It's Young Workers' Month

November is the Trade Union Congress' Young Workers' Month.

Why do we need Young Workers' Month ?

• Presently there are 683,000 people aged 16-24 (or 14.8%) who are looking for and available for work: youth unemployment rate is nearly three times the rate for all workers aged 16+ 
• In 2014 19.6% of young workers were underemployed, more than double the percentage of any other age group. Underemployed workers are those people who have jobs but want to work more hours than they currently do. Young workers have consistently been twice as likely to be underemployed than workers in general, meaning it has become commonplace for them to be trapped in jobs that don’t have enough hours to provide the income they need.
• 255,000 young people (or 6.7%) are in zero hours contracts, meaning that the proportion of people in zero hours contracts is three times higher for young people than the adult population generally.
• Young people’s wages fell disproportionately further than those of older workers during the downturn. Between 2009 and 2014 median hourly earnings for 22-29 year olds (excluding overtime and RPIJ-adjusted) fell by 12.7%, 
• The inevitable consequence of this low pay is young people finding it harder and harder to get by. The most recent figures show that 1 in 5 (22.4%) young people are at risk of poverty.

The National Minimum Wage- introduced in 1998- allows a lower rate for workers under 21.  The Government's wrongly-called "national living wage" coming in next year, will only apply to the over 25's- leaving young workers falling further behind.

TUC General Secretary Frances O’Grady said: “Younger workers must be treated fairly. It is wrong to leave 21 to 24 year olds out: they face the same expenses as other adults and are highly productive. Not paying them the full minimum wage will demotivate younger adults, who will get less pay than their colleagues for the same work."

Eastbourne Borough Council- to its shame- takes full advantage of the young worker rates: our freedom of information request showed that during August 2015 47 young staff (6% of the council workforce) were paid less than the minimum wage rate of £6.50 an hour. 

Why Should Young Workers Join a Union ?

Care for the Care Staff !

Eastbourne has many hundreds of people working in the Social Care sector- providing vital services for our elderly and vulnerable residents.  However, conditions for many of these dedicated staff are a scandal !

Nationally, 220,000 care workers are illegally under-paid below the national minimum wage of £6.50 an hour. According to the National Audit Office 220,000 care workers are being exploited in this way.

This is in part because whilst the advertised rate may be above the minimum wage, most care workers are on zero hours or temporary agency contracts, with the employers cutting out paid time wherever they can. A full day on the job can translate into only a handful of paid hours.

In 2011 and 2013 HMRC investigated the care sector and found that only half of care providers were paying the national minimum wage. Thanks to their investigation several companies were forced to pay care workers the money that they were legally owed. 

One way employers under-pay home care workers is by only paying them for the time they spend caring for people in their own homes. This means the time they spend traveling between visits is unpaid.  Sadly many care workers are also not given enough time to care for people with dignity.

This puts care workers in an agonising position because they know they are being taken advantage of and are losing money they need for their own families, but they care deeply about the people they work with.

This sometimes puts care workers under pressure to leave their visits early to avoid having their wages pulled down.  Whereas others regularly stay longer and work for free to just make sure the person gets the care they need and deserve. 

Many good care workers get fed up with the situation and find other work, and the high turnover means a lack of continuity of care.

The Public Accounts Committee looked at the issue in the summer and said, “We are astonished that up to 220,000 care workers earn less than minimum wage and seemingly little has been done to rectify this”.
Unison has launched a petition calling on the (Lib Dem) Secretary of State for Industry to act to end this scandal.  You can sign the petition here !

Citizens UK has a major campaign calling for a charter of rights for workers in the care sector- including payment of the Living Wage.  Find out more here.

Britain Needs a Pay Rise !

It's getting harder to make our pay packets stretch until the end of the month and more and more people are falling into debt. In this new animation we follow the lives of Gareth and Aisha and the everyday challenges faced by millions of people who've been hit by the cost of living crisis.

The animation was created for the TUC's Britain Needs A Pay Rise campaign - a campaign to restore fairness to the nation's incomes.

It's Fair Pay Fortnight !

Working people in the UK are seeing their living standards squeezed harder and harder every year. The cost of energy, food and housing is soaring but wages aren’t keeping up.

6.1 MILLION people in working households are living in poverty. This means that (excluding pensioners) there are more working households in poverty than there are workless households !

Full time workers have lost on average over £4,000 in wages since 2009 and while jobs may be returning to the economy, they’re increasingly low paid, low hours and low security.

Eastbourne has many workers who are employed in low-wage and zero-hours contracts. Eastbourne definitely needs a pay rise !