THIS November sees the latest in a series of “living wage” weeks where the charities, academics and financial institutions behind the Living Wage Foundation reveal to a waiting world their opinion on what we can live on in 2015.

In June the new Chancellor gave us his opinion of the wage he thinks we should live on when he cut tax credits by up to £24 per week from next April for the working poor to be paid for by the new “national living wage.” This idea has been passed into law this week.

GMB launched a Life on the Living Wage survey of its members earlier this year. We wanted to know more about the stories behind the competing “living wage” rates.

We wanted to hear from our members about their families’ experience of life on less than the £10 per hour GMB living wage. Thousands responded with passion, anger and a demand for a united campaign to raise total earnings where they work.

The survey tells us that the reality facing British workers is very different from the assumptions made by the great and the good.

Our members tell us that one of the biggest problems they suffer is not enough contracted hours of work. This is as much an issue as the rate they are paid for each hour of work they get.

For many the minimum wage becomes the maximum wage as their employers make them reliant on in-work benefits to make ends meet.

Work simply does not pay for millions of workers and too many are forced onto in-work benefits by wage dodging bosses — forced to work every hour they can to earn their poverty.

It is clear from our survey that vast and growing numbers of workers find themselves moved from “old-fashioned” full-time contracts with guaranteed hours, pensions and employment rights to zero-hours contracts, tiny-hour contracts, bogus self-employment or agency work.

Whatever the form of insecure work the story is the same — living on erratic wages and daily pressures to negotiate, grovel or beg for enough hours of work.

GMB members are clearly sceptical of campaigns and governments that seek to promote an hourly wage that they say a person can live on but have nothing to say about their rights to regular working hours.

GMB committed itself in 2014 to campaign and bargain for a £10 an hour living wage with the right to a stable contract with enough hours to live on. In the survey our members were asked a series of questions about life on less than £10 per hour and insecure hours. On wages above the minimum wage they told us what life was like for millions of workers in George Osborne’s Britain.

It’s no surprise that Osborne plans to cut in-work benefits years before he forces wages up with his “national living wage” — putting even more working families into poverty.

Over recent years many employers in the private and public sectors have seen in-work benefits as a means to hold wages down — a taxpayer subsidy for bad employers, locking workers into a permanent cycle of in-work benefits.

Our task is to make employers make work pay for all those suffering on less than £10 per hour and with too few hours to live on.

We should lobby academics, governments and charities to make sure they talk to low-paid workers before announcing what they should expect to live on.

But employers will only pay up when they have no choice and our job between now and April is to target employers who rely on in-work benefits to subsidise their pay bill — to organise, campaign and build industrial pressure.

In Osborne’s world wealth doesn’t trickle down, it trickles up — out of our members’ pockets and into those of the friends and supporters of the Tory Party.

Unions in the workplace have an ideal organising opportunity over the next few months to give hope to the millions our members speak for in the Life on the Living Wage survey.

• Martin Smith is national organiser at GMB.

Inside Poverty Britain

• 24 per cent regularly use a pay day loan company to get by.
• 90 per cent regularly borrow from family or friends to make ends meet.
• 83 per cent are unable to save money for a holiday or an emergency at home.
• 38 per cent support children or relatives living with them as they can’t afford to live on their own.
• 36 per cent have missed a rent or mortgage payment at least once recently.
• 30 per cent pay their utility bills on a meter key card.
• 50 per cent regularly seek extra hours to top up their pay.

Behind the statistics lie real people struggling with their lives.

“Life is quite depressing. I have to think about every penny I spend. I can’t treat my children at all and they don’t get to experience the things in life I would like them to.”
Domestic support worker,
children’s hospital

“It’s a poor family life. Every day is a struggle. Without tax credits we would go under.”
Factory worker

“We can’t go out, go on holiday or buy Christmas presents for the kids. It’s a grind every day. Depressing.”
Retail worker

“However hard I work I’m getting nowhere. I’m expected to risk life and limb to live in poverty.”
Online distribution centre worker