Fair Pay, Fair Food: Why Real Living Wage Adoption is Essential for Transforming Liverpool’s Food System

By Gentian Khan, Finance and Operations Lead

Earlier this month, I attended and spoke at the ‘Real Living Wage in Liverpool City Region – Building the Movement Together’ event hosted by the Living Wage Foundation. In total, 24 organisations were represented – both RLW accredited and not – and heard from a panel of three Liverpool-based companies about the benefits and challenges of being an accredited employer.

The event was informative and impactful; it provided information on accreditation – including Living Hours and Living Pension, the opportunity to network and learn about other organisations in the region, and encouragement to all attendees to create a ‘pledge’ for the continuation or improvement of our current practices.

Feeding Liverpool’s pledge was to support our network and the organisations we work alongside to both understand and acknowledge the importance of providing and implementing a Real Living Wage. This pledge reflected the speech I gave, emphasising the necessity of all actors within our food system to recognise a difficult truth: our food system cannot be fair if the people who keep it running cannot afford to live well.

At Feeding Liverpool, we are proud to be a Real Living Wage employer. As the city’s Food Alliance lead, much of our work is rooted in tackling the structural causes of poverty and hunger, and supporting communities to access fresh, affordable and culturally-appropriate food.

Across Liverpool and the UK, in-work poverty is rising, with many people in paid employment still struggle to afford housing, heating and good food. For too many, work simply does not ‘pay’ and is no longer a guranteed route out of hardship.

Our ‘Without Access to Justice’ report highlights this clearly:

The level at which minimum wages are currently set are below the level of ‘Real Living Wage’… not providing a sufficent income for a decent life to people who are working full-time.

This is why a conversation about living wage is essential for all actors and participants within our food system, as the issues present within it are not simply about food; they concern income, injustice and indignity – all of which a real living wage can begin to address.

 

The Hidden Cost of ‘Cheap Food’

As a society, we often celebrate cheap food as a social good to aim for and protect. However, food does not just appear out of nowhere, and every one of the crucial steps involved in getting our food from the ground and onto our plates has a cost attached to it.

When this is acknowledged, we begin to understand that cheap food is never truly cheap, and that the cost is simply carried elsewhere further down the chain. This is usually moved onto workers within the food system itself, whose wages are already stretched. ‘Cheapness’ is only possible when it is subsidised by poor working standards – low pay, insecure work and injustice.

So, when we demand lower prices, we must ask: what is it that we are asking to be sacrificed and who are we asking to make it?

A good food system cannot be built on poverty wages. When there is widespread hardship in the system itself and when those who sustain the food system by growing, harvesting, processing, transporting and selling our food cannot afford the very items they help to provide, the system is fundamentally out of balance.

Fair pay must not be considered an optional extra when it is a structural necessity for a resilient and just food system. A Real Living Wage has the ability to strengthen the food system by improving financial security for workers, reducing reliance on emergency food support and breaking the cycle in which low wages drive demand for artificially low prices. It shifts us away from a race to the bottom and towards a system that values dignity, stability and shared prosperity – laying the foundation for a food system that is resilient, humane and genuinely fair for everyone.

 

Income Shapes Food Choices

Income does not only determine what people can buy; it also determines the choices people are able to make.

Financial insecurity forces decision-making to narrow and sees people needing to opt for cheap calories to fill them up or stretch across the week, and not necessarily what aligns with their values or even what they enjoy. When healthy eating, ethical consumption or sustainable diets are encouraged and applauded, but the financial means to make these choices is out of reach, we run the risk of falling into a cycle of constraint and blame that shifts responsibility onto the consumer, while the structural forces that limit their choices and the businesses that profit from these limitations escape scrutiny.

When large numbers of people are constrained to the cheapest options, the market responds by prioritising low-cost, low-margin and often low-quality food. This reinforces the cycle: cheap food requires cheap labour, cheap labour suppresses wages and suppressed wages deepens financial insecurity. The consequences then ripple outward – harming health, undermining wellbeing, eroding environmental and ethical standards, and weakening local economies.

A fair wage gives people the ability to choose what they really want and to align their purchasing power with their own values  – enabling autonomy and giving people the option to take part in the food system as active participants, and to move the system towards being something that actually works for people.

A Real Living Wage does not just improve individual lives. It shifts the entire system towards one that works for people, supports dignity and builds a healthier, more resilient food economy.

A Call to Action: Every Actor in the Food System has a Role

One of our key recommendations in the ‘Without Access to Justice’ report was for the Government to revise the minimum wage to ensure that no one works for less than the real Living Wage. We believe this is essential to tackling the root causes of food insecurity and creating a fairer society.

However, if we want to move beyond crisis response and toward building long-term resilience within our food system, all actors within that system must begin to scrutinise and address the underlying causes of food insecurity. Insufficent income is one of the most significant causes and every actor has a choice to operate above the minimum prescribed by law.

When organisations across the food system adopt the Real Living Wage, they collectively shift the expectations of what work should pay and what dignity in employment should look like. When we begin to view work as more than employment, we begin to acknowledge that work is a means of expressing the values we hold as a society – respect, security, equality and dignity.

Paying fairly for this work is a way of embodying these values. It ensures that the people who keep our food system running can afford a decent standard of living, aligns organisations with the values of fairness, dignity and respect, and contributes directly to a more resilient, equitable and sustained food future for our city.

We invite every organisation in Liverpool’s food system to join us in choosing more than the minimum and commiting to paying the Real Living Wage. If you are part of Liverpool’s food system – whether you are a grower, wholesaler, business owner, community food provider, retailer, distributor or national food business – your decisions can help shape what we all rely on. Adopting the Real Living Wage is one of the most powerful steps you can take to strengthen the framework and help build a food system rooted in fairness from the ground up.

 

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