In her latest column for KentOnline, Broadstairs writer and dominatrix Melissa Todd considers what it means to be working class after her friend was treated appallingly during a stint as agency staff...

My young friend George came home from university hoping to find a few months employment. A doddle, surely, you’d think, given how often you hear of employers being desperate for eager, reliable workers, into which category he wholeheartedly sits, love him, all wide-eyed and perky.

So, he joined an employment agency. They sent him to a factory where his job was to work with hot plastic, stooping for ten hours a day to mould it into pipes. Or something. To be honest, I wasn’t really listening to this part of his story. I’m a girl. His job sounded uncomfortable, hot and horrid, OK?

He wasn’t given gloves, despite working with dangerous hot materials. He was meant to supply his own gloves, although no one told him that before he began. He was also expected to supply his own steel capped work boots, although again, this wasn’t made clear.

Being agency staff, he wasn’t allowed to park at the factory, and consequently had to rely on public transport, which meant standing on the bus for a further two hours a day when there were train strikes or cancellations.

He was often unable to take breaks from his hours of standing and stooping, because there was no one there to take his duties over, the place being so horribly short-staffed.

He stuck it out for a few weeks nonetheless, but eventually the constant, insidious bullying and racism became overwhelming, and he decided to look elsewhere.

When he got his wage slip, he found he’d paid the agency 15% of his wages for the privilege of this employment opportunity, when in fact the agency’s involvement had made his employment considerably more difficult.

“You were treated as second class, and seen as replaceable” George told me. “If you arrived five minutes late, you were told you wouldn’t be paid for your day’s work. It made you panic, because so much was outside your control.”

Middle class people wouldn’t accept these conditions, and rightly so. Being subject to unreasonable expectations is the very definition of being working class.

Happily George is back to uni in September where a dazzling future awaits him. But his experiences made me think about those who are stuck inside such a life, with no chance of parole.

Our social class is defined and understood by our occupation. From the way we earn our daily bread derive all the other factors with which class is often associated (earnings, lifestyle, consumer habits, whether we own property, our hobbies, where we holiday). Prosperity, or working in a prestigious profession, confers a certain level of respect, not always proferred to check out assistants, hospital porters, cleaners, factory or call centre workers.

Not so long ago, being working class was a state associated with pride and dignity. Now, being working class is more often a condition one strives to leave behind, not only to be seen as successful, but because being and remaining working class involves resigning yourself to certain hardships and indignities - job insecurity, low pay, a lack of respect, few paths to career progression. And once a job which involved the performance of manual tasks would be undoubtedly tough, but would pay enough to feed a family and run a household.

Employment looks very different today. A full-time wage is far from a guarantee you can support yourself, still less a family. George took home £316 for a week of back-breaking work, because the third party recruitment agency demanded its fleshy cut. They took £43 every pay day for something called ‘holiday pay’: he doesn’t know why, and nobody would tell him.

“Being and remaining working class involves resigning yourself to certain hardships and indignities - job insecurity, low pay, a lack of respect, few paths to career progression...”

After gloves, boots and bus fares, he couldn’t possibly have survived on what remained, nor enjoyed any of the small pleasures civilisation has to offer. He’d have been worse off, in fact, than a beast in the field, for at least a beast has no clue what it’s missing: that in another world people live who can take holidays, go to the theatre, eat nourishing meals, not worry about putting the heating on, the landlord raising rents or selling up, the possibility of an unexpected dentist or garage bill.

George says, “I understand you have a duty to work. But it would be so much easier in an environment where you’re kept informed and feel you can work without judgement.”

I admire his work ethic, truly, but I’m not at all sure you have a “duty to work”, at least in such circumstances. So much should not be asked of anyone for so little remuneration. And nothing can change until the working classes cease to be resigned to their ill-treatment.