The UK’s minimum wage is to rise to £6.31 for adults and £5.03 for 18-to-20-year-olds with business secretary Vince Cable stating that “Nobody in the country should be paid less than the minimum wage”. Some commentators have raised the question of whether the minimum wage keeps up with the cost of living and this question is an interesting one, as despite the number of times it has been raised and words expended asking it, the answer is quite simple: alas, no. Since 2009 minimum wage increases have regularly fallen behind the rate of inflation leaving minimum wage earners paying more for goods and services without their wages rising in line with this. Vince Cable is just in saying that there is a wage that nobody in the country should be paid less than, but is this wage a minimum wage?
When we speak of the cost of living, this is often within the context of the welfare state and whether benefit payments are too great or too small. However, in-work poverty is common with many simply not earning enough to provide for themselves and their families. This is a problem that the younger sibling of the minimum wage, the living wage, looks to address.
When advocating the living wage, there is a tendency to separate between moral and economic benefits, however, any discussion should give consideration to both. Ensuring employees are paid a sum that doesn’t leave them living in poverty or on the brink of poverty is the ethical thing to do and is one of the soundest means of “making work pay”. Since the inception of the Living Wage Campaign in 2001, 45,000 have been lifted out of poverty as a result. More than just a concept that politicians pay lip service to, the living wage has elicited change in the way its advocates intended, and with the Trust for London estimating that all low paid workers in London alone being paid the living could save the government £823 million per annum, the economic benefits are apparent.
Young workers are much more likely than their older counterparts to be working for a low wage. In addition to this, there is the expectation that many young people work for no pay as a precursor to finding a paid position. Whilst youth unemployment continues to rise, in many sectors young people are pressured to take on unpaid positions simply to get their foot in the door.
As an intern I’m highly aware of the trope of the suffering unpaid intern, forever bearing a heavy load of work that should be assigned to a paid staff member. Tanya De Grunwald of Graduate Fog has waged a war against this calling out organisations that take on unpaid interns for positions that should be filled by paid staff. One firm that has incurred her wrath is French fashion house Balenciaga for their request for unpaid sales assistant interns; a position involving all the features of working as a sales assistant with none of the financial returns. An option only available to those financially stable enough to generate no income for a prolonged period of time.
In a period where youth employment prospects are particularly low, many see these unpaid options as a necessary stepping-stone. At first glance it may seem counter-intuitive to spend four weeks working as a sales assistant for no pay, but the opportunity to say that you’ve worked for a high-brow fashion house may be just what someone wishing to crack the seemingly impenetrable world of fashion is looking for.
What this says about employment prospects is sad, at a time when youth unemployment is rising; numerous organisations take advantage of a desire for that coveted concept – experience.
An adoption of the living wage for all workers including interns is not something that will happen overnight, but whilst it is accepted that some people are paid less than they need to survive on, or nothing at all, the problem of in-work poverty will continue to increase and some sectors will continue to have barriers to entry which exclude those from a lower socioeconomic background. Organisations becoming living wage employers begin to solve these problems and in doing so, they step closer to becoming ethical workplaces that practise equality and diversity through genuinely facilitating inclusion.
The City of Sanctuary movement, although flourishing in a growing number of UK cities, is relatively unknown to many people in the voluntary sector and even less so among the general public.
This was certainly the case for us at the Piers Road Centre in Birmingham when just over a year ago Indrajit Bhogal, one of our volunteers, mentioned that a relative had pioneered the idea in Sheffield in 2007. After outlining the basic concept she ended rather challengingly with “….why don’t we start one in Birmingham?”
Enquiries revealed only Shari Brown of RESTORE and former head of the city’s Wardlow Road Centre for Migrants, Adrian Randall, knew anything about it, but both were keen to join us in an initiative. Within a few weeks we found ourselves taking the lead for what hopefully will turn out to be a flourishing branch in Birmingham.
The national website shows what is happening elsewhere and the stage participating cities have reached. In Birmingham a series of meetings attended by an increasing number of enthusiasts, has distilled a draft strategy to move forward simultaneously on three fronts in order to develop support:
1. Raising awareness and improving public understanding of forced migration in order to generate more welcoming responses to newcomers. The Birmingham group’s existence is a start and telling people about our purpose will begin to spread the word, but there is a job to do using all available media to educate the public about issues such as forced migration. We have prepared a leaflet to make people think about the idea of welcome and are developing web pages and details of opportunities to participate as we identify more people interested in the concept.
2. Encouraging community organisations to take actions which generate a welcome or recognise the contribution that migrants make. Engaging with existing welcome groups will help us to move forward and perhaps help them to expand their volunteer base. We are seeking to expand a group of people who are able to visit and make presentations to community groups and to this end are preparing a basic presentation that can be used ‘off the shelf’. Such visits would provide an opportunity to let individuals and groups sign a pledge of support.
3. Seek public support from large organisations for the City of Sanctuary principles, whilst assisting them to examine their policies and practices from this welcoming perspective. Starting with large voluntary organisations such as Housing Associations and commercial organisations that espouse social responsibility we should gain formal support and help those organizations to take steps to be more positively welcoming to migrants. So a pledge should include action that an organisation will publicly sign up to.
The accolade for individual city of sanctuary branches is when their respective local authority passes a formal resolution proclaiming itself to be a ‘City of Sanctuary’. To this end we are maintaining close contact with Birmingham City Council to achieve such a resolution.
In this respect we have a major ally in Councillor Waseem Zaffar, Chair of Birmingham City Council’s Social Cohesion and Community Safety Overview and Scrutiny Committee. Coun. Zaffar has been a keen supporter of our efforts, and at a meeting of the city council on 5th February this year the council passed the following resolution put forward by Coun. Zaffar’s committee: ‘The City Council should explore the appetite to achieve City of Sanctuary status with organizations across the city, and strive towards gaining this title if supported’. Officers have been instructed to deliver a preliminary report back to the council for September this year – and we are now working with city officers to meet this timescale. Great oaks grow from little acorns, and we believe good progress is being towards establishing Birmingham as a City of Sanctuary.
Dennis Minnis OBE is Project Manager at the Piers Road New Communities Centre in Handsworth, Birmingham
Michael Mendelson is now Senior Scholar at the Caledon Institute of Social Policy.
You can find out a bit more about why we’re launching a new blog platform here. I think it’s fair to say that while our new publication illustrates how the Trust has retained constancy of purpose, this blog represents part of the Trust’s willingness to embrace change in the tools we use to communicate.
If you don’t already do so, you can also follow the Trust on Twitter @BarrowCadbury.
Paul Evans is Communications Manager at the Barrow Cadbury Trust.
