Harder than the Rock is a documentary about the once forgotten British reggae band The Cimarons, that have reformed with the players now in their 70s (and some, sadly, dying). A poignant scene for me, not about the music, was when the Cimarons’ singer Michael Arkk was working one night in an office, as a cleaner; singing to himself while he dusted tables and surfaces. It was a reminder, as the documentary mentioned, of how creative people – not only makes of music, but painters, potters, writers – mostly cannot make a living from their art. They have to take a non-artistic job (another Cimaron drove a taxi-cab). It should teach us that those who we pay for services have inner lives the same as you and I; maybe richer than ours.
I forget what year EDI (Equality-diversity-inclusion) began; I was glad to report on it, as it met the definition of news; it was new. It seems that you cannot attend an exhibition, about any field of work, without a talk about EDI (or sustainability). The sorts of people who attend shows are not the Cimarons’ singer; not cleaners or security officers. They, in the winter months, might not see much daylight; they don’t keep the hours when training on EDI runs.
The grumbles that contracted out service workers have are consistent. A council or university goes from in-house to outsourcing, perhaps telling its workers one thing (the managers cannot recruit and keep staff; implying the specialist contractor will solve this) and outsourcing for other reasons. To cut or at least keep down costs. As no contractor is a charity, and will need to take some profit, even if the margins in cleaning and facilities management are thin, that inevitably means that workers are paid less (or not more, in line with inflation), or the workers have to spread themselves more or work harder, or the service otherwise suffers (which does trouble the long-serving workers, because they have feelings, and opinions, the same as any CEO!). Also more or less inevitably the contractor will bring in more agency workers, that don’t know the site, because the contractor has to serve many. Yet you might imagine EDI might apply most to these contracted out workers, as the cleaners are mainly women and many of the security officers are ethnic minority blokes (as shown in a recent photo of striking Natural History and Science museums officers behind a United Voices of the World union banner).
The hitch with EDI – that applies to the political left for some generations now – is that the push for progress in matters of culture and personal liberty appears to come at a cost; a lesser interest or an outright uninterest in, the economic rewards to people in workplaces. Once cleaners and security officers ask for more pay, suddenly it becomes harder than the rock. Quite apart from the hypocrisy of a college or town hall that says it celebrates EDI, while making explicit to its cleaners or security officers that they are not to enter by the main door but to use the tradesmen’s entrance at the back (I have heard of a college case). Security officers striking this month at the Natural History Museum and Science Museum in London likewise complain of being ‘second-class citizens’, compared with the directly-employed. The Natural History Museum on its website says, naturally, that it wants to be ‘as inclusive and welcoming as possible’.
The EDI champions, then, ought to address themselves quite specifically, to their organisation’s CFO or head of finance. The larger the organisation, the less surprising it is that it might house staff and even whole departments that appear to be at odds with each other.
– The Cimarons are crowd-funding to bring out an album in 2025 – visit https://thecimaronsband.com/.
Photo by Mark Rowe; dinosaur exhibit, Natural History Museum.
