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Wage

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Wage and Well-being

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Abstract

On the eve of COVID-19, the world of work was boasting record numbers in employment. Yet a record number of those people were also not being paid enough, in their everyday wages, to sustain collective wellbeing. Today that crisis – of wage and wellbeing – is even more acute. This chapter introduces a plan for tackling it. The foundation is material and moral – wage structures should always promote not undermine wellbeing. A first step from there is recognizing that wage, and in particular wage-setting, has not been taken anywhere seriously enough by governments, businesses – and by research. Psychological research is a prime example, but Humanitarian work psychology has been shifting the focus. Economic Necessity matters, and what people need POST-Covid, more than ever, is not just courses on self-esteem or resilience but an overhaul of how we understand the materiality of wage and its implications for human wellbeing.

The Work Experience Program … Creating jobs for people … Just like normal jobs, the only difference being you don’t get paid. If you’re unemployed you get to work but you don’t get any wages… But it’s to boost your self-esteem, that’s how f****** condescending? … That’s what people need – last Friday of the month, I’m going to check if my self-esteem is in… Gonna try and pay these bills, ‘Hi is that British Gas, Listen mate I’m skint but … are you prepared to accept self-esteem?’…

... To stop people sinking into depression… working in Poundstretcher for no wages….That’s pretty f****** depressing, working in a shop where everything is worth a quid, except you. (Kevin Bridges, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEWYvdtxqHE)

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Notes

  1. 1.

    In the case of own-account employment, organisational may include other organizations in the supply chain.

  2. 2.

    Well-being is also multifaceted; however, full discussion of this multiplicity is deferred until the next chapter.

  3. 3.

    Thanks here to Professor Darrin Hodgetts, from whom this idea is taken almost verbatim.

  4. 4.

    I am grateful to an online lecture by Professor David Harvey (http://davidharvey.org/2019/03/reading-marxs-capital-vol-1-class-4-chapters-4-5-6-2019/, accessed September 13, 2021, via Dr. Clifford van Ommen.

  5. 5.

    Henry Ford reportedly doubled the pay, and purchasing power, of his production line workers, but the goal seems to have been production efficiency – handling the pressure of production lines – not well-being.

  6. 6.

    The most recent source of information in this report dated to 2017.

  7. 7.

    This is a fixed fund in a way that is more clearly circumscribed than for wider, societal wage fund theory.

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Acknowledgement

Thank you to Professor Darrin Hodgetts for your invaluable feedback on an earlier version of this chapter.

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  1. UNESCO Chair on Sustainable Livelihoods/School of Psychology, Massey University, Auckland, New Zealand

    Stuart C. Carr

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Carr, S.C. (2023). Wage. In: Wage and Well-being. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-19301-9_1

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