Fair pay is one measurement of how a fair society treats its most vulnerable. We can talk all we want about making society better, but the strength that students' unions like Canterbury College, Norwich City College, Oxford, Strathclyde and Derby have shown- all of whom developed their campaigns with support from NUS and Citizens UK- speaks volumes about the power of students' to build a fairer society.
Miliband and Prentis called this week for the living wage to be "a core economic policy for Labour at the next election". They talk of "financial incentives" for local authorities and other employers to encourage private contractors to pay the living wage.
This makes economic sense, both for private sector employers but for the public sector too. Less will be paid out in tax credits to those on low incomes, but most importantly, fair pay delivers greater satisfaction for those already being hardest hit by public sector cuts.
NUS supports a public education sector, which leads me to mention Queen Mary's, who last year brought their cleaning services back in house. Despite that, we can't escape the fact that millions of workers who keep our institutions running- the cleaners, porters and canteen staff- are employed through private service contracts. In recent months, many long-time employees on the living wage have been getting laid off and replaced with lower paid, more flexible workers employed by private companies set up by universities. As I've been travelling around the country, the extent to which this is happening is really quite worrying.
We can bemoan the privatisation agenda all we like, but it exists nonetheless, and I'd rather spend my time supporting students to work with workers and unions to negotiate better conditions, including a living wage. It is a moral duty by NUS and this is all the more pertinent when these services help run a public education system.
Through private sector procurement, we can use our power at institutional levels to lobby college and university management for a living wage. This is already happening in other areas- where services providing colleges are made to employ students and provide apprenticeships. At Norwich City College, many of their students are employed and in training on campus. David Miliband has this week floated the idea of savings from tax credits to go into a local skills fund. This is the kind of model we could deliver in education- to generate jobs and apprenticeships for the millions of young people and graduates out of work.
NUS Scotland last week responded to a government consultation and supported the introduction of a living wage across Scotland. They argued that by establishing criteria for all public procurement contracts, we could ensure that we increase the number of apprenticeship opportunities through outsourced contracts. This can be done to deliver a living wage too, and I know this has already been floated at Holyrood.
We can call on Labour and other parties to deliver more. If they are really serious about a fair day's pay for a fair day's work, why not only award new government contracts to living wage employers? And outsourcing in publicly subsidised institutions for living wage companies alone?
Let's hope next year's Living Wage week welcomes more success at a local level, but more progress at the very top levels of government too.