Even in an international downturn, Australia is a prosperous country. Yet many Australians are working more for less and struggling to meet their basic needs, despite being employed. Living Low Paid investigates the Orwellian vision unfolding, often behind closed doors, in Australia's working heartland. The book challenges the low wage path to national prosperity by exposing the hard realities of living low paid for Australian workers today. In their own words, workers tell the costs of low pay for individuals, families and communities and the social fabric at large. Workers are increasingly being undermined by casualisation, hours of work and exploitative pay setting methods, while enormous tax breaks are given to the rich, jobs are outsourced, unions are muzzled and job entitlements such as sick pay, holiday pay and penalty rates are scrapped. Living Low Paid offers a biting account of Australia's growing underbelly. It is vital reading for anyone who cares about where Australia is heading. The hope that a job was a sure road out of poverty for most in our country no longer holds. This book shows that many face insecure or inadequate hours, low hourly rates and little access to basic benefits. Low pay casts a long shadow, well into retirement for many.' Louise Tarrant, National Secretary, Liquor Hospitality and Miscellaneous Workers Union This book helps strip back the cloak which shrouds the lived experience of working poverty in a nation where prosperity shields so many from direct knowledge. It is an eloquent argument for change: we can and must do better.' Tony Nicholson, Executive Director Brotherhood of St Laurence

As wealth inequality skyrockets and trade union power declines, the living wage movement has become ever more urgent for public policymakers, academics, and – most importantly – those workers whose wages hover close to the breadline. A real living wage in any part of the world is rarely its minimum wage: it is the minimum income needed to cover living costs and participate fully in society. Most governments’ minimum wages are still falling short, meaning millions of workers struggle to cover their living costs. This book brings new, vital insights to the conversation from a carefully selected group of contributors at the forefront of this field. By juxtaposing advances across sectors and countries, and encompassing many different approaches and indeed definitions of the living wage, Dobbins and Prowse offer a rich tapestry of approaches that may inform public policy. By including the experiences and voices of those workers earning at, or near, the living wage alongside the opinions of leading experts in this field, this book is a pioneering contribution for public policymakers as well as students and academics of work and employment relations, public policy, organizational studies, social economics, and politics.

The "living wage" is an old idea that has experienced a dramatic resurgence of political popularity in recent years. The underlying logic of the concept is quite clear: it is a wage that provides workers with enough income to live on at some level considered adequate. However, in practice the term has become blurred with that of the "minimum wage" and in its implementation it has lacked a consistent meaning despite being widely used as a campaigning slogan. This short primer traces the origins of the concept of the living wage and seeks to explain the current rise in its fortunes as an economic instrument with a social objective. It examines its impact on labor markets and wage levels, explores how it has been applied, and assesses whether it is an effective measure for raising living standards. Drawing on case studies from France, the Netherlands, the USA, and the UK, The Living Wage offers a broad-ranging analysis of the debates, policy developments and limitations of wage floors in developed economies and will appeal to a wide readership in economics, public policy and sociology, as well as those working in non-profit and non-governmental organizations.

Britain has the lowest social spending and the highest poverty in Europe. As the income gap between top and bottom has widened, so social mobility has shuddered to a halt. The low-paid are caught in an economic double bind that victimises them and shames the rest of us.

The New York Times bestselling work of undercover reportage from our sharpest and most original social critic, with a new foreword by Matthew Desmond, author of Evicted Millions of Americans work full time, year round, for poverty-level wages. In 1998, Barbara Ehrenreich decided to join them. She was inspired in part by the rhetoric surrounding welfare reform, which promised that a job—any job—can be the ticket to a better life. But how does anyone survive, let alone prosper, on $6 an hour? To find out, Ehrenreich left her home, took the cheapest lodgings she could find, and accepted whatever jobs she was offered. Moving from Florida to Maine to Minnesota, she worked as a waitress, a hotel maid, a cleaning woman, a nursing-home aide, and a Wal-Mart sales clerk. She lived in trailer parks and crumbling residential motels. Very quickly, she discovered that no job is truly "unskilled," that even the lowliest occupations require exhausting mental and muscular effort. She also learned that one job is not enough; you need at least two if you int to live indoors. Nickel and Dimed reveals low-rent America in all its tenacity, anxiety, and surprising generosity—a land of Big Boxes, fast food, and a thousand desperate stratagems for survival. Read it for the smoldering clarity of Ehrenreich's perspective and for a rare view of how "prosperity" looks from the bottom. And now, in a new foreword, Matthew Desmond, author of Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, explains why, twenty years on in America, Nickel and Dimed is more relevant than ever.

This book offers hope to those whose limited income bars them from some of the simple pleasures in life. Informative and easy to read, it will help them through everyday struggles and beyond. The authors encouraging tone combined with a healthy dose of honesty makes the book real to the people who read it. This book could change the way you live your life in a considerable, meaningful, and lasting way.