Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
The London Living Wage - Week....
Mayor Boris Johnson is a surprising backer of the London Living Wage. He's pragmatic at least, anything employers don't cover in the bare minimums of food, clothing and shelter, he will be.
The London living wage is currently £8.30 an hour, although it has been raised this week by the GLA to £8.55 an hour.
The UK's minimum wage is £6.19 an hour (for those aged 21 or over). If you can secure 37.5 hours of employment a week that is £232. You'll spend at least half of it on rent, if you can handle a flat share that is. It's unlikely that you'll regularly secure 37.5 hours of work a week regularly at that end of the wage bracket though.
Before you mutter about those little shops on Green Lanes, let's look at a large multinational employer nestled in amongst the Pides and Lamacuns. They don't pay minimum wage either, they tell their franchise holders not to, they pay £6.20 an hour. If you are privileged enough to work on the tills you'd better be on your toes. If there is a discrepancy when you're cashing up and it's not in your employer's favour, expect to be asked for the difference then and there. This is VERY common for people working in 'hospitality' in the UK.
As someone who is involved in a job where mistakes can cost money I'm all too aware that employers need to encourage employees to be careful. I have (in 2001) made a mistake that cost my employer £100K. Fortunately there is an unwritten rule in my employment that goes something along the lines of "because he gets a percentage of the profits he wears all the mistakes" and that wasn't me. My employer was however quite within their rights to take the mistake out of my salary (they probably took a bit of it out of my "bonus"). Here are the rules around that:
1. You cannot take more than 10% of someone's gross wage in a year.
2. You must ask for the money in writing.
3. You can only take the money on payday, from their wage - no marching them to the cash machine.
4. There is NOTHING you can do, NOTHING, that takes someone's wage below £6.19 an hour. Nothing they can sign away, nothing.
Another unenforced rule that hits us indirectly. Happy Living Wage Week everybody.
Tags for Forum Posts: jobs, london living wage, minimum wage
Replies to This Discussion
-
Permalink Reply by Hugh on
-
Thanks for picking this up again this year, John. (I've added tags to link to previous conversations on this topic). The Citizens UK site has some interesting data on the Living Wage. It lists, for example, all accredited living wage employers. Amongst them there are just four London Boroughs out of 35 or so. Those boroughs are:
London Borough Hounslow
London Borough Lambeth
London Borough of Camden
London Borough of Islington
London Borough of Lewisham
Perhaps shockingly, as of 5th of November, there are only 93 organisations listed.
-
Permalink Reply by John McMullan on
-
Hugh, LLW is one thing, many people are still being paid less than the minimum wage by large and supposedly responsible corporations.
-
Permalink Reply by Old-Age-Emporium(OAE) on
-
And then there's the HaLaLW or Harringay Ladder Living Wage. I wonder how, for example, do the casual Cleaners or occasional Child minders (who sometimes have a starring role on this site) make out. They'd need to be very well organised to make 37.5hrs a week. £10 per hour, or part thereof, might seem little enough as a 'Minimum HaLaLW', considering travel etc between jobs. But do many of them make that, or at best do they hover somewhere between the Minimum Wage and the LLW, even if they're thorough, reliable, with years of experience and folders full of references (to paraphrase two of yesterday's posts)?
And how does the HaLaLW compare with the MuHiLW or the HighLW, or even the CrEnLW, StrGrLW or ToHaLW?
© 2024 Created by Hugh.
Powered by
