UNISON workers will stage a protest at 4.30pm tomorrow outside the civic suite at Solihull council against the council’s refusal to pay its staff a Living Wage of £7.20 an hour.
The refusal comes as the Tory-led council moves ahead with plans to scale-up the salaries of its top executives and despite a campaign by UNISON, working closely with Solihull’s Labour group.
Solihull UNISON’s branch secretary David Williams says: “At 4.30pm on 16 October we will be outside the council house in support of a Living Wage of £7.20 an hour for all the lowest paid staff working for the council.
“The council is dragging its feet on the Living Wage while steaming ahead with moves to scale-up the salaries of its top executives.”
Mark Clifford, regional organiser in the West Midlands explains: “UNISON has been at the forefront of the Living Wage campaign and the situation we have in Solihull is a Tory-led council who are hell bent on ensuring that the Tory government’s ideological policies of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer hit at a local level.
“Cameron and his cronies still maintain we are all in it together – not in Solihull, we aren’t, and like many other public service workers and communities up and down the country, it is the working class people and hard up communities who continue to pay the price.”
Cllr David Jamieson, Labour leader on Solihull council said: “The Tories say we are are all in it together, but they refuse to pay the lowest paid council employees a Living Wage while at the same meeting they give the council chiefs big rises in their salary scales.
“Care workers, classroom assistants and cleaning staff have had their wages frozen for three years. The Living Wage could make a real difference to the hard pressed families struggling to put food on the table”.
UNISON is campaigning for a Living Wage. The Living Wage is an hourly rate set independently every year. It is calculated according to the cost of living and gives the minimum pay rate required for a worker to provide their family with the essentials of life.
In London the 2011/2012 Greater London Authority rate is £8.30 per hour. Outside London the current rate is £7.20.