http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/nov/03/miliband-living-wage
Further reading of the article reveals however the imprint of cold fingers when the suggestion appears that employers might voluntarily sign up for the LW following the lead of those champions of the poor and weak KPMG.
Hard on the heels of the last week's damning report on the state of poor, and the crippling effects that austerity is having on too many families, the Resolution Foundation( http://www.resolutionfoundation.org ) pour much cold water on any attempt to smash poverty through feeble, voluntaristic means.
It is interesting that Dave Prentis is party to the Milibands' tinkering with low pay as it tells those who are interested that UNISON's historical roots run deep to a much more fundamental and powerful demand that work should pay (to coin a phrase from the Coalition - but of course with a different emphasis) and that pay, to use a more traditional TU phrase, should be the going rate for the job.
Alan Fisher (and Bernard Dix) carved out the labour movement's position on low pay in 1974 with their publication Low pay and how to end it: A union view. The trade union position on low pay (as with equal pay) reveals a shameful record of reaction and cowardice, yet for Fisher and Dix (leading policy lights in NUPE) the time had come to end the appalling levels of low pay faced by large proportions of public sector workers.
You'll find plenty in the Ruskin library on the history of this but here is a good, short summary:
http://www.theworkfoundation.com/assets/docs/publications/57_national%20minimum%20wage.pdf
With the 70's UK economy in (reasonably) good health it was understandable that the government should take the lead in setting pay trends (and indeed they did throughout the 60s and 70s negotiated with TUs in the form of incomes policy) and in adopting a minimum wage. Although the national minimum wage (NMW) only came into being once New Labour (and the Milibands) were in No.10 no accurate history of the pressure on the Blairites to introduce the NMW is faithful without a reference to Fisher and Dix and indeed NUPE.
Yet, here were are over 40 years later with the Labour heralding voluntarism as the means by which employers should be encouraged to move from the NMW to a LW. It reminds me of New Labour's tragic handling of the finance sector in the 90s between Gordon Brown (then Chancellor) and Patricia Hewitt (then Secretary of State at the DTI) when they claimed that 'light touch regulation' way be the way in which to regulate the sector.
And thus light touch has brought us the heavy hand in the spectacular rise in levels of poverty and the response of the Coalition to the phenomenon.
I will look with interest at how UNISON (both lay and official) in particular responds to the LW debate - particular because of the Shephard/Dix legacy - but also because the LW speaks of a much more fundamental problem for UNISON - and the other affiliated unions with public sector members - which is how they sell the continuity of low pay for public sector workers (Ed Balls has promised the continuity of the pay freeze under Labour) when it is obvious to all that the economic plight for low paid workers is set to worsen.
Where are the new Shephard/Dix that UNISON desperately needs?
In Solidarity
Ian Manborde
Programme Co-ordinator
MA ILTUS
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