Campaign Corner... My Fair London

This afternoon I went to the launch of My Fair London at the Old Vic Tunnels.

The campaign has been set up by the London Equality Group, described as an "autonomous collective of more than 200 Londoners loosely affiliated to the Equality Trust".

This group is setting out to reduce inequality in London. Their first big action is this awareness raising campaign - My Fair London - which wants each mayoral candidate to sign up to their manifesto by polling day (3rd May). So far, Ken Livingston (Labour), Jenny Jones (Green) and Brian Paddick (Lib Dem) have signed it... that just leaves mop-haired Boris.

Why not bash of a quick email to Boris and ask him to sign up? His email address is mayor@london.gov.uk.

There's another really easy action you can take...

They need you to sign their petition [find it here] - they have a target of 10,000 signatures by 3rd May. In a city of close to 8 million people, that shouldn't be too hard if we help spread the word.

What's wrong with inequality?

There is an absolute truckload of research out there proving that inequality in a society causes enormous problems - and not just for the poorest, but for the rich too. This became national news in 2009 when Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson published their book The Spirit Level. It contains a wealth of information on why inequality is bad for us all.
You can read more evidence in detail here at the Equality Trust and there are more links to other sources at the bottom of this post.

Essentially, it's been proven that life expectancy, health (both bodily and mental) and crime rate amongst other issues are worse in countries and cities with greater inequality.
The graph below shows you this according to countries. The more unequal the country, the worse the social problems are:

from the Equality Trust here

The Equality Trust also says this:

If the UK were more equal, we'd be better off as a population. For example, the evidence suggests that if we halved inequality here:

- Murder rates could halve
- Mental illness could reduce by two thirds
- Obesity could halve
- Imprisonment could reduce by 80%
- Teen births could reduce by 80%
- Levels of trust could increase by 85%

So that's the research behind this drive against inequality. Of course there is also a rather large moral argument, but people like a bit of empirical data in their morality stew these days.

You can view My Fair London's manifesto here - it's accessibly written and very clear. 

It asks the mayoral candidates to say that if they win, they will do a number of things to promote greater equality in London. The main area it focuses on is pay inequality. 

Pay inequality has been all over the place lately - see my previous post on the maximum wage idea here. There's also the London Living Wage campaign, which I'll do a post on soon.

Tackle pay inequality by...changing pay ratios

The key idea in this issue is pay ratio.

I like to think of pay ratio
as "Who ate all the pie?"

This isn't about levelling out pay until everyone earns the same amount. It's just about making the gap between the people earning the most and the people earning the least a bit smaller. That would reduce inequality across society.

The main figure bandied about as the ideal pay ratio is 10:1 - i.e. the top earners would not earn more than ten times what the bottom earners do. Other figures vary from 7:1 to 20:1.

The Green Party have been onto this
whole 10:1 business for a while

It's hard to estimate the pay ratios that we actually have at the moment because, unsurprisingly, most companies don't go around shouting about how much their CEOs earn.

The Commonsense Sniff-o-meter
on youcanarguewithstupid:
rotten haddock - eggy - pine fresh

But as an example, Barclays paid its Chief Executive £4,365,636 last year. Meanwhile, their Customer Advisors in the lowest pay bracket earn £12,665/year. This is a ratio of 344:1. That rates rotten haddock on my Commonsense Sniff-o-meter. [figures from here and here].

So My Fair London wants the mayor to tackle this by:

• Challenging all employers to publish the income gap between their lowest and highest earners.

• Challenging London’s wealthiest citizens to sign a petition asking parliament to increase their income tax as a sign of
of their commitment to make London more equal, like the Patriotic Millionaires [see here for this truly impressive campaign] in the USA.

• Reduce the pay ratio within the Greater London Authority (the administrative body for Greater London) from highest to lowest earners to 10:1.

• Require all employers used by the GLA to pay their workers the London Living Wage.

• Vigorously lobbying the government for more progressive taxation policies and for changes to business regulations to encourage fair pay ratios.

They also want the Mayor to establish a Fairness Commission for London to bring together all the evidence about inequality in London and use it to inform strategy.

There are several other components to the manifesto that you can see on the 4th page of this PDF.

What happened at the launch today?

Well, we all got free Oyster card wallets with the My Fair London logo on them, not to mention the free cupcakes decorated with the logo too!

The 4 panelists spoke on a range of issues relating to inequality. They were:

Kate Pickett with The Spirit Level
co-author Richard Wilkinson

Kate Pickett was co-author of the immensely influential 2009 book The Spirit Level, which everyone who's interested in society should read (so, everyone basically). She's also co-founder of the Equality Trust.

Michael Robinson, BBC journalist who presented the documentary The Wealth Gap.

Andy Hull, smiley guy

Andy Hull, this guy was amazing. He's on Islington Council and is vice-chair of the Islington Fairness Commission which is truly an example to hold up high for a fairer, happier society.

Dr Faiza Shaheen, from the New Economics Foundation [previous post on their big idea for a shorter work week here].

Alex Bax of the London Equality Group managed the show and gave a galvanising introduction to the themes of the campaign. As is often the case with panel events, there was rather a lot of waffle, so I'm culling all that to give you some basic points in a nutshell.

Kate Pickett said that: 

• Inequality in most areas has increased since 2009
• There is a growing awareness of the need for better social cohesion (Cameron's Big Society) and yet it seems to be a lot of talk and less action
• We no longer think greed is good - the anti-bonus backlash
• "Our current economic model isn't working. Our current ideology has failed us. Austerity might be needed, but austerity for whom?"

• We need redistribution and rebalancing
• Those at the top that would pay more tax etc may think that they would be disadvantaged, but actually they would benefit - The Spirit Level showed that in more equal societies, everyone - rich and poorer - benefits in myriad ways

Adam Hull spoke about what the Islington Fairness Commission has been up to since it was established in June 2010. It is a truly impressive body. I'm going to give it its own post, rather than make this one overlong, but suffice to say if you read the manifesto of my Fair London and think, gee whizz, that's never going to happen, the Islington Fairness Commission is showing that changes really can be made.

All in all, My Fair London is a great campaign which will serve to highlight the endemic inequality we have across London in every area (geographical and social). If it gets enough support (and signatures, don't forget to sign it here), it will hopefully mean that whoever our next mayor is, he/she can't afford to ignore the public wish for change and a more equal London in the future.

youcanarguewithstupid

Sources/further reading:

The High Pay Commission which led an independent inquiry into pay in the private sector

"Does income inequality cause health and social problems?" - a report by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation

London's Poverty Profile - independent source of information about poverty and inequality in London

New Economics Foundation report on pay ratios here

"Britain's Livelihood Crisis" - a pamphlet by Steward Lansley for the TUC on how rising prosperity has not trickled down to those workers at the bottom

A selection of articles written by Kate Pickett for the Guardian here

The Equality Trust - set up in response to the Spirit Level

Future Fodder...the shorter work week

Don't mourn for me friends,

Don't weep for me never,

For I'm going to do nothing

Forever and ever.

Traditional epitaph

[source]

On January 11th 2012 there was a panel discussion and lecture at the London School of Economics called "About Time: Examining the case for a shorter working week".

It was run by the New Economics Foundation (NEF), who call themselves a 'think-and-do tank', and who published a preliminary report in 2010 suggesting a 21 hour work week would reap huge benefits.

Now their aim is to build the case in more depth, explore the evidence and think more about ways of overcoming practical and cultural obstacles.

A bit of background

The idea of a shorter working week is far from a new one. Here are some instances where it has come up in multiple ways in the past:

• In 1974, Prime Minister Ted Heath imposed an emergency 3-day work week on the nation in response to a nationwide coal miners’ strike. It lasted 3-4 months. [source]

• In the 19th Century the UK govt passed the Factory Acts. These were essentially to improve working conditions for factory workers. The first Factory Act in 1802 stated that children between 9 and 13 years old could work no more than 8 hours in a day. The 1856 Factory Act stated that women and children could only work from 6am - 6pm in the summer and 7am - 7pm in the winter.

• In his 1931 essay Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, the eminent economist JM Keynes predicted a 15-hour workweek for his grandkiddies generation. He also notes a distinction between two classes of human needs - absolute needs (food, shelter etc) and "those which are relative in the sense that we feel them only if their satisfaction lifts us above...our fellows." He does say that this latter grouping may be insatiable, but I think he would be flabberghasted to see quite how much those needs now rule the economy and society.

Keynes, who also promoted
acceptance of homosexuality

• Though still maintaining a 40 hour workweek, in 2008 the state of Utah, USA experimented with shortening the number of days worked: In August 2008, they redefined the workweek for more than 17,000 of its employees so that they worked 10 hours on 4 days a week and not at all on Fri, Sat and Sun. By May 2009, the state had saved $1.8million and 82% of workers involved said they would prefer to stick to the new routine. [source]

• The European Work Directive of 1993 made a maximum workweek of 48 hours for EU member states. However it also had an opt-out clause - and guess what, the UK opted out. Essentially, we have a law that no one can be forced to work more than 48 hours per week, unless they wish to do so. So yeah, we don't really have a maximum. [source] [source]

There are loads more examples of legislation and policy ideas on workweeks; those are just a handful.

Here's what the experts said...

On the panel were:

Juliet Schor - Professor of Economics at Boston University and author of these related tomes

Lord Skidelsky - Emeritus Professor of Political Economy at Warwick University, he's way too impressive to reduce to a couple of lines - check out his site.

Tim Jackson - Professor of Sustainable Developtment at Surrey University and author of this book which I'll be doing a post on soon.

Anna Coote - chaired the panel, Head of Social Policy NEF

You can watch the event yourself at this webpage.

So, here's what NEF and the panel reckon about a shorter work week:

• "The time's right to think about time" - Coote: We need to start thinking about how we value time, money and products, and reassess those valuations. For example, by trading some money for some more time.

• Cutting working hours could: reap environmental benefits through less use of fuel in travel or powering work places; encourage more active participation in citizen affairs due to freed up time; improve health and stress levels; leave more time for relationships and family; reduce inequality and unemployment by redistribution of hours - less hours per person equals more people able to get some hours of work; potentially increase output in some fields.
•  Even if we could grow our way out of unemployment/recession, we don't want to: working hours are closely related to ecological issues and carbon footprints. Higher hours = higher footprint. The more you work, the more you degrade.

• Time-stressed households behave in a more carbon intensive way. (I don't have a stat for you proving this one, though I can imagine that it'd be accurate - most labour-saving home stuff requires electricity. You'd be more likely to drive or fly to places.) 

• To accumulate without end is pathological, i.e. to keep working more in order to make more money to buy more things that aren't necessities or above a certain low-level of comfort is an illness.

• We need to start thinking about our working experience qualitatively, not quantatively; i.e. about the quality of it, not how much of it we do.

• "Pathology of squeezing time through the frame of productivity growth to increase output in the economy" - Tim Jackson

•  Behavioural economics tells us that we have 'asymmetrical preferences': Applied here this means that people feel very differently about income that they already have compared to income that they don't yet have - we are resistant to giving up what we do have, yet not resistant to forgoing future earnings. That's why people like direct debits.

• The "delusive promise of more consumption" (Schor) perpetuates us passively taking on longer hours than necessary.

This is from www.getrichslowly.org

They ask us to consider what is Enough, what is Necessity, what is the Purpose of our working day, and how much do our unpaid activities (home life, leisure etc) become eroded by our working hours.

The problems with the idea

There are the general problems noted in the public domain about this idea.

The first is glaringly obvious: Some people barely earn enough to live off working over 40 hours/week on the minimum wage - how on earth could they live off 21 hours pay?

Prof. Juliet Schor
looking cheerful

Schor said in the panel discussion this: "the trajectory of progressive work time reduction in which you can use productivity growth to finance those changes [in work hours means that you don't] need to take income away from people."

So basically she's saying that somehow, people would still earn the same amount. She also said that minimum wage would need to go up. This is where the idea seems to turn into widespread income redistribution - which is a Good Thing in and of itself, but makes this whole 21 hour work week caboodle a lot more complex and unlikely.

Secondly, the argument that it would reduce carbon footprint slightly depends upon what people do with their extra day off. If Larry goes off and arsons a forest, it's not so helpful ecologically. Bad Larry.

For some reason this is what came
up when I image searched
'lump of labour'.

Thirdly and more technically, there's the lump-of-labour fallacy

This is basically the notion that there is not a finite amount of work available - i.e. that an economy can always generate enough work to employ its whole population.

This is what Schor has said here in response to someone bringing it up:

"Here’s a little bit of what’s wrong with that argument. It’s about a closed economy–not a set of wealthy countries in a global system with severe inequities and free movement of capital. There’s no reason that jobs are created in the wealthy (and declining) parts of the world. And second, climate change requirements act are a constraint on labor demand/job creation."

There's also the rather massive question of how we'd go about putting this new work week in place - would businesses start it? Would the govt regulate? Etc.

Parkinson's Law

Parkinson's law says that work expands to fill the time available to do it in. It was first used in 1955 by Cyril Northcote Parkinson in an humourous essay for The Economist [read it here].

Combining that adage and the basic assumption that it is better for the environment and society to try to consume less, a shorter working week makes rather a lot of sense.

I'd love to see or hear about some companies in the UK trying this one out.

The 10-4 notion (see above about Utah; 4 days a week working 10 hours daily) is a really interesting one and surely one worth testing out over here. It doesn't affect pay as the total number of hours worked weekly remains the same, but it does free up a whole extra day. The 5 day 9-5 grind is as much a construct as imposing this new version of the work week would be.

The Commonsense Sniff-o-meter
on youcanarguewithstupid:
rotten haddock - eggy - pine fresh

However, the idea of a 21 hour work week rates Eggy on my Commonsense Sniff-o-meter. It is SUCH a vast reduction, that I don't see how it would ever come about (except over a huge number of years - which the environment doesn't really have). We live in a largely passive society and the 9-5 is so strongly ingrained that a smaller shift is far more likely to come into effect. So for me, the 4-10 model rates Pine Fresh, and could be a starting point for bigger changes.

But the point isn't really about the numbers - it's about starting to think properly about how we live, and how we can improve our wellbeing. This is all part of that.

Any move towards normalising shorter work hours (whilst having a living wage) has to be a good thing. The insatiable wish to consume, to accumulate and to compete in a 24 hour globalised world has led many people and industries to a point where they no longer consider how they use their time, they just use it. But time as a commodity needs consideration; what should the division of it between economic and social use be?

To wind up, here's Keynes again in the same essay as above:

The love of money as a possession as distinguished from the love of money as a means to the enjoyments and realities of life will be recognized for what it is, a somewhat disgusting morbidity, one of those semi-criminal, semi-pathological propensities which one hands over with a shudder to the specialists in mental disease.

youcanarguewithstupid

Guardian's lovely photos from the 1974 shorter workweek here
Juliet Schor explaining her argument for here
Books that talk about subjects touched on here (other than the panel's books):
How to be Free - Tom Hodgkinson
The Age of Absurdity - Michael Foley
Affluenza - Oliver James
Small is Beautiful - E F Schumacher
Articles about a 4 day work week:
Guardian
Inc