Research from the UK Government’s Social Mobility Commission has found that, right now, employees from working-class backgrounds are being paid less than their middle-class peers. Even when people from working-class backgrounds successfully enter professional occupations, their more privileged counterparts still earn £6,000 more per year, a difference of 60 days’ pay. In other words, it quite literally pays to be privileged.

Concepts like ‘polish’ – which we routinely hear in the professional workplace – underpin this Class Pay Gap. They represent the self-presentational markers of a privileged class background that we continue to mistake as markers of merit, ability or potential.

It simply is not right that a Class Pay Gap exists in modern Britain. It holds back social mobility, prevents employers promoting and keeping the best talent, and undermines meritocracy.

Scrubbing out workplace classism and closing the Class Pay Gap is possible and it is time to take action!