The solution is that “work of equal value” does not exist
Last week we pointed out that to solve the Birmingham binmen strike it is necessary to pay teaching assistants more.
We know what it is too. The insistence that there is a value to something other than what the market determines. Fools have decided to encode into law a nonsense, that there is some definable “value” to a type of work other than market wages. The only economic value anything has is what someone will pay for it. For wages this then becomes the amount folk are willing to pay to get the job done as compared to the amount people will have to be paid to do the job. As and when all the desired labour - yes, of suitable quality - has been hired at whatever price gains willing workers then that’s the value of that labour. There is no other valuation possible.
Well, no other useful or logical valuation possible that is. For clearly it’s possible to be an idiot about it. Which is where we are. In order to clear Birmingham’s streets of 17,000 tonnes of rubbish and the associated rats the size of cats it is necessary to pay teaching assistants more.
Which, given that the teaching assistants aren’t going to be picking up shovels to either move the rubbish or beat the rats is an absurdity. Therefore the policy that led to this is in itself absurd.
Of course, because we are neoliberals and all that we are but just a voice howling in the forest. So, here’s The Observer making the same point:
Those lawyers were Leigh Day, acting on behalf of women working in council roles that didn’t get those kinds of perks – traditionally female-dominated functions such as teaching assistants, cleaners and caterers.
The WRCO job was used as a comparable by Leigh Day to demonstrate that the council discriminated against women in favour of men. Even worse, Birmingham had created the WRCO role five years after it had lost a landmark equal pay claim in 2012, when it had given bonuses to refuse collectors and street cleaners but not to cleaners and caterers. By 2023, it had paid out £1.1bn in a series of compensation claims, and that year effectively went bankrupt. Other similar claims have been lodged against Next, Asda, Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Morrisons and the Co-op.
Last December, Birmingham settled this new claim, brought by GMB and Unison, and agreed in principle to pay a £250m settlement to 6,000 women. The final details are still being worked out and the council is trying to prevent further claims by changing its employment practices – hence the scrapping of the WRCO which led to this year’s strike.
“This is an issue that’s dogged this council for years,” said John Cotton, Birmingham’s leader since 2023. Successive administrations had failed to “eliminate the injustice” he said, “and clearly, if we don’t follow the right processes and procedures relating to pay grading, then we risk opening up a future liability.”
Fixing the problems could mean levelling up pay for the teaching assistants, the cleaners and the caterers, but given Birmingham’s financial problems, adding millions to the payroll is not an option for Cotton.
Howling in the forest we may be but we’re also right. The problem is this asinine assumption that there is “work of equal value” which must then be paid the same wages. The determinant of wages is how much do we have to pay to get enough people to come and do this thing? There is no other valuation possible - or, perhaps, no other without ending up with the truly absurd result that to gain access to sufficient rubbish collectors we must pay the dinner ladies more.
Markets work, prices work, wages are prices in markets. Any and every attempt to usurp this ends in asinine absurdity - as we have here.
Change the law, fools.
Tim Worstall