No satire was intended when the Wilson Government published its last White Paper on Incomes Policy, proclaiming "The challenge which faces us as a socially just society is what steps we can now take to improve the lot of the low-paid in an increasingly affluent society. " On the contrary, every government that our "socially just society" ever fostered has sworn, hand over heart, to speedily improve the tragic position of the badly-paid and raise them higher in the class system.
Fortune has now presented us with an instructive guide to just how much they all failed. It appears in the form of a report by an institution now closing down because it, too, failed to solve such embarrassing problems for the ruling class as low pay. The doomed and unlamented National Board for Prices and Incomes has just produced its final official Report, some 200 pages on "General Problems of Low Pay" It's worth looking at.?
VERY LITTLE CHANGE The experience of the past is considered and summarised as follows: "the position of low paid workers in relation to better-paid workers has changed very little over long periods of time". Indeed, this reality is central to the Report. It is readily proved by the figures of earnings for men in full-time manual work. The Report looks at the median (or middle) earnings level for these workers and then considers how the lowest 10% of them have fared, in the light of that level. The results seem astonishing: % of median earnings level earned by bottom tenth in:
1886-68.6% 1906-66.5% 1938-67.7% 1970-67.3% In short, a century of regular and severe inequality. Now, of course, there are qualifica tions (the surveys carried out in those different years varied in coverage; general economic progress means that today's bottom tenth are not so badly off as those of 1886; tax and social security arrangements have helped the low-paid to some extent). However, the message comes over loud and clear-marked inequality amongst workers is a fact, unchanged for generations.
HOW TO HELP Everyone agrees that some action must be taken to assist the low-paid. However, the Report says, "There always will be people who are low-paid in relation to their fellows"3 , and restricts its solutions to trying to raise the bottom 10% of workers to a a position somewhat nearer to the middle level of earnings. In other words, the Prices and Incomes Board insists on limiting its study to the "fellows" of the low-paid, to other workers. It, therefore, RED CIRCLES/RED MOLE CONTACTS BELFAST: Alan Morris, c/o Red Mole. BIRMINGHAM: Val Graham, 72 Cambridge Road, Kings Heath, Birmingham 14.
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The Red Mole 15th May 1971 Page 4 ends by calling on the workers and the trade unions to recognise that "a relative improvement of the position of some must mean a relative worsening of the position of others". 4 The "others" it refers to are the better-paid workers. The reader is tempted to shout out: "What about the Bosses?"
THE BOSSES SHARE Nowhere in the Report proper is the question of low pay considered other than in relation to other workers. It is entirely incidental to the body of the Report-and not referred to elsewhere that, delving deep into the pages of statisties following the text, we discover a table covering the national income as a whole. " It is a vital piece of information:
U.K: Shares of Pay and Property Income in the Net Domestic Income:
Year 1911 1924 1965 Pay 77% 81% 86% Property Income 23% 19% 14% (To make the table easier to understand, the incomes of the self-employed are not included and anyway, represent only a small% of national income). So, PAY, meaning both wages and salaries, is slowly taking an increasing share of the national income, and PROPERTY INCOME, meaning rents and profits, is declining in relation to pay. From the point of view of capitalist economists, higher profits are crucial to the health of the system. Only with higher profits can investment be stepped up and the economy expanded. To consider, instead, a further reduction of the share of the national income going in profits and rents through a major redistribution of wealth towards the low-paid workers is unthinkable. Capitalism cannot seriously aid the low-paid without throwing the burden upon-the other workers. It cannot further reduce the bosses' share.
THE WORKERS EFFORTS Everybody knows why the workers are winning an increasing share of the wealth. Their own efforts, expressed through trade union militancy, are piling up the pressure upon the ruling class, and squeezing profits. The Report particularly locates three industries where pay is low (each covered by recent NBPI studies)-laundries and contract cleaning, where union membership is very low, and Health Service ancillary workers, where the unions have members but "have been inactive locally". The conclusions are obvious. Workers in the worst-paid industries must organise and struggle for better returns of their labour. No reforms can be expected from above, from a capitalist government watching the rate of profit decline.
The Prices and Incomes Board, by accepting the assumptions of capitalism, impliedly calls for restraints by militant workers in their pay claims. The capitalist press (e.g. Sunday Times, 3.5.71) openly brands the unions as the villains for not sharing out Labour's wealth more evenly HULL: Malcolm Ball, Students Union, Hull University, Hull.
IPSWICH: Kevin Barter, 2 Camarthen Close, Ipswich, IP2 80g.
KEELE: Jason Hill, Flat 37, The Hawthorns, Keele, Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffs.
KIDDERMINSTER: Nigel Brown, 44 The Deansway, Kidderminster, Worcs.
LANCASTER: Brian Heron, 29 Clarendon Road, Lancaster.
LEEDS: Ron Thompson, 132 Askeren Chase, • Hunslet Grange, Leeds 10:
LEICESTER: Jean Holman, 7 College Street, Leicester.
LINCOLN: Dave Thompson, 65 Tower Cres., LONDON NORTH: c/o The Red Mole, 182 Pentonville Road, London N.1.
NORTH-WEST: Tohy Fry, 101 Park Avenue SOUTH: Tony Jones, rurzedown College of Education, Welham Road, SW17. amongst the workers. For these*"experts", profits are not to be mentioned. Or the reality of declining British capitalism might suddenly be revealed.-And rejected.
J.C.
NOTES 1 "Productivity, Prices & Incomes Policy after 1969", para. 61. 2 N.B.P.I. Report 169. From H.M.S.O. Price-£1.50. 3 Page 39.
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