No Living Wage at the Town Hall

WARRINGTON Borough Council will not be introducing the “Living Wage” for its employees – at least for the time being.
Members of the council’s executive board has accepted a recommendation by the organisational improvement and development policy committee who have been studying the issue since the beginning of the year.
But while the committee has not recommended implementation of the Living Wage at present, it believes the issue remains of national importance and recommends that the council review its position in the light of any further developments.
The Living Wage is currently £7.45 per hour – set in early November last year – compared with the national minimum wage of £6.19.
It is estimated that adopting the Living Wage would cost the borough council an additional £400,000 a year.
The Living Wage Foundation has been campaigning for public and private organisations to set their lowest hourly pay rate to the living wage since 2001. It is independently set annually and claims it provides workers with a wage that will enable them to provide for their families with the essentials of life.
A working group studying the issue came to the conclusion that the Living Wage would have the potential to increase costs to the extent that jobs would have to be cut for a service to remain competitive.
They also had concerns over an uncontrollable element to the pay structure, outside of national pay negotiations and costly changes to the council’s agreed pay and grading structure.
A national, independent 12-month inquiry into the future of the Living Wage is currently under way and is expected to report its findings next year.