Chill winds are sweeping Britain’s economy with a general expectation that poverty will increase in the coming years, and that poverty reduction targets will be missed. Alarm bells rang loudly after hints that the Government is considering changing the way it measures poverty. They wouldn’t just do this because unmet targets are embarrassing. Difficult times mean that politics in Britain has primarily become an exercise in allocating pain, not spreading butter. It may be tempting to just try to protect those with access to power, a voice, or those likely to vote because they still believe the status quo can work for them.

But this would be like applying sticking plasters to a breaking dam. Ignoring the 13.5 million people suffering below the poverty line wouldn’t just be immoral, it would be nonsensical. For two reasons, economic weakness has made tackling poverty more important, not less. Firstly, the solutions to Britain’s economic malaise require the inclusion of people on low incomes. Secondly, poverty in Britain is caused by a dysfunctional economy, and in this financial crisis, this underlying dysfunction is dragging down the living standards for growing numbers of people.

Why is solving poverty more important than ever?

If Britain is going to rebalance its economy to take advantage of new global opportunities in the way that the Government and business organisations like the CBI want, then our people and their skills will become more important determinants of growth. Some economists argue that because middle classes have become more educated, they are likely to provide fewer productivity gains in future. This means that improving poor peoples’ economic inclusion is even more important – a stable, decent standard of living is a precondition for realising potential.

Instead, increasing numbers of people are being subjected to the kinds of pressures and vulnerabilities that have existed at the bottom for years. The share of national income that goes to workers has not only declined inexorably during recent decades, but has kept falling during recession. This problem is affecting the majority of people in Britain as well as those below the poverty line. People are increasingly realising that while they’re working for the economy, the economy isn’t working for them.

This isn’t really new, it’s just worse than ever. UK economy has become supremely ineffective at including people. The proceeds of growth are not allocated where they are due. So as the numbers of those struggling with unemployment, underemployment and in-work poverty all rise, the gap between an “underclass” of the workless and millions more people in work will become more blurred. Now is the time to make common cause, to commit to tackling the underlying drivers of poverty, because it is more obvious than ever that doing so will benefit the majority. This is why a plan to come together to deal with the fallout of the economic crisis is an essential part of a bright, attainable vision of the future.

What needs to happen?

Firstly elites need to change the way they talk and think about poverty, being clear that it’s a problem for everyone. For most people, although extreme deprivation persists, poverty is decreasingly a question of ‘them’ and ‘us’.

Secondly, Britain needs big changes that work for the majority. Policymakers must make sure new forms of growth include society from the bottom up, and commit to reversing the rise of economic inequality that is making the financial crisis more painful for millions. And economic policy must focus on increasing the quality as well as the quantity of work. Work is now a debasing experience for millions of people: it offers low pay, few chances of progression, and little security. This is why, if you are a British child in poverty, the chances are, at least one of your parents is working. A work ethic can’t thrive when work is becoming an increasingly ineffective way to support a family.

Thirdly, policymakers need to inject urgency into making policy across the board pro-poor. There are plenty of low-cost and no-cost ideas out there that need a hearing. For example improving the Welfare Reform Bill should be an urgent priority, a Robin Hood Tax to protect services and safety-nets for the poorest should be another. Strong signals from the top that reducing poverty is a priority will give bureaucrats and junior ministers the courage to innovate.

Finally, leaner years require a more equitable distribution of the crop. A majority of people seem to think two things about the deficit: it is real and needs to be dealt with (56 per cent in a November YouGov poll), and that it’s not being closed fairly enough (57 per cent). In Westminster, closing the deficit can seem like the crucible of the political contest. But people outside the bubble know it’s not a game. For some communities it’s a question of life or death. To policy elites deficit reduction looks like a myriad of ‘difficult decisions’, each one subject to intense lobbying by those who can afford a voice. But the important question is do we get through this together or split apart? Does society share the burden, ensuring a decent standard of living for everyone – or do various interests fight over the scraps in a contest that can only condemn the vast majority to a poorer future? It’s the decision over the kind of society we want our children to grow up in.

Ben Morgan is Oxfam Advocacy and Policy Officer on poverty in the UK.

The reason why this language jars so badly is that there seems to be an assumption that what’s good for business is automatically good for us all; that we just need to work for the best interest of businesses, elevate their interests above all other concerns and all will be fine. It is that easy, apparently.

But this assumption is trickle-down economics at its laziest and least effective.

Cameron’s declaration of a ‘war on the enemies of enterprise’ also assumes that impositions on business (such as health and safety laws) are inherently a bad thing and accordingly that businesses should be as unencumbered by social concerns as possible (that is, as much as the people will tolerate).

Sadly, and dangerously, in reality this risks undermining rules and regulations that keep our businesses humane. Laws that ensure acceptable levels of minimum pay, safe working conditions and prevent exploitation. As Ha-Joon Chang reminds us, child labour is outlawed because as a society we see it as abhorrent. Yet our continued tolerance of poverty-wages – to the extent that we essentially subsidise them through the in-work tax credit system – suggests we’re still all too intimidated by businesses.

Of course we need jobs, and of course we need enterprises to deliver the goods and services that meet our needs.

But surely we as a society (and perhaps even our political leaders…?) are sophisticated enough to understand that we need to be a bit more nuanced in calling for growth, business, jobs.  We need good jobs, jobs that mean a movement out of poverty, jobs that allow employees to balance their caring responsibilities and community engagement, jobs that deliver progression and skills.

And we need good quality enterprises doing good quality activities that match our vision of what sort of society and economy we want to be and that deliver social and environmental sustainability.  And of course, enterprises that pay their taxes.

So we need to be less precious about businesses, and just a wee bit more demanding about what sort of activities they undertake and the way they carry out their activities (for example, through community benefit clauses in procurement, through how we reward and invest and through the social and regulatory structures in which we allow them to operate).

Let us never, ever forget that the economy should be the servant of the people, not the other way around.

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The Fair Pay Network is a national coalition dedicated to leading the fight against low-paid work and in-work poverty, of which Oxfam is part of.

Much depends on how these principles are taken forward in future years. So, while allowing people on benefits to keep 35p of every £1 they earn is a big step forward, it’s still less than the 50p of each extra £1 that the very richest get to keep. Are we happy to finish reforming with the very poorest still facing higher marginal rates of tax than the very richest?

And for now, the government promises that Universal Credit won’t mean further benefit cuts, but future levelling down of benefit levels in the name of simplicity has been made much easier. Given that the amount they’ve cut from benefits already is 36 times greater than the amount being invested in reforming welfare, it’s difficult to trust this government on that.

The other main set of proposals is around the conditions attached to benefits. The saddest thing about this is that yet another government feels the need to engage in destructive posturing around ‘getting tough’ on benefit claimants. People living on benefits want to work. The problem has long been a lack of support and structural problems in the benefits system, not a shortage of sticks to beat people with.

But this is more than just playing to the gallery. Personal advisers, who are supposed to be there to help people, will be given the discretion to cut their benefits for up to three years. Shamefully, destitution is being used as a tool of public policy. Also proposed is to force job seekers to work for up to a month, with no payment beyond their meagre benefits (far less than the minimum wage). Work should not be used as a punishment, and people on benefits should not be treated like criminals. Hidden in the detail are a lot of vindictive policies, which undermine the basic dignity of people claiming their right to benefits.

A final aspect to the reforms is the attitude to the nature of family that seeps through. Benefits will be calculated and paid at the household level. When this happens, men tend to claim the entitlement to benefits. Yet women in poor households usually manage the family budget. Things are far from perfect now, but this represents a sizeable stride backwards for gender equality and women’s financial independence.

A further curio, unmentioned in the main text (and which you have to go to Annex 3 to dig out) is around what sounds like a technicality: changes to earnings disregards. In fact, earnings disregards – the amount that someone (or a household) can earn before their benefits are affected – can have a huge impact on someone’s ability to enter work. At present, these are tiny, amounting to £5 a week for most individuals. A substantial increase is proposed in most cases, which will greatly help people to take their first steps into (or back into) work. That is very welcome. Yet for single, childless adults, there will be no disregard whatsoever: as soon as they earn anything at all, their benefits will start being withdrawn. If that same person is in a couple, they can earn up to £3000 a year before their benefits are even touched.

In his Centre for Social Justice days, Iain Duncan Smith praised couple formation as a ‘positive behaviour’. They and other think tanks from the right have long railed against a perceived ‘couple penalty’ in the benefit system. Rather than paying people to get together or stay together (which is what the ‘couple penalty’ argument is all about), these proposals make it easier for people in couples to get work, and to make sure they’re richer than single people if they do. Underpinning the pro-couple stance is a belief that people in couples do better; this stands to make that a self-fulfilling prophecy. Single, workless people stand to lose out, after falling furthest behind the rest of society under the last government.

So, these reforms are indeed a step-change towards addressing much that’s wrong with the benefit system. But in many ways, the direction of travel continues: benefit levels are being cut; poor people are demonised and bullied, criminalised and threatened with destitution. And in some things, we’re going backwards: women’s economic independence is under threat, and the benefits system is to be used to promote a particular vision of family life. There are reasons to be hopeful, reasons to be cheerful, and reasons to be downright confused. But the government is right about one thing: there are big changes afoot in our welfare system.

Well, one of the key causes of in-work poverty is a lack of access to labour rights. Labour rights seek to ensure that employers are prevented from exploiting workers and instead must meet certain standards of employment. The most obvious example of such a right is the National Minimum Wage, £5.80 an hour for those aged 22 and older. But there are other important rights that we often take for granted: protection from unfair dismissal, written terms and conditions, and redundancy pay. Doesn’t everyone who works have the same rights?

In a word: no. There are three employment statuses: ‘employee’, ‘worker’ and ‘self-employed’. As an ‘employee’, you have access to all rights available. A ‘worker’ – typically an agency worker – has core rights but no right to a written statement of employment terms, statutory notice, or protection from unfair dismissal. Someone who is ‘self-employed’ has no rights and is expected to negotiate their terms with their business partner – but, increasingly, workers are being falsely ‘self-employed’ and have no control over the terms, which are dictated by their employer.

The benefits to the employers are obvious: reduce the risk (and often cost) of taking on labour. However, the consequence of having one employment status over another is significant, and especially for poorer people. Indeed, it’s estimated that there are 500,000 low-paid workers who are denied their full employment rights – either being a ‘worker’ or falsely ‘self-employed’.

The reality for these workers blows the myth that any work is a sure-fire route out of poverty. Instead, their employment status means that they could lose their income at a moment’s notice and end up in a low pay-no pay cycle – with no hope of that cycle ever ending. Unscrupulous employers will also seek to classify their workers as ‘self-employed’, despite the worker having no power to negotiate their terms and conditions. Such falsely self-employed workers are not entitled to the National Minimum Wage and can be seen in hotels, where sub-contracted agency workers are paid a mere £2 per hour.

Can’t such workers claim their rights through an Employment Tribunal? The short answer is yes. However, working out your employment status is no easy task and, as Directgov will tell you, ‘just because you have a contract that describes you as an “employee” or as “self-employed” does not mean that it is the case.’ The reality is that if you are living in poverty, taking on the stress and cost involved in claiming your rights and proving your true employment status is simply not an option.

Such conditions permanently scar workers and their dependants, and serve to perpetuate poverty in the UK. In February the Joseph Rowntree Foundation said that the way employers treat their employees plays “an important role in the low-pay, no-pay cycle” and called on public sector bodies to use their purchasing power to favour companies that offered greater job security, adding that entering work could not provide a sustainable route out of poverty “if job security, low pay and lack of progression [once in work] are not also addressed”.

What can be done? Oxfam has previously called for a review of the employment status regime. We know that there are structural causes of poverty that make it difficult for those who live below the poverty line to ever make it above. We are not alone. We’ve joined the Fair Work coalition, which was launched earlier this month and includes a wide range of organisations, including faith groups and community organisations, which will be campaigning for a change to the current employment status regime. We call for all workers to have the same range of statutory employment rights to remove the confusion over who qualifies for which rights, and ensure that work can be a route out of poverty.

A more progressive taxation system:

>>National Insurance has been rising rapidly but it is effectively capped meaning higher earners don’t pay any more than anyone else. Where possible necessary rises in NI, should be replaced by increases in income tax.

>>Reduce indirect taxes such as consumption taxes that disproportionately impact the poor, and reduce demand – much needed during this fragile recovery.

>>Resort to regressive indirect taxes only when they achieve worthwhile social goals, and offset regressive impacts elsewhere in the tax, and benefits system.

>>Reduce the tapers on tax, and benefits

Make welfare a genuine springboard for all:  Pay for strong, and comprehensive social protection (compared to consumer citizens, and narrow workfare policies).

>>Investing in a less myopic welfare system will be cost neutral over the long-term anyway as it will lead to greater employment in more highly skilled, and better paid roles that in turn will increase the net tax-take. The system should also be designed to prevent people being forced into the informal economy. The informal economy proves there is untapped productivity, which if utilised could increase tax receipts.

>>Invest a net £2.7 billion per year to increase earnings disregards and introduce a standard 55% withdrawal rate for both out-of-work and in-work benefits, to end the benefit trap.

>>The administration of the welfare system is far too complex and makes benefits less predictable, which in turn increases financial insecurity and people’s ability to make rational financial decisions – the system has to be radically simplified.

>>There also should be a full analysis of the differentiated effect these measures will have on women and men.

>>As a first step in welfare reform, roll out the Create Consortium’s proposals for a Community Allowance beyond the pilot areas, especially if further evidence supports the view that the model would prove cost-neutral.

Expanded community ownership: With measures to enable poor communities to organise, and access benefits. This would cost £5m to start up the infrastructure, and the facilitation, and would yield savings in the long-term.

Tackle debt at the bottom: Continue and increase investment into DWP’s growth fund that provides small loans with wider access, and longer repayments. £100m would directly enable 225,000 people access affordable credit (rather than having to use high cost lenders), and 80,000 people would be enabled to open a basic bank account or savings account.

Increase family-friendly jobs:

>>Create a pool of employees to provide extended maternity cover so small businesses have no excuse not to hire women.

>>Realise long-term ambitions to extend paternity cover; enabling couples to break away from traditional gender roles at the beginning of parenthood by ensuring the law doesn’t actively encourage one gender to take on the role of primary child-carer.

Economically empower women: £3bn to make childcare affordable, flexible, and accessible. The lack of affordable childcare in Britain (childcare in the UK is the most expensive in Europe) is a key stumbling block for women that want to work. This is the single best way to . Spending here would also enable good nurseries to meet their obligations to provide a minimum amount of free childcare without having to close because of financial pressures. The Government could also remain committed to its recent action on the gender pay gap.

Tackle domestic violence: Ensure secure and stable funding of specialist services for women and girls who have experienced violence (such as rape crisis centres), which are at constant risk of closure. Almost half of women in England and Wales experience domestic violence, sexual assault or stalking in their lifetime, but face a postcode lottery when seeking support

Increase the tax take through better Labour rights:

>>Increase enforcement of labour rights – eg. through more on-the-ground inspectors. The two key agencies the GLA and the EAS only have 64 inspectors between them to inspect the largest and most fragmented agency sector in Europe. We currently only spend about £3 million on these government bodies that have a remit to protect the most vulnerable in society.

>>It is proven that better enforcement is likely to lead to people being brought into the formal economy – increasing tax revenues, and enhancing observance of basic standards like the minimum wage.

Reduce fuel poverty: Invest £5 billion to fully insulate every home in Britain – saving around 10 million households over £200 a year on their energy bills, and helping to eradicate fuel poverty. Fully insulating every house in the UK would reduce household emissions (that amount to a quarter of national carbon emissions) by more than 20%.

Re-skill the unemployed: Provide training for roles in green growth, manufacturing and digital technology. A £5bn investment in the training and mentoring could help drive new growth. This properly funded overarching approach will be accompanied by robust policies to encourage sustainability, and strong policies to support manufacturing, such as targeted Government export insurance guarantees.

Improve social housing: Smash the social scourge of bad housing by investing £2.6 billion per year to meet the government’s annual target of 45,000 new social houses annually. This will also help the construction industry that remains in dire economic straits, and which is an enormous employer, is economically strategically important, and accounts for between 6% and 9% of UK GDP.

Alistair Darling should use the budget tomorrow to introduce a Currency Transaction Levy across Sterling – a safe and lucrative first step towards an international Robin Hood Tax.

Spend 2 minutes to urge the Chancellor to act.

This article also appeared on the Robin Hood tax website

Who Cares? published today by Oxfam and Kalayaan, the specialist organisation for migrant domestic workers, highlights the exploitation of migrant carers at the hands of unscrupulous agencies. The research revealed workers who were forced to work excessive hours (more than 60 hours per week, and sometimes up to a 100), underpayment of wages, denial of holiday pay and sick pay, and the provision of accommodation by the employer in order to coerce and intimidate the worker into being constantly available for work. Indeed, one worker, Jula (not her real name) from Poland, said that following exploitation from her agency – deductions from her wages and being overcharged on her accommodation – she was forced into such a dire financial situation that within three months, she had been forced to spend the savings which had taken her ten years to put by in Poland.

We have seen these forms of exploitation before. Underpayment of wages, excessive hours, and coercion through links to workers’ accommodation are all forms of exploitation by agencies (or gangmasters) that were common within the agricultural sector now regulated by the Gangmasters Licensing Authority (GLA), set up in 2006 after the Morecambe Bay disaster in which 23 cockle-pickers died because of the negligence of their gangmaster. It should come as no surprise that we are seeing similar exploitation in the care sector as in agriculture: gangmasters tend to operate across several sectors where there is a similar demand for flexible labour, sectors such as agriculture, construction, care and hospitality.

But whilst the GLA has been successful in regulating gangmasters and rooting out exploitation in the agricultural sector, agencies operating in the care sector are currently regulated by the Employment Agency Standards inspectorate (EAS). And EAS’s approach – which relies on workers to report abuse, rather than proactively investigating employers – has been shown to be much less effective than the GLA’s in upholding labour rights and preventing exploitation of workers in the sectors in which it operates.

Which is why Oxfam is calling on the government to extend the remit of the GLA to the care sector (as well as to the construction and hospitality). It won’t solve all abuses of labour rights in the sector: but we believe that it is a vital first step in helping to protect Jula and workers like her who have shared their experiences with Oxfam for this research. With the government’s commitments on the personalisation of care in the Personal Care Bill, the use of agencies to deliver care is only set to rise and we must ensure that this positive initiative does not lead to the exploitation or impoverishment of the  workers who care for older people.

This morning the Guardian covered Oxfam and Kalayaan’s research on this subject

The case for doing so is obvious. The exploitation of temporary, mainly migrant, workers isn’t limited to one industry. Agency workers themselves don’t make any distinction between the food industry and any other; they just go where the work is. And the bad employers and criminals that were operating in the food and agricultural industry will undoubtedly have scurried off into other sectors to avoid the legislative spotlight.

The GLA has shown its value to the industry and to workers. It’s high time the government let it get on with the job of tackling exploitation of agency workers wherever they happen to be – up in Lincolnshire packing vegetables for the supermarkets or cleaning rooms in Knightsbridge.

In fact, few are contesting this, and the recent inquiry commissioned by the government into deaths in the construction industry (One Death is Too Many) calls for an extension of the gangmasters’ legislation to cover construction.

So, given we’re all pretty much agreed, let’s focus on how to make the extension of the legislation successful.

The Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI) played a lead role in establishing the GLA and preparing the food industry for the new regulations. Critical to success was the involvement of the supermarkets, growers, packers, trade unions and labour providers themselves in shaping the Gangmaster Licensing Act, and later their active role in supervising the GLA’s process. This means that the licensing regime works for business as well as for the workers it was introduced to protect.

Getting the gangmaster regulations to work in other industries demands that their leaders also step up to the plate and play their part in tackling exploitation of migrant workers in the UK .

The choice for the hotel, construction and care industries seems clear: Bury your heads in the sand and remain open to criticism and continuing campaigns, or follow the example of the food industry and help re-shape this successful legislation so it works for your sector.

The result will be a more ethical and level playing field where the good employers are not undercut by the bad. Both you, and the workers you indirectly employ, will benefit.

The views expressed in this blog are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Oxfam GB.

The Morecambe Bay tragedy of 2004, in which 23 Chinese cockle pickers drowned due to the negligence of their employer, brought to light the grim reality for those hidden from the consumer, surviving on what can only be described as poverty wages. In the aftermath of Morecambe Bay, the Government felt compelled to act, and created the Gangmasters Licensing Authority – an employment rights enforcement agency tasked with licensing gangmasters (labour providers, often very similar in nature to agencies) in five areas of the economy: agriculture, forestry, horticulture, shellfish gathering and food processing and packaging.

But gangmasters are not limited to these sectors – and so it is unsurprising to find exploitation that is now an exception in GLA-regulated sectors, to be the norm elsewhere. As our report shows, exploitation in construction, social care and hospitality is endemic.

In construction, the explosion of subcontracting has resulted in workers being less trained in safety protection. We found systematic violations of health and safety procedures, with repeated instances of threats to sack workers if they raised concerns, putting both the worker and his colleagues at risk. Our report also found workers paying high rates for overcrowded, low-standard, tied accommodation. Tied accommodation means that if a worker leaves their accommodation – they lose their job and vice versa.

In hospitality – which underwent a proliferation in outsourcing over the past decade – our research found systematic exploitation in the hotel industry in London, which leads us to believe that this occurs in hotels up and down the country. Last night’s edition of Newsnight drew attention to the systematic underpayment of workers in a prestigious London hotel. Indeed, through our research we heard similar stories of workers being paid £2.29 per room, which means that they’d have to clean over two rooms per hour to make the minimum wage . Often workers are paid without wage slips, so they cannot even contest underpayment of wages.

In social care, an industry set to expand significantly as our population grows older, there are similar experiences. We know, for instance, that one-in-five care workers are paid below the minimum wage. Workers were often recruited abroad paying up to £2000 for a job in the UK to be arranged. Subsequently, workers were bonded to their employers, with some working almost 100 hours a week for very little pay.

Why, five years after the Morecambe Bay tragedy, can such abuse by gangmasters continue, you might ask. Currently, gangmasters operating in construction, social care and hospitality are regulated by the Employment Agency Standards Inspectorate (EAS) – a poorly resourced, highly ineffective body, as explained in our report. With such woeful enforcement in construction, care and hospitality, it’s not surprising that gangmasters in these sectors exploit their workers as they seek to compete on the cost of labour.

Sectors now regulated by the GLA have been through the same problems – and such intense competition can have fatal consequences. The GLA has had a significant impact in the areas which it regulates: bringing gangmasters into the formal economy, requiring 70% of those initially licensed to improve their standards and revoking licences where appropriate. It is unacceptable that workers in one industry are not subject to the same level of protection as those in another. That’s why today, Oxfam is calling for an extension of the remit of the GLA to construction, care and hospitality.

The CBI cited four indicators of what constitutes flexible work (easy hire-easy fire, wage-level adjustment, varied skill-set, mobility) and we should not underestimate the importance of a flexible labour market to employers, employees and the economy. At Oxfam, we’ve worked with people in sectors in which flexible employment thrives, such as hotels, catering and care.

However, there are many employers who take the notion of flexible work much further. To FRED, flexible work means being forced to take her holidays during shut down and having work withdrawn at very short notice. Flexible work is zero-hour contracts, where you don’t get paid unless there is work available. In some cases, when factories go through temporary shut-downs, workers may be forced to go without pay but are unable to claim benefits as they are officially employed. As the recession bites and savings need to be made, there is no doubt that many more employers will increasingly turn to such cost-cutting methods.

The Government’s response, the Employment Act 2008, does little to actually clamp down on unscrupulous employers. We can commend the Government’s £1 million investment in raising agency workers’ awareness of their rights, and their campaign to encourage the reporting of workplace abuses. But when there are 24 inspectors at the Employment Agency Standards Inspectorate, and this represents a doubling of inspectors in the past year, it’s little wonder that the worst employers feel they can get away with exploiting people who are desperate to work.

As James Reed, the Chairman of Reed recruitment company noted in the FT, permanent vacancies at Reed are down 50 per cent on last year, while the market for temporary jobs has dipped only 9 per cent. The significance of this is important. It suggests that people will increasingly be forced to take temporary work, and with this comes the uncertainty mentioned above. Again, not all agencies will seek to cheat people like FRED, but the UK has the largest and most fragmented agency sectors in Europe, making it much harder to police for rights infringements. For example, in France, Adecco and Manpower constitute almost 60 per cent of the agency market. Here, in the UK they barely make up ten per cent, despite being on most high streets in the country. Indeed, we have over 13,000 companies making up over 80 per cent of the market.

It is the lack of enforcement of such a vast and fragmented sector of the economy which the Government must address if it is to help people like FRED through the recession. Enforcement of existing regulations needn’t cost the employer. More proactive enforcement is not a burden on the economy but a necessity to prevent the exploitation of those who are rarely heard in the public media.