In July there was a storm of controversy about relative rates of pay. The media, the unions, the politicians and the economists all entered the fray which arose out of the recommendation of a committee, set up for that purpose, to grant big increases of pay for top civil servants, judges and high ranking military officers. The pay of an Admiral and Civil Service Permanent Secretary went up from £45.000 to £60,000 and a High Court Judge's pay from £51,250 to £60,000. This got a bad press, partly on the ground that it was outrageous to give top people increases ranging up to 46 per cent while teachers, civil servants and others were being offered even less than the rise of prices, and partly on the ground (this from supporters of the government) that it had been badly timed. The government narrowly escaped defeat in the House of Commons. many Tory MPs abstaining.
The committee which recommended the increases gave as their reasons that, while the top people in the government service did not expect to get into the £100.000- £200.000 levels of some of the highest paid directors of companies, the gap had become too large; they were being disheartened and demoralised and the recruitment of suitable people was falling off — reasons which the critics found unconvincing. A telling point made by the government was that similar big increases had been given by the last Labour government.
Unions currently engaged in pay negotiations made the most of this situation. How could it be justified that already well paid top people should be given these big increases while teachers were being offered only 6 per cent? The teachers' unions argued that at their present pay, teachers are "grossly underpaid". But this does not single teachers out from all the other workers. Every one of the nearly 400 unions will maintain with equal vehemence that their members, too. are "grossly underpaid".
It would be entertaining if the opinion pollsters were to take time off from failing to forecast accurately the results of by-elections and conduct polls about what people think of their pay. To the first question. “Do you think you are underpaid?", the answers would surely be an overwhelming "Yes". The answers to a second question. "On what do you base this belief?" would be more interesting.
The list of reasons would be long and varied. That pay is not enough to live on. It does not take enough account of our skills and qualifications, or of our conditions of work, of our having to work at night or at the weekend. We have to work underground, or in the open-air, or at heights above ground. Our work is dangerous, or boring or exhausting; our pay undervalues the quality and quantity of our output, or our responsibility for human life, or for health or large sums of money. It has not kept up with prices and so on. Of course the pollsters should include the people receiving sick benefit, unemployment benefit or pensions. It is certain that large numbers of the replies would be concerned with comparisons — women's pay and men's, rural pay and pay in the towns, industrial workers' pay and that of office workers. Naturally everybody 's pay would be compared with that of the top people.
Ever since the government started publishing information on average pay in different industries, and average pay in all industries combined, the workers receiving less than the combined average have claimed that they ought to have their pay brought up to that average. (Agricultural workers recently asked for their pay to be doubled on that ground.) If ever such an adjustment was accepted for general application it would end up with all industries receiving the same pay. If no industry remained below the average there could be no industry above the average either.
The idea of the same pay for all has had well-known backers. Marx alleged of Proudhon that his idea of the aim of social revolution was "equality of wages". At one time Bernard Shaw advocated it, as did Lenin in Russia and Attlee, Prime Minister of the 1945-51 Labour government in Britain. Lenin, in his State and Revolution, published in 1917 before the Communists seized power, wrote: "The whole of society will become a single office and a single factory, with equality of labour and pay". A year later he announced that this idea was unworkable and had had to be abandoned. It has, of course, never been resumed. Attlee in his The Will and the Way to to Socialism (1935) rejected the Tory belief "that society must always be divided into classes of rich and poor", and promised that a Labour government would abolish social classes and introduce "an equalitarian society", the method being to raise wages and cut down the incomes of the rich. "There would be no little cottages and no large private houses. All would be reasonably housed."
No political party now treats seriously the concept of equal pay to all as a practical way to run capitalism, but much has been written about, and much effort applied to. schemes for fixing relativities between the wages paid in all occupations, by means of "job evaluation". The late Lord Brown, a Labour Party supporter (not Lord George Brown) claimed that it would be possible to fix the "proper" rate of pay for every job in the country from the lowest to the highest. The requirements of each job would be assessed and points awarded for each factor; for qualifications and skill, for initiative and responsibility and working conditions, and numerous other factors. According to Lord Brown's scheme, this would result in an objective and scientific measure for comparing one job with any other and fixing pay accordingly.
This, and other proposals for fixing comparative rates of pay on some ideal standard. come up against practical difficulties. Any trade union which found itself in a position to enforce higher pay than the one awarded would ignore the assessment, as would any employer who could get all the workers needed at a lower rate of pay.
But the theory behind such schemes is also flawed. The assessments can never be objective, depending as they do on who makes them. There would always be disagreement between the people actually doing the job and the outside assessors. Although the Royal Commission on the Civil Service 1953-55 recommended that some use might be made of job evaluation in the fixing of the pay of civil service grades, their Report (page 149) admitted that objectivity is impossible, as indeed it is:
In this and in other fields where it is necessary to compare and to add together factors, which are, strictly speaking, unmeasurable, the use of the points system may well facilitate consistency of judgement-, though it must be recognised that the judgement itself remains essentially subjective.
Behind the widespread complaint of workers that they are underpaid is the belief that, as distinct from the pay they are actually receiving, a "fair", or "just", or "equitable" rate for the job would be something more. (None of the replies to the pollsters would say that the subject is overpaid, though plenty would say that of other people's jobs.) This is quite meaningless and irrelevant, arising out of the refusal to face up to the fact that we live in a capitalist society. Capitalism is not concerned with distribution on some principle of "equity" but with making as much profit as possible. It is as true now as when Marx wrote in Value, Price and Profit over a century ago. that capitalism is a class-divided society, the two classes having opposing interests:
The capitalist class constantly tending to reduce wages to their physical minimum; and to extend the working day to its physical maximum, while the working man constantly presses in the opposite direction. The matter resolves itself into a question of the respective powers of the combatants.
In this struggle trade union organisation and strikes are the workers' only weapons. For the employers, including government departments and nationalised industries, the "proper" rate of pay is the lowest that they can get the workers to accept and yet recruit in sufficient number the workers needed. This is the background against which the great mass of the wage and salary earners get their living. It is another matter entirely for the propertied class who depend for their living, not on working, but on profits, interest and land rent, based on the exploitation of the working class. What way out is there? Marx provided the answer. He did not urge the workers to carry on with the endless struggle for "fair wages" but the reverse:
Instead of the conservative motto, "a fair day's wages for a fair day's work”, they ought to inscribe on their banners the revolutionary watchword "Abolition of the wages system".
Before leaving consideration of the people with fancy and quite unrealistic ideas about reforming the wages system under capitalism. Woodrow Wyatt (Times, 27 July 1985) provides an interesting sidelight on the MPs. Roy Hattersley, Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, was very angry about the big increases for top people. So were many Tory, Labour, Liberal and SDP members. Wyatt had this to say:
However, despite their sudden conversion to "social justice" most were among those MPs who in July 1983 voted themselves to be linked by January 1988 to 89 per cent of a Senior Principal's pay. A very nice bonanza with no examination by an independent review body. MPs' pay is now £16.900 a year. Already 89 per cent of a Senior Principal's pay is £20,404 and by 1988 will be around £23.000 giving MPs an increase of some 36 per cent to look forward to.
The MPs' pay of £16,900 is supplemented by what Wyatt says are very generous allowances.
Perhaps the pollsters will ask MPs if they too think they are grossly underpaid and if so why. particularly in view of the fact that all of the several thousand who have been in Parliament since 1945 were committed to hold down prices and maintain "full employment". They can hardly base their claim on their performance in these two fields.
Edgar Hardcastle
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