John McTernan insightfully critiques ‘blue Labour’ as compelling in its analysis of citizens caught between powerful markets and a not-responsive-enough state but – and it is a big but – he could go much further in recognising that, far from offering “very little idea of what might be done” it already has a proven record and relevance to today’s society and to tomorrow’s workplace.
So does blue Labour have any part in the equality debate? Or do its provocative subtitles of family, faith and flag effectively locate it firmly in a past idyllic for some, less so for others?
Blue Labour in its incarnation as London Citizens’ Living Wage Campaign has boosted the pay, employment status and terms and conditions of thousands of women and ethnic minorities in low-paid jobs, up to the Joseph Rowntree Minimum Income Standard, the level to sustain life and social inclusion; more than this, it has convinced companies to bring workers back in-house restoring their status as employees, facilitating future work progression.
New Labour’s national minimum wage was a huge success but it is not enough to live on without the supplementation of tax credits from the state. People prefer the dignity of fair pay through the pay-packet to hand-outs from the state.
Relational and one-to-one, a coalition of trades unions and faith and community groups, blue Labour takes the politics of personalisation and persuasion straight to company board-rooms and AGM’s and speaks there in a quiet collective voice about the redress of social and economic inequality.
As such is it is an effective strategy against gender and BAME inequality and undervalue, against insufficiency of pay and economic exclusion.
Yet in a parliamentary democracy, we put our faith in law as the agent of political change. Does the direct action of the Living Wage Campaign complement or subvert representative democracy? With a gender pay gap of 19.3% and an escalating age-related gender pay gap even with the existence of an Equal Pay Act for the last 40 years, legislation is demonstrably only part of the answer.
Where law on the statute book fails to win hearts and minds in the boardroom, the relational approach can complement what can be achieved through legislation. But can the Living Wage Campaign ever be more than a scratch on the industrial surface, its achievements small scale, individualised, piecemeal, one firm at a time, a trailblazer not a panacea?
A metropolitan-based organisation, London Citizens is able to speak directly to bosses who set the pay for firms nationally so it makes waves right across the UK.
Yesterday’s Observer confirms that two-thirds of Britons do not like the extent of the pay gap between higher and lower earners (Pay gap is too wide, say two-thirds of Britons) and would approve government action to address it. Recent polling shows that voters are intimidated by the power of markets but lack faith in the centre-left’s ability to protect them. The High Pay Commission shows that as a nation the divergence of pay between lowest and highest levels is taking us back to the levels of inequality of a century ago.
We will always need the overarching protection of equality and employment law to set social norms and legitimise goals – the Coalition government’s current plan to water down TUPE protection of outsourced workers’ jobs is a step in the wrong direction and will increase inequality, poverty, disempowerment in the workforce. Blue Labour, though, as a champion for the rights at work of the least-paid, has a secure place in a multi-strategic approach for creating the good society.