Bristol's workers suffer as further research from PwC shows fall in top level pay
Workers in Kingswood, near Bristol, are worst off when it comes to pay, with 48 per cent of people earning less than the aspirational ‘living wage’ of £7.65 an hour, according to research from the TUC.
The London boroughs of Chingford and Woodford Green, and Harrow West helped top the list of poorly paid blackspot areas, with 43.4 per cent and 42.4 per cent of workers being paid less than the living wage.
However, unlike the national minimum wage, which is currently £6.31 an hour, the living wage is not enforced by law, so employers are under no obligation to pay it. But many progressive organisations have chosen to increase their lowest salary to reflect it.
The suggested UK living wage rate rose at the end of last year to £8.80 in London and £7.65 for the rest of the country, to help cover the basic cost of living.
However, TUC analysis of official figures from the House of Commons Library shows that today around 5 million people are making less than the hourly rate across the UK.
Gender disparity over the living wage was also highest in the Bristol area, with 56.1 per cent of Kingswood’s female workers earning less than £7.65, closely followed by London’s Bexleyheath and Crayford at 51.3 per cent, and the parliamentary constituency Heywood and Middleton at 49.7 per cent.
The TUC’s analysis show that on average one in five jobs pays under the living wage and this amounts to nearly half of jobs in some parts of Britain.
Poplar and Limehouse, and Runneymede and Weybridge were hailed as the best areas for paying the living wage with just over 5 per cent of workers earning less than the designated amount. South Cambridgeshire in the East of England closely followed with 7.3 per cent.
“Extending the living wage is a vital way of tackling the growing problem of in-work poverty across Britain,” said TUC general secretary, Frances O’Grady.
“Working families are experiencing the biggest pressure on their living standards since Victorian times. Pay has been squeezed at all levels below the boardroom and it’s costing our economy dear.”
Despite an increase in the number of employers offering the living wage, and lobbying from unions, O’Grady said the government would have to show equal initiative for the campaign to really take-off.
“We need to see a far greater commitment to pay the living wage from government and employers, and modern wages councils, which could set higher minimum rates in industries where employers can afford to pay their staff more,” she said.
News comes as PwC suggests a third consecutive year of bonus reductions for executives in 2014, in an effort to increase fairness among the wider workforce.
Nearly a quarter of FTSE100 executives have had their base pay frozen, with the average salary for CEO’s reported to be £898,000 per annum. Pay increases rewarded at less than 3 per cent, were reflective of inflation rates and largely in line with the rest of the workforce.
Of the 43 companies surveyed with financial years ending from September 2013 onwards, PwC reports on average CEO bonuses were down one per cent on 2012’s total.
Tom Gosling, head of PwC’s reward practice suggested that new pay disclosure rules from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills could be having an impact on remuneration committee decision-making, but the rules come as a “double-edged sword.”
“While they have helped re-build trust in executive pay and increased fairness with the wider workforce, there are concerns that the prescriptive nature of the rules will make it harder for companies to recruit directors from overseas and have not led to improved quality of engagement with shareholders,” he said.