The Living Wage is about the kind of society we want to live in

By Sam Tomlin

Today Jenni and I joined with friends as part of South London Citizens to campaign through action for companies on the Southbank to pay the Living Wage (and celebrate with those who already do like ITV and the Financial Times).

For those who don't know the Living Wage campaign was set up in 2001 by members of London Citizens (including various churches) who found that despite working two jobs or more, many people were still struggling to get by and spend time with family and in their community. The current Living Wage in London is £9.15/hour and £7.85 for the rest of the UK (the minimum wage is £6.50/hour). Initially derided as unrealistic and too demanding for employers there are now over 1,000 accredited Living Wage employers.

My support of this campaign is based on a number of reasons.


While proponents don't claim it will be a panacea, it appears to make sense economically at a time when the cost of living is one of the greatest crises in the UK. A government-commissioned Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission report published last year showed that two-thirds of the 2.3million children defined as in poverty have at least one parent in work - basically work is not paying. This means that taxpayers are paying £30billion in in-work benefits, essentially subsidising employers who do not pay employees a living wage. Can't imagine that helps in the 'global economic race' Mr Cameron!

To put that in perspective (taking George Osborne's new tax statements as the example), someone earning £23,000 and paying £4,542 income tax will be paying £296 for such in-work benefits - compared to just £38 for unemployment benefits. Encouraging large employers to pay the Living Wage will help to reduce this tax bill.

There are a number of advantages for employers themselves as large companies like KPMG have found:

'KPMG has also found that the Living Wage simply makes good business sense.  Since introducing the Living Wage for its staff in 2006, KPMG has found that the extra wage costs are more than met by lowered recruitment churn and absenteeism, greater loyalty, and higher morale leading to better performance.'

 The 1,000+ employers around the country are now accredited living wage employers is also proof of this.

Socially there are also a number of advantages, illustrated well by Conservative thinker David Skelton who argues that higher wages should fit comfortably within the Tory tradition. Low pay means that parents are statistically more likely to suffer emotional pressures, impacting strongly on the family unit with parents spending less time with children which in turn is likely to impact educational attainment as well as children's general wellbeing: 'Children from the poorest fifth of families are more than a year behind the richest children in terms of vocabulary development by the age of five.'

But perhaps the reason I feel such an affinity for this campaign is because all these things speak deeply about the kind of society we want to live in and ultimately the Kingdom of God. For decades we have had an economic system which has arguably dehumanised people within it. Far from the economy existing for

people, people have existed for the economy, fuelling seemingly unending growth for its own sake. The ability of the market to adjust poor wages is often cited by Christian friends along with the importance of companies amassing huge profits for executives and shareholders before considering wage rises for employees. It's almost as if the Kingdom of God was waiting for the economic liberalism of the 1980's until it could be properly realized.

What I love about the Living Wage campaign is that it dares to oppose the view that our economy needs to run primarily by greed. It may actually be possible that executives in large firms could take their eye off the immediate bottom line and re-humanise their work-force. It may even mean their yearly salary decreases (momentarily or permanently) from £1million to £750,000 to enable others to simply live. Living Wage is not the heavy hand of statist socialism which so many business leaders fear - it is the invitation to join a movement where all are truly valued and the benefits are shared as illustrated above (of course the minimum wage could always do with a small top-up!).

That may sound like the definition of absurdity within the narrow confines of our dominant economic system, but for me it seems to fit well into the up-side down Kingdom of God where lions will sit with lambs and the powerful and rich will give up their status for the poorest and most marginalised.

There is, as my friend and Salvation Army officer Nick Coke put beautifully earlier this week, a very spiritual dimension to all of this: when a child shares about 'how they have much more time with their mum now she only needs to do 1 job', when a cleaner talks 'about the dignity that comes with feeling valued in the workplace', when a father speaks 'of his pride in being able to provide for his family's needs', and when an employer can take pride in knowing that they have facilitated this, then 'the space between heaven and earth is narrowed.'