There is no doubt that London is now one of the largest financial center in the world
and most of the credit must go to the migrant workers. The migration in London not only do
the banking or trading but also do the low paid job such as cleaning. However, due to the
constant development of the technology, there is a growing polarization of jobs which makes
a large rise in the number of both well paid jobs and low paid jobs. In 2013, about six hundred
and forty thousand people in London were doing the low paid job, most of them were either
migration or women. They were paid less than the London Living Wage and some of them
were even has a terrible work condition. Moreover, the percentage of the people who were
paid less than the London Living Wage is increasing year by year. This situation shows the
fact that the cost of living in London is growing much faster than the earning people make,
that is why more and more jobs are fall below the threshold of the low paid job. Therefore,
the members of London Citizens launch the Living Wage Campaign in 2001. The aim of it
is to built a real social cohesion by making people not only dealing with the common issues
together but also winning the justice together. To that end, it may be argued that London
Living Wage Campaign is a way out of poverty for the workers in London. This essay will
divided into three parts. In the first section, this essay will define more details about living
wage and London Living Wage Campaign. The second section will discuss the problem
existing in subcontracted employment. Finally, in the third section, this essay will mention
about the low paid foreign-born worker in London.
Living wage is the wage that based upon the cost of living in an area which enabled
the worker supply enough standard of living for their family. As mention above, many
workers in London were low paid which means they were paid less than the London Living
Wage. It may cause many problems such as education, health, social services, and benefit
system. Low pay can also linked to other problems in the workplace, for examples, high
turnover, poor training, lack of bargaining power. According to Wills (2009), some employers
cutting down on the labor and management the cost of the low cost workers to save the
money. More and more numbers of the employees are no longer directly employed by the
organization or company that they work for. The jobs which are more likely to be
subcontracted are the jobs of service sector such as cleaning, security, catering.
Subcontracted employment is a particularly effective way for the employers to cut down the
cost, slip the responsibility, and increase the flexibility of employment. London Living Wage
Campaign was launched in 2001 and has been led by London Citizens. The aim of this
campaign is to put the pressure to the employers to win the wages for the workers. According
to Evans (2007) claims that the London Wage Campaign has already counts many important
for the workers in hospitals and also universities in East London. London Living Wage
Campaign has demonstrated the power of the new form of the labor organization to deal
with the subcontracted employment. It is also revealed the lack of unions of trade in some
part of the low paid labor market in London.
Subcontracted employment is a new kind of employment recent years and exists in
the low-wage physical work mostly. Sometimes a company may subcontract their demand
for specific staffs to another special company for saving money on management of
unimportant affairs and increasing efficiency. Followed by a consequence, it is hard to
identify the real employers from the perspective of contracts, which enable companies to
offer inferior pay and welfare without regulation, since the employees have been contracted
out and do not know who should they negotiate with (Wills, 2009) . That is a bug in the
contract and make it hard to implement living wage in the past. With the help of UNISON,
some workers like mentioned above have received fair treatment (salary, sick pay, holiday
entitlement). Due to the workers are not directly employed by the company or organization
they work for, they do not have the industrial contact with their real employer which means
they have no way to bargain with their situation. However, Will suggests that if the workers
are trying to bargain and giving pressure to the employers, they may end up losing their
jobs. As a result, some trade union and labor organization were working together to develop
new ways to respond the problems of the employment. Living Wage Campaign was launch
and allowed the workers to make alliances with other no labor people to gibe the pressures
to the real employers.
It has proved that trade unions can effectively sort the problems caused by
subcontract, but it is not the best way. In the case of Homerton Hospital, UNISON is a
member of London Citizens, the staffs in the hospital managed to place pressure on NHS.
However, it took 5 years to complete the improvement. Due to the high turnover rate, many
staffs have left before the living wage campaign come into effect. Beside that, the union is
no longer as active as it was during the campaign. By contrast, community-based
organization without active trade union had a better performance, the schedule of the
campaign was faster relatively. And it highlighted the representation and organizing gap
between “real employers” and “workers” and trying to fill it. Both the two forms have their
own merits and shortcoming. Workers need union representation to recalibrate their day-to-
day working conditions, while the community-based organization is more effective. Only by
combining these, will the problems of subcontracted employment be solved.
The low wage economy in London is populated by an extraordinary diverse group of
the workers and there are many of the common features between them. Will (2010) suggest
that the migration and its relationship between the benefit entitlement has been critical in
the creating of the new migration division of the labor in London. Many of the migrants has
children, their low wages and the lack of the benefit entitlement will relative to the child
poverty in London. Will also founds that many of the workers with low wages in London were
motivated by the prospect of employment and educational rather than by the benefits.
Migrants come to London because they thought it was more easier to find a job here and
also because they knew that the rate of wage were much more better than in their home
countries. Furthermore, many of the the migrant workers come to this unknown city without
access to the benefits system and they need to work for money to survive. Many of them
has the problems in English language and some of them even do not have the recognized
qualification. Due to this reason, they were often forced to do the low paid job and most of
their wages are even below the living wage. As the result, they are the people who need the
help for the Living Wage Campaign.
To sum up, in London, a fraction of workers still suffer unfair treatment due to various
reasons, and most of them are the migrants workers. Living wage campaign is an humane
action to help the weak group of the workers which allowed the workers to straighten and
established trade unions organization. The London Living Wage Campaign also help the
workers in London to change the condition and of employment and make their terms of work
become better. In the past years, trade unions and some community-based organization
play important role in the campaign to some extent, but cooperation between the two forms
are needed to improve the campaign.
References
Evans, Y., Wills, J., Datta, K., Herbert, J., McIlwaine, C., May, J., (2007), Just Labour: A
Canadian Journal of Work and Society, Vol 10, p85-97
Wills, J., Datta, K., Evans, Y., Herbert, Y, May, J., Mcilwaine, C., (2010), Global Cities at
Work: New Migrant Divisions of Labour, London and New York: Pluto Press, p59-93
Wills, J., (2009). Subcontracted Employment and Its Challenge to Labor. Labor Studies
Journal, Vol 34, p441-459