Jack Dromey: Paying the living wage benefits everyone in our society

Everyone deserves to be a paid a wage that allows them a decent standard of living. As a founder member of the drive for a living wage, I was proud as deputy general secretary of the old Transport and General Workers’ Union to work together with what has now become London Citizens to organise the 3,000 cleaners in the City of London and Canary Wharf to be paid the living wage.

Next, I joined 170 Houses of Parliament cleaners in their picket of parliament to call for them to be paid the living wage. It was a scandal that the mother of all parliaments was not paying a decent wage to the cleaners, many of them ethnic minority workers, who keep it clean for parliamentarians to enjoy. We won, just as we had taken the fight to the City and shamed the big banks, whose bosses were making millions, that it was only right their cleaners were paid a living wage. We won there too.

I welcome this Living Wage Week that National Express, one of the biggest private sector employers in the West Midlands, has committed to paying all its workers the living wage. National Express is an admirable but profitable company, and their workers should share in that.

It is to the credit of the Living Wage Foundation and their tireless work that now, over 4,400 employers across the UK are paying their workers the real living wage. They have shifted the argument from shaming large organisations into paying workers a fair wage, to highlighting the business case for it. As they say, 93% of living wage-paying businesses have benefitted from paying the living wage since they started.

The simple fact is that everyone benefits from workers being paid a living wage. The worker benefits as they have more money in their pocket and feel more fulfilled in their career. Their family enjoys a better standard of living and the worker doesn’t need to work two jobs to make ends meet. Paying it is good for the employer as a better paid worker is happier, more committed and less likely to leave. Less churn of staff leads to a more stable and productive workforce. 75% of accredited living wage employers say that it has increased motivation and retention rates for employees.

It is good for the local economy as workers who are paid a living wage don’t salt their wages into a Bermuda bank account, they spend it in local shops and local economies. They also pay more tax and claim less in benefits. In other words, their extra income not only boosts the coffers of the Treasury, therefore meaning more money to be spent on the NHS and your child’s education, it boosts local businesses who we all want to see thriving in our economy.

Paying the living wage is vital to building a fairer and more prosperous country. It is good for the worker, good for the worker’s family, good for the employer, good for the local economy and good for the taxpayer.

Jack Dromey is MP for Birmingham Erdington and former deputy general secretary of the Transport and General Workers’ Union.