From Monday the 8th of April, 5,000 nail technicians across the UK are set to raise their prices simultaneously. But this isn’t the usual coordinated industry price rise designed to fleece consumers. Nail technicians in the UK have been working for as little as £7 an hour, more than 30 percent below the minimum wage.
Unfortunately, many in the industry are self-employed, leaving consumers with many different providers to move onto if one person ups their prices. Competition between providers has pushed prices low enough that many nail artists are living on poverty wages.
This has come on the back of rising utility costs and prices for nail products.
To solve this problem, nail technicians across the UK are banding together to increase their prices on the same day. Hopefully, this will mean that they don’t lose customers by undercutting each other.
Getting your nails done professionally is considered a luxury service, and for many it’s a great form of relaxation. No doubt this price rise will put the service beyond some people, and lead to others decreasing their use of it.
However, watching ordinary working people come together like this and organise themselves to achieve a decent living is wonderful to see.
The system of free market competition that pushed these people into poverty in the first place is undoubtedly having similar effects on other self-employed people. Gig workers, such as Uber drivers and food delivery workers, have also been coming together in recent years to fight for fairer payment, though with mixed results.
Pitting workers against each other in market competition only leads to a race to the bottom for wages and working conditions. Ultimately, this doesn’t benefit anybody except the few capitalists who manage to form monopolies based on these services, or small business owners who profit off self-employed providers.
Hopefully this coming together of nail technicians will be more than a one-time event, and will lead them into longer term cooperation against market forces.
Ultimately, however, eliminating an economy based on profit is the only way we’re going to ensure that workers aren’t pushed into poverty.
