Seventeen pence, that's all
WORKERS, APR 2007 ISSUE
WHOOPEE! The national minimum wage has gone up by 17p per hour for an adult (over 21 years) to £5.52p, with 15p for 18-21 year olds and 10p for 16-17 year olds. The government has refused to include 21-year-olds as adults on the basis that they are more closely aligned to 20-year-olds rather than "older" people. Odd, that: most 20-year-olds become 21 years old en route to getting 'older'.
It is, of course, complete bunkum from Trade and Industry Secretary Alistair Darling: you can go and fight and die in the armed forces at 16 years old and even vote at 18 years old (with the government – desperate to boost the numbers of people voting – suggesting that the voting age should be lowered to 16 years).
Evidence produced by the trade unions to the Low Pay Commission indicates that a minimum rate of at least £6.75p is required if any real inroads into poverty in Britain are to be made. This rise of less than 3 per cent will not go a long way to helping workers on the minimum wage cope with increased travel costs – 6.3 per cent in London and the South East; gas bills – 107 per cent during the past three years; electricity bills – 63 per cent in the past three years; water bills – 12 per cent in the last two years but with agreed increases of 20 per cent in the next two years and council tax up an average of 4.5 per cent this year.
The government makes a great deal of its campaign to enforce the minimum wage, especially for migrant workers, and quickly points out the scandal before the minimum wage become law in 1999 of wage rates as low as £1.30 per hour for cleaners or £2.25 per hour for security staff.
Those rates were a disgrace then, and the trick of the employers now is to hide behind the government and its minimum wage in order to avoid paying a wage workers need to live on. It is estimated that over a million workers are on the minimum wage. At the other extreme, 4,000 individuals shared over £9 billion in Christmas bonuses from the City last December.
Meanwhile, Gordon Brown's budget abolition of the 10p starting rate for tax means that someone on the new national minimum wage and working 35 hours a week will be £2 worse off a week, making the increase in the minimum wage even more derisory.