Commoners #003
Helping common people become more common in the creative industries
Hello Common friends,
As the temperature dips below 0, we hope you’re all managing to keep warm. Jed swears by wearing double thermals while Kim is loving her heated blanket. Aside from speaking about the weather, it has been another busy month for Common People. The group has been supporting one another with tips on how to get paid on time, build confidence, understand your rights as a renter and how to get started as a freelancer.
We’ve been talking about…
Class Pay Gap Day
Because we’re heading into Christmas, we thought we’d kick off the newsletter with some depressing stats! If it wasn’t bad enough that we spend one third of our lives at work (around 3,515 days) if you’re a professional from a working-class background you’re probably working one day in seven days for free!
This fun fact was brought to our attention on #ClassPayGap day (14 November) which helps raise awareness about the fact that working class people are paid thousands of pounds less than their middle class counterparts.
Sam Friedman, professor of sociology at LSE, said an average pay disparity of £6,718 represented a “grossly unfair class pay gap”, adding that “it’s time for the government to act and finally make class a protected characteristic”.
Marketing was also urged to ‘own’ its socio-economic pay gap problem and take action to address its persistent lack of socio-economic diversity.
If you’re as frustrated about all of this as we are, the Social Mobility Foundation is asking everyone to sign their petition to launch a consultation to create a register for class pay gap reporting.
Accents
Lots of people have been talking about accents following a new survey from the Sutton Trust which found that 46% of workers have faced jibes about their accents, with 25% reporting jokes at work.
Jamie Fahey, a working-class Liverpudlian who had to fight his way through class barriers as a journalist, asks why so little has changed in the industry in a piece he wrote for The Guardian. His story touched a nerve and lots of people like Clair Battaglino shared their own stories of having to learn how to speak ‘properly’ to overcome class barriers.
In the FT, Jo Ellison notes how even though Prince Harry has adopted a transatlantic twang, a posh voice still helps you get a top job. Ellison sums up the piece perfectly when they explain that:
“It’s incredibly sad to think that still, in 2022, the way you speak determines the extent to which you can advance”
With bias against working class and regional accents at a similar level to what it was in 1969, Ellen Hammett wrote a piece about how classism impacts the workplace and what employers can do to tackle it.
The decline of working class people in the arts
This piece by James Tapper really got us talking. New research shows that the proportion of working-class actors, musicians and writers has shrunk by half since the 1970s. Tapper explores how the decline reflects the fall of working class people in wider society and the impact that this has on the stories that are told.
Education
We were not surprised to hear that girls from a state school faced misogynistic language and racial slurs when they visited Eton College recently. However, we spent more time talking about the challenges facing state schools instead.
With research now showing that social mobility will decline for this generation, we enjoyed reading an interview with Lee Emmiot Major, the UK’s first professor of social mobility:
“Poorer children are up against it in a way that is so extreme now, compared to previous eras.”
We’ve been reading…
It's always interesting to learn how other sectors are tackling class prejudice. London’s financial sector has been told that at least 50% of senior leaders should come from lower socio-economic backgrounds by 2030.
When anyone mentions Gregg's, our interest is naturally piqued (we love a steak slice). Ian Gregg, the former chairman of Gregg’s, wrote a piece for the Guardian outlining why the wealthy should be paying more tax. It includes some sobering stats highlighting that the richest 10% of households now hold 43% of all the country’s wealth while the bottom 50% hold only 9%.
We’ve been watching…
How to Crack the Class Ceiling, a new BBC documentary which investigates how young people from working class backgrounds secure jobs in Britain’s elite professions.
From Working Class to World Class with singer Jim Kerr where he talks about some of the challenges he faced in his journey to success and how he used them to his advantage.
We’ve been celebrating…
The Social Mobility Foundation sixth Employer Index. The most represented sectors were law; banking, finance and insurance; and the public sector.
We've been listening to…
Maxine Peake on Front Row talking about Signal and working class art.
Someone in the WhatsApp group recommended we listen to The Brown Don’t Frown podcast episode with Dr Lisa Mckenzie who has written and spoken extensively about classism, social inequality and leftist politics.
Government stuff
Lots of talk about inflation hurting the poorest the most. We won’t go into the details as we all know the situation is grim, but rest assured we’re talking about what we can do about it.
Helping Common People
The easiest way to help is to share this with some Common People Like YOU. Whether they’re an industry leader, or someone wanting to break into the industry, we can help. Point them in our direction.
If you’ve got jobs or opportunities that you’d like to share, send them our way.
If you see anything interesting that you think us Commoners would like, send that too.
If you’d like to offer up yourself as a mentor or find a mentor, reply to this email and we can help.
If you’d like to support Common People by helping out, then we’re always looking for people to join the group that puts a lot of this sort of stuff together.
We hope you enjoyed our third newsletter. Let us know what you think - we’re a friendly bunch.
If you’re celebrating Christmas we hope you have a great time. We’ve got lots of exciting plans for Common People in 2023 and we can’t wait to share them with you.
And never forget, we’re Common People, and proudly a different class.
See you again, take care, and stay in touch,
Your fellow Commoners