Excellent post, and we need to talk about this A LOT MORE. Really appreciate this openness. I think a lot about new publishing folk trying to live on £23k in London. Also, as a single parent family, I have tried to survive on one salary (all the same outgoings) for 15 years and I am very knackered and VERY in debt.
As a former union rep in two major educational publishing houses, I can confirm that pay and the increasing opacity around it is a huge problem. Pay systems are restructured and become more of a 'free-for-all'. Even when the equal pay audit was introduced, trying to get clear, transparent information around pay was incredibly difficult.
I would also question this sentence "We both come from middle-class families with all the immense privilege that entails." It is common to hear people in publishing talk about being middle class and being 'privileged'. From the description given above, the individual is not middle-class. Class is not defined by your education, your taste in music, whether you work in a professional or white-collar industry, even how much you earn. It is defined by how much control and reward you have over the work process, other workers and production. I suspect most people in publishing will be working class (whatever their parents might be), although with increasingly top-heavy management layers, that might be changing.
I wonder if the interviewee was a member of a union at all?
Thank you for making this point! I was hoping someone would. (I don't like to editorialise too much). But yes, the word privilege often obscures as much as it reveals. I recommend everyone in publishing to join a union (if you read my earlier piece on Publishing and the Working Class), you'll see this.
Yes, read it and liked it a lot. It's refreshing to see this topic being discussed. I also shared it on the Organising Freelancers group on Facebook, which all publishing freelancers are welcome to join!
Excellent post, and we need to talk about this A LOT MORE. Really appreciate this openness. I think a lot about new publishing folk trying to live on £23k in London. Also, as a single parent family, I have tried to survive on one salary (all the same outgoings) for 15 years and I am very knackered and VERY in debt.
As a former union rep in two major educational publishing houses, I can confirm that pay and the increasing opacity around it is a huge problem. Pay systems are restructured and become more of a 'free-for-all'. Even when the equal pay audit was introduced, trying to get clear, transparent information around pay was incredibly difficult.
I would also question this sentence "We both come from middle-class families with all the immense privilege that entails." It is common to hear people in publishing talk about being middle class and being 'privileged'. From the description given above, the individual is not middle-class. Class is not defined by your education, your taste in music, whether you work in a professional or white-collar industry, even how much you earn. It is defined by how much control and reward you have over the work process, other workers and production. I suspect most people in publishing will be working class (whatever their parents might be), although with increasingly top-heavy management layers, that might be changing.
I wonder if the interviewee was a member of a union at all?
Thank you for making this point! I was hoping someone would. (I don't like to editorialise too much). But yes, the word privilege often obscures as much as it reveals. I recommend everyone in publishing to join a union (if you read my earlier piece on Publishing and the Working Class), you'll see this.
Yes, read it and liked it a lot. It's refreshing to see this topic being discussed. I also shared it on the Organising Freelancers group on Facebook, which all publishing freelancers are welcome to join!
So many flashbacks to my time as a designer in the 80s. Not much appears to have changed.
I don't know who you are but can confirm you do not come across as a dick! Thank you for your honesty.
This is such a frank and helpful piece. Good luck to him - I wish him well x