No age exemptions
Unions must demand Labour increase minimum wage immediately
Daniel Forest, Teesside Socialist Party
I’ve worked many minimum wage jobs, as have many friends. We can all attest to the fact that a low wage does not mean that your work is easy or not valuable. Ask any hospitality worker if their job is easy, or any warehouse or production worker if their job isn’t valuable.
Ask any young worker if they work less hard than their older workmates, because with Labour’s new minimum wage a 16-year-old gets 38% less than their 21-year-old colleague.
If we take into account just how much our pay packets have dropped in value due to the rapid rising of our bills over the last few years, then we can see that these scraps from the captain’s table are simply inadequate.
Right-wing press
The right-wing elements of the press are recoiling in horror at the news that Labour is raising the minimum wage for those over the age of 21 to £12.21 an hour. Along with a new rate of £10 for those over the age of 18, and £7.55 for those under 18 and apprentices.
It should be no surprise to anyone to hear the squeals from the bosses and right-wing media against the rise. After all, most of them were against the minimum wage being created in 1998.
Low-paid workers need every extra bit of pay we can get. But compared to the size of the enormous cake, this is just crumbs. The remit the Labour government gave the Low Pay Commission, which recommends the minimum wage rate, was basically what the last Tory government had pencilled in anyway, according to the Resolution Foundation.
Long way off
It’s a long way from the £15 an hour that was in Jeremy Corbyn’s 2019 Labour manifesto, and that is the policy of the Trades Union Congress.
The union leaders should be demanding the Labour government increases the minimum wage to £15 an hour now, with no age exemptions.
It could easily be paid for by redirecting profits that line the pockets of the super-rich bosses into the hands of the workers who create that wealth. If they say they can’t pay, we say open the books to trade union inspection. If they can afford sky-high profits and dividends, then they can certainly afford to pay workers a decent wage for our hard work.
