wages

There is a fairly generally held belief in the richer world that what someone earns is not a morally relevant fact. In the business world, that is true almost without exception. But it is held to be true in the so-called non-profit sector as well, even if not quite unconditionally (and perhaps not universally). The fact that ‘western’ consultants are paid at a daily rate exceeding the monthly rate of locals is rarely thought to be troublesome, even if the relative living costs differ by much less; and that the chief executives of Oxfam, Action Aid or Save the Children take home more in a year than most of the people they are supposed to be helping can hope to see in a lifetime is not, for most people, a morally significant issue.

Why not? I suspect that the average worker in sub-Saharan Africa, struggling to feed a family on 50 cents a day would find it morally relevant. So where is the flaw in our more expensive reasoning?

This is what I think we would hear from the chief executives and the roaming consultants:

1. ’The cost of living in sub-Saharan Africa is incomparably less than it is in London / New York / Strasbourg / Brussels: we need more to live off here’.

Yes it is, and yes they do. That, incidentally, raises the question of how far it is justified to have a well-staffed, recently renovated, state of the art headquarters in London, of all places, given the enormous rents; but even supposing it is justified – do these people ‘need’ $500-odd dollars a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks of the year? That is a heck of a lot more than others need to live off in the same place.

2. ’We are paid at the market rate: if we were not worth it, the market would not pay so much.’

Never mind what the market thinks: the market is a cruel, amoral beast. I wonder if you, the recipients of 6 figure salaries believe you are worth roughly 500 times more than someone who works the same hours, under much more difficult conditions, with no perks, no pension, no international glory – just sweat-shop conditions, day in, day out, for 18 hours per day.

Is the market the best judge of what people are 'worth', and is the market anyway the most appropriate judge for the world of international aid?

3. ’We do a hard job, subject to enormous stresses and strains and burdened by great responsibility. We should be well compensated for this.’

Yes... but so should others for their labour, no less stressful and incomparably worse compensated. Given that any money raised by Oxfam / SCF / Action Aid etc is raised on the understanding that it is going to be used to best effect to help those really in need – is this an honest way of raising the money, let alone an ethical way of spending it?

4. ’If we worked in the business world with the same responsibility and the same number of employees we would be paid far better’.

And if you were a footballer or successful porn star you would be paid even better. Why should that be thought to be a relevant consideration? The money for business executives is not raised on the understanding that it is going to those in need; and anyway – their enormous salaries are hardly benchmarks for good behaviour.

5. ’If I had fewer skills and was less able to run this organisation efficiently, we would help far fewer people around the world’.

I wonder… I wonder, first of all, whether huge ngo-businesses are really the most efficient use of resources. But even if they are, I wonder whether people who are ready to work for less would necessarily be any worse at managing them. Just conceivably, they may be, given the business practices that mostly govern ngo-businesses today. Maybe Oxfam and Save the Children would do even better if they hired real business executives to manage their empires.

Let us anyway do the sums and see: let us see what else, and how else we could spend the money raised for those in need. I am sceptical that $150,000 can not be spent in a way that would be more useful to the starving millions. Since the money is rightfully theirs – perhaps we should give them the chance to decide.

6. ’If I did not take this salary, someone else would take it instead. The money would not go to sub-Saharan Africa.’

!!!??? And if I did not shoot this Iraqi / vote for war / torture this prisoner / support the occupation / invade Afghanistan / sell arms to Suharto …. someone else would do it instead. It may be true (or it may not) but it does not absolve me from moral blame for being the one that actually carries out the act.

7. ‘I cannot be held responsible for not saving more lives: I do far more than most to limit the number of casualties around the world.’

Consider: I am in a position where I could save 10 people or I could save 100 people. I shall survive (and live comfortably) whether I do the first or the second. If I do the first, I shall live not just comfortably, but about 4 times better than the average British citizen, and at least 500 times more comfortably (if comfort can be measured in numbers) than the average sub-Saharan African. The money raised to pay for my additional comfort is intended to go towards improving the lot of the sub-Saharan African. But I cannot be held responsible if I use it instead to pay for my additional comfort.

(to be continued)

It was Action Aid that put out a report a few years ago, rightly complaining about the fact that on average, between 75% - 90% (from memory) of 'international aid' in fact stays in the pockets of the donor countries. Mostly in the pockets of well-paid consultants, or in the form of contracts for western businesses. But then it is Action Aid that pays its chief executive about $172,000 per year (not including pensions!) - which works out at about $3,300 per week, or $471 per day. Action Aid is not alone, of course, and nor is it by any means the worst. But no-one in the UK needs $471 per day, every day, 7 days a week, in order to live comfortably*.

Is it really not relevant that every day that the chief executives of Action Aid, Save the Children, Oxfam, Unicef take home around $450, another 30,000 children die from poverty-related causes? Those are Unicef's figures.

And in Unicef's words, these children "die quietly in some of the poorest villages on earth, far removed from the scrutiny and the conscience of the world. Being meek and weak in life makes these dying multitudes even more invisible in death."

You can see the charity medium-wigs' salaries here. I am sure these are not the biggest wigs. Where is Amnesty International, for example?

P.S. The national minimum wage in the UK is £5.35 / hour. That works out at about $426 / week. That is what the government reckons we need in order to live comfortably in the UK.