A living wage

Alan Sealy believes workers are now between a rock and a hard place

by Alan Sealy 20th November 2015

At a meeting held in London on 2 November Boris Johnson, the mayor of London, announced the new London rate for the Citizens UK Living Wage. It is £9.40 an hour – up from £9.15. Outside London it is £8.25 an hour. It was previously £7.85 an hour. This is voluntary and independently calculated by the Living Wage Foundation, and is recalculated every year based on the cost of living. It does not adjust the calculation on the potential adverse impact on numbers of jobs. Implicitly, the profitability of a business should not depend on the penury of the workforce.