How much is a firefighter worth?

A version of this piece was published in the
Independent on the 26th October 2002, under the headline ‘How should we decide what a firefighter is worth?’

The dispute over firefighters’ pay raises a wider question: How do we determine how much anyone ought to be paid?
There was an uneasy moment on Newsnight last week when an interviewer took a spokesman for the firefighters to task for their decision to go on strike. How could they justify it, he demanded, when it would almost certainly lead to loss of life? It was a shame the fireman didn’t ask our intrepid reporter how much he earned, or how many people would know or care – still less suffer – if he withdrew his labour. Is it right that people on whom our society utterly depends should take home less than others most of us could do very well without? And would we give the same answer if the comparison was between sewage workers and players in the Premier League?

Most people agree that firefighters ought to be paid more than they currently get – at £21,531 a year, rather less than the national average. At present, there is no lack of people wanting to join the service, but it may be that, unless salaries rise substantially, the condition of our firefighters, and their morale, will sink dangerously low. But for most of us the word ‘ought’ in this case is an appeal not just to enlightened self-interest but to ethics. We feel it is wrong that people whose skill and courage and commitment are indispensable to our society should themselves be so poorly served. We are sure they deserve better.

But how far should notions of justice influence pay? Is there actually such a thing as a fair wage? As we survey the pattern of payment in Britain, we may easily come to the conclusion that the balance is all wrong, and often grotesquely so; and yet it is very much harder to say how it should be put right.

The principal factor in determining pay has long been the tug-of-war of the market: the going rate is decreed by supply and demand, and just deserts have nothing to do with it. In a hard world, employers are tempted to pay as little as it takes to get the number and calibre of people they want. But of course there are all kinds of other factors involved. The salary of a television reporter, for example, may be inflated by the competition for his services from rival channels. Then again, a huge institution like the BBC can construct its own pay scales almost in isolation, according to a corporate culture that may in fact be inclined to be rather generous.

The firefighters, on the other hand, have the misfortune to work in a monolithic profession unaffected by competition and subject to the parsimony of a cost-conscious government. And while other workers can use the leverage of industrial action to force their pay up, the irony is that this tactic is often denied to (or renounced by) those like them on whom our society most depends.

But suppose it was possible to regulate pay according to some notion of right and wrong, how would we decide what was just? The fair-trade organisation Traidcraft has gone so far as to limit the differential between its highest- and lowest-paid staff to a factor of five. In a society where some companies now pay their CEOs a hundred times as much as their cleaners, this is radical stuff. But can we truly say that one person’s work takes even five times as much out of them as another’s?

Not surprisingly, perhaps, those who work with their heads rather than their hands tend to promote the view that mental toil should be the better rewarded, but recently the Bishop of Oxford admitted: ‘Many of us have very varied and interesting work [and] I sometimes wonder if because of this we should be paid less than those whose work is all slog and drudgery.’ If we reckoned as part of our ‘package’ the other benefits that come with our jobs, such as mental stimulation, prestige and a sense of achievement, maybe the company director should earn less than the person who scours his executive toilet.

On this score, the Judaeo-Christian tradition, which has shaped so much of our public morality, offers only limited help. The apostle Paul restates the principle that ‘the labourer is worthy of his reward’ (arguing, less famously, that preachers who were especially good should perhaps be paid double). Five centuries earlier, the prophet Malachi had pronounced God’s judgement against ‘those who defraud labourers of their wages’. So far, so good: workers are entitled to their pay, and it is wicked to cheat them out of it. But no pay differentials delivered on tablets of stone, nor even a judgement about whether a scribe should earn more than a water-carrier.

But though Paul talks of entitlement, it is notable that his words are directed not at those who have the right to be paid but at those who have the responsibility to pay them. For him, it is not a matter of bargaining, still less of fighting: the onus is on employers, to offer freely what an informed conscience says is appropriate. Those of us who believe that the firefighters deserve more – not to mention the soldiers who will be ordered to stand in for them, the nurses, the teachers and many others who serve society – should remember that the public purse from which they are paid is, ultimately, our own. The consciences in question may well be ours, too.

© The Independent 2002

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