Lowest bands revised to comply with national minimum wage change
Public-sector union Unison has claimed that councils are “scrambling” to adjust their bottom pay bands to keep workers above the minimum wage.
The national minimum wage goes up to £6.31 per hour on 1 October, and Unison has accused membership body Local Government Employers (LGE) of deleting its bottom pay point at the last minute to ensure its members stay above the law.
LGE has set its new bottom pay point at £6.45 an hour – just above the new legal minimum wage, but still £1 less than the living wage rate, which is £7.45 an hour outside London.
Unison claims this will mean around 21,000 workers – mainly in occupations such as cleaning and catering – will receive just above the minimum wage from next month. Around half a million council staff still earned below the living wage, it added.
The union also argued that if local government workers had received pay rises in line with the Retail Price Index (RPI) rate of inflation between 2010 and 2013, they would now earn 18 per cent more.
In a Unison survey of 247 councillors, chief executives and officers, two-thirds agreed or strongly agreed that pay cuts and job losses in councils were contracting demand in the local economy and were to the detriment of local businesses.
Heather Wakefield, Unison’s head of local government, said it was a “disgrace” that councils appeared to have waited until the last moment to delete their bottom rate.
“It is shameful that poverty pay is so endemic in local councils, dragging down the workforce and undermining local economies – and thereby the UK economy,” she said.
“We need more councils to take a long hard look at their workforce and try to imagine families surviving on £6.45 an hour. For the half a million council workers who earn below the living wage, that translates into very real hardship in the home.”
She added that 53 per cent of council workers’ pay was spent in local outlets, so pay rates had a direct impact on the local economy and survival of businesses.
In June this year, chancellor George Osborne confirmed that thousands of public sector staff would lose their right to automatic pay rises, through reform of the pay progression model where employees are placed on scales containing steps or points, and are entitled to move up the wage scale as they gain experience.
LGE were not prepared to comment on Unison’s claims.