Campaign for A Living Wage!

While the government devotes millions to combatting "benefit fraud" including advertising campaigns, hiring detectives and harrassing working people, it seems strangely reluctant to prosecute employers who fail to pay their employees the minimum wage, indeed up until extremely recently not a single employer has been prosecuted for breaking the law. It seems that the "law" is applied selectively in Labour Party Capitalist Britain.

Living Wage campaigner and Mersyside RESPECT member, Nick Wall comments:

"We have just seen the first successful prosecution of an employer under the National Minimum Wage legislation. That’s one prosecution in nearly 10 years. But wait, it gets worse. The owner of Rascals Day Nursery in Walthamstow was fined just £2,500 for her deliberate non-cooperation with investigators. Miserable though this penalty may seem, the maximum fine employers can face is just £5,000. In practice, it is ludicrously easy for employers to avoid any prosection at all. 95 per cent of employers caught underpaying the minimum wage simply pay back what they owe to avoid any further penalty. If they fail to do this within a 4 week period, they can be landed with a fixed penalty notice (about £225 per worker).

If the government seems inept at flushing out those employers who pay starvation wages, it is because the resources devoted to finding them are totally inadequate. Earlier this year the government announced proudly that the budget to enforce minimum wage laws was to increase by 50%. Unfortunately this was just an increase from £6m to £9m - scarcely enough to cover the office furnishings of some government departments. I read that the government is doing a mail out to hotel employers this month, informing them about minimum wage rules and things they need to be doing. After a short ‘bedding in’ period this will be followed up by spot checks from enfocrement officers. I just have one question : isn’t ten years a long enough bedding in period for employers to comply with the law ?"

More information about the campaign for a Living Wage can be found here

Women - Free to Work Harder

The following article by Lindsey German was printed in today's Guardian.

Lindsey is National Convenor of the UK Stop the War Coalition, RESPECT candidate for London Mayor & Author of "Material Girls: Women, Men & Work"

The women's economic miracle has passed largely unremarked, but increasing numbers of women over the past two decades have contributed more to global economic growth than either new technology or the rapidly industrialising giants of China and India. In the 1970s many of us thought working outside the home would be liberating for women, freeing them from financial dependence on men and allowing them roles beyond those of wife and mother.

It hasn't worked out that way. Women's labour has been bought on the cheap, their working hours have become longer and their family commitments have barely diminished. Yesterday's G2 special investigation into how employers treat parents highlighted companies offering decent maternity packages, but many firms refused to take part, and the question remained whether a woman's career would survive childbirth.

The reality for most working women is a near impossible feat of working ever harder. There have been new opportunities for some women: professions once closed to them, such as law, have opened up. Women managers are commonplace, though the top boardrooms remain male preserves. Professional and managerial women have done well out of neoliberalism. Their salaries allow them to hire domestic help.

But more women face worsening conditions: the supermarket or call centre workers; the cooks, cleaners and hairdressers; all find themselves in low-wage, low-status jobs with no possibility of paying to have their houses cleaned by someone else. Even those in professions once-regarded as reasonably high-status, such as teaching, nursing or office work, have seen that status pushed down with longer hours, more regulation and lower pay.

Inequality is not just between men and women, but increasingly between "top" women and those at the lower levels of wages and conditions. Class divisions between women appear in starker form than they did a generation ago. Indeed, those at the top often rely on the labour of those at the bottom to sustain their lifestyles.

Role models such as cabinet ministers Yvette Cooper (three children) or Ruth Kelly (four) do not face the problems of most working women. They receive salaries of three or four times the average female wage, have far longer holidays, access to drivers and other benefits. Estimates have put the cost of employing a nanny at £35,000 a year. Even the cost of a full-time nursery place, at £10,000 a year in London, is close to many women's annual wage.

Women's right to work should not mean a family life where partners rarely see each other or their children. Yet a quarter of all families with dependent children have one parent working nights or evenings, many of them because of childcare problems.

The legislative changes of the 1960s and 1970s helped establish women's legal and financial independence, but we have long come up against the limits of the law. A more radical social transformation would mean using the country's wealth - much of it now produced by women - to create a decent family life. A 35-hour week and a national childcare service would be a start.

It is hard to imagine the major employers conceding such demands. Every gain that women have made at work has had to be fought for.

Women's lives have undergone a revolution over the past few decades that has seen married women, and mothers in particular, go from a private family role to a much more social role at work. But they haven't left the family role behind: now they are expected to work even harder to do both.

Support School Staff: Term Time Pay - No Way!

UNISON members in Cardiff are campaigning for the fair and equal treatment of ALL staff working in schools. RESPECT supports this campaign 110% and will be doing everything we can to publicise it!

Sign the petition here:

http://www.cardiffunison.co.uk/schoolpetition.htm

(From UNISON website)

DID YOU KNOW:

Support staff make up around 50% of all employees in Cardiff Schools.

Like teachers, they work term time and take their holidays during the school holidays. Unlike teachers, many don’t get paid for the full year.

School support staff are not in ‘part time’ jobs – so how is justified that they get part time pay?

WHAT WE ARE FIGHTING FOR:

* Equality for all school staff and an end to term time only pay, which means;
* Paid 52 week contracts
* Fair pension entitlement
* Full week = full time status
* A maximised number of paid hours and weeks
* Tackling low and unequal pay and achieving proper levels of reward and career opportunities.

HOW CAN YOU SUPPORT US ?

This is a new campaign but already we are building popular levels of support in Cardiff and nationally within UNISON. On top of organised general meetings for all school members, over 60 UNISON members are now signed up as contacts in their school to receive regular information. The campaign is being co-ordinated by UNISON officers, the UNISON Cardiff schools convenor, stewards and school support staff members who make up a campaign steering committee.

SOME COMMENTS FROM UNISON'S PETITION:

"Schools work as teams. All staff contracts should be on similar terms and conditions. 52-week contracts for teachers should mean the same for all support staff. That comes from a teacher. The inequality must stop now!"

"Second class employees First class workers"

"Equality for all"

"I have worked for 20 years in the school but my pension is worked out as 13 years due to being paid for 38 weeks instead of 52."

"Under valued and under paid!"

"Term time workers are just as important as the rest so stop treating them like their not. Equality for all workers now."

"This system discriminates against people ( mainly women) who make a valuable contribution to our children's education, and hence our society. They should be paid in the same way as teachers who they work alongside every day.UNISON is working to end this unequal treatment."

We won a minimum wage - Now we need to fight for a living wage

Many RESPECT activists & elected representatives are signatories to this petition - why not add your name?

Hi

I am an activist and a public sector worker from Merseyside. I am running a petition on the 10 Downing Street website in support of a living wage, which has 380 signatures so far. Please can you take a minute to read my e-mail and if you wish to sign, click on the link below and fill in your personal details.

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/living-wage-2007/

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to take steps to replace the national minimum wage with a living wage based on the level of pay and conditions that enables a full-time worker to make ends meet for themselves and their family. Official regional living wage figures should be announced such as the one given by Mayor Livingstone for London (and increased by the GLA in April 2007 to £7.20 an hour).

I have also now started a blog to run alongside it, which will be regularly updated and expanded over the coming months, with useful information including what the living wage campaign is about, who supports it, and details of recents news stories and events :

http://livingwageuk.wordpress.com

The information below is copied from my blogsite :

Why a living wage?

The national minimum wage does not allow many workers to escape poverty. The Low Pay Commission do not take into account peoples actual needs in setting the NMW. In the UK 4¼ million adults aged 22 to retirement were paid less than £6.50 per hour in 2006. Two thirds of these were women and a half were part-time workers. A living wage could ensure that no workers receive poverty pay or have to rely on benefits, and could allow contract workers to lay claim to the same pay and conditions as staff directly employed by government and local councils.

Some would say that a living wage would actually harm poor people by losing vital jobs. This is exactly the same argument that was trotted out innumerable times against the introduction of the NMW. And what was the effect of the NMW ? According to the government's own evidence last year to the Low Pay Commission, "UK academic research to date has not found any firm evidence that the adult minimum wage has reduced employment rates or raised unemployment; this is consistent with the available international evidence."

Why now?

In the USA since 1994, over 120 city and state governments have passed living wage ordinances following pressure from local campaigners. Living wage campaigns have raised levels of pay and provided benefits like health care for thousands of workers. Studies there have shown that the living wage has had no significant adverse impact on jobs, business or the economy.

Following pressure from campaigners, London mayor Ken Livingstone has given his backing to a living wage in London. A living wage unit has been set up in City Hall, through which figures for the London living wage are calculated and published. Implementation has so far proved a thornier problem, but the publication of the figures has already started to change the pay bargaining landscape. It follows on some notable victories for low paid workers, in particular cleaners in East London Hospitals and cleaners in Canary Wharf and the City of London, thousands of whom have secured a living wage. Last year QMUL became the UK's first first living wage campus :

The college council committed itself to making Queen Mary the first "living wage campus" in the UK. This means no one will be paid less than a living wage (currently set at £6.70 an hour), or receive fewer than 28 days' holiday and 10 days' sick pay. Crucially, the change includes all staff on campus, not just those directly employed by the university. Queen Mary's cleaning staff are going to get a rise.

For Christine Martin, cleaning supervisor at Queen Mary for 12 years, the living wage will make a huge difference. Martin is employed by the university's cleaning contractors, KGB, and receives £5.20 an hour - the £5.05 minimum wage plus a pitiful 15 pence an hour as supervisor. "It is difficult to survive in London on this kind of money. Sometimes you think you might as well not work for what you earn," she says. "I do a second job and have to claim housing benefit just to make ends meet, so the living wage really has given me something to look forward to."

Guardian April 11, 2006

London's problems are not unique. Everywhere you go around the country, there is poverty pay, and there is a need for a living wage. A living wage in every region in the UK would be a huge boost to millions of low paid workers.

Jean Lambert (Green Party MEP) said in support of my petition

British people work some of the longest hours in Europe yet 7 out of 10 people working over 48 hours per week say they would like to work fewer hours. For many however this is impossible as they simply cannnot afford to do so. It is currently possible for someone to work more than 60 hours a week and still be paid less than £11,000 per year. The number of people living below the poverty line in the UK is higher than the EU average and continues to increase. The long hours culture is endangering our health and acting as a detriment to our family life. We can't have a culture that says you can not rest. We need a national living wage immediately to ensure this changes and everyone can make ends meet without working 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Labour Party councillor Richard Bertin (Vale of Glamorgan) added these comments

Yes we have now thankfully got the minimum wage, and yes it is helping thousands of low paid workers. But with the economy doing so well there are repercussions one of which is the rising house prices. Unfortunately, the gap between the rich and poor continues to grow and this needs to be addressed now ! - How ? By rightly establishing a national living wage to ensure that we improve the lives of those on low pay and also do our bit to remove poverty from the 4th largest economy on the world - Great Britain. We need a living wage and we need it now!

Thanks for your time

Nick Wall