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You and Yours: Call You and Yours: The Living Wage

Call You and Yours: The Living Wage

05/11/2013

BBC Radio 4 - You and Yours, Call You and Yours: The Living Wage

Winifred Robinson asks why more employers don't pay their staff a living wage.

Labour wants employers to increase the salaries they pay to their lowest paid staff. The party has offered tax breaks to companies that commit to paying the Living Wage to their employees, if they win the next election.

Currently 432 companies and organisations have committed to paying the Living Wage, which has just increased to £8.55 an hour in London and £7.65 elsewhere. It is well above the legal minimum wage of £6.31 an hour for over 21's.

Many of these companies say the Living Wage is good for business. It attracts better quality applicants for jobs, and also improves staff retention. So why do so few employers pay it?

Some businesses say it is just unaffordable, and believe that if it was enforced as a new higher minimum wage, then jobs would be lost.

Is there also a moral obligation to pay a higher basic wage, or is that trumped by the reality of economics and the market?

Email us with your experiences and your views: youandyours@bbc.co.uk

Producer: Jonathan Hallewell
Presenter: Winifred Robinson.

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