Living Wage Week 2021

This week marks #LivingWageWeek with the announcement of new minimum rates of pay.  On Monday the Living Wage Foundation announced that the UK real living wage will rise from £9.50 an hour to £9.90 an hour and the London Living Wage will rise from £10.85 an hour to £11.05.  We are delighted that this means a pay rise for those on the lowest pay that are employed by a GBC organisation or a Living Wage Employer.

As the Living Wage Foundation set out on their website: 

The real Living Wage is the only UK wage rate that is voluntarily paid by almost 9,000 UK businesses who believe their staff deserve a wage which meets everyday needs – like the weekly shop, or a surprise trip to the dentist.

Almost 300,000 employees have received a pay rise as a result of the Living Wage campaign and we enjoy cross-party support. We have a broad range of employers accredited with the Foundation including half of the FTSE 100 and big household names including Nationwide, Google, Brewdog, Everton FC and Chelsea FC.

In July 2021 we hosted a webinar with The Living Wage Foundation to give them an opportunity to explain the value of Living Wage Foundation accreditation for our smaller GBC members who have less than 51 employees.  We require these organisations to pay the Real Living Wage, but not necessarily become LWF accredited – however we do want to encourage them to consider it. We discussed the benefits of both of our organisations, our common goals for everyone to be paid a fair wage for a day’s work, and hearing from a Living Wage accredited employer – watch the webinar here.

Next year we are looking forward to running an informative webinar that explores the benefits of GBC accreditation for Living Wage Employers and we look forward to hearing from Living Wage guest speakers about the benefit they see of widening their commitments  to their employees beyond pay as well as including commitments on tax, the environment, customers and suppliers.