This article was written by Anthony Lipmann. All views and opinions expressed are strictly his own.
I call them the underclass. Guy Standing in his book from 2011 calls them ‘the precariat’. We all know to whom he refers – the employee with two jobs serving you at the petrol station, the female cleaner in the men’s toilet at a posh London Club, the Transylvanian carer on a zero hours contract whose services are required 0730 hrs to 13.30 hrs and 19.00 hrs to 21.00 hrs so dependent on public transport as to be condemned to wait between paid hours. I have met all of these and spoken to them. The petrol attendant told me his wages were going to be docked because the customer before me filled up left without paying. The oil company employing him is a household name.
But there is another less obvious class in the finance world. The nameless legions inputting data for insurance companies or banks. My wife’s nephew is one of these. He works from home, he has not met any of his bosses, he knows no one above him or below him. He does not know the full significance of anything he does. He is paid by the hour with no holiday or medical cover. He is part of an apparatus set up to remedy a miss-selling scandal.
It made me ponder the extent to which we in our metals trade rely on the precariat. There will perhaps be a million minions inputting data resulting from the legal claims of the 2022 nickel palaver (when the LME summarily cancelled contracts when nickel rose from £10k to £100k following Putin’s attack on Ukraine). There will be some in the back offices of the commission houses and shipping departments of large commodity traders. But generally, our precariat works for those we work with rather than those who work directly for us.
The members of our precariat are more likely to be miners or auxiliary workers in developing countries at prey to the whims of local and generally powerless labour laws and weak unions. In Zambia for example the precariat is so poor that despite pollution, safety concerns, or machinations in the international market in which assets are bought and sold without reference to those affected, each one would be willing to work merely to have a job.
I would like to say that there are solutions – but they are unlikely to be popular. One of them is the idea of faithfully paying tax in the country where the activity takes place. When discussing this with CEOs of mining corporations (some of whom following recent actions by the Singapore government will be questioning why they domiciled in Singapore in the first place) the usual answer offered is that the country in which they mine is corrupt. It is not an excuse I go along with. It is a similar argument to the one often used to justify mitigating tax in UK via offshore entities - the claim that their tax will be wasted on bureaucracy.
Perhaps it is an unpopular opinion, but to me a public servant in a functioning bureaucracy is one of the highest callings there is. Castigated by Michael Gove as ‘the blob’, it is public servants upon whom we depend. Their service for the common good is perhaps the only distinction I know of between a civilized country and anarchy. They too are part of the modern precariat.
So, perhaps think of all these as you wince while paying your tax on January 31st 2025. Think not that your pound is wasted but rather that it is sacred, a sacred duty and one to be spent with utmost care.
This is why - this Christmas - those of us whose earnings are above this level of dependency might like to spare the precariat a thought.
I would just like to wish a Merry Christmas to all who read these articles. I would also like to extend my unbounded thanks to those who, like Anthony above, continue to help me with their frequent - and always valuable - contributions.
Thank you all, and a very Happy Christmas to you and your families.
GS.
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