UNISONActive is an unofficial blog produced by UNISON activists for UNISON activists. Bringing news, briefings and events from a progressive left perspective.

Sunday 7 July 2013

Minimum Wage as the going rate – it wasn’t meant to be like this

The UK is at risk of creating a two-tier labour market in which growing numbers of workers earn little more than the legal national minimum wage of £6.19 per hour. A report from the Resolution Foundation has found that almost one in ten jobs (2.4m) now pays within 50p of the minimum wage as the labour market has become increasingly bottom-heavy. George Bain, the founding chair of the Low Pay Commission, has warned in a Guardian article that ‘in a way the policy has been a victim of its own success. The wide support means the policy has settled down into a premature middle age, with little thinking about how it could do more to tackle low pay’
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/jul/05/minimum-wage-risks-going-rate