Cllr Andy Hull, Islington Council’s Executive Member for Finance, Performance and Community Safety, explains why paying the real Living Wage (which Islington started doing in 2012) was an important step in making our borough a fairer place.
The original version of this piece first appeared as a blog on the New Local Government Network website on 9th Nov 2018.
Most people living in poverty in the UK today have a job, and the majority of children growing up in poverty live in a household where at least one person is working.
These damning statistics demonstrate that working full-time is no longer necessarily a route out of poverty. Without a statutory minimum wage which pays enough to live on, five million workers put in a hard day’s graft and still don’t earn enough to get by.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. Thousands of organisations across the country now choose to pay the real Living Wage. Overseen by the Living Wage Foundation and calculated independently each year, the rate is based on the actual cost of living. The new rates announced during Living Wage Week last week are £10.55 an hour for London and £9.00 an hour for the rest of the UK.
I’m very proud that back in 2012 Islington Council became the country’s joint first accredited Living Wage local authority. Now our 4,500 staff get paid at least the real Living Wage, along with 98 per cent of the council’s contractors. Some might ask if an extra tenner or so each day is really such a big deal, but if you listen to workers themselves you hear the difference it makes. The Living Wage means not struggling to feed your family, and not having to choose between heating and eating. Businesses who are cautious about the Living Wage should know that there are big benefits in terms of recruitment, retention and reputation. It stands to reason that staff are more likely to stay in a role long-term if they are paid fairly.
Beyond securing decent pay for our employees and contractors, our council has also been an active advocate for the Living Wage. Islington is now the local authority area in the country with the third highest concentration of accredited Living Wage employers – 148 at the last count. Each of these employers has made the decision that their people will not have to work for poverty pay. Thanks to them, our area now has one of the lowest levels in the country (at 10 per cent) of workers who earn less than the real Living Wage.
Despite over 8 years of failed austerity and unprecedented Tory central government cuts – Islington Council will have lost 70 per cent of its core government funding by 2020 – local authorities still employ large numbers of people. The Greater London Authority, for instance, employs one in every hundred workers in the capital. Councils also purchase £40 billion of goods and services every year. For a local council, committing to pay staff and contractors the real Living Wage is an act of leadership in the area they serve. Councils can pull other levers as well to secure proper pay for workers, such as making paying the Living Wage a condition for grant-making, the provision of affordable workspace or the leasing of commercial buildings.
I was one of many real Living Wage campaigners who were disappointed when in 2015 the Tory-led government introduced its so-called ‘National Living Wage’ – which is actually a minimum wage for people over 25 – aping the campaign’s name but setting a rate well below that required to live on. It was and remains a cynical ploy at a time when an increasing number of people are struggling to make ends meet despite going out to work.
In local government, Labour are in power and making a difference in our communities. In Islington our mission is to make our borough a fairer place to live. Pushing hard on the Living Wage is one of the ways we turn that rhetoric into reality. But if we want to live in a country where everyone is paid a fair wage for their work, we need Labour in power in Westminster.