Living wage campaigners who have spent more than a decade battling against poverty pay are considering rebranding themselves the “real living wage”, after George Osborne announced what he called a “national living wage” in yesterday’s Budget.
Neil Jameson, executive director of Citizens UK, which co-ordinates the living wage campaign, told the Guardian that the possibility of a name change – to the real living wage – had been discussed at a board meeting on Thursday.
“The real living wage may emerge as a response to the great leadership that the chancellor has taken here,” he said.
The chancellor announced a larger-than-expected increase in the national minimum wage for the over-25s, to £7.20 an hour next April, and around £9 by 2020, calling the rise a “national living wage”, and saying, “Britain deserves a pay rise”.
While welcoming the policy, members of Citizens UK, which includes churches, trades unions and citizen activists, are concerned that their message to employers and the public will be blunted by the chancellor’s appropriation of their language.
The living wage, which is calculated by the Greater London Authority for the capital, and for the rest of the UK by a team at Loughborough University, is meant to reflect the cost of a decent standard of living. It currently stands at £9.15 in London – already above the level the new national living wage is due to hit in five years’ time.
Jameson said the increase in the minimum wage would reach sectors that have so far been largely impervious to London Citizens’ arguments. “It’s extremely difficult for us to reach the people who will have to pay the government’s living wage, which is hotels, retailer and so on.”
However, he added that it was important that citizens, and not the government, keep control of the “responsibility and the right” to decide what a decent level of pay should be, and stressed that it was based on the cost of affording a decent family life.
Andy Hull, a Labour councillor in Islington who has also been an active living wage campaigner, said: “An increased national minimum wage for over-25s is welcome, but let’s not pretend this is a living wage, which is based on the actual cost of living, calculated independently and set far higher.”
More than 1,600 employers have been accredited by the Living Wage Foundation, allowing them to display its brand to show they pay all of their employers above the £9.15 minimum in London – or £7.85 in the rest of the UK.
Mike Kelly, of accountants KPMG, who chairs the Living Wage Foundation, insisted the scheme would still have cachet, despite the chancellor stealing the slogan. “There is still a lot of value to to be had from the voluntary accreditation.”
Other living wage campaigners were already preparing to jettison the idea, however, now that it has been seized on by Osborne.
Rob Lugg, a union rep involved in the recent living wage campaign at the Ritzy cinema in Brixton, south London, which won pay rises for many workers in the sector, said: “For us as a union campaign, the living wage was always a tool that we used to push up pay and conditions. It was very zeitgeisty and of the moment, and therefore very useful; but for us the campaign was always more about what we could achieve as a collective.”
