COVID-19: how the crisis has exposed class divides Ben Tippet - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Ben Tippet (University of Greenwich)

Class in the time of COVID-19: how the crisis has exposed class divides

Outline

What is class? A story of capital and labour Work: What will happen when furlough ends? Gender: Care work and COVID-19 Race: Why are BAME people dying? Conclusion: Should economists think about class?

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What is class? A story of capital and labour

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What is class? A story of capital and labour

Capital-labour relation is a relationship defined by:

• Exploitation
• Dispossession
• Conflict
• Discipline

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(Umney, 2018 and Wright, 2015)

Work: what will happen when furlough ends?

UK government support to currently around 12-13 million people

• 8.4 million are currently furloughed
• 2.3 million on self employment income support scheme
• 2.1 million on Universal Credit.

Furlough ending

• Employers pay 10% in September, 20% in October, ends in

November

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(Cant, 2020)

Work: what will happen when furlough ends?

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(OECD, 2020)

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Resolution foundation (2020b)

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Resolution foundation (2020b)

Work: what will happen when furlough ends?

Cliff edge decline in the bargaining power of labour

• Huge increase in reserve army of labour
• Compounded by existing structural inequalities already in the labour

market: insecure work. → Disciplining labour, increase exploitation and inequality (Cant, 2020)

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Gender: Why are care workers paid so little?

“Imagine for a moment what would happen if all the hedge fund managers in The City of London decided to collectively quit their jobs. How much of an impact on our lives would this actually have? While I am sure there is a case to be argued that the loss of these jobs would cause some damage to the economy, it is not unreasonable to ask whether the world might actually be a better place? Compare this to an alternative case where all the paid carers – the workers who look after children, the elderly and the sick – stopped turning up for work. The negative human impact would be undeniably immediate and devastating”

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Tippet (2020)

(Resolution Foundation, 2020a)

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(Khurana et al, 2020)

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Why care work so low paid despite being essential?

Occupational segregation: 3/4s working women in UK work in either care, administrative, retail, catering and cleaning (D. Kamerade and H. Richardson, 2017) These traditionally feminised jobs are lower paid (Olsen et al, 2-18) COVID-19 exposing how pay about power as much as productivity Challenge traditional masculine understandings of who are the working class are: “We should be rethinking the image we conjure up when we think of a working-class

• person. Instead of a white man in a flat cap, it’s a black woman pushing a pram.” Eddo-

Lodge (2017)

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Race: Why are BAME people more likely to die from COVID-19 ?

(Booth and Barr, 2020)

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Overcrowding: Bangladeshi families were 15 times more likely to experience overcrowding than white British households, while Pakistanis were eight times more likely and black people six times more. (Young, 2020) Deprivation: All three groups were more likely to live in deprived neighbourhoods and to experience higher unemployment, higher poverty and lower incomes than white people. (Young, 2020) Bangladeshi/Pakistani and Black Families are still more than twice as likely to die from COVID-19 even after controlling for these plus relevant factors (ONS, 2020) Genetics? NHS England (with Oxford Uni) claim underlying health conditions do not fully explain disproportionate deaths

• Hidden forms of discrimination
• Occupational segregation

Race: Why are BAME people more likely to die from COVID-19 ?

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(Khurana et al, 2020)

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Structural racism and gendered inequality is a class issue.

Occupational segregation facilitates exploitation Not just divide within labour. Class split between labour and capital is racialised and gendered:

• 199 elite managers that run top 20 global financial organisation (Phillips, 2018)
• 70% are male
• 84% are white of European decent

Dispossession and discipline:

• Lack of state support (housing, sick pay, unemployment benefits)
• Police violence
• Colonial expansion: “we are here because you were there”

Racialised divide and rule: migrants were blamed for a housing crisis that they are on the receiving end of This type of ‘structural racism’ cannot be spotted ‘as easily as a St George’s flag and a bare belly at an English Defence League rally – it is much more respectable than that’. (Eddo-Lodge, 2017)

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Is class an outdated concept?

• In 1985, 45.3 per cent of the British workforce was in a trade union. Today, only 23 per cent are.

(Tippet, 2020) Economics as ideology: justifying the position of the winners Success based on individual competition versus class struggle Economists should ask: how can working class power be mobilised in the face of the crisis? Class not just a description of inequalities but a way to radically transform society One of heterodox distinguishing features and strengths is class Need to do more to incorporate racialised and gendered structural inequality and more empirical work

Conclusion: should economists think about class?

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Next PEGFA/GPERC webinar

18th June 3pm Title: Greening the Bank of England COVID-19 QE programme

• Dr. Maria Nikolaidi is a Senior Lecturer in Economics at the University of

Greenwich Get registered here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/webinar-what-do- economists-have-to-say-about-the-challenges-of-our-time-tickets- 104304194654

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References

Wendy Olsen, Vanessa Gash, Sook Kim, Min Zhang, The gender pay gap in the UK: evidence from the UKHLS (Government and Equalities Office, Social Sciences in Government, Research Report, May 2018). Charles Umney (2018) Class Matters: Inequality and Exploitation in 21st Century Britain. Pluto Press. Erik Olin Wright (2015) Understanding Class. Verso Callum Cant (2020) The crisis has only just begun. Notes from Below https://notesfrombelow.org/article/crisis-has-only-just-begun OECD (2020) World Economic Outlook. https://www.oecd.org/economic-outlook/ Resolution foundation (2020b) A new settlement for the low paid: Beyond the minimum wage to dignity and respect. Resolution Foundation https://www.resolutionfoundation.org/publications/a-new-settlement-for-the-low-paid/ Ishan Khurana, Lukas Kikuchi and Will Stronge (2020) The Work of COVID: care work and care home mortality. Autonomy. https://autonomy.work/portfolio/careandcarehomes/ Resolution Foundation (2020a) What happens after the clapping finishes? The pay, terms and conditions we choose for our care workers. https://www.resolutionfoundation.org/publications/what-happens-after-the-clapping-finishesc Robert Booth and Caelainn Barr (2020) Black people four times more likely to die from Covid-19, ONS finds. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/07/black-people-four-times-more- likely-to-die-from-covid-19-ons-finds ONS (2020) Coronavirus-related deaths by ethnic group, England and Wales methodology https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/methodologies/coronavirusrelateddeathsbyethnicgroupenglandandwalesmethodology Gary Young (2020) We can’t Breathe. New Statesman. https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2020/06/we-cant-breathe Reni-Eddo Lodge (2017) Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race. Bloomsbury Publishers NHS England Study https://www.lshtm.ac.uk/newsevents/news/2020/risk-factors-covid-19-death-revealed-worlds-largest-analysis-patient-records

Peter Phillips, Giants: The Global Power Elite (Seven Stories Press, 2018).

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Thank you

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