But this is not a ruling that will only apply to privileged media professionals. Ahmed’s victory will have positive ramifications across the low-paid sector, and for the most marginalised employees. Thanks to Ahmed’s bravery and tenacity, her insistence in fighting this case alongside her union, and the way she continually made links between her one-woman struggle and the most iconic of working-class and BAME women’s battles for equality and dignity in the workplace, this case will go down in history as a game-changer.

Ahmed claimed the BBC had underpaid her by a whopping £700,000 over six years for hosting the television show Newswatch when compared with the amount Jeremy Vine was paid for hosting a similar show, Points of View. The 600% difference in pay, claimed Ahmed, was purely down to sex discrimination.

Fifty years after the introduction of the Equal Pay Act, one third of all employees are still not aware that it is illegal for men to be paid more than women for doing the same or similar job, according to the Fawcett Society. I bet, thanks to the high-profile nature of Ahmed’s case, that many more women now know what they are entitled to.

by the same author

Why woke men fear real feminism

By Julie bindel

One of the very few high-profile British-Asian women at the BBC, Ahmed is both a feminist icon and a role model for people of colour in the media and beyond. She is also a born fighter. When she was just ten years old in 1978, Ahmed wrote to Newsround to tell her story of playground racism at school, which was subsequently read out on air.

Her win is no ‘glass ceiling’ moment.  Whenever a battle about equal pay is played out in public, the focus tends to be on barriers in the careers of high-achieving women and rarely about the women at the bottom. Ahmed is certainly not representative of zero-hour workers or low-paid part-timers, but her case will help them, nonetheless. Most media coverage after the initial announcement edited out Ahmed thanking the National Union of Journalists and its pivotal role in the action, and any mention of the 1976-8 Grunwick strike, except Channel 4 news and ITV news.

There is a good reason that Ahmed thanked the women that led the Grunwick dispute. Those women, most of them Indian women from East Africa, called the strike at a film-processing factory over low pay and horrendous working conditions. In the 1970s, union officials were all white men who, in the main, did not give two hoots about female workers and their issues. The Grunwick women forced them to do so.

Yet counsel for the BBC argued that while Vine was like a “concert pianist in a concert hall”, Ahmed was more like “someone playing piano to a ballet class of 10 children”. On social media, a few blokes annoyed at any woman speaking out (and a non-white one to boot) tweeted sarcastic, derogatory remarks about how Ahmed was unknown compared with Vine, and how Vine is a ‘star’ and she is not. These remarks are born out of blatant sexism. To belittle a talented and experienced presenter like Ahmed is appalling.

Ahmed took the case against the BBC with the support of the NUJ, which is one of the many reasons why her win will have ramifications way beyond benefiting the elite. As well as acting on behalf of Ahmed, the NUJ also raised grievances on behalf of dozens of other women at the BBC.

suggested reading

Who will speak for today's working class?

By Paul Embery

I have heard more than one journalist covering this latest case hint that they may instigate a freedom of information request to reveal just how much the BBC spent on legal fees on this case alone. Ahmed did all she could to reach an agreement with the BBC over a two-year period before the tribunal.

Most of the newspapers that covered the outcome of the case chose not to use a photograph of Ahmed and none ran a profile, despite that being standard with such a ground-breaking story. Only a video report by ITN’s Juliet Bremner used footage of Ahmed winning Celebrity Mastermind, and began the report with Ahmed thanking the Ford Dagenham sewing machine strikers — an inspiring story of working-class resistance that was made into a popular feature film — and the Grunwick women.

As a feminist and journalist I was obviously interested in the outcome of this case. On day one of the tribunal last November I joined other supporters, women and men, in walking with Ahmed from the Tube station to the employment tribunal offices. One of those supporters was Ahmed’s colleague Naga Munchetty, the BBC presenter who received widespread support after a single viewer complaint against her was partly upheld (and later dismissed). Munchetty was accused of breaching BBC guidelines over comments she made about a tweet from Donald Trump about four female politicians of colour.

This case is not only about sexism. By linking her struggle to that of low-income working-class women in the 1970s, and highlighting the intersection of sex and ethnicity, and how that impacts on minority ethnic women, Ahmed has shown herself to be a force to be reckoned with, and a role model of all of those women that find themselves pushed out on the margins. Her case is as much about inspiring marginalised and oppressed people to fight for dignity and respect as it is for equal pay at the BBC.

Last week, a video clip made the rounds on Twitter, provoking dismay. It showed an airship emblazoned with the Amazon logo, hovering with intent over a city. It manoeuvred into position – and then gave birth to a swarm of buzzing drones. Each of the flying robots carried a package, swooping off and down to deliver it to some address below.

The clip was soon revealed to be a digitally-conjured illusion – but I wonder if the sighs of relief were mixed with a little bit of disappointment. While some people fear the growing power of companies such as Amazon, just about all of us love the convenience of door-to-door deliveries. Fully automating the process promises a whole new level of speed and affordability (not to mention the absence of delivery vehicles choking up the street).

Further reading

Is it all over for the big tech companies?

By Peter Franklin

New delivery companies and technologies are attracting billions in investment – as one might expect of a growing market with a lot of room still to grow.

In the US, online purchases still accounts for only 5% of retail sales. In part, that’s because some things are much harder to deliver than others. As Heather Haddon explains in the Wall Street Journal, fresh food and restaurant meals are especially difficult:

“Unlike easy-to-ship household items, groceries must be packaged carefully and sent in refrigerated trucks. That makes the ‘last mile’ of the delivery process—from the warehouse to the consumer’s door—a costly, often perilous journey. The average online grocery order contains dozens of items, with different temperature and handling requirements.

“Restaurant meals must likewise be packed in special containers and delivered within a short window.”

And yet because these are frequently-made, routine purchases (certainly in the case of groceries and, increasingly, for restaurant meals too), the appetite for home delivery is especially keen:

“Online grocery sales are expected to grow to around $86 billion in 2022 from $17 billion in 2017, according to a report from UBS Group AG. Investment firm William Blair & Co. estimated sales of online restaurant delivery will grow to $62 billion in 2022 from about $25 billion today.”

Almost a third of restaurant meals are now consumed at home in the US. The home delivery of fast-food has long been an established part of that market, but thanks to Deliveroo-type operations, ‘slow food’ is going mobile too.

In theory, this is good news all round. Customers get convenience; grocers and restaurants expand their markets; and tech entrepreneurs turn their start-ups into thriving new enterprises. But at what cost?

Haddon quotes figures showing that the cost to the vendor of delivering food is typically higher than what customers are willing to pay. Therefore margins in a notoriously low-margin sector are being squeezed even harder. Nevertheless, they can’t afford not to participate in this growing market.

Economies of scale are vital to minimising the cost of delivery. While major food retailers and restaurant chains can more easily run their own delivery services, smaller operations have to rely on third party delivery services – at a cost to the bottom line and to their commercial independence:

“Food sellers pay the services an average fee of 10% to 25% on each order, which means the actual deliveries often lose money. Better placement on the services’ websites or apps costs even more…

“Many restaurants and grocers that work with third parties also lose control over customer data, which food apps can use to drive customers to other outlets.”

However, it should also be said the food delivery business is a highly competitive one – full of companies with high valuations but no profits.

Further reading

Who benefits from the Uberised economy?

By Peter Franklin

Obviously, none of this is good news for the low-paid workers of the retail, catering and delivery sectors.

It would seem that the only winners in all of this are us consumers – with everyone else falling over themselves to cater to our demands. But I think we’ll pay a price too.

Be Here Now by Ram Dass was first published in 1971, introducing its largely western readership to Hindu philosophy and spirituality. It is a classic of the genre, which inspired a song of the same name by George Harrison and the 1997 album by Oasis. In Dass’s words, the title of his book means “being in the moment, at ease with whatever comes one’s way”, so that one can “be present to love and serve others and to express unconditional love in the world”.

I’ve got a horrible feeling that, before long, ‘be here now’ will become the slogan for a delivery company – its original meaning twisted out of recognition. Instead of a reminder to oneself, the three word phrase is becoming our impatient instruction to the world: serve me without delay or heed to the wider consequences.

Hired: Six months undercover in low-wage Britain by James Bloodworth

Low paid, insecure and precarious work has come to characterise the modern labour market, and UnHerd columnist James Bloodworth’s book Hired exposes just how exploitative much of it is. In a similar vein to Polly Toynbee and George Orwell before him, Bloodworth goes undercover in various low paid jobs across the country to experience first hand the conditions millions of workers face. Hired is an illuminating piece of journalistic work and sheds light on a topic that rarely gets serious coverage. For this reason it is a must read.

Betraying Big Brother by Leta Hong Fincher

Leta Hong Fincher’s excellently researched book draws on extensive interviews with women across China to paint a portrait of a burgeoning feminist movement that is flourishing despite repression by the powerful Chinese state. Hong Fincher focuses on the feminists’ activism against domestic and sexual violence, unequal pay, sexual harassment in education and the workplace, arbitrary detention and political surveillance, and the more general fact that the Chinese Communist Party relies on patriarchal authoritarianism to enforce “harmony” and social stability. The stories of these Chinese women are inspirational and remind us of the need for continued feminist activism across the globe.

Mistaken Identity by Asad Haider

I have my differences with Asad Haider politically, but Mistaken Identity is a nuanced critique of identity politics from a socialist and anti-racist perspective. He briefly, yet energetically charts the history of identity politics from the Combahee River Collective in the 1970s to the present-day reemergence of social movements like Black Lives Matter. Haider argues that “identity politics” has lost any emancipatory potential it may once have had, and has degenerated into essentialism – viewing ‘identity’ in itself as an organisational category and a condition of being political. I did feel Haider could have further developed his advocacy of strategic “insurgent universality”, but Mistaken Identity is nonetheless an important contribution to the debate about identity politics on the Left.

HATE: Why We Should Resist It with Free Speech, Not Censorship by Nadine Strossen

The role of free speech is at the centre of the culture wars that are polarising Western society, and the concept of hate speech, and whether it should be criminalised, is a frequent topic of debate. Supporters argue that hate speech laws are a tool in the fight against racism and other forms of bigotry, and can remedy the injuries hate speech can cause.

Using strong legalistic arguments and evidence from other countries Nadine Strossen takes the view that hate speech laws are at best ineffective, and worst counterproductive, to their stated aims. In particular, she shows how vague the concept tends to be, leading to very loose interpretations and the propensity for abuse. It should not be a surprise that reactionary politicians and commentators in the US refer to Black Lives Matter as a “hate group”.

Strossen’s core argument is that the best way to fight against hate, and for equality and social justice, is not through censorship, but with the vigorous use of free speech. Her argument may not be popular in some circles, but the need to defend free speech from all threats is more important than ever.

Indefensible by Rohini Hensman

This is one of my favourite books of this year. Rohini Hensman has written a much needed critique of certain tendencies on the Left to subscribe to a hypocritical form of “anti-imperialism” – opposing imperialism from Western powers while expressing indifference, or worse support, for Russian imperialism, Iranian clerical imperialism or various Bonapartist regimes that are authoritarian and nationalist in nature and who give lip service to anti-Western populism. Indefensible should serve as a clarion call for the Left to practice a more consistent internationalism, where the values of freedom, democracy, self-determination and human rights apply to all parts of world.

Most care workers simply get on with this sort of thing. It is a basic part of the job, a bit like turning on the computer is for me as a writer. And besides, you don’t have time to dwell on feelings of discomfort or even nausea: the next client is invariably waiting.

The reality of the social care sector was aptly summed up to me by a fellow carer, who told me she felt like a “glorified cleaner”. This was not meant to be disrespectful towards cleaners. Rather, it was a pithy judgement on the way in which care workers – on whom thousands of vulnerable people rely for their most basic and intimate needs – are rewarded and remunerated for the work they do.

Further reading

Would you let a robot care for Grandpa?

By Rhiannon Williams

It is quite easy to get a job as a carer – something I did as part of the research for my book, Hired – because few people stick around in the job for long. The turnover rate in the social care sector is 25%, compared to a UK average for all jobs of 15%. The figure is even higher in the private care sector and among home care workers, where around 300,000 people leave their positions every year.

According to a new report by the IPPR think tank, England faces a stark shortage of 350,000 care workers by the year 2025. Should freedom of movement end after Brexit, that figure could reach 400,000.

Crucially, the report notes that “chronic underfunding” of care, together with a “dysfunctional” social care system, has resulted in outsourced providers competing to minimise wage costs in a race to the bottom. With council budgets being cut by as much as 50% since 2010, there is less money with which to fund the private companies that are contracted to provide care, meaning wages are kept low. The IPPR report estimates that increasing social care wages to a living wage could cost the public purse as much as half a billion a year.

A great deal of what is wrong in social care boils down to money – or a lack of it. According to a 2014 report by the Public Accounts Committee, local authorities have cut costs in recent years “partly by paying lower fees to providers of care, which has led to very low pay for care workers, low skill levels within the workforce, and inevitably poorer levels of service for users”.

Further reading

The trouble with tackling loneliness

By Giles Fraser

In Blackpool, where I worked as a carer and where large numbers of low-income families have the cost of their care subsidised, the lack of cash makes a big difference in the level of care people receive. For obvious reasons, it also discourages people from working in social care, which in turn reduces care quality yet further. It’s a vicious cycle.

The deficit in the number of people working in social care is also indicative of the lack of dignity and respect afforded to carers, which in turn affects the quality of care vulnerable people receive. Rochelle, a care worker at a company similar to the one I worked for, succinctly relayed the process to me: “the care workers [are] working for way less than the national minimum wage, no travel time, fifteen to twenty two-minute calls back-to-back, rushing in and out, and not actually having the knowledge and skills required to deal with particular situations because you were thrown into places”.

And care workers are “thrown into a place” because companies are usually short staffed. I received just four days of classroom training before I was sent out on calls. With this modest instruction under my belt – which resembled the cramming I did back in university prior to an exam – I was expected to do everything from change pads, stomas and catheters, to administer medication and move disabled service users in a hoist, as well as prepare meals and visit the shops for groceries. All of this typically had to be completed within a twenty-minute window.

Further reading

Capitalism is suffering a crisis of care

By Victoria Bateman

Even a perfunctory care visit like this was more than many people were getting. According to Unison, three-quarters of English councils commissioned care visits of just fifteen minutes in 2014, up from 69% the previous year. Put another way, many of the people under my charge were receiving what has been accurately dubbed ‘clockwatch care’.

Officially, of course, we were paid the minimum wage. In reality, however, as Rochelle pointed out, it worked out at less once the unpaid time spent travelling from house to house was factored in. And then there was the cost of the fuel to get there. The company I worked for paid fifteen pence per mile towards your petrol costs, and you were entitled to claim another thirty pence back out of your tax. The rest you had to cover yourself, along with the depreciated costs associated with using your car at work.

As with many of the jobs I did while researching my book, it wasn’t just the lack of money that made the job unappealing. The sheer insecurity of care work caused just as much unease among the care workers I interviewed as the material poverty. Around a quarter (23%) of care workers in Britain are employed on zero hours contracts, meaning they have no guaranteed hours.

Several care workers I spoke to relayed stories about how ‘difficult’ care workers, those who blew the whistle on wrongdoing or tried to join a trade union, had been driven out of jobs in the sector. They had not been fired – that would almost certainly have presented legal problems for the company – instead they had turned up for work and found that their hours had been abruptly reduced to nothing, which was effectively the same thing.

Further reading

Britain's homelessness shame

By James Bloodworth

The constant lack of time prevents you from developing any sort of bond with the ‘service user’ (itself a cold term for another human being). According to research carried out in 2016 by the charity Age UK, half a million over-sixties spend every day alone. When a carer enters an elderly person’s house, whizzing past photographs of children, grandchildren, and long-dead spouses, they bring a little bit of the outside world in with them. I remember being peppered with questions: what was weather like? Who had won the football? Was that Tony Blair fellow still the prime minister? Because above all, what they wanted was company.

This would probably fall under the heading ‘social value’ – an aspect of care work that is extraordinarily difficult to measure in monetary terms. Yet it is arguably just as important as the physical aspects of the job, such as ensuring clients are clean and comfortable. And loneliness costs money too. Last year researchers at the London School of Economics estimated that an “epidemic of loneliness” was costing £6,000 per person in costs to health and other local services. The report calculated that for every £1 spent on preventing loneliness there are likely to be around £3 of savings.

In order to solve Britain’s care crisis – and to ensure that older people are treated with dignity and respect – government must reform the sector from the bottom up. This means understanding the link between the way we treat care workers and the quality of care they provide.

This is a moral imperative – it is simply wrong to leave vulnerable people to the whims of the grossly substandard system of care provision we have in this country. But it is also something that should concern anyone who looks at public policy through the lens of self-interest. Those of us lucky enough to live into old age will need a carer too one day. One care worker described the current status of Britain’s elderly to me as “units parcelled up and sold to the highest bidder”. None of us want to be treated like that.