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Disappointed (once more)…

Susan Gardiner, Thursday 15 August 2013


coveralfThere’s a famous bit in Dickens’ Little Dorrit when the novel’s hero, Arthur Clennam, receives a letter from Flora Finching, the girl he was engaged to twenty years earlier, when she was seventeen and he was not much older. Despite the passage of time, he can’t help imagining her to be exactly the same as she was then and Dickens has a lot of fun describing his disappointment that she has turned into a much larger, more garrulous, silly, sentimental woman. But, being Dickens, the reader is left feeling a great deal of sympathy for both characters: Arthur, for his foolishness at expecting his love not to have changed at all in twenty years and Flora, because the changes in her have so obviously been caused, not merely by the passing of time, but by the disappointment of lost love.

I’m beginning to feel a little bit like that about Town. The new season has started me thinking about past glories, the fixture list is like a letter inviting me back to those good times, to forget the awfulness of recent years under Keane and Jewell. I know rationally that Matt Holland is no longer our captain but there’s a little bit of me that thinks he might run around the pitch applauding the fans. One more time.

It took Mick McCarthy about ten minutes – and this video – to remove any misgivings that I might have had when he was appointed. MM, our seventh manager since we were last relegated from the Premier League at the end of the 2001/2 season, appears to have done an excellent job of assembling a competitive squad, spending very little money in the process. We may have lost at Reading but we weren’t outplayed in what must be one of our most testing fixtures this season and, although I’d have loved a run in the Carling Cup, the defeat by Stevenage has been easily forgotten after last Saturday when I enjoyed a match more than I’ve done for…. oh, ages.

But as it was for Dickens’ characters, my long-standing passion is beginning to be strained, the object of my affections has changed, is a bit blowsy, overblown, and full of contradictions. Expensive but also a little cheap. Nice but occasionally a bit nasty. I can still see the thing I adored but there are too many irritants. I may have to make my excuses and…. [ditches strained analogy].

We have written about aspects of ITFC that are a little disappointing here for example – and the independent supporters’ trust, Ipswich Town 1st, has issued a statement about the new ticketing policy here, so I won’t go over old ground. There are many views on the new ITFC and it’s hard to form a definite opinion when you’re not sure of the motives behind the decisions. The new Managing Directors, Symonds and Milne, along with Simon Milton, seem to have improved public relations exponentially. But still, there are things that annoy, nagging doubts… redundancies, bad experiences of customer service, rip-off prices, the tension between a football club as a business and as a club, with supporters who are part of the “family” or “community” according to the PR, but are also there to be exploited by the business, a multi-millionaire owner who is asking hard-pressed working people to stump up for the Academy and the fans, bless ‘em, don’t let him down.

Recently, the club has advertised for three part-time, unpaid “interns.” I’m disappointed once more (and possibly also, disillusioned encore) because I expect more from the club of Sir Alf Ramsey and Sir Bobby Robson. Yes, I know other clubs – bigger clubs, more successful clubs, richer clubs – do it too, but I only care about my club, ITFC. I understand the economics too. Unfortunately, for several decades now, we’ve been encouraged to look at the dismal science of economics as if it is a proper science and has inexorable, immutable laws, like the laws of physics (which as we know, ye cannae change). But economics can’t, in my view, be taken out of the context of morality and society which even the Prime Minister has admitted exists after all. And what is the morality of employing people but not paying them?

Apart from morality, there’s actually a rather compelling reason why people should be paid for their work which every devotee of capitalism should be arguing for. It’s obvious really – if people have no wages, or low wages, they can’t spend on the goods and services businesses are offering. It’s counter-productive and short-termism at its worst. Think, Mr. Evans, how many more shirts and ITFC-branded meerkats we’d all buy if we were all living in a high-wage economy instead of scraping around in the back of the sock drawer for the cash to buy that season ticket every year.

The arguments in favour are, of course, that a young person, seeking experience in a difficult labour market will be pleased to have the opportunity to work for nothing in order to gain a foothold into a career in football … and it’s football! Football, which as everyone knows is more important than life or death or affording to eat, itself.

After all, what’s the difference between being an unpaid intern on the American model and volunteering? Well, there’s a considerable difference. I volunteer for two organisations, but I’d never do any work that would or could be done by a paid employee. I’m a qualified librarian but I would never work unpaid in one of Suffolk’s libraries. It’s an insult to the paid workers and makes it more likely that redundancies will be made. Working for free (or for very low wages or zero hours contracts) undermines other working people’s jobs, their conditions of employment and their wages. It may be that many people no longer care about their fellow citizens and only see what will benefit themselves, but in the end, we’ll all suffer. Decent wages, working conditions, paid holidays and sick leave are taken for granted now – or at least they were until recent years – but they were won by the hard-fought campaigns and the real suffering of people in the past. Even the fact that football matches traditionally start at three o’clock on a Saturday afternoon goes back to the nineteenth-century Factory Acts which were the result of long campaigning by reformers to allow people a few hours off a week. Because before that, most ordinary workers laboured from dawn until night, seven days a week – and that isn’t living, it’s existing.

Of course, in a world obsessed by “choice” or the illusion of choice, it’s up to the individual to choose whether or not to work without pay – except that it isn’t. Only those with some other means of financial support – the Bank of Mum and Dad, perhaps – can do it. In that sense, it’s discriminatory. Lots of people, I’m sure would love to work for ITFC. Few are going to be able to afford to do so for nothing.

Oh, and according to this website, unpaid internships are illegal.

You can find more information here.

There are lots of difficult things going on in football at the moment, all the result of big business and faceless corporate owners who have little love for or knowledge of the game. Cardiff City, Hull City AFC [please consider signing their petition against the enforced change of their name to Hull City Tigers] and Coventry City all have their own problems. It’s making fans feel alienated from their own clubs, sometimes even causing such tensions that supporters are arguing and fighting one another. It’s not that bad at Portman Road. I sincerely hope that it never is, but there are signs that business and the interests of the owner and shareholders are paramount, more so than football. You may accept that this is right, or it’s part of the modern game and we have to be cynical about it if we want to “succeed.” But success can be measured in many ways.

Once we were highly regarded as a football club which, like our managers, Ramsey and Robson, showed the best side of football, decent, competitive, inclusive. When ITFC were last promoted to the Premier League on 29 May 2000, BBC radio commentator, Pat Murphy, welcomed us back to the top tier with genuine warmth, speaking of a club of “good football, good beer and good people.” I like that description and I’d like to be good again.

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This was posted under the following categories: Ipswich Town, Finance


Comments


dc96
15/08/2013 at 20:58

“Of course, in a world obsessed by “choice” or the illusion of choice, it’s up to the individual to choose whether or not to work without pay – except that it isn’t.”

The advert states that the applicant must be able to work either Saturday or Sunday. This isn’t the long term 5 day working week internships that the Guardian offer. The advert also states that they are looking for someone who is currently studying a sports science degree – not a full time position for free.

If the club were to advertise a scheme whereby Sports Science students at Ipswich College could do a ‘work placement’ at the club everyone would be applauding the community engagement. It’s exactly the same thing that will be achieved here. Some student who is prepared to give up a Saturday or Sunday will gain valuable experience which in an oversaturated market for that qualification might give them the edge. They’ll also almost certainly get access to games for free which they wouldn’t otherwise do.

Sorry – I agree with a lot of what is published here but I do think this is an overreaction.



Susan Gardiner
15/08/2013 at 21:07

I take your point but I believe that all work should be paid – even students deserve to be paid surely?



dc96
15/08/2013 at 21:28

No I disagree – the benefits accrued by the internee here are valuable in their own right. I also think the difference you make between volunteering in a charity shop and other kinds of unpaid work is false when many charities these days are businesses in their own right with multi-million pound turnover.



Leon
15/08/2013 at 22:20

@dc96

All of which still doesn’t answer the simple question: Why not pay them?

Work is work. Besides, it’s clearly not a work experience placement. They’re doing useful work for the club over a long period of time, even if it is for a day a week (and it merely says they should be available at the weekend, not that the work is limited to those days).

I agree about charities. Some of them even use the government’s workfare scheme. That doesn’t make ITFC right.



Susan Gardiner
15/08/2013 at 22:43

Not entirely sure where you got the “charity shop” from because I didn’t say that. Neither organisation that I volunteer for is a “charity” as such. They don’t use workfare either or I’d have nothing to do with them.



dc96
15/08/2013 at 23:04

I suspect the answer is that the benefits accrued by the club aren’t sufficient to warrant payment. This post seems to believe that if the club were forced to pay for this work that the posts would still exist. This isn’t necessarily the case. If both parties gain from an arrangement which wouldn’t otherwise exist then what’s the problem. Who knows one of the interns might impress enough that the club decide to create a new full-time paid slot which wouldn’t otherwise exist.



Susan Gardiner
15/08/2013 at 23:06

The problems for me are quite simple and I think I explained them sufficiently in the original post.



dc96
15/08/2013 at 23:06

Apologies – I’d misinterpreted your statement. I am interested in what type of volunteering isn’t equivalent at all to a paid employment for the same type of work.



Susan Gardiner
15/08/2013 at 23:11

It’s not so much that it isn’t worth renumerating but the work that I do (and in one case the organisation) wouldn’t exist because there are no funds to pay people. Neither involves replacing work that should be done by paid employees. I accept the argument that some big charities are as guilty as exploitation as businesses.



Leon
16/08/2013 at 11:19

The post involves videoing games and producing statistical reports. How can that not be of value to the club?

It’s clearly an assistant role. Not a 2 week work experience placement or a part of a training scheme where the aim is to teach a student how to do x and y.

As such, it should pay.



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