Emma’s Story

A study commissioned by Shelter in 2016 found that one in three families in England were just one month’s pay away from losing their homes. Like those millions, Emma lives paycheque to paycheque, and the insecurity about being able to pay her bills is a constant source of stress and tension.

‘By the time I’ve paid my rent, got my food and paid my fuel to get me to work, my wages are gone,’ she says. ‘I’ve got nothing left. There is nothing else to pay my electric, get my gas, water and keep my home warm.’ As a result, she relies on her son, also a postal worker, for support. ‘I don’t live an extravagant lifestyle. I’ve got no extras, just the basics. It’s no way to live.’

A few years ago, just before starting at Royal Mail, Emma was diagnosed with cancer. Signed off for treatment, she says, ‘things were really a struggle’.

In Britain the pain of diagnosis and treatment is often compounded by financial anxiety, which in turn inhibits healing. This is something sociologist and cancer survivor Amelia Morris wrote about in Tribune earlier this year: ‘when you undergo cancer treatment, the knee-jerk reaction of many people is to encourage rest’—but how can patients rest, she asks, ‘when forced into debt and living with the threat of losing their home because this country’s sick pay doesn’t cover the bare essentials?’ Our statutory sick pay, at just £99.35 a week, is among the lowest in Europe.

This is a reality made all the clearer by the current cost of living crisis, which according to data from Macmillan Cancer Support has left 750,000 cancer patients across the country in ‘financial dire straits’. Good and reliable nutrition, warmth, and hygiene are all vital in aiding recovery, the charity notes—and are all pulling ever further out of the reach of average people. And that’s before considering the fact that people in Britain’s most deprived communities are more likely to get cancer in the first place.

‘When you get over something like that,’ Emma continues, ‘your hope is that things are going to get better. The only thing that kept me going was that at some point, I’d be back at work, standing on my own two feet and getting myself back into a better financial situation.’

But at the point Emma was due to return to work, the Covid-19 pandemic took hold—and as she fell under the clinically extremely vulnerable label, she was put in a bubble and not able to return to work. Between the treatment and the shielding, she says, she was ‘financially crippled’.

The Cost of Living Crisis

Today, Emma still suffers with health issues, which have grown worse since finishing chemotherapy.

‘When restrictions were lifted, I thought I’d be able to earn my own money, concentrate on recovery and build my strength,’ she says. But in the wake of the pandemic, Emma and her colleagues have been hit with the worst cost of living crisis in decades. Bills and household costs have skyrocketed, and employers have resolutely refused to offer wages that keep up, despite tidy profits across the board.

Royal Mail, Emma’s employer, is no exception. The company made £758 million last year; the CEO and Chief Financial Officer received £2 million in bonuses and shareholders enjoyed a payout of £400 million. Postal workers, meanwhile, have had a two percent rise imposed on them against RPI inflation now standing at 12.3 percent—a massive real-terms pay cut. According to Emma, it works out to an additional income of around £6 a week.

Alongside inadequate pay, many posties are exhausted under the pressure of physically demanding work. Emma walks in excess of 25,000 steps a day; her son’s route consists of a series of steep-incline hills. ‘We’re out in all weathers,’ Emma adds. ‘It’s been particularly difficult working during the recent heatwaves.’

An offer of an additional 1.5 percent was made by management on the condition that workers sign away their terms and conditions. ‘Posties will be pensioned off on next to nothing despite dedicating their entire working lives to Royal Mail,’ explains Emma of the changes being demanded.

‘I often find myself running over, which I do because people want their letters delivered on time, and I get paid overtime for that. When the company brings in annualised hours, we will no longer get paid for going over that.’

This change also means school-friendly hours will be abolished, Emma says, forcing parents have to spend more on childcare and after school clubs. The whole situation, she says, is ‘a sad state of affairs’. Like many others, she has been pushed into taking a second job to make ends meet.

‘I have no money, no time, no energy. I am really low in myself. I often come home and cry because I’m in pain.’ Emma tries not to show that pain at work, she says—but with morale declining in the workplace too, it’s never easy.

Enough is Enough

As colder months draw closer, Emma is far from alone. A growing number of people will find themselves unable to heat their home or put food on their tables. The apparent lack of willingness on the part of Westminster to tackle the crisis—with Truss’s much-touted energy plan still leaving bills having doubled in the space of a year, and with the profits of energy giants intact—has led to growing sense of disillusionment with our political system. But it has also led to the formation of a new wave of grassroots and industrial struggles, rooted in working-class communities, many of which are now organising with Enough is Enough. Emma is one of hundreds of thousands that have signed up.

‘I remember watching the first live rally in tears,’ she says. ‘Could the tide be turning? Could the people who were clapped on the doorstep during the pandemic, those in poor housing, those faced with rising costs, those struggling with poor health realise their worth?’

For her and those she works alongside, that possibility—of a real chance to build a society that values the working class and takes care of each other—is a source of vital hope.

‘I hit rock bottom a few years ago with cancer, went through many difficulties and realised the people in power only help the well-off,’ she concludes. ‘Something is wrong, and they hope we don’t realise our worth. I refuse to watch people suffer. If we don’t stand up and do something now, when will we?’