Moya Lothian-McLean: In 1887, a British soap baron began casting around in Cheshire for a new site from which he could expand his booming business. William Lever – the man whose surname makes up part of the multinational, Unilever – alighted upon 56 acres near a railway station and the River Mersey.
Here Lever brought to life his dream: a beautiful model village to house his workers, named Port Sunlight after his company's most popular product. Comprising 800 houses and amenities like a hospital and art gallery, Lever's workers also benefited from welfare, educational and recreational schemes funded by their employer. It was a far cry from the existence of the average Edwardian factory employee, crammed into grimy and overcrowded accommodation.
Lever – later Lord Leverhulme – exemplified the lottery facing workers before the solidifying of the modern welfare state. If blessed with a 'philanthropic' boss, some employees were given welfare and patronage, linked to their employment status. Yet if you happened to be one of the millions of workers that were the rule, not the exception, you could expect almost nothing from employers, instead relying on the meagre state welfare provisions that existed at that time, and private charity.
Just over a century after Lever completed the construction of Port Sunlight, Britain's landscape of welfare and work is shifting into a framework the soap multi-millionaire might not find unfamiliar. In-work poverty has soared; the majority of people living below the breadline are from working households. An economic crisis is tightening the screws on just about every strata of society, but it is those in low-income brackets who face being completely crushed by inflation and the spiralling costs of everything from rent to energy bills. Meanwhile, the safety net of the welfare state has been reduced to frayed strands. | |
No hay comentarios :
Publicar un comentario