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ORIGINAL RESEARCH
published: 03 June 2022
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.810870
Edited by:
Sara Santilli,
University of Padua, Italy
Reviewed by:
Jane Wills,
University of Exeter, United Kingdom
Ray Fells,
University of Western Australia,
Australia
*Correspondence:
Darrin J. Hodgetts
d.j.hodgetts@massey.ac.nz
Specialty section:
This article was submitted to
Organizational Psychology,
a section of the journal
Frontiers in Psychology
Received: 08 November 2021
Accepted: 16 May 2022
Published: 03 June 2022
Citation:
Hodgetts DJ, Young-Hauser AM,
Arrowsmith J, Parker J, Carr SC,
Haar J and Alefaio S (2022)
Deliberating Upon the Living Wage
to Alleviate In-Work Poverty:
A Rhetorical Inquiry Into Key
Stakeholder Accounts.
Front. Psychol. 13:810870.
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.810870
Deliberating Upon the Living Wage to
Alleviate In-Work Poverty: A
Rhetorical Inquiry Into Key
Stakeholder Accounts
Darrin J. Hodgetts1*, Amanda Maria Young-Hauser1, Jim Arrowsmith2, Jane Parker2,
Stuart Colin Carr1, Jarrod Haar3and Siautu Alefaio1
1School of Psychology, Massey University, Albany, New Zealand, 2School of Management, Massey University, Albany,
New Zealand, 3Department of Management, Auckland University of Technology, Auckland, New Zealand
Most developed nations have a statutory minimum wage set at levels insufficient
to alleviate poverty. Increased calls for a living wage have generated considerable
public controversy. This article draws on 25 interviews and four focus groups with
employers, low-pay industry representatives, representatives of chambers of commerce,
pay consultants, and unions. The core focus is on how participants use prominent
narrative tropes for the living wage and against the living wage to argue their respective
perspectives. We also document how both affirmative and negative tropes are often
combined by participants to craft their own rhetorical positions on the issue.
Keywords: living wage, minimum wage, rhetoric, public deliberation, in-work poverty, socio-economic inclusion
INTRODUCTION
Recognizing foundational links between work, income and poverty, over the past century most
OECD countries have introduced statutory minimum wages (MW) as a key pillar of their social
safety nets. These MWs were originally envisioned as living wages (LWs) that could lift people
out of poverty and sustain the health, morale, and productivity of communities, and reduce state
dependency (Levin-Waldman, 2000). Efforts to ensure such decent pay have sparked considerable
public controversy. Powerful conservative interests have opposed livable wages by arguing that
these are not financially viable for businesses, are not warranted due to low employee productivity,
and will result in job losses and business failures (Fourcade, 2009;Karjanen, 2010;Skilling and
Tregidga, 2019). Correspondingly, the value of the MW in many OECD countries has been eroded
and kept artificially lower than the LW. This has resulted in increased in-work poverty (Schulten
and Luebker, 2019). In response, LW advocates have mobilized research evidence that shows that
higher wages need not lead to increased unemployment or business closures (Card and Krueger,
1995;Luce, 2004). In promoting decent pay as a solution to in-work poverty, LW campaigners
have also mobilized broader social justice notions of business ethics, social license, equity, socio-
economic inclusion, and human dignity (Luce, 2004;Stabile, 2008). These campaigns have gained
considerable momentum with the 2008 global financial crisis and subsequent recession in many
that was exacerbated by poverty generating austerity responses in many countries. The current
COVID-19 pandemic has also highlighted the importance of “essential” low-paid workers and the
in-work poverty they experience (Hopner et al., 2021).
Since antiquity, scholars have considered links between public understandings of such
contentious issues and argumentation (Levine and Saunders, 1993). More recently, Wood (1997)
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Hodgetts et al. Living Wage Rhetoric
explored key arguments for and against the introduction of
the MW in the United Kingdom, as evident in media items
and published research. Similarly, Karjanen (2010) explored LW
debates in selected jurisdictions in the United States and London.
Skilling and Tregidga (2019) found that the majority of relevant
public reports, press releases and subsequent news items in
New Zealand presented arguments for the LW, reflecting growing
pressures from unlivable wages and high living costs (Plum
et al., 2019). Arguably, this reflects an asymmetrical conflict
whereby those seeking change have to advocate more vigorously
to challenge this status quo of poverty level wages. Relatedly, those
opposing the LW often simply defend the status quo by reducing
the dialog, responding primarily to particular points of argument,
and/or diverting attention elsewhere.
Research cited above has begun to explore rhetorical trends in
wage setting in publicly available documents. We seek to extend
such research by drawing on face-to-face conversations with key
representatives (rhetors) of employers and employees. This article
explores how these rhetors (Ancient Greek term for “orator,”
Walker, 2000) argue for and against the LW in Aotearoa/NZ;
one of the first countries to introduce a statutory MW that is
now amongst the highest in the world (Schulten and Luebker,
2019). Conversely, our national average wage is relatively low
(Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development
[OECD], 2019). The campaign for a LW has gained traction due
to increasing inequalities associated with a comparatively high
cost of living (Arrowsmith et al., 2020).
The importance of public debates regarding contentious
issues, such as the LW is reflected in thousands of years
of sustained scholarship on rhetoric (the art of persuasion)
originating in ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, India, and
China (Hallo, 2004). Today, the study of rhetoric informs
scholarly understandings of how human beings make sense of
the world, whilst often seeking to influence the understandings
of others (Burke, 1969). A key focus is on the techniques rhetors
employ to advise, persuade, and motivate others to think and
act in particular ways. Rhetorical techniques involve the use
of specific fragments of cultural discourse (e.g., heuristics or
tropes) to encourage other people to make quick judgments and
accept the plausibility of the rhetor’s position in public debates
(Burgchardt, 2010). As such, the rhetorical perspective we adopt
is useful in orientating us toward how citizen rhetors participate
actively in public deliberations regarding the LW, and present,
advocate for, advance, and defend their positions in dialog with
opposing views (Burgchardt, 2010). Our study of LW rhetoric
focuses on the tropes and devices used by research participants to
defend and to persuade others of the merits of one’s own position
regarding the LW.
This study is informed by insights from Billig’s (1989)
seminal work on rhetorical psychology, which emphasizes the
importance of human meaning-making as a communal process
that progresses through the reconstruction of conflictual tropes
or snippets of discourse. According to this perspective, human
beings are storied and argumentative beings who often act
as rhetors when making sense of contentious issues through
argumentation (Fisher, 1984). This involves rhetors drawing on
and contesting available public deliberations as they employ
various rhetorical tropes1and devices to influence both their own
and other people’s positions on contentious issues. Moreover,
by analyzing participant accounts we can explore how rhetors
think through contentious issues out loud by combining key
points from opposing perspectives (Billig, 1989). Such thinking
and arguing involves self-positioning rhetorically within public
deliberations by combining and revoicing multiple stock counter
arguments (tropes) for and against the LW. This serves to warrant
their own evolving positions on the LW in what Billig (1989)
refers to as “the spirit of contradiction.” That is, rhetors can often
voice what might appear to be contradictory ideas or attitudes as
they argue for their own position. This polyvocal orientation to
human thought and argumentation guides our exploration of the
dynamic complexities of public deliberations regarding the LW,
and associated personal, organizational and societal tensions.
This research is also informed by notions of “public
deliberation” in which rhetors absorb or concede some counter
arguments or tropes as they advance their own positions and
interests. The concept of public deliberation is also used to
posit that, in democracies, people affected by wage setting
decisions (e.g., employers, employees or their representatives)
should have a say in decisions impacting upon them (O’Doherty
and Stroud, 2019). Ideally, in public deliberations different
stakeholders pursue their interests by entering into dialog with
those voicing opposing perspectives with a view to reaching
collective resolution. As such, public deliberations constitute
inter-subjective encounter spaces within which participants may
evolve their own arguments to incorporate aspects of counter
tropes as they manage complexities and contradictions regarding
the LW. As we will demonstrate, interchanges between different
perspectives can reach the point where rhetors opposing the
LW also re-purpose and voice selective elements of tropes for
the LW, and vice-versa. In the process, participating rhetors
contribute dialectically to the construction of an organic mini-
public (O’Doherty and Stroud, 2019), which is subject to
the influence of power relations that shape tensions between
employers and employees.
Exploring deliberations within this mini-public is important
in addressing these knowledge gaps regarding how the LW is
constructed and understood not only by employers, but sector
and employee representatives too. This article also responds to
a situation in which work is often being touted as the “solution
to poverty” (Hodgetts and Stolte, 2017), when most people in
poverty are already engaged in work that pays unlivable wages.
Further, poor working conditions, including inadequate wages
have been recognized as the number one challenge in the world
of work [International Labour Organization (ILO), 2019]. This
topic warrants our careful consideration.
RESEARCH CONTEXT AND APPROACH
Aotearoa/NZ was the world’s first country to endorse a national
MW through the Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act
1For our purpose, tropes comprise figurative, metaphorical, recurrent and readily
recognizable shorthand figures of speech, narrative plot elements or points of
argument that populate ongoing debates (Sandberg, 2016).
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Hodgetts et al. Living Wage Rhetoric
of 1894. The Act established a process of Arbitration to set
minimum rates of pay across sectors and occupations as well
as requiring compulsory union membership and collective
bargaining. This tripartite (employer, union, government)
approach lasted until 1991 when the Employment Contracts Act
deregulated the industrial relations system and contributed to
the subsequent collapse of private-sector union representation.
This resulted in an imbalance in power relations between
employers and workers in wage setting and contributed to
increases in poverty.
Legislatively, the legally mandated adult MW introduced with
the 1983 Minimum Wage Act was relatively generous and the
seventh highest rate in the world in purchasing power parity
terms (Schulten and Luebker, 2019). Over time the MW has not
kept pace with inflation and its actual value has been eroded.
Significant in a recent effort to lift the MW was the election of the
Labor-led government in 2017 who announced stepwise annual
increases to NZ$20 by 2021, some 27% on the 2017 rate and
closing the gap on the LW rate pursued by campaigners. Such
increases comprise a response to high living and housing costs
that leave many households “. . .with insufficient income to meet
other basic needs” (Perry, 2019, p. 64). In-work poverty rates
were between 9 to 12% in 2018 (Plum et al., 2019), and were
increasingly recognized as key drivers of negative consequences
for employees, their families and communities (Groot et al., 2017;
Hodgetts and Stolte, 2017). It is in this context that the LW
campaign has gained considerable traction since its formation in
2012 as a means of supporting a basic material standard of living,
civic participation and dignified lives for employees, families, and
communities (Hurley and Vacas-Soriano, 2018;Carr et al., 2019).
The LW campaign has experienced considerable opposition
that often draws from orthodox neoliberal economic “theory,”
which is based on equilibrium models of supply and demand,
whereby paying above “market clearing” wages is considered
uncompetitive and as leading to job losses and/or work
intensification (Leonard, 2000). Alternative theories posit that
low pay reflects unequal bargaining power, rather than market
forces, resulting in a discretionary pay “range of indeterminacy”
(Arrowsmith et al., 2003). Concepts such as “efficiency wages”
and insights from motivational psychology and social exchange
theory also suggest that higher pay can deliver offsetting returns
especially in the longer term through better recruitment and
retention, returns to training, improved commitment, and
employment relations (Card and Krueger, 1995;Searle and
McWha-Herman, 2020). Hence, a living wage can benefit both
organizations and workers (Carr et al., 2017).
This paper explores these issues by drawing on a major
research project running from 2018 to 2021 involving a
national quantitative survey of low-paid workers and qualitative
interviews and case studies of employers. The employee survey
results, presented elsewhere, indicate that wellbeing (both work
and non-work) spike at around the living wage figure, suggesting
that it could have a significant positive effect. This article
draws on 25 semi-structured interviews conducted in late 2018
with sector-level employer representatives, managers at five
regional Chambers of Commerce, managers at two city councils
(Auckland and Wellington, which have formally adopted the
LW), two pay and human resources consultancies, and union
representatives involved in the LW campaign. The employer
associations represented sectors with a large proportion of low-
paid workers (Retail NZ, the Tourism Industry Association,
Hospitality NZ, the Food Grocery Council, Federated Farmers,
Horticulture NZ, the NZ Aged Care Association, Manufacturing
NZ, the Employers and Manufacturers Association) and the peak
body Business NZ. The second wave of the research involved four
focus groups in December 2020 that again focused on low-wage
sectors such as hospitality, cleaning, and retail. Each focus group
consisted of senior managers and human resource professionals
from non-LW (focus groups one and four) and LW businesses
(focus groups two and three).
Qualitative analyses in psychology are often concerned with
categorizing the world into lists of mutually exclusive themes.
Rhetorical and more impressionistic forms of inquiry also
engage in some categorizing, but tropes are not conceptualized
as mutually exclusive categories (Burgchardt, 2010;Hodgetts
et al., 2021). Rather, tropes are approached as entwined,
dynamic and dialogically related common statements or dynamic
snippets of shared culture that exist and take shape within
rhetorical processes. Likewise, the focus of our inquiry is not
on constructing a list of distinct themes. It is on the dialectical
interplay of tropes in the contingent formation of rhetorical
positions in the LW debate as a dynamic and collective meaning-
making process involving the adaptation of these tropes in real
time. Although our focus is on interpreting, rather than trying to
verify or validate the empirical findings, it is useful for us to offer
an account of our iterative process of inquiry that was centered on
abductive reasoning or logical inference (Hodgetts et al., 2021).
To initiate this inquiry, the first two authors searched the
academic literature and websites featuring arguments for and
against the living wage. We then re-read the interview and
focus group transcripts independently to explore which tropes
featured in participant deliberations. Next, our extensive notes
were compared to establish prominent tropes and associated
rhetorical devices across the empirical materials and to establish
how these were being used in concert by opposing rhetors.
We then re-read the research corpus independently and coded
extracts of participant accounts relating to each trope. Many
extracts were coded in relation to multiple tropes as a reflection
of how rhetors combine these when posing their arguments
for and against the LW. The first two authors then came
together to integrate the preliminary coding and found a high
degree of synergy in the exemplars coded against particular
tropes. We then explored how participants used combinations
of tropes in constructing their positions on the benefits and/or
costs of the LW. This open-ended and iterative process that
was then extended to additional co-authors who offered critical
feedback from their own readings of the participant accounts and
deepened the literature base of the article to include, for example,
management literature related to this topic. We then met as a
team to write through the draft of the article and to deepen the
interpretation. A key concern to emerge from this process was
how participating rhetors drew on key tropes regarding work and
renumeration and combined these dialectically to express stances
for and against the LW.
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Building on and extending previous thematic work on the LW
(e.g., Wood, 1997;Karjanen, 2010;Skilling and Tregidga, 2019),
we also considered some of the rhetorical devices employed by
participating rhetors in arguing for and against the LW. These
include hyperbole (making exaggerated assertions of negative
impacts), repetition of fear-invoking emotive assertions (e.g.,
LW will cause business failures and job cuts), and efforts to
construct and foreground contradictions in opposing arguments.
Also considered is circumlocution or the use of well-known
phrases (tropes) to invoke oversimplified assertions regarding
empirically tenuous links between wage rises and job losses.
Relatedly, we considered the process of antonomasia, a form of
metonymy that is used by participating rhetors to invoke notions
of “deserving” and “undeserving” workers and “responsible” and
“irresponsible” employers. As we document, antonomasia serves
to atomize perspectives on the LW in a manner that detracts from
due consideration of issues of public good. Also of key concern
was how several rhetors invoked a shared imaginary through
references to “the government,” “the market” or “business,”
in order to conjure up positive and negative associations for
different ideologically orientated groups.
Given the focus on rhetoric and the ways in which
participants combined key tropes in crafting their positions in
the LW debate, we opted to present our interpretation of their
meaning making processes in two sections. The first focuses on
arguments for (e.g., fairness, poverty reduction and enhanced
organization performance) and the second arguments against
(e.g., organizational costs, employee performance and free-
market wage setting) the LW. Combined, these sections comprise
the core of a new bricolage (Lévi-Strauss, 1966) or exemplified
interpretation that is rendered meaningful in the context of
the theoretical arguments advanced in the introduction, the
interpretative methodological position advanced in this section,
and the conclusion that completes this article.
Arguing for the Living Wage
Key supportive tropes for the LW are linked to fairness, poverty
reduction, lower staff turnover, sustainability, and broader
benefits to workers, families and society. These were drawn
upon throughout the participant accounts by both those taking
positions generally for or against the LW. In terms of invoking
issues of equity and fairness, the trope of the LW being the
“right thing to do’ is prominent in all participants” accounts,
whether they support or oppose the LW. In the affirmative, it
was often used as a way of introducing complementary tropes,
including benefits to the organization, whilst acknowledging
contrary concerns. We draw on the arguments of a union
representative by way of initial example:
I guess the drivers are “doing the right thing” for a start and
making sure that they’re making an ethical statement about what
is an acceptable wage for their staff. And then alongside that comes
a whole lot of potential benefits from it in terms of wellness,
reduced turnover and absenteeism, loyalty to the organization,
those sorts of things.
Pragmatism is also evident here in that, although a LW might
generally be accepted as the right thing to do for employees,
it has to be the right strategy for particular organizations. This
line of argument was somewhat agreed by participants both for
and against the LW, and functioned rhetorically to enable them
to present themselves as being reasoned and balanced in their
deliberations:
It’s sort of that space between having a firm, which needs to be
profitable, but also having wider goals than just the bottom line.
Those arguing for the LW acknowledged employer concerns
around the financial impacts and issues of profitability. In
doing so, these rhetors appropriate concerns from the tropes
against the LW around the importance of organizational viability.
Proponents of the LW did this by signaling that, although these
concerns are important, it is also crucial to consider more than
“the bottom line” – rhetorical shorthand for broader societal
responsibilities. Also evident is the notion of what this union
representative referred to as “good employers” who can gain pride
and reputational capital from paying a LW, and contributing
to what was termed “a cultural shift” around changing societal
expectations regarding fairer renumeration.
Although these quotes come from a union representative,
the same accounting practices were provided by many
HR consultants and managers, particularly those whose
organizations had adopted the LW. In their accounts, the issue
of fairness was also contextualized through the use of additional
tropes, for example, regarding New Zealand being a low wage
economy, despite having a relatively high MW. This rhetorical
strategy constituted a less challenging way of promoting the need
for a LW by broadening the issue beyond specific organizations
to issues of sustainability, prosperity and socio-economic
inclusion:
There’s so many drivers for us as a low wage economy. First of all,
there’s the overarching philosophy, which is “it’s the right thing to
do.” So, that philosophy propels everything else. . . It immediately
impacts people like care workers. . . In my view, this is societal
change. This is not just the prerogative or the responsibility of
employers. It goes far beyond that. It’s embedded across the fabric
of society or should be. . . It has a direct societal impact. (Senior HR
consultant)
Here, references to low wage jobs functions to ground recourse
to an abstract philosophical assertion of the “right thing” (read
social justice) and the need for changes in the “fabric of society,”
which carry material consequences for actual employees. Further,
evident in the above extract is the rhetorical positioning of
businesses and employers as being embedded in society and, as
such, responsible for contributing to the public good.
Pushing this line of argument further, a manager from a power
company (focus group two) linked their adoption of the LW
to the need to have positive impacts on society as an issue of
sustainability (organizational and societal) and “social license”:
Our sustainability team actually posed this originally, and wedged
it into our sustainability framework. It’s very much around care for
our people, but also. . . there’s a social license that we have to be able
to actually operate.
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Along similar lines, the LW was presented as a mechanism
for addressing broader issues of societal equity, with rhetors also
emphasizing gender and ethnic pay gaps:
The one benefit we realized was, that if we bring this [pay] up, this
is going to benefit more women and is good for pay equity. . . The
other thing is the ethnicity equation. We know that some ethnicities
are the ones that are in those brackets. (Council representative)
Exemplified above is how deliberations regarding the LW
often extend to the need for societal change to ensure
greater equity for different employee groups. Both employee
representatives and managers linked pay to addressing inequities,
including poverty reduction. As we document in the next section,
this is a stance largely contested by sector representatives,
suggestive of a “lower common denominator” effect on the
part of umbrella organizations in how they respond to or
anticipate vociferous concerns that might be raised by some of
their actual employer members. What is also signaled here is
the pervasiveness of how arguments for and against the LW
were entwined and mounted in the context of knowledge of
opposing tropes.
For example, in focus group two, a manager for a call center
company invoked and challenged arguments against the LW,
in general terms and specifically relating to wage compression
(differential) effects between new and more established or senior
employees. As is acknowledged, these differentials potentially
can complicate perceptions of fairness between employees as
many would argue that experience and service warrants wage
differentials also being the right thing to do:
The arguments against weren’t relevant anymore. It’s difficult not
to pay a living wage when, you know, that effectively is the right
thing to do. We were still worried about how some of the long-term
staff and team leaders, for example, would cope. . . They’re like a big
family and everybody was just thrilled. I haven’t heard any negative
feedback from that area at all.
Here we see an employer raise and then mitigate a key trope
relating to wage differentials between newer and long-term staff.
This is achieved by first questioning the relevance of arguments
against the LW generally and then posing one such argument
about wage differentials, and then how they did not receive
negative feedback.
An accounts manager in focus group three engaged in a
similar rhetorical strategy, but went further to reposition the wage
differentials trope as a faulty perception that managers may need
to address with their staff:
We had a bit of a talk in the beginning that people were like, “Well
I’ve been here years, I’m gonna be getting like a few dollars more
[than new staff]. It just doesn’t feel right.” You go like, “Well stop
comparing! You were happy like a month ago when you were getting
paid that wage. You’ll be happy next month when you’re paid that
wage.” And why can’t everybody have a good wage? Just because
you’re earning this much more than the other person, don’t keep
looking at it like that. Look at it like everybody’s earning this much
and then everyone can go off and go home and garden, or dance or
do whatever they want to do. [We are] trying to change the mindset.
Combined, the rhetorical strategies of these business leaders
(particularly the second) offer a glimpse into how tropes
regarding fairness and wage differentials can be reworked to
support the LW and its impacts on different staff groups. The
LW is also presented in the second case as a key mechanism for
this self-perceived responsible organization to achieve its humane
goal of all employees being able to earn enough to enjoy quality of
life. Relatedly, many employers also differentiated the living from
the minimum wage, indicating that moving to the LW constituted
evidence for a responsible employer:
It’s almost embarrassing for an organization to turn around and
say, “We pay minimum wage.” It’s kind of like, “Oh, really?” I think
especially when, you know, the difference in terms of the impact on
somebody’s life between paying minimum wage and paying living
wage. It’s really difficult to argue out of that. And I get there’s
mum and dad businesses out there that are struggling, but really
it’s almost a onetime cost if you forecast it into your business. (Focus
group two)
Central to such arguments is the difference between the MW
and LW, and how increasing pay to a LW is constructed as a
responsible move that can enhance an organization’s reputation
(cf. Haar et al., 2018). It is also interwoven with the assertion
that organizations can benefit from meeting changing public
expectations around pay and employer responsibilities.
Issues of fairness for employees were also extended to benefits
for good employers, including improved relationships with staff
and reduced turnover. In this line of argument, the LW was often
presented as a sensible or logical strategy in that it provided a win-
win situation for employees and employers. In the service sector,
it was asserted that these benefits also extended to customer
and community relationships as well as potentially positive labor
market and employment effects:
I notice that there’s a bit of a shift now to operators paying a
bit more for both attraction and retention. That’s probably one of
the drivers. . . It helps to improve their standing within the local
community. . . Again, both those things are perhaps indicative that
employers are starting to see the role that LW or fair wage plays in
both retention and attraction, but also working with their local host
communities. (Sector representative)
This extract also reflects the importance of local
embeddedness and organizational reputation in the tourism
industry. Significant too is the linking of a LW to a “fair wage,”
again reflecting the currency of the “right thing” trope in terms of
benefits for employees, organizations, communities and society.
This perspective was echoed by a brewery manager in focus
group three who connected the LW to the brand, organizational
values and broader issues of social responsibility:
As a brand and in terms of the values it stands for, from the
outset has always been very community minded. . . That’s what
predominately drove us to seek accreditation with the LW. . . We
wanted them to have a sustainable lifestyle, and. . . a duty to care
for them. . . It received a huge positive response from our team
internally and externally. . .
Another manager of a security firm (focus group three) argued
that his organization was proud to pay staff a LW because they
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deserved it, and this also returned retention, reputational and
growth benefits to the organization (cf.Haar et al., 2018). After
proposing that introducing the LW reduced their staff turnover
from 100 to 20% per year, this rhetor proposed:
That alone makes a huge impact to our business. It costs us 5,000 to
10,000 dollars to train a patrolman. . . We can feel a little bit better
knowing we’re giving some of that money back to the people that
really deserve it. . . We have a lot of organic growth in the business
and it is word of mouth. What people are beginning to see out there
is if they pay for a quality product then they’re gonna get it. . . It’s
testament to having skilled staff, experienced staff that stay with you,
because they’re paid well and they’re looked after.
Such accounts of employee deservedness, worth, retention
and business growth remind us that organizations operate in
ecosystems where reputation for equity, social responsibility, and
skill competence can generate mutually beneficial and sustainable
returns, or what the ILO Decent Work Agenda and the SDGs
term "shared prosperity" (United Nations, 2021, SDG-8).
The issue of business sustainability was often used to argue
both for and against a LW. In the former, anticipating concerns
around financial sustainability, rhetors proposed that well-run
businesses are more likely to be able to afford the LW. This
rhetorical reframing placed primary responsibility on employers
to run their organizations well so that they could afford to
do the right thing. This stance is in direct opposition to
the common trope against the LW that organizations will
become unsustainable if they try and introduce the LW. Again,
some hedging work is used in such proposition in terms of
acknowledging the need for some firms to increase revenue from
customers, which invokes the consumer as a social actor who can
contribute to the LW by being willing to bear increased costs for
products and services:
. . .Successful businesses have to be resilient enough to be able to cope
with wage increases over time, provided they can offset that cost to
the consumer in some way. . . The consumer has the opportunity
to increase its behavior, then businesses should be structured well
enough to be able to increase their costs as well. (Focus group three)
Evident in the accounts of several such rhetors was the need
for organizations to be managed well enough to be able to afford a
LW, placing the responsibility regarding issues of affordability to
employers who design work systems (cf. Levin-Waldman, 2000).
Subversion of counter arguments for the need for productivity
increases to pay for the LW was also evident in the contribution
of a manager from a hospitality firm in focus group three:
And why did they [the business] do it?. Definitely not anything to
do with productivity or squeezing the most out of their workers. You
know, people’s lives are important and your job is just your job. . .
You’ve all got your own lives and they just wanna encourage people
to be able to live them. . .
In this exemplar, the rhetor creates a rhetorical opposition
between drivers for the LW being productivity gains and needing
to care for one’s staff by not necessarily intensifying their
workloads. Also evident is the relativizing of a job in terms of
recognizing the importance of broader concerns such as workers
being able to live quality lives.
In sum, this section has documented the complimentary use
of various tropes in support of the LW as a means of benefiting
employers, employees and broader society by addressing issues
of equity and economic inclusion. Evident is how arguments for
the LW are also crafted to subvert dominant tropes against the
LW. This involves rhetors presenting themselves as reasonable
and pragmatic by acknowledging and responding to the concerns
of “some” employers regarding financial and operational matters,
and in voicing the need to ensure the LW is the right strategy
for particular organizations. Additionally, pro-LW rhetors also
expand the debate out beyond specific operational concerns for
employers. Participants promote the importance of considering
the broader societal responsibilities that “good employers”
accept. This serves to position “good” and “bad” employers
differently in relation to the public good and changing societal
expectations regarding the need for socio-economic inclusion
and poverty reduction.
Arguing Against the Living Wage
Key tropes against the LW related to business affordability, job
losses, unrealistic employee expectations in life, undeserving
employees, and the complexities that LW may impose on
businesses (pay relativities). LW opponents also argue that there
are better alternatives for addressing poverty (reduce housing
costs), the importance of individual choice and fairness, free
market autonomy, and that morality has not place in business
decision making. Prominent tropes relating to negative impacts
on jobs and business failures were invoked through the rhetorical
technique of hyperbole and presented as factual “common sense,”
despite a lack of empirical support (Karjanen, 2010). Another
key rhetorical technique was the use of circumlocution to
oversimplify links between wage rises and job losses, and to
dismiss or ignore counter evidence. Implicit to rhetoric against
the LW is a shift in responsibility from the employer to the
employee who must become more productive to ensure the
business is able to pay a LW. Overall, the strategic use of key
tropes and rhetorical techniques served to marshal uncertainty
regarding the benefits of a LW, cultivate fear regarding possible
job losses, and to bring into question who is responsible to resolve
in-work poverty.
Rhetors who oppose, or are more cautious around the LW,
were less likely to be actual employers and more likely to be
sector representatives or from chambers of commerce. In arguing
against the LW, these rhetors demonstrated awareness of tropes
supporting the LW considered above, which they repurposed to
align with their own oppositional positions. Their undermining
of the LW was often both overtly affronting as well as more subtle,
as is the case in the following extract:
I think the benefits are a better-engaged workforce, potentially.
Although there’s no guarantee of that either. (Chamber of
Commerce)
Such assertions reflect how many opposed rhetors did not
necessarily contest key arguments in support of the LW, but
rather subtly minimalized benefits as only possibilities. In so
doing, they brought these benefits into question. Such approaches
also extend to subtle challenges to notions of fairness and the
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LW as a means of addressing poverty, often with reference to pay
differentials and organizational viability:
The ultimate goal is for people to get a fair wage for a fair day’s work.
It’s also about trying to reduce that poverty gap. The key to some of
that is, are we just squashing the lower and middle band closer and
closer together, because let’s say your wage goes up, and then each
level has to go up. So, if your office worker now goes up by NZ$5,
that means your middle manager has to go up by NZ$5. . . Yes, the
pay increases are absolutely positive for the staff themselves, but the
implications that it has for providers’ viability is quite significant.
(Chamber of Commerce)
Through such extracts, we see a general acknowledgment
of acceptance of the LW in principle as a possible means
of addressing in-work poverty. However, the challenge to the
LW comes in the form of rhetors strategically raising various
practicalities and complications for organizations that need to
be worked through before a LW can be introduced sustainably.
Further, whilst the need to address in-work poverty is accepted,
such rhetors support the status quo by offering no convincing
alternatives for addressing in-work poverty and focusing on
possible complications in terms of pay differentials.
As we will show below, this line of argument often then
morphs into assertions regarding organizational viability, job
losses, issues of employee value or productivity, and the targeting
of the LW to employees who are deemed “deserving” by
employers. For example, a senior HR consultant argued against
the LW through fear regarding job losses and business failures,
and to prompt the need for productivity gains:
My concern is for the bottom end of the market, the companies that
struggled to pay that. They will go out of business. One employer I’m
particularly thinking of. . ., he’s already said to me, “I won’t employ
as many people.” It’s easy. “To keep my cost of labor down I’m not
taking the risk on these idiots. I’m going to employ less people, so the
ones that I’ve got are going to have to work harder.” This particular
employer has got his business up for sale at the moment. If it doesn’t
sell, he’s going to close it down because he’s sick of the HR issues and
how hard it is to get hard-working employees.
The ethics of referring to employees as “idiots” by proxy aside,
such extracts were at times quite threatening in tone and reliant
on reprisal. This rhetor presented the case of an undisclosed
business as a rhetorical means of supporting a truth claim that
businesses are worried, while some employers are looking to
sell or wind up their businesses because of perceived existential
threats from rising employment costs. This line of argument
comprises a more refined variation of the “it will cost jobs
and businesses” trope. Interestingly, it was not advanced in the
accounts from organizations that had adopted the LW.
Arguments against the LW are sometimes informed by
stereotypes of undeserving, dysfunctional, unskilled, and more
commonly unproductive workers. Not paying a LW was often
recast as equitable due to undeserving workers not being
productive enough:
Productivity is what the whole economy needs. . . It’s very poor.
Employees taking drugs and living from week-to-week and
drinking their pay. . . and not turning up on the weekend or
on Monday. All those issues need to be addressed to improve
productivity. Last time I checked 20 percent of the New Zealand
population was illiterate or partially illiterate. (HR consultant)
This line of argument is often extended through the
proposition that at best the LW should be a targeted intervention
to employees who are more work orientated, motivated and
productive so as to avoid the type of undeserving workers
invoked above from gaining a “free ride” (Karjanen, 2010). This
“undeserving employee” trope was also contrived in more subtle
terms by other rhetors as “let’s pay people for the contributions that
they make” (Retail manager, focus group four). Individualizing
issues of pay with reference to employee deficiencies distracts
attention from issues of employer social responsibility and social
license (Levin-Waldman, 2000). Further, national deficiencies
in productivity can be presented as the result of undeserving
employees transgressing traditional norms around hard work
and sobriety, rather than insufficient wages and poor work
conditions (Carr et al., 2011;Blumkin and Dansiger, 2018). Such
rhetoric also positions “undeserving” workers outside the scope
of justice (Hodgetts et al., 2020) because they have not met the
moral responsibilities of productive workers. Positioning a group
outside the scope of justice means that they can be denied the
same rights and privileges as people located within the scope.
Our attention is drawn here to the rhetorical strategy of
antonomasia that involves the use of a form of metonymy or key
words that stand in for an actual object. In this context, the classic
distinction between the “deserving” and “undeserving” poor is
used to contest the fairness of a LW and to shift responsibility
for poor pay onto employees (cf. Skilling and Tregidga, 2019).
On the surface it may well be reasonable that if employees want
increased pay then they need to increase their skills and work
harder. However, this line of argument is also used to warrant
the status quo that features unlivable wages and exploitative
employment practices whereby employees have to work harder
with no guarantees of increased pay. Such accounts serve to
naturalize unlivable wages as meritocratic responses to individual
performance and omit the fact that many “deserving” workers are
also currently paid below the LW.
Such rhetorical sleights-of-hand were used by several rhetors
opposed to the LW to repurpose notions of fairness and to
argue against the LW on the basis of performance. Central to
such rhetorical repositioning are tropes relating to productivity,
affordability and possible negative consequences for businesses.
While not wishing to totally dismiss employer concerns
underlying these tropes, it is important that we consider issues
around increases in labor and associated costs that are carried by
organizations, and which were associated by several rhetors with
issues of sustainability, profitability, and job losses:
They [businesses] restructure their approach to cost, which . . . can
be laying off people, it can be in fact introducing more technology
to offset the labor components, and a whole bunch of cost-based
responses. (Sector representative)
Such extracts reflect an assumed cause and negative effect
pathway from the introduction of a LW and job losses and
automation. They also carry a false equivalency in threatening
that a LW “logically” equates to such negative outcomes:
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Unemployment will go up because those businesses will close.
There are consequences – cause and effect . . . If it’s regulated, it
[LW] will force companies to close in the hundreds or thousands
in New Zealand. That means unemployment is going to go up and
the cost of inflation will rise. (Sector representative)
This negative cause and effects trope was widely presented
as common sense. Omitted from such assertions was how
many businesses could absorb increased wage costs by reducing
profits to shareholders, reducing salaries and bonuses for higher
earning staff, as well as through more benign process efficiencies
(Kenway, 2016;De Bievre, 2018).
This is not to say that rhetors opposed to the LW did not
acknowledge organizations that had adopted a LW without
job losses. These rhetors raised important queries around
complexities in cost structures across different organizations
and how some sectors and organizations may be better placed
to adopt the LW than others. However, they also worked to
rhetorically mollify the positive experiences of LW organizations
by associating the LW with monopoly or public organizations,
which faced less competition and could pass on added costs:
Those who have been advocates for a living wage have tended to be
organizations like councils and agencies that aren’t responsible for
the generation of their own incomes. (Chamber of Commerce)
Such extracts reflect rhetorical efforts to undermine the
credibility of the messenger (public sector organizations), and
in doing so dismiss evidence for the benefits of the LW. Also
omitted here are the cost restraints faced by such organizations in
terms of how much they can actually raise their incomes through
increased taxes and other such means.
The efficacy of a LW was also brought into question through
recourse to prominent societal tropes regarding the high cost
of living. Many argued that a LW will not address in-work
poverty because of the rapidly rising cost of housing, and
legitimately proposed that the government should look at
alternative strategies, such as addressing rental costs. The issue
of income and cost of living is then diverted from one of income
to one of failed public policy:
The reason is of course, that New Zealand has, I think, probably
the highest MW in the world. . ., not just nominally, but if you
normalize it for currency. The reason why that’s not enough is
not because the figure is too low, it’s you can’t afford to live
here on it; and the reason why you can’t afford to live on it is
accommodation costs are too high. So, on the one hand, for unions
and the government, it’s very convenient for them to frame this as
the miserable employers are not paying enough; when, in fact, the
social policy and the public policy issue sits really around other
things. (Sector representative)
The same rhetor went further to associate the cost of living
to unrealistic employee expectations and personal differences in
what constitutes a dignified quality of life. In doing so, they re-
imagined a past where employees were more “realistic” about
what they actually needed:
What is a good life? There was a time if you were dry and warm
and not too hungry you were okay, because the other guy probably
was in bare feet out on the street. Today, that’s not good enough; we
expect to have access to broadband and a whole lot of things that we
think are absolutely the minimum requirement to be living. . . The
problem with the living wage is, who’s living? It’s a very imprecise
measure and it doesn’t actually tell the whole story, because my
life and your life will be different. I might want to live in a cave
somewhere and that living wage is going to look like a king, but if
I’ve got three kids, and I’ve got a sick mother-in-law at home or
something, that’s not nearly enough to actually live with dignity.
(Sector representative)
The “people’s needs differ” trope often manifests via a selective
hypothetical comparison between personal expectations, which
serves to sidestep issues of material hardship that come with
unlivable wages and a high cost of living. The focus is shifted from
the adequacy of income to “unrealistic” employee expectations.
This line of argument is foundational to efforts to relativize the
LW as an issue of personal lifestyle, rather than equity.
Many rhetors, likewise, posed legitimate queries and
objections regarding how the LW is calculated. However,
these also functioned rhetorically to shift the focus toward
technicalities and the perceived biases of LW proponents. This
enables rhetors opposed to the LW to avoid engaging with the
broader issues of equity, fairness and exploitation (Karjanen,
2010). Such strategies were also implicated in notions of the
sanctity of free market autonomy (Skilling and Tregidga, 2019),
to the extent that it was repeatedly asserted that the Government
setting a LW is inappropriate when, in fact, such wages are
not state mandated. What is evident in such assertions is the
use of arguments against the increasing MW, which is set by
government with the voluntary LW, which is not:
This particular government is trying to artificially increase wages
without having any of the other factors in place first, or a plan for
any of those other factors . . . I mean, maybe we’ll be fine and maybe
we won’t. I don’t know. But, I think that’s an unbelievable risk to
take when everything that you read says that’s not the way that it
should be done. (Sector representative)
Several rhetors appealed to popular imagery of “the
Government,” along with unions disrupting what are asserted to
be the “natural” market self-regulation of wages. This trope has
been used against the MW in the United States (Wood, 1997) and
is used in Aotearoa/NZ to assert that LW proponents are socialist
Christians who are biased and should not be emboldened to
interfere in free market wage setting:
I can’t understand why somebody hasn’t formally come out with
another version of the LW that is not so reflective of a faith-based
research organization and a trade union who have their obvious
biases. (HR consultant)
Asserting that opponents are biased infers that one’s own
position is somehow more objective. We also discerned the
rhetorical strategy of oversimplifying the world into dichotomies
between businesspeople and Christians. The latter are positioned
as existential threats to the market, business and economy, and
ultimately the welfare of employees.
In terms of the sanctity of the free market trope, it is
important to note that many employers did not fully embrace
this line of argument. For example, reflecting arguments for
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the LW explored above, a senior manager from focus group
three proposed that “the market” is actually shifting toward the
expectation of a LW, at least in part, due to shortages of skilled
migrant labor (exacerbated by the pandemic) as well as broader
benchmarking away from the MW:
In terms of recruitment, which I do a lot of, I think the market was
starting to expect a living wage from employers. I think particularly
the kind of brand that we like to aim for, a lot of talent we were
recruiting were already demanding that.
In the extract above the market trope is undermined somewhat
through the assertion that the market and society are actually
shifting toward expecting a LW. This reworking of a key trope
against the LW also undermines the artificial division between
the market and society, which is used by other rhetors to privilege
self-interest over collective interest, and to ignore how indebted
businesses actually are to the societal infostructure upon which
they rely to operate. It also remines of the importance of nuance
and diversity in employer perspectives.
Above, we have presented arguments against the LW that
respond to opposing views, and in particular dispute the
meaning of fairness, affordability of wage rises, and foreground
potential negative consequences for employers and employees.
These rhetors also shift the focus from the LW to alternative
strategies for addressing poverty and emphasize the importance
of personal choice and the sovereignty of the market over
perceived government interference in wage setting. Whilst
questioning what is presented as socialist and moral arguments
for the LW, several rhetors voice conservative moral distinctions
between the deserving and undeserving poor, which are used to
question justifications for the LW based on concerns regarding
unrealistic expectations, low productivity and work ethics among
the underserving. This rhetoric work functions to differentiate
employees to promote uncertainty regarding arguments of equity
that support the LW. It also shifts responsibility away from
employers and onto employees who need to become more
productive and realistic. The appropriateness of the LW as a
form of poverty reduction is questioned through the introduction
of fear regarding negative consequences, such as job losses, and
the questioning of why employers are being targeted to reduce
poverty and not groups such as landlords who often increase
the cost of living.
CONCLUSION
Little is known empirically about the rhetorical relationship
between employer and employee stakeholder understandings of
the living wage, particularly with regard to low pay sectors
(Werner and Lim, 2016). This article reveals considerable overlap
between positions for and against the LW that are worked
through rhetorically within the dynamic accounts of participating
rhetors. For example, a dominant trope across opposing rhetors
was that the LW may well be the right thing to do to support a
dignified life for employees. Relatedly, both sides acknowledge
that not all employers may have the means to pay a LW.
Where rhetorical positionings tend to differ is in terms of
affordability, what consequences a LW has, and how it can be
funded. Understanding such rhetorical complexities is crucial
for engaging with issues of equity, fairness and business social
responsibilities in wage-setting deliberations and work-based
poverty reduction efforts.
This article also documents the influence rhetoric can have
in stakeholder contributions to public deliberations regarding
the LW. These accounts are also shaped within broader socio-
political contexts and power relations that are reproduced,
supported, justified, and challenged within these deliberations.
Correspondingly, Bitzer (1968) as argued that rhetoric is central
to the construction of reality through the recreation of key
aspects of public discourse (deliberation) and the perspectives
and actions of those involved. By documenting rhetoric within
public deliberations regarding the LW, we are able to open
up and examine the multiple and competing realities on offer
(Burgchardt, 2010). To this end, we have documented how
various tropes are employed by key stakeholders (rhetors) to
influence and explore the plausibility of and adopt similar
positions regarding the need for and consequences of the LW
(O’Doherty and Stroud, 2019). This is important because public
deliberations can have actual material impacts in terms of
whether or not the LW is adopted by particular organizations,
and what consequences this has for organizations and employees,
their families and civil society. A rhetorical perspective also
orientates us toward the relationship between key snippets
(tropes) of these deliberations and to avoid presenting these
as a list of mutually exclusive categories of argumentation. We
have demonstrated how different tropes become entangled in
dynamic and emergent ways within competing positions in
public deliberations regarding the LW.
Beyond documenting key tropes in public deliberations
regarding the LW, a key contribution of this article is
documenting how these are employed rhetorically. This is
important because human meaning-making is often embroiled
within rhetorical practices that are not always conducted in
accordance with the dichotomous logic of either or, which is
often employed in psychology to demonstrate how people all
make sense of the world. In actuality people often entwine
existing tropes from public deliberations in agentive and novel
ways to extend their understandings of arguments regarding
the LW (Billig, 1989). Supporting the importance of this focus,
several of the tropes we have explored are also evident within
previous research on public documents in the United States,
United Kingdom and NZ (Wood, 1997;Levin-Waldman, 2000;
Karjanen, 2010;Skilling and Tregidga, 2019). These include the
sanctity of the “free market” in wage-setting, pay rises costing
jobs, and concerns regarding productivity. Rhetors on both sides
have heard, thought about, and draw on opposing arguments to
promote their own agendas rhetorically.
A prominent example was how opponents of the LW propose
that increasing wages can be a positive phenomenon, but qualify
this ascription to some deserving workers, arguing that it can
also cost others their jobs. Although there is little empirical
evidence of resulting job losses attached to significant increases
in low pay (Jardim et al., 2018;Aitken et al., 2019) and emerging
evidence to the contrary (Parker et al., 2015;Kenway, 2016), this
is omitted in this combination of tropes. Further, the persistence
of tropes such as “the LW will cost jobs” demonstrates the
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rhetorical strategy of circumlocution (use of a few well-known
phrases to narrow engagements with this complex issue). It also
exemplifies how current public deliberations are populated by
misinformation, half-truths and threats of business closures if the
LW is normalized. Correspondingly, one might expect that many
employers who want to “do the right thing” by their employee’s
express uncertainties about the potential consequences of such
a move (Karjanen, 2010). What also becomes apparent is how
current public deliberations regarding the LW do not meet
expectations for reaching consensus or a fair resolution through
open dialog (O’Doherty and Stroud, 2019). Although rhetors
may have heard counter arguments, they may not necessarily be
listening to these or be as willing to shift their own positions.
Contestation prevails.
Wood (1997) also proposed that central to public debates
about renumeration are issues around the adequacy of the free
market in wage settings. Little evidence supports the assertion
that markets are naturally egalitarian social phenomena, free
from power differential-based distortions or the best mechanism
for wage setting (Karjanen, 2010). The MW is not currently a LW,
partly due to the contemporary asymmetrical power relations
between employers and unions that have artificially deflated
wages over the past few decades of neoliberalism (Arrowsmith
et al., 2020). Unlivable wages and in-work poverty can also be
read as a failure of the market to set an equitable wage floor.
Further, it can be asserted that low-wage employers going out of
business constitutes a valuable form of market correction.
Previous research into the LW debates in the United States
and United Kingdom (Karjanen, 2010) found that those opposed
tended to work harder to divert the debate from issues of fair
pay and social responsibility in addressing in-work poverty. In
considering key rhetorical practices in Aotearoa/NZ, we can see
how issues of fair pay and poverty reduction were not avoided,
but rather were presented in the context of other important
issues of fairness, including pay differentials and the need to
address the high costs of living. These issues are presented as
beyond employer control, and therefore responsibility. As such,
rhetors against the LW do not always directly challenge the
equity or fairness trope. Rather, they employ rhetorical strategies
and devices to appropriate, circumvent or decontextualize such
affirmative tropes. In doing so, they can concede that in-work
poverty is a negative phenomenon, the solutions to which lie
elsewhere in society. There are some grounds for this position,
which reworks cost of living concerns shared by many LW
campaigners. Our analysis reveals that concerns regarding pay
and the cost of living are not mutually exclusive. In policy terms,
it is necessary to raise wages where this can be done sustainably,
but also to prevent these gains to employees from being syphoned
off by landlords, for example.
Whilst also hearing the concerns of opposing employers
regarding issues of productivity and the needs of small
enterprises, LW proponents raised broader considerations
regarding organizations’ social responsibilities that rhetorically
re-position business as accountable to society. These rhetors
then propose that there are growing expectations that employers
should pay employees enough to live with dignity. In doing
so, they do not deny counter arguments that wage increases
may have challenging implications for employers. Rather, they
present the LW as a key mechanism toward a fairer or more
equitable society. Given such rhetorical efforts in current public
deliberations we are heartened that both sides are familiar with
opposing perspectives.
DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT
The datasets presented in this article are not readily available
because the qualitative data collection is not intended to be shared
due to sensitive information. Requests to access the datasets
should be directed to DH, d.j.hodgetts@massey.ac.nz.
ETHICS STATEMENT
The studies involving human participants were reviewed and
approved by Human Ethics Committee Northern, Massey
University. The participants provided their written informed
consent to participate in this study.
AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS
All authors contributed to manuscript revision, read, and
approved the submitted version.
FUNDING
This research has been funded by the Royal Society New Zealand’s
Marsden Fund (17-MAU/137).
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