'I know what it's like to struggle to get by'. Councillor Tom Hayes shares his experiences as he calls for a living wage of £10 an hour to be introduced for all workers.

“I WORK 42 hours a week. I work really hard, but it’s never enough.

"I pay £900 for a two-bedroom in St Clement’s. This is where I grew up, but it’s not easy to be low-paid in Oxford.”

I had knocked on the door of a 37-year-old woman I’ll call Debbie.

She lives with her daughter in my ward, down a road off St Clement’s Street, in a beautiful home with family pictures on every surface, and she told me a story at her kitchen table that I hear so often.

She had worked in fast-food places for a decade and seen the cost of living going up while her wages more or less stayed the same.

At 37, she’s thinking about moving back in with her mother for a few months to save on rent.

But she’s worried that a few months might become forever.

Debbie’s story is familiar to me, and not just as a councillor who visits people on their doorsteps to pick up casework.

I spent seven years working a succession of low-paid jobs ranging from staffing a till at Clintons to giving the same answer to the most common question I heard in the pound shop where I worked: “How much is this?”

For a long time, I worked a combination of three jobs to put myself through university, while living at home with my parents.

Debt wasn’t an option because I’d seen the cost of debt on my council estate.

In my last year of low-paid work, I went from stacking toys on shelves at Woolworths to flipping burgers and wiping down tables at McDonald’s to staffing private boxes at Manchester Arena.

In that year, I worked from 9am to 11pm practically every single day to make enough money to afford for postgraduate study.

I was always in work or on a bus going between jobs, exhausted and living frugally.

I earned £17,000 in low-paid jobs—it was just enough to make the move because I had been living at home with my parents.

Few people in Oxford know about my history of long hours and low paid work because I don’t talk about it.

I realise—largely because friends in low-paid jobs have made me realise this—that people who move away from low-paid jobs but never forget them can still honour their experiences and support their friends and similarly low-paid people.

The way you can do it is by ensuring that the campaign against low pay is led by the only people that truly matter in it: today’s low-paid workers.

Low pay is a choice.

When businesses choose to underpay their workers, they know they’re paying their workers less than they can live on.

That’s exploitation. When politicians choose to turn away, they do nothing to protect the exploited.

That’s a betrayal of their responsibilities we need to end.

An effective living wage is a basic right.

A living wage is necessary for people to enjoy every other right that makes life meaningful.

Like physical security, shelter, clean air, water and healthcare, a mandatory minimum income is a basic right.

The most fundamental responsibility of politicians is to ensure that people are free from insecurity in their lives and that means guaranteeing everybody has a mandatory minimum income to meet the essential costs of life today.

The voices we need to be listening to all the time are low-paid workers’ voices.

Anyone else who cares about this national tragedy playing out in Oxford can be fantastic allies by helping low-paid workers to life their voices.

If you’re a low-paid worker and want campaigners to support you to demand—and get—the £10 wage an hour you deserve, email me on cllrthayes@oxford.gov.uk.

Many will be concerned about losing their jobs by irritating their bosses.

You can share your stories anonymously and, when you do, it helps everyone to speak up rather than feel at the mercy of their bosses.

Being heard is an important kind of power and, in Oxford, more people are starting to listen.