When my friend Katrina arrived to work recently as a relief catering assistant in a primary school in Derbyshire, England, the last thing she expected to greet was a group of agitated midday supervisors. The lunchtime supervisors' distress was caused by the fact they are not entitled to the U.K.'s “Living Wage.”
The Living Wage is over £1 ($1.65) more than Britain's national minimum wage. And the reason the midday supervisors – formerly known as dinner ladies – are not entitled to the Living Wage is because they are employed by the school instead of the local authority.
Unlike the Derbyshire local authority (known in the U.K. as the council) which has recently implemented the Living Wage, the law leaves it to individual schools' discretion whether or not to pay their employees the Living Wage.
How can setting a living wage that is unavailable to workers like the dinner ladies – those who often need it the most – be fair? It's no wonder the Derbyshire dinner ladies were threatening to walk out.
The Surest Way Out of Poverty?
The U.K.'s Living Wage is based on the amount of money individuals require to cover the basic cost of living. As living in London is higher than the rest of the U.K., the rate of the Living Wage is higher in the capital. The pay benchmark is promoted by the Living Wage Foundation, which asserts that “work should be the surest way out of poverty.”
The Living Wage has received widespread political support. The London Mayor, Boris Johnson, said, “Paying the London Living Wage is not only morally right, but makes good business sense too.”
Ed Miliband, leader of the Labour Party, agreed that the “Living Wage is a really important idea.” Even conservative Prime Minister David Cameron has said he supports the idea, in principle.
And naturally, many workers in the U.K. are in favor of receiving a wage that would realistically help them cover the costs of living.
“With rising costs of utility bills, rent, food and general living, expecting to live on the minimum wage is nigh impossible. It's about time a fairer living wage was brought in,” Gary Rogers, a kitchen assistant in Manchester, told Occupy.com.
So what's the problem?
The Living Wage, as my friend's recent experience with her irate co-workers testifies, has, despite widespread support by politicians and workers, received limited endorsement by employers. This is because unlike the U.K.'s national minimum wage, which is a legally enforceable minimum level of pay, the Living Wage remains an informal benchmark.
Thus, enforced only at the discretion of individual employers, it is hardly surprising that resentment and disputes over the U.K. Living Wage are finally erupting in the open.
The difference between minimum wage and Living Wage
The minimum wage is enforced by the U.K.'s HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC), a non-ministerial department of the British government responsible for the collection of taxes. By comparison, the Living Wage is not enforced and is currently calculated by the Centre for Research in Social Policy at Loughborough University.
Unlike the national minimum wage, the Living Wage takes into account factors associated with the cost of living, including rent, childcare, public transport and food, and is annually adjusted for inflation.
Last week, the British government announced as of October this year, the national minimum wage will increase by 19pence an hour to £6.50 ($10.75). It is the first time in six years that the rise will be higher than inflation.
However, despite the increase, some believe the minimum wage is in need of more major reform.
Talking to the BBC, Professor Sir George Bain, founding chair of the Low Pay Commission, said the minimum wage has become a “blunt instrument” and that many workers can now afford to pay their employees much more than the minimum wage.
Struggling to Make Ends Meet
Despite the 19pence increase, the latest rise is well below the Living Wage. “Across the country, people are struggling to make ends meet,” Dave Prentice, the head of Unison trade union, told the BBC. “The sooner we move to a living wage, the better.”
As of September 2013, there were 277 employers in the U.K. using the Living Wage as a benchmark to pay employees. Some firms don't require the Living Wage benchmark because they already pay employees salaries that exceed the level. But this is not the case for many, as employers continue to pay workers below the Living Wage standard.
According to The Guardian, the accountancy company KPMG, which supports the living wage, reported that in 2013 almost 20% of workers in the U.K. – nearly 5 million people – didn't earn as much as the Living Wage.
Some local authorities, known as councils, such as Newcastle, Birmingham, Cardiff and now Derbyshire, have adopted the Living Wage, while others haven't. And this brings us back to the dinner ladies dispute in the the North West county of Derbyshire.
My friend Katrina, a relief catering assistant, is posted at school canteens in the area as and when she is needed. The mum of three young children, she is employed by the local Derbyshire council. In January, she received a letter from the council informing her of the good news that as of April 2014, instead of receiving just above the minimum wage she'll be paid the Living Wage of £7.65 an hour.
Receiving an unexpected letter that your pay is going to increase by more than £1 an hour would be a nice surprise for most and Katrina was naturally happy with the increase.
The same, however, cannot be said for the permanent midday supervisors at the primary school in Derbyshire who don't work for the council and who were up in arms about their pay. Learning that co-workers, some of whom are neither full-time nor contracted to the school, are likely to be paid £1 more an hour will inevitably cause conflict.
“People working in the same environment, doing virtually the same job yet getting paid different wages simply because of authority politics, is going to put people at loggerheads,” Katrina admitted.
From midday supervisors to care assistants, shop workers to call centre operators, workers across the U.K. in many different vocations are struggling to make ends meet. If people are going to enjoy the basic standard of living the U.K.'s Living Wage is designed to accomplish, the Living Wage needs to be much more widely adopted.
Or, at the very least, colleagues working in the same workplace doing the same jobs should be entitled to the same pay compensation. Failing to implement such fair practices has every hallmark of a worker rebellion waiting to happen.
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