimum wage began in April 1999. The National Minimum Wage: Low Pay Commission 2012 Report shows that from October 2001 to October 2006 it rose faster than prices and average wages; from 2006 it has risen significantly below them (pages 27-28).

The minimum wage for the young, those under twenty one, will not rise. For example, for 18-20 year olds it will remain at £4.98 an hour as recommended by the Low Pay Commission. The Commission says that the employment of young people is more sensitive in economic difficulties such as we currently have than that of adults (page 149).

I have discussed before the Tory hostility to it and the initial Libdem notion of a “Cornwall low” regionalised minimum wage. However, slippage in the wage began under Labour, who introduced it, before the present economic difficulties. The wage has been a godsend to working people, including many in Cornwall. It must not be cut in real value by a continuing failure to match prices and wages. It is important to people here and should be saved from longterm erosion.

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O FRABJOUS DAY

Today the national minimum wage goes up. That is good. The adult rate is now £6.08 an hour with lower rates for younger workers. The wage rise will help
890 000 workers, plus their families. Several thousand people in Cornwall will benefit. That is good.

It is twelve years since Labour magnificently introduced the national minimum wage. However, we should now advance and do better. We should press for the living wage, currently £7.20 outside London, to be the minimum in Cornwall. I discussed this earlier this year here.

I hope that every political party in Cornwall will sign up to this. Every large employer. It might not be possible to get there in one leap in these financially difficult times but we can and should say that a living wage is where we want to be. There are about 1500 direct employees of Cornwall Council who get less than the living wage and the Council should set the living wage as its aim now. I hope the progressive councillors will push for this.

ADDENDUM 2 October 2011
See Working for nothing – the truth about low pay in the UK in the Observer for 2 October 2011

(4 October 2011) And here’s the research from the Resolution Foundation Low pay Britain September 2011.

Earlier posts

The pro-Cornish wage 31 August 2010
A living wage for Cornwall 17 May 2011
Progress to a living wage 29 June 2011

O frabjous day: Lewis CARROLL Through the looking glass, Chapter 1

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HELPING THE LOW PAID IN CORNWALL

Cornwall Council is set to help some of the low paid with the cost of car parking.

The Council’s advisory panel on parking has suggested a special season ticket for town centre council car parks for people getting working tax credits: £300 a year for the ticket, payable in instalments. This will help those on low wages in jobs in or near town centres.

More details are here and here (item 2 of the minutes 15 September 2011).

This is an excellent proposal; the panel and its chair, Andrew Wallis, have responded well to concerns about the low paid being priced out of parking and work; it’s an example of doing good in minute particulars. I hope the Cabinet goes along with this at its October meeting.

There remains the question of how to help the young low paid who do not get working tax credits. I hope that question is solved. And of course the Council has still to take up the question of a living wage for all its employees.

Car parking charges are problematic. Motorists do not like them and wish them to be as low as possible; but council car parks are a community asset and charges below the market rate are in effect a subsidy to users from council-tax payers, some of whom are also users. Cheap parking, smartly scheduled, helps shoppers and shop owners and workers too and helps to keep the town centre as a viable retail centre, though the last seems to me a disputable aim for a council. Is this help also a subsidy? I think subsidising the poor or disabled is justifiable but a wider subsidy or discount to motorists requires close argument rather than claim and description.

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“Labour well the minute particulars … He who would do good to another must do it in minute particulars” William BLAKE (1757-1827) ‘The holiness of minute particulars’ in Jerusalem, lines 51 and 60.

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TOLPUDDLE AND THE AGRICULTURAL WAGES BOARD

“We raise the watchword liberty. We will, we will, we will be free” George Loveless 1834

Tolpuddle
The wet and windy weekend just gone was the Tolpuddle festival, an annual celebration and remembrance of the six Dorset farm workers who formed a union in 1834 and were transported. Trade unionists and supporters from all over Britain come to Tolpuddle to celebrate each year. Read the Tolpuddle story here.

The six were George Loveless, James Loveless, James Hammett, James Brine, Thomas Standfield, and John Standfield.

Tolpuddle matters because it gave trade unions a solid foundation for growth in Britain and that led to better lives for workers and their families.

People protested at the time in vast numbers against the injustice dealt to them; on 21 April 1834 there was a massive demonstration in Copenhagen Fields, Islington, and petitions flooded into parliament and the government. The six were given a full pardon on 14 March 1836 and brought back from Australia.

Agricultural Wages Board

On cue the other day there was a debate in the Commons which touched inter alia on the Tory Libdem proposed abolition of the Agricultural Wages Board for England and Wales (AWB) (Hansard 12 July 2011 column 212 onwards). This is an issue which affects agricultural workers in Cornwall. The Tory Libdem government is not talking about change and reform for the AWB but abolition.

There was also a debate earlier on the abolition of the AWB but no vote in the Lords (Lords Hansard 1 December 2010 column 1513 following).

Andrew George, Libdem MP for St Ives, supported the AWB and opposed its simple abolition (columns 215 and 253). He is right to take that view. He and Labour, which opposes abolition, broadly made the same points: the AWG is a protection for often isolated workers; it sets bands of rural wages that take eighty percent of workers above the minimum wage and give a career ladder; and it regulates matters like sick pay, holiday pay, and overtime. Labour feared there would be a decrease in agricultural pay if the AWB and its wage bands were abolished (column 261); and the abolition of the AWB would take away the guarantee of sick pay and that could mean a fall in income of up to £265 a week (column 225). The arguments against abolition strike me as persuasive and telling. The Tory Libdem argument that the existence of the minimum wage makes the AWG superfluous suggests a lack of full understanding of the circumstances of rural work and is uncomprehensive and unconvincing.

George voted in effect for the second reading of the bill which included the AWB abolition. The bill now goes to committee where it may be amended; Labour is sure to try to get rid of the AWB abolition provision and it will be interesting to see what the Libdems on the committee do. It will also be interesting for us in Cornwall to see what George and the two other Cornwall Libdem MPs do if the abolition of the AWB is still in the bill at third reading.

It is a difficulty for MPs. Many bills are curate’s eggs, some bad parts and some good parts. An MP can often vote against the part he objects to, but what does he do when the whole bill, including the objectionable part, comes to a vote? This happened on the Devonwall bill: in effect the six Cornwall MPs voted against the Devonwall provisions, lost, and then voted finally at third reading for the whole bill including the part they objected to. They presumably took the view that the bill as a whole was worthy despite its objectionable part. That is a rational argument which weighs up the value and importance of the whole and part. Different people will of course come to different judgements on weighing.

There are no such difficulties in the matter of the Tolpuddle farm workers. They were right, their prosecutors and persecutors were wrong. And our material and intellectual lives are better because of the six men from Dorset and many others.

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LIVING WAGE CAMPAIGN

Have you sent an email to your bank about the living wage? The campaign for just pay has an easy click facility for this.

If you have a blog or use twitter or facebook, perhaps you’d think about publicising the campaign to encourage initially companies in the FTSE 100 to pay the living wage.

If you’re a member of a political organisation in Cornwall, perhaps you’d ask it to support the campaign. It would be excellent to see many groups in Cornwall explicitly support the living wage which I have described in an earlier post as the pro-Cornish wage.

Early day motion (EDM) 2023 in the Commons calls for a living wage. So far only Andrew George among Cornwall’s MPs has signed it. If you live in one of the other Cornwall constituencies, you might like to ask your MP to sign too. (If you live outside Cornwall, have a look and see if your MP has signed. If not, perhaps ask him or her to.)

Of course an EDM carries no power but government and opposition parties notice when very many MPs sign one – and so will companies. It will also give a morale boost to the campaign and encourage Cornwall employers to move to a living wage.

Earlier posts

Progress to a living wage 29 June 2011
A living wage for Cornwall 17 May 2011
The pro-Cornish wage 31 August 2010

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PROGRESS TO A LIVING WAGE

Good news for many Tesco workers in Cornwall. From next month (July 2011) Tesco will be giving its UK instore customer assistants a pay rise that takes them to over £7 an hour. Customer assistants make up about two thirds of store staff. This pay is noticeably more than the national minimum wage which is currently £5.93 an hour for adults, rising to £6.08 in October. The Tesco pay increase for its customer assistants is pointing in a positive direction and I hope the supermarket will adopt the living wage soon.

Of course there remains the difficulty of low pay for Tesco cleaners employed by and paid by contractors; and £7 an hour is well below the living wage. Nevertheless, well done, Tesco, genuinely helping Cornwall workers and their families in a time of austerity and, through the workers’ spending power, the local economy too. Now let’s see other employers in Cornwall beef up their low pay towards a living wage and using cleaning companies which pay it too.

Is not a Cornwall living wage an issue that the Labour party in Cornwall should be vigorously advancing? Is this not an issue that the local Liberal Democrats, MK, the Greens, the unions, and, remembering Boris Johnson’s sterling support for the London living wage, the Conservatives, should also be pushing? A clear declaration from any of the local groups that they are ambitious for a Cornwall living wage would be a start.

Earlier posts on Cornwall living wage

A living wage for Cornwall 17 May 2011

The pro-Cornish wage 31 August 2010

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TACKLING POVERTY IN CORNWALL 2011

Eoin Clarke who writes the excellent, well-researched Green benches blog, which I heartily recommend, has published a score board exploring the comparative impact of various benefits in constituencies in England. Read them here where he also explains his methodology. The scores are slightly adjusted in this post.

He has looked at the number of recipients of the benefits in each constituency and worked them into rankings of comparative overall poverty.

There are 533 constituencies and these are the overall poverty rankings for Cornwall (where lower means more poverty):
Camborne and Redruth 162nd out of 533, St Austell and Newquay 165, St Ives 236, South East Cornwall 286, North Cornwall 300, and Truro and Falmouth 324. (These are the final scores as set out in the post of 24 May 2011 on Green benches.)

The detailed findings for each benefit are on the blog.

The Cornwall constituencies are not the poorest in England on these measures.

You might also like to look again at the index of multiple deprivation which I have discussed on this blog several times and which largely tell the same story. I have also stressed that we have information for small areas of Cornwall (and the rest of England) and can identify which have a large incidence of poverty and which are comparatively prosperous. It is on the areas of serious poverty in Cornwall that our relentless focus should be though we need whole-county approaches too. Have any of the parties here got beyond rhetoric to even a half-policy for this? As far as I can see not one of our notionally left of centre parties in Cornwall has developed comprehensive and practical and up-to-date policies for tackling the multiple causes and forms of the poverty experienced here. Make a start with a living wage anyone? Anyone?

Recent posts about this
Child poverty: Yesterday and tomorrow

Cornwall unaffordable by 2019?

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A LIVING WAGE FOR CORNWALL

A few months ago I wrote about the pro-Cornish wage, advocating a living wage for Cornwall. Labour’s national minimum wage of £5.93 an hour, which rises to £6.08 in October with the qualifying age for this full amount at twenty one, is a godsend for many workers here but it is not enough for a decent standard of living. In London the Greater London Authority (GLA) has adopted the living wage and the supportive Conservative mayor, Boris Johnson, has just increased it to £8.30 an hour. Around a hundred other firms have adopted it and so have University College London and the House of Commons, and London underground cleaners also benefit.

We have to be economically realistic but we also have to aspire to economic and social justice. There are motivational and production advantages too. Cornwall Council is best placed to take the lead on the living wage in the county and it is time to push the council to formally set the adoption of a Cornwall living wage for itself as a serious aim and to seek to implement it in its contracts. The RCHT and university should get involved. I think national companies will only respond nationally.

A practical start would be for the council to confirm what the Cornwall living wage would be. The groundwork done by the GLA and for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation could be readily adapted for Cornwall (see Notes below).

Let us also see the political parties and unions in Cornwall make the adoption of a Cornwall living wage their policy and start campaigning for it. Let us see Cornwall councillors sign up to it. At the same time let us see a push for it among the major local employers in Cornwall.

Notes

Here is an excellent list of reasons to support the living wage.

You can read about the London living wage and how it is calculated in A fairer London: the 2011 living wage in London. And A minimum income standard for the UK 2010 is research for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation looks at what income would enable most households to achieve “a minimum socially acceptable standard of living”.

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MINIMUM WAGE: REFORM BY MINUTE PARTICULARS

There have been reforming amendments to the legislation about the mandatory national minimum wage.

Since 1 October 2009 tips paid through an employer’s payroll cannot be used to make up a worker’s pay to the mandatory national minimum wage level: they are additional to that wage. The amending regulations are below.

From 1 January 2011 payments made by an employer to a worker for travelling expenses, eligible for tax relief under section 338 of the Income Tax (Earnings and Pensions) Act 2003, cannot count towards the minimum wage. This change, put in train by Labour and carried through by the Tory Libdem government, was made after a consultation earlier this year and an unsuccessful legal challenge and will largely benefit low paid workers including those in Cornwall. A full account of the court case, which gives the background to the change, is here. A link to the amending regulations is below.

I have given more details and links than most people will want because I am making the point that reform does not always have to be grand; it is by attention to details, by minute particulars, that we can also effect many important changes that help people. These regulations show the importance of reviewing legislation. The texts of the amending regulations are dry but work beneficial change for workers here.

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“Labour well the minute particulars…He who would do good to another must do it in minute particulars” William BLAKE (1757-1827) ‘The holiness of minute particulars’ in Jerusalem, lines 51 and 60.

National Minimum Wage Wage (Amendment) (No 2) Regulations 2010

National Minimum Wage 1999 (Amendment) Regulations 2009 . Regulation 5 is the relevant one.

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