If one wishes to get to the root of why populism in Britain today has such an appeal, whether it is the populism of the Brexiters or the Corbynistas, then this is the book to read. For, as history has shown, the roots of populism can be traced back to poor working conditions and living standards.
Bloodworth chronicles in a very graphic manner, the daily reality of millions of Britons who are trapped in low paid insecure jobs in the ‘gig economy, ‘ on zero hours contracts, who are exploited on a daily basis with very few employment rights
It is the Britain of the twenty-first century where one in twenty people live on the minimum wage, where nearly two and a half million people who are self-employed have a weekly wage below the minimum weekly wage, and while there are record levels of employment, an increasing proportion of this work is poorly paid, precarious and without regular hours. As Bloodworth points out “working for five hours a week may keep you off the government’s unemployment figures, but it is not necessarily sufficient to pay the rent.”
And for those in full-time work, more and more private sector companies are no longer paying sick pay, but merely statutory sick pay of ninety-two pounds and five pence a week. How can anyone live off such a meager amount whilst sick? This leads to tremendous injustices with employees working whilst sick because they can’t afford to take time off because they will lose pay. It also leads to cruelty. An employee of a major high street law firm with numerous branches in the South East who suffered a broken leg as a result of a road accident and who was clearly off sick through no fault of her own was offered a loan by the firm to cover her time off which she was expected to pay back.
Exploitation is rampant. Stewards who work at Premier League football clubs for private security companies have to sign in an hour early before they start getting paid and there are numerous occasions where even when the steward arrives on time he or she is sent home with no pay as the security company has overbooked on its numbers. There are paralegals in law firms left dangling for a year and half on minimum pay before they are finally told whether they will be offered a training contract or not.
For too many people in Britain there is the insecurity of not knowing whether one has a job from one day to the next. The mental stress this causes is tremendous and immeasurable. We truly live in Dickensian times.
James Bloodworth starts his ‘journey working’ in an Amazon warehouse in Rugeley, Staffordshire, where until he mentions he is working at an Amazon warehouse, the reader is left wondering aloud whether he is actually working in a prison with Amazon workers in effect getting only fifteen minutes lunch break to guzzle down stodgy food, where to be underpaid is the norm, where the shifts last ten and a half hours, and where in this Darwinism world to be sick is considered to be an unpardonable sin caused by laziness and where your every movement is monitored through a hand-held electronic device, very Orwellian..
His journey then takes him to Blackpool where he works as a care worker. It is the norm for Home Office security checks to take two to three months, so care workers could end up with no pay for two to three months. Bloodworth in Blackpool strikes a rapport with a homeless individual called Gary who informs him that he always sleeps near a CCTV camera as a deterrent against people ‘kicking his head in’ whilst asleep. A Shelter report in 2016 stated that one in three families in England could not afford to pay their rent or mortgage for longer than one month if they lost their job.
Bloodworth also worked at a call center for Admiral in South Wales which he described as “sheer tedium.” He finally ended back in London as an Uber driver, a company that has tried to avoid paying its staff minimum pay and holiday entitlement by defining its workforce as independent contractors.
This book is a must read for anyone who believes in social justice. It is a book about the millions of ordinary Britons who wake up in the morning and ask the following question: How shall I keep myself alive? It is a book about modern Britain, a Britain of two nations, the haves and have-nots. All policy makers who are responsible for tackling inequality and poverty need to read this book.
Ze’ev Portner works as a part time law lecturer and in security in the ‘gig economy.’ The English Channel.
