Amazon- Pay your staff and pay your taxes !

To finish off Fair Pay Fortnight- why not sign the GMB's petition against low pay by one of the world's best known companies.  While Amazon does not employ staff in Eastbourne, many Eastbourne customers use their services, and all Eastbourne taxpayers subsidize the poverty pay that Amazon offers its staff- many of whom are forced to rely on Tax Credits and Housing Benefit ! Amazon, meanwhile, pays a tax rate equivalent to less than 1% !  

GMB explain:

Amazon offers "jobs of last resort" to the communities where they build their warehouses, currently Inverclyde, Dunfermline, Swansea, Rugeley, Bedford, Peterborough, Hemel Hempstead, Doncaster and Croydon. They employ tens of thousands of people, mostly on temporary contracts and at arm’s length through agencies.

Most of the time, according to GMB members, Amazon is not helping people off benefits and into work permanently - their employment practices lock people into the revolving door of low paid temporary work and Job Seekers Allowance - making already hard hit towns and communities even poorer.

In Amazon the National Minimum Wage (NMW) has become the maximum wage for most staff, who cannot get enough hours of work and live in fear of losing their job. Few Amazon staff can make ends meet without claiming ‘in work’ benefits while they work for Amazon. According to a survey of Amazon staff:

91% would not recommend working for Amazon to a friend.
70% of staff felt they were given disciplinary points unfairly.
89% felt exploited.
78% felt their breaks were too short
71% reported they walked more than 10 miles a day at work.


GMB - the trade union for Amazon staff - is campaigning with local communities, tax justice groups and Amazon staff to make sure the company makes its full contribution to rebuilding the UK economy - both by paying wages its staff can live on and by paying its taxes.

In the last three tax years for which information is known Amazon has paid only £4.24 million tax on £10.82 billion sales: a tax rate of less than 0.5%. Yet at the moment Amazon is heavily subsidised by taxpayers in three ways:

• Through the Tax Credits and Housing Benefit their staff have to claim to make ends meet due to their low wages and short term jobs 
• Through the millions of pounds in grants they get from national and local government to build roads, street lighting and land clearance every time they build a new warehouse.
• Through their exploitation of tax loopholes that means they pay Corporation Tax at a fraction of the rate their low paid staff pay.

GMB say it's time to end the something for nothing culture - It's time Amazon paid their way. We urge all staff at Amazon to join GMB to protect their job, get back up when they need it and join our campaign for better pay, secure working hours and a safe workplace.

GMB are campaigning to ensure Amazon:

• Allows staff access to GMB where they work to get the employment advice and back up they need 
• Pays a fairer wage so that its staff don't have to claim ‘in work’ benefits
• Provide more permanent contracts of employment with enough hours of work for families to have the security the need 
• Improves its approach to safety and long term health at work to protect employees from the effects of its work practices 
• Pays its taxes 
• Acts responsibly towards the local communities it disrupts with its activities

Support GMB's campaign- Sign the Petition!

Church needs to practice what it preaches !

The Church of England has been vocal in its backing for the Living Wage- with the Archbishop of York heading the Living Wage commission, and the Bishops writing to parishes last week on the subject ("Who is my neighbour")

So today's front page headline, in The Sun no less ("Wages of Sin") exposing how some churches and dioceses were advertising for jobs at the minimum wage, has caused more than a little embarrassment. This has been acknowledged by the Archbishop of Canterbury today, when he admitted that the Church had "fallen short of the standard".

What of the staff employed by the churches in Eastbourne, or by the Diocese of Chichester ? We don't know the full picture, which is why the Trades Council will be writing to all of the Church of England parishes in Eastbourne  this week to ask whether they are employing staff on the Living Wage, and if not, what plans they have to achieve this. We will let you know the results on this page.

As employees, we would encourage all church staff to join an appropriate trade union.  In the early 1990's the MSF Union (now part of Unite) started to recruit clergy and other church staff- and Unite now has a thriving Faith Workers branch, with members in Eastbourne from both the clergy and lay staff. You can find out more here. The branch also has a regular newsletter which can be downloaded here, and a Branch Blog here.

Stop exploiting "apprentices" ! Minimum Wage NOW !!

Ever since the Minimum Wage was introduced, many trade unionists have been uncomfortable about the existence of "age related" lower rates. The GMB ran "Rage Over Age Rates" campaigns in the first term of the last Labour government.  Despite these campaigns, there remains a difference in age rates- over 21 year-old workers are entitled to the full Minimum Wage of £6.50 per hour; those 18-20 £5.13, while those 16-18 can be paid just £3.79 an hour.

HOWEVER- if you are on an apprenticeship, the law allows an even lower rate than this.  Apprentices aged 16-18, or over 19 in their first year can be paid a meagre £2.73 per hour.

Remember- the independently assessed Living Wage agrees that £7.85 is the minimum hourly rate to cover living costs- yet an adult worker can be employed on more than £5 per hour less than this, if they are classed as an apprentice.

Stephen Lloyd, the Lib Dem MP for Eastbourne is a great champion of the Apprenticeship scheme, and has vocally defended the existence of the poverty-pay apprenticeship rate - even to a meeting of Eastbourne Trades Council.

Parents of young people lose out if their son or daughter takes on an apprenticeship at an exploitative sub-minimum wage rate:

As apprenticeships aren’t included in the government’s ‘approved’ training category they can’t claim child benefit and lose their child tax credits also – but they could if their child was doing a course at the very same level full-time in the classroom. In the worst cases, parents can be thousands of pounds worse off per year if their child chooses the apprenticeship route. We already know that parents are a huge source of guidance for young people making choices about their education, but how can parents be expected to make such a reasoned judgement about their child’s choices when so much money is at stake?

The National Union of Students takes a different view from our coalition MP.  Their excellent report Forget Me Not blows apart some of the myths around the Apprenticeship scheme. It has taken evidence from real young people who are doing a full day's work, and yet living on levels of pay below those that were outlawed by the Minimum Wage when it was finally brought in by the then-Labour government in 1999 (the Minimum wage then was £3.60 per hour- 81p an hour more than apprentices are expected to live on nearly 16 years later)

"Take Paul, for example. He is in the first year of his social care apprenticeship and earns £109.02 a week on the apprentice minimum wage. After he’s paid for his weekly travelcard, his lunch and costs associated with his course he’s left with £71.76 a week. But, Paul doesn’t live with his parents and he also has to fund his rent from this leftover money. As a result he has to work in a pub a couple of nights a week, earning the national minimum wage in order to complete his apprenticeship and afford to live. This is not what apprenticeships were designed for."

The Government of which Stephen Lloyd is a (temporary) member has flirted with the poor by suggesting that the minimum wage for apprentices might be raised by a £1 an hour.  What they should do is say that young people and their families should not be punished for taking the decision to gain skills and qualifications, and rule that the minimum wage (still lower than a basic living wage) should apply to those in work- without exception.

Do you think a £2.79 an-hour minimum wage is a disgrace for apprentices ?  Write to Stephen Lloyd and tell him so, at https://www.writetothem.com/

A Living Wage for Cinema Workers- nationwide !

Time for a Living Wage and Union recognition at Picturehouse cinemas in Brighton and nationwide !

The cinema sector in the United Kingdom is a low wage employer with most of the big chains paying at or only just above the National Minimum Wage (£6.50 per hour - less if you are under 21). Things are a little better at independent cinemas but not much.

BECTU is the recognised trade union at Picturehouse's Ritzy Cinema in Brixton and members there were determined to win a pay rise. Following a long dispute earlier this year with 13 strikes and huge support on social media and in the press, members at The Ritzy are now earning £8.20 per hour with further rises happening during 2014 and 2015.

Unfortunately the staff at other cinemas owned by Picturehouse- including our colleagues down the road at the Brighton Duke of York Cinema-,  have not been offered the same increase. The company argue that they can't afford pay increases, despite the fact that last year their operating profits rose by 31% to £1.3 million. The parent company, Cineworld which owns Picturehouse, made profits of £31 million in 2013. So it's a profitable company and they can clearly afford to pay their staff more.

The people who work for Picturehouse in Brighton and across the country love their job, they love cinema, and helping to bring great films to the public. What they don’t love is the poverty wages they are paid.

Other independent cinemas can afford to pay the Living Wage with Curzon Cinemas (where BECTU is the recognised union for all its workers) recently implementing the Living Wage and the London Living Wage at all their cinemas both in London and across the UK.

The Ritzy is only one cinema owned by Picturehouse and although BECTU have members at many of their other cinemas the company won't talk to the union about recognition or pay.

One thing that helped change the company's mind in Brixton was pressure from their customers, who did not want to see staff at their local cinema exploited. Please help us build this petition and campaign to show them just how many of their customers nationwide believe that Picturehouse can and should pay their staff a Living Wage.

Click here to sign the petition !

Kick Out Poverty Pay !

Premier League football clubs have just got a ‘windfall’ that means they’ll receive £5.4 billion from TV deals. But whilst their top stars get millions, they’re still refusing to pay their ground staff a living wage! [1]

If enough of us get involved, we can change that. After a big public campaign, Chelsea FC has agreed to pay their lowest paid staff enough to cover basics like rent and food. Big petitions to the bosses of the other clubs could force them to follow suit.

There’s one petition per Premier League club. You can pick any, whether it's the club you support, or the one you live closest to and add your name to the petition:
https://secure.38degrees.org.uk/living-wage-football-petition

How can it be right that in an industry where top stars like Wayne Rooney make £300,000 a week, the people selling the tickets or preparing the pitch may be left struggling to pay the rent and put food on the table?

When an employer agrees to pay a living wage, it makes a huge difference to families struggling to get by. And more and more employers are doing it - thanks to customers and employees working together to push for a fair deal for all staff.

Football is an industry of huge inequality. But it relies on the support of millions of ordinary people. So it's a great opportunity to pile on the pressure and give low wages the red card - click here to add your name !

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 !