“The Worker Deserves His Wages”-
Why Jeremy Corbyn is right to demand
a fairer sharing of profits
In 1980 the average CEO of a UK FTSE 100
company earned 18 times the average worker. Today they earn 180 times. Meanwhile, over recent years average
workers' wages have reduced or stagnated. The world's 62 richest people now own
as much as the 3.6 billion poorest half of the world, having seen their wealth
grow by £1/2 trillion over the last 5 years. And yet most of the super-rich
still take extreme measures to put their wealth beyond the tax man’s reach. The very richest are
gorging themselves on an increasingly grotesque share of the world’s wealth and
resources, leaving the rest of us, especially the poorest, dwindling slender
portions. We can’t just blame David Cameron. This is a global trend
developing over at least three decades.
This is why I applaud Jeremy Corbyn’s recent
proposals to give UK workers a greater share in their employers’ profits as
part of reversing this unhealthy trend. Two of the key proposals were to give
workers of medium & large employers a 5 % share in their employers’ businesses
and ban shareholder’s dividends until a company paid their workers’ the living
wage. As an evangelical Christian I believe such policies are in line with God’s
values revealed in the bible. If we look for it, there are plenty of pointers
there to how He wants us to share the world's resources.
A biblical pattern
The starting point is that we are not the
ultimate owners of anything in this world. “The
earth is the Lord's and everything in it.” (Psalm 24:1) We are merely
tenants and stewards of what we have and shall one day have to account to God
for how we have used His world’s resources. (Matthew 25:14-30)
We see a clear pattern in the bible of how God’s people were to share
their resources. This started during their 40 years of wandering in the desert when
He gave the Israelites manna & quail
to eat, ensured they were shared fairly: ”...the one who gathered much did not have too
much, and the one who gathered little did not have too little. Everyone had
gathered just as much as they needed.” (Exodus 16:18).This was a precursor to how they were to share
the Promised Land when they finally entered it; to be divided fairly and evenly
between all tribes, clans and individual families, “based on the number of names”. Everyone was to have their stake in
it (quite different to how successful invading armies in the rest of history have
distributed the winning portions). Under Kings David and Solomon, although the
kings grew rich, generally the people continued to enjoy their stake in the
land, “everyone
under their own vine and under their own fig tree.” (1 Kings 4:25). However, as their
kings and rulers turned away from the Lord, they oppressed the people and there
was a growing inequality. The rich ruling elite accumulated great wealth for
themselves at the expense of the people generally, and especially the poor whom
they exploited. (Does this sound at all familiar today?) Through his prophets
the Lord spoke out his anger at this evil . For example, In Isaiah 3:14-15:
“The Lord enters into judgment against the elders and leaders of his
people: … the plunder from the poor is in your houses. What do you mean by
crushing my people and grinding the faces of the poor?”
The Lord punished the Israelites who were forced
into exile. Yet He made clear His plan that His people should be restored to
their land and once again each would be given their own fair share of the
land’s resources; “You are to distribute this land among yourselves according
to the tribes of Israel.” (Ezekiel 47:21-23). They Lord’s did return. However, sadly,
the fair distribution of resources did not last long. Inequality, poverty and
exploitation soon returned.
And so the time of Jesus, God’s
own Son. What remained of God’s people were now living under the Romans’ yoke.
Jesus’s mission in one sense was completely apolitical and yet in another was
and is very political. He established a new order, the Kingdom of God, where
ordinary folk were invited to the “top table”, to sup with the King (Matthew
22). Ultimately that new order will be fully realised when He returns to earth
to establish His new Jerusalem (Mark 14:62 /Revelation 21). In that Kingdom there
will no more exploitation or poverty. Every citizen will be a co-ruler with
Jesus, enjoying God’s full abundant blessings (2 Timothy 12/Revelation 21). And
through His very first followers Jesus gave us the ultimate pattern of sharing
our resources now in Acts 4; “No one
claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything
they had.”
God has
made clear through his Word His desire that everyone should have a fair share
in the world’s resources and that excessive hording of wealth, whilst others go
without, is an evil for which we will be judged.
I am certainly not prescribing a mathematically
equal division of wealth. The bible is clear that men should be rewarded
according to their efforts. “He will reward each person according to what
he has done.” (Matthew 16:18). However, the bible emphasises that “From everyone who has given much, much will
be demanded.” (Luke 12:48). Certainly therefore it is perfectly proper that
owners/ managers of successful businesses should enjoy the fruits of their own
efforts. But do CEOs
of large companies really deserve to be paid 180 times the average ordinary
worker? Most of them owe their success not just to
hard work, but gifts that they have been given; natural abilities and (for
many) being born into rich families with good connections and a good private
education.
It’s not just unjust, it's unhealthy
The excessive accumulation of wealth by a small rich elite
is not just unjust but economically and socially unhealthy for us all. Reversing that trend
should have three particular benefits.
Productivity
Low productivity is a particular issue in the
UK, where our worked are now producing significantly less (goods or services) per
hour than our major competitor. We are increasingly becoming a high employment
but low wage low productivity economy. Many believe one way to help reverse
this trend is to incentivize workers by giving them a greater and more direct
stake in their employers’ businesses. Jeremy’s proposed 5% profit share would
for example give the average BT employee an extra £1,200 a year. This is what
some more enlightened and successful businesses, like John Lewis, already do.
It is what is effectively required by law in France. Perhaps it is no
coincidence that French workers produce about 30% more per hour than we do.
Oiling the wheels of
the economy
The growing
concentration of wealth in a rich elite is decreasing the available spending
power of ordinary people. This is bad economics. The super-rich, increasingly soaking up the
wealth, tend to hoard that wealth (especially off shore) rather than spend it.
The rest of us however tend to spend the vast majority of our income. If ordinary people don’t have the disposable
income to buy the goods and services businesses are selling in the end all incomes
suffer, even for the rich.
Increased taxes for better
public services
Most of the super-rich put a lot of their
wealth beyond the tax man’s reach. If more of that wealth was diverted into the
pockets of ordinary folk the government’s tax take would significantly
increase, because
we aren’t able to take advantage of the same tax loopholes as them and on
average as a percentage of income pay more tax than big corporations and their super-rich
owners. This would give government the extra funds it badly needs to pay for
our badly under resourced public services. After all, even the rich elite
directly or indirectly benefit from public services; through the supporting
infrastructure provided to themselves, their businesses and their employees.
The wealth no longer “trickles down”
Some would
argue that despite the extreme imbalance in the end everyone benefits as the
wealth the super-rich generates “trickles down” to us all. The only problem is
the facts no longer support this. It used to be true, but for decades now, both
nationally and globally, the proportion of the wealth generated by business
going to ordinary workers rather than the owners has steadily fallen. Meanwhile
real average wages have stagnated or fallen and private investment in the economy
are at historically low levels. Certainly I would not
advocate a communist-style economy with enforced equality and no opportunity to
reap financial rewards from our own efforts. This stifles innovation and is
good for no one. However, all we are talking about here is tweaking the capitalist
system to put some limits on the extremes of disproportionate profit grabbing
for the few at the top and provide a greater reward for their efforts for the
many below them. It’s
a recognition that pure free market capitalism on its own does not deliver a
prosperity that benefits all.
Lessons from history
Looking back over history it was the same sort
of arguments establishment voices put to oppose virtually every proposal for
economic and social justice over the past 200 years and in every case those fears proved false:
- the abolition of the slave trade 200 years ago
- factory reforms to control excessive hours and dangerous conditions from the late 19th century onwards
- increased taxes on the rich to fund the welfare state & the NHS in the first half of the twentieth century
- employment rights from the 1970s onwards to prevent unfair and discriminatory treatment at work
- the introduction of a minimum wage.
The Labour Party has a proud history of promoting such
economic and social reform. In doing so they have been realising in a small way the
“justice for the poor” that Jesus will ultimately bring when He returns.
(Isaiah 11:4). And it was that biblical vision that inspired Christians like
Kier Hardie to help found the Labour Party. New Labour had far too often
forgotten that mission for social justice. To be relevant today Labour needs to renew that
mission through developing new policies like these. We certainly cannot
rely on the Tory Party deliver such reform; the party that opposed nearly every
one of these previous reforms when they were first proposed.
A vision for the
future
I recently
watched the sci-fi film “Elysium”, a dystopian vision of our world in the 22nd
century. A rich elite build themselves a hermetically sealed, technologically
advanced paradise in a space station above the earth. Meanwhile, the millions
below them languish on a dying earth. It takes a Christ-like act of sacrifice
for that paradise to be invaded and the benefits of Elysium brought to earth. We need a democratic
invasion of the current Elysium that the rich elite are now building for
themselves; to share the benefit of their wealth with the many. The proposals
for enforced profit sharing would be just part of that democratic invasion. And
it falls to the Labour Party to call us to arms.
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