Giving way over wages
I have bought the Standard for 34 years and voted “Socialism” at elections as you advise us to do.
Recently I have been having a battle in the local newspaper with married women teachers who have husbands earning the average industrial wage of £60 a week. I have suggested that where they have joint incomes of £160 gross per week they give up their employment in favour of the young unemployed who receive £11 dole. The reply of the married women teachers is that the law has now been changed and they are going to hang on to the good life no matter how many are out of work. This legislation I believe was due to pressure on the Labour government by women’s organizations. By the way the local Labour Party have kept out of the argument!
What has the SPGB to say on this matter to the unemployed? I myself am existing on £14.15 invalidity pay at 59 years of age. Will we ever get Socialism? Do we deserve it? The so-called "middle-class” women have no principles.
E. Hewkin,
Derby
Reply:
We sympathize with your anger over inequalities, but in this instance you are mistaken. What you are proposing is a variant of the “wages fund” idea; i.e. that a certain amount of money is available, and one group of workers gets more only at the expense of another group. That is not the case, nor is the converse—that if one group relinquished its higher wages the money would go to others who are poorly paid.
If married women teachers resigned on principle as you suggest, who would get their jobs and salaries? In the present situation, the answer is “Nobody”. The numbers of teachers are being cut down, not by sackings but by non-replacement of those who leave (normally by retirement). The authorities, who are seeking to reduce government expenditure, would be gratified at having the process thus speeded-up; they would not then defeat the object of “cuts” by giving extra money elsewhere. The result therefore would be two people out of work instead of one, with the dole as it was.
But higher incomes do not mean opulence for workers. Wages represent the cost not only of producing labour-power, but the cost of reproducing it: maintaining the worker and his family. Some labour- power is a cheap product, requiring little training and maintenance—hence low wages. Skilled, professional and managerial workers generally are selling a more expensive product, hence its higher price. However, the latter must also live in a manner which reproduces their labour-power satisfactorily; and, just as with unskilled workers, that will take them to the extent of their incomes. In housing, for instance, poorer-paid workers may live in Council dwellings or privately-owned ones, at relatively low rents. A mortgage of £7,500 on an “owner-occupied” house at present Building Society rates over 15 years means repayments of nearly £100 a month, and similar expenses knock holes in the sort of wages you refer to. Please understand that we are not asking you to shed tears for people with incomes several times bigger than yours. We are pointing out that all workers are ultimately in the same boat. The married women replying to you may pretend to be arguing from principle, but in fact it is expediency thrust on them by the economics of capitalism.
Why not point out, instead, that women workers are exploited the same as male ones, and “the good life” is a carrot on a stick? An unemployed person seeks whatever solution he can find to his immediate individual problem, but the only way to get rid of unemployment and its miseries is to abolish capitalism. Don’t bother your head with such questions as whether we “deserve” Socialism. The capitalist class did not consult its conscience but simply pursued its material interests: Socialism will be established by the working class doing the same.
Editorial Committee.
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