Inclusive growth?

15% of employees in the cultural sector are paid less than the real Living Wage. The new government could change this by embedding the living wage in procurement meaning – as in Scotland – that organisations in receipt of public money must pay their workers the real Living Wage.

Low pay is a problem in the creative and cultural industries. After hospitality, ‘Arts, Entertainment and Recreation’ is the second lowest paid sector in the UK, with around one in seven employees paid less than the real Living Wage. And that’s not including the significant number of freelancers struggling on low pay. 

A wage based on the real cost of living

The real Living Wage is calculated according to the real cost of living. Distinct from the government’s statutory National Living Wage, it’s a voluntary rate paid by over 15,000 employers, ranging from tiny charities to household names like Ikea, Nationwide and the Royal Albert Hall. 

The real Living Wage currently stands at £12/hour, or £13.15 for workers in London. Accredited Living Wage employers commit to paying this sum not only to their directly employed staff, but also to third-party workers. 

People like the cleaners who sweep the glitter from the stage after the concert. The catering staff, keeping the crew fuelled and caffeinated. The retail staff at the museum shop. 

These workers, while sometimes unseen, are also part of our sector. In fact, almost all creative work is underpinned and enabled by the less glamorous and often underpaid work of cleaning, catering and front-of-house staff.

Living Wage can be transformative

Organisations like Creative UK and unions do excellent work setting the bar for freelance pay. But alongside better pay for freelancers, employers need to ensure that entry level and outsourced staff are also included in these agreements.

For low paid workers, having their salary uplifted to the real Living Wage can be transformative. It can be the difference between always having to say no to social events and being able to go out with friends. 

It can mean being able to say yes to swimming lessons for your kid. It can mean having three meals a day rather than skipping meals. 

Socio-economic diversity and the real Living Wage

There has been progress on living wage accreditation in the arts in recent years. There are now hundreds of creative and cultural organisations signed up including Arts Council England, the Baltic and the Museums Association. 

Across theatre, museums and galleries, film, TV and publishing, there’s an increasing awareness that Living Wage at entry level is foundational to socio-economic diversity. That people from lower socio-economic backgrounds will continue to be under-represented in the arts until starting salaries are high enough to survive on without a generous mum and dad. 

For some employers, living wage accreditation is simply getting recognised for something they’ve been doing for years. For others, it involves careful financial planning over several years to bring pay structures in line with mission and values. 

Overwhelmingly, however, employers see the business benefits of accreditation: improved recruitment and retention, decreased absenteeism and increased productivity. 94% of Living Wage employers said they had benefited from accreditation, with a third saying it had helped them secure contracts and funding. 

Living Wage funders 

In a difficult financial climate, it’s not easy for stretched arts organisations to implement the real Living Wage. The support of funders makes all the difference. There are now 83 Living Wage funders.

These funders include local authorities, family trusts and corporate foundations. They commit to enabling every grant-funded role they fund to be paid at the real Living Wage, and to supporting grantees to become Living Wage employers. Happily, several arts funders – Esmée Fairbairn, Youth Music and Paul Hamlyn among them – are Living Wage funders. 

Imagine if government – both nationally and regionally through combined authorities – embedded the real Living Wage into procurement and grants. It would be the beginning of the end of low pay in the creative economy. 

Living Wage for inclusive creative growth

It’s a truism to say the creative economy is an engine of growth, growing one-and-a-half times faster in recent years than the overall economy. Regional mayors, recognising the value of the creative economy, vie with each other to support creative corridors, hubs and clusters. Herein lies an opportunity – and a risk.

The opportunity is to embed the Living Wage into government funding and investment for the creative economy, and to turbocharge creative growth. The Smith Institute estimates that increasing the number of Living Wage jobs by a quarter would deliver a £1.7bn boost to the UK economy. 

Scotland already includes paying the real Living Wage as a condition of receiving taxpayer money. The Fair Work First Standard came into force last year and means all organisations in receipt of government funding must pay the real Living Wage. 

At a time when the importance of placemaking is recognised as never before, cultural organisations that are Living Wage employers are making a statement that their presence benefits the place they’re in. That in creating good jobs for local people, they are serving their community.

The risk? That without the real Living Wage embedded into the creative economy, creative growth will simply exacerbate existing inequalities. That investment into creative zones benefits those with skills and qualifications who can get the ‘good’ jobs, but the wage floor stays the same, and people struggling to get by continue to struggle. 

That investment into creative clusters does nothing to challenge a two-tier creative economy, where skilled workers flourish but more than one in ten workers in the sector still face in-work poverty. 

Embedding Living Wage into the creative economy

By embedding the real Living Wage into funding and investment agreements, we can grow a good creative economy, where everyone – from the director down to the person who cleans under their desk – is paid enough to thrive. 

And it begins with regional mayors, combined authorities, the Arts Council and the UK government specifying that funding of arts and culture should support and enable everyone working for a creative organisation to be paid the real Living Wage.

Lianna Etkind is Partnerships & Campaigns Manager at the Living Wage Foundation.
 livingwage.org.uk
LivingWageUK 
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