The Dignity of Labour. Jon Cruddas

Preface

      Dignity is the type of big word favoured by popes and presidents. For George W. Bush it framed bioethical challenges and Barack Obama the pursuit of international human rights. Pope Francis talks of the irrepressible dignity of every human.

      When I was young, I was taught about the dignity of labour. For my devout mother it was part of our Catholic teaching. As a teenage union member, I heard talk of it from the same guy who told me to read The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists. It is an unfashionable term that suggests all jobs have worth and status, that no occupation should be considered superior.

      Until recently if we discussed dignity, we were likely to be contemplating how we die rather than how we live. The pandemic changed this. In the face of death, we reconsider how we live and what we value in the contribution of others. Personally, I know I did years ago when I had to confront the possibility of my own death.

The pandemic interrupted our work or stopped it altogether and affected how we consider the work of others. We applauded care home workers, nurses, porters, orderlies and doctors. We were moved by the sacrifice of tube, bus and lorry drivers, cleaners, teachers, the police and fire service, front-line council workers – welfare and housing officers, maintenance and refuse operatives – as well as delivery drivers, supermarket employees and many others. These jobs are now more visible and have acquired renewed standing. We recognize the dignity of the labour.

      Until recently we were told that many of these jobs would soon be automated and few cared. This work is often poorly rewarded, performed by those considered part of the ‘left-behind’. Yet we clapped in appreciation of this labour; these vocations gathered esteem. Yet dignity is not just about status. Something else was going on.

      Dignity is elusive, difficult to define, not just about worthiness in a job hierarchy. It is also about something we acknowledge when lost, the negation of dignity, and suggests the violation of an essential humanity. Something that implies intrinsic human worth and acceptable moral standards in terms of rights, freedoms and obligations in the ways people live together.

      These are questions of justice. They suggest ethical duties in how we order society to remedy the violation of dignity. When such indignities are recognized and remedied, we confer a certain dignity on ourselves and society. In turn, our inability to confront them – in tolerating forms of death, punishment, slavery, abuse and exploitation – compromises our personal and collective dignity.

      In pandemic and death, we recognized the brave selfless contribution of others and challenge ourselves. How we resolve these questions of human dignity will help define how we live together and who we become.