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 ?

Eastbourne: Poverty Pay in the Public Sector

EASTBOURNE BOROUGH COUNCIL: 42% of staff paid less than Living Wage

EAST SUSSEX COUNTY COUNCIL: 27% of staff paid less than Living Wage

EAST SUSSEX  HOSPITALS (DGH): 11% of staff paid less than Living Wage. 

As it is Living Wage week, we were keen to look at the situation for workers in Eastbourne. Eastbourne has many staff employed in the hospitality, leisure and retail sectors, all of which have traditionally been low-paid- although Morrisons and Lidl have recently joined the ranks of Living Wage employers. A number of other employers active in Eastbourne have also signed up to the Living Wage foundation's Living Wage accreditation, paying all staff over 18 £8.15 or more. You can read these here

Brighton and Hove City Council is accredited as a Living Wage employer, and Hastings Borough Council pays all of its directly employed staff above the Living Wage rate. So the public sector is setting a good example, yes ?...... Sadly not in Eastbourne !

East Sussex County Council employs a total of 16,200 people (many are part time and/or casual- the full time equivalent is 8,717 )   Of these, a staggering 4,373 are paid below the living wage rate- that's 27% of the council's workforce.

Eastbourne Borough Council employed 741, and 314 of these were paid less than the living wage. This equates to just over 42% of the council workforce.

Of those, we established that 27 were under 18 (the age at which the Living Wage Foundation expects their accredited employers to pay the Living Wage.)

Shockingly, the Borough Council still takes advantage of the lower rates within the national minimum wage to pay under 21's even less:  47 staff were paid less than the adult national minimum wage of £6,50 !

Perhaps the NHS would be better ?

Sussex Community NHS Trust, the main provider of NHS community health and care services across West Sussex, Brighton & Hove and High Weald, Lewes and Havens area of East Sussex has been paying the Living Wage since 2013. Sussex Partnership NHS Trust which provides services for those with mental health problems, learning disabilities or an addiction to drugs or alcohol have agreed to do the same at Board Level and are currently looking at the logistics around implementation.

As for the good old East Sussex Hospitals NHS Trust, which runs Eastbourne DGH- not such good news..... as we reported earlier, of a total workforce of 7314 across the trust (including the Conquest Hopsital in Hastings) 790 people were paid less than the Living Wage: around 11% of the workforce.

Trades Council secretary, Dave Brinson recalls: "I was in a meeting a couple of years ago, when an official of the Borough council berated me for suggesting that the town was a 'low wage' economy, This would seem to prove a point- and the Borough Council itself is at the forefront of perpetuating it !"

Source for EBC and ESCC information: FoI request by Dave Brinson, covering August pay period. Source for NHS information, FoI request by Unison. 

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!

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.