Making Ends Meet—VIII
By A BANK CLERK WHAT sort of life did I expect when I entered a bank ten years ago at a salary of £65 a year? I certainly had no dreams of a sudden rise to a high-salary grade. But living at home on twenty-five shillings a week was possible even in those days with the help of generOus, but far from rich, parents. As far as I could see, my prospect was 10be a general run-around for a few years, with perhaps small annual increases, something like ten pounds. I was satisfied. I expected no more. However, I did feel—and I was often reminded of this by my elders, when I was tempted to go for bigger money jobs—that I had a safe job. Banking was a career which, if I worked hard and had the right personality, could bring me a respectable standard of living. At the age of sixteen I had not met the only girl for me, but I supposed that, if I wanted to get married when I was about twenty-seven or twenty-eight, I could, do so fairly comfortably. .
Inflation has, of course, played havoc with the banks' salary- scales. A new salary-scale was introduced by the leading British banks in 1946. The main advantages in this new scale went to the younger clerks, but since this date there has been no increase in bank salaries. Twice a year the banks have been paying cost-of-living bonuses, which have now risen to 20 per cent. Allowing for this bonus, the income of an average bank clerk has risen about 50 per cent. since before the war. How much would it need to have risen to have kept up the same standard of living a bank clerk enjoyed before the war? By the Chancellor of the Exchequer's valuation of the pre-war pound at 10s. 6d. last year it would have had to have doubled.
Not that the bank clerk expects to keep the same standard of living as pre-war. Who does? The miner who wrote in this series a few weeks ago stated that he has as much difficulty now in making ends meet as at any time during the past twenty years, ,although his wage has more than doubled since 1939. Admittedly, his trade was badly treated in those days, but the comparison does show what a substantial cut has been taken by the black-coated bank clerk. And we were not paid like film stars before the war.
Hardships are felt amtmgst all grades of the banks' staff. Young married men provide the worst cases. They have never earned enough to save money, and after a struggle to set up home they find that their salary is quite insufficient to keep it going. Where there are no children the wife can go out to work, but when there is a family then serious hardship is founti. The staff' associations of the large banks do offer to help in serious cases, but should this necessity arise? Older married men, who once had some capital, live like domestic hermits and resort to such savings as sandwich lunches. Subscriptions to clubs and proper holidays are out of the question.
A banker has a certain standard of appearance to Weep up. But a married man of thirty has to work two weeks for the price of a new suit: Young unmarried clerks like myself see these con- ditions, and many are resigning from the banks before they are caught up in a tangle of housing loans and other responsibilities. The opportunities for bright boys to gain executive positions has never been greater, but fifteen years is a long time to stay bright under these conditions.
Fortunately, I am one of the lucky chaps who is able to live at home. My fare to the office every day is. three shillings. I pay for my lunch and snacks ; we have no canteen. I have a reasonable life. I play tennis. I drink moderately—only beer— but I do not smoke. I cannot save. What Of my future? I see no prospect of ever being able to afford to get married—or alter- natively run a car. It is not as though I have not undergone my apprenticeship at a low salary. Aged twenty-one-I was getting £2 5s. 6d. a week. It is npt as though I have not worked hard. A bank clerk's job is not easy these days. The staffing position is quite serious. Young men and girls are not coming into the banks, and it is the long hours almost as much as the low salaries which is keeping them away. We often have to work until eight or nine o'clock. And we get no overtime pay.
In the service of the bank a clerk is expected to work in any part of the country. A young man living away from home can- not expect to support himself until well into his twenties. Chang- ing one's abode is an expensive business, and, although the banks give an allowance to a married man with a house, the move generally leaves the clerk considerably out of pocket. A single clerk in lodgings finds that his hard-earned subscription to the local tennis-club is wasted when he is ordered to report to so-and- so branch next month..
When I set out to write this article I promised myself I would try not to make it one long moan. There is too much moaning these days, and, after all, most people are hard up. All the same, I have painted a pretty black picture. Unfortunately, it is the truth. We all have to make sacrifices in these times. The bank clerk should not escape. But I believe that the bank clerk's load is a little too heavy for his own good and for the good of his customers. Banking is an important industry—a profession to be proud Of. Good men are leaving it, some for jobs that are less essential but pay a-living wage.
(In a final article, to be published next week, Walter Taplin will review this series.)
Previous page
