The Department for Business, Innovation & Skills has today announced that 250 of its contracted staff across the UK will benefit from an above inflation pay rise. The rate of pay will rise from £6.40 per hour to £7.85 per hour, bringing them in line with the UK, but not the London Living Wage.
Staff who benefit on 1st April will receive a rise of £1.40, nearly 22% above the current £6.45 per hour rate. This increase will restore and surpass the real value of wages that has fallen in recent years.
Rhys Moore, Director of the Living Wage Foundation said:
"We welcome the increase in pay for the contracted staff at the Department for Business, Innovation & Skills. We would like to applaud Vince Cable for taking a strong step in the right direction towards achieving the Living Wage standard.
"The Department still has the opportunity to go beyond this raise, and we encourage them to become accredited Living Wage employers. This would see them commit to increasing wages to match the independently calculated Living Wage rate each year, and recognise both the national and London Living Wage.
"The best employers are voluntarily signing up to pay the Living Wage now. The current Living Wage of £7.65 for the UK and £8.80 for London is a robust calculation that reflects the real cost of living, rewarding a hard day's work with a fair day's pay.
"The National Minimum Wage (NMW) provides an effective robust minimum floor for wages and has all but eliminated extremely low pay in the UK. One side effect is that we now see rates of pay at the lower end of the market clustered at or just above the NMW. The Living Wage provides a recognised benchmark for employers who are able to pay more.
"We have accredited over 600 leading employers ranging from cafes, hairdressers and breweries, to well-known companies such as Axminster Tools & Machinery and Pearson, to Barclays, SSE and Salford City Council."
Business Secretary, Vince Cable said:
"I have always encouraged businesses to raise wages when it is affordable and will not lead to job losses. As the recovery continues I want to ensure that all workers - especially the lowest paid - are able to share the benefits of growth. This is why I have announced an affordable pay rise for the lowest paid contractors working at my Department.
"While we will have reduced our overall departmental running costs by £500 million by 2015, this pay rise will see the wages of some of the lowest paid BIS employees restored to more than their pre-recession level, making a real difference to their take home pay."
As well as encouraging employers to raise wages where affordable, the government is committed to increasing compliance by all employers with National Minimum Wage legislation. This includes cracking down on employers who fail to pay the National Minimum Wage through tougher penalties, raising awareness of workers' rights and naming and shaming employers who flout the law.
You can view the full statement on the Department for Business, Innovation & Skills website:
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/lowest-paid-bis-contractors-to-benefit-from-pay-rise