My letter in this week’s Camden New Journal:
Dear Sir,
The more I think about Camden’s traffic wardens having to live on poverty wages the angrier I get. These are people doing a socially necessary job, out in all weathers, and often treated like rubbish by some members of the general public raised to believe it’s perfectly acceptable to hate traffic wardens.
When I left school I went to work in a lawn mower factory and, as it was a hard and boring job, I got a really good wage for it. But that was the eighties when people who did rubbish jobs usually got paid properly in recompense for their trouble. Now when people get low status jobs they get low pay to go with it because, I suppose, it’s assumed they don’t deserve any better. That’s not progress.
Everyone deserves to be able to live like a decent human being. In London that means a decent living wage. It’s particularly galling in the case of the traffic wardens not just because the council says it wants to become a living wage employer and outsourcing contracts has allowed them to dodge their responsibilities but because traffic wardens do a job that serves the community, keeps the traffic moving and pavements clear.
It’s not often you hear someone praising traffic wardens, so the least we can do is make sure they get a proper wage for their work.
Yours,
Jim Jepps
NW1