Pay rise – no rise

More than a million workers earning the National Minimum Wage today (October 1) received a pay rise of 20p, with the adult rate going up to ÂŁ6.70 an hour.

 
Business secretary Sajid Javid said that the 3 per cent rise in the hourly rate showed that the government was “making sure that every part of Britain benefits from our growing economy”.

 
But headline stories of low-paid workers being awarded a few extra pence an hour obscures another story – that, thanks to swingeing cuts to working tax credits, those on the minimum wage are actually being handed a pay cut.

 
The £4.4bn in cuts to credits for low-paid workers will mean that low-income families will be on average £1,000 a year worse off from April. In order to be compensated for these cuts, a 20p an hour pay rise doesn’t even begin to put a dent in their losses.

 
In fact, one report estimates that the NMW would have to rise to nearly £12 an hour if the nation’s lowest paid are to feel any benefit.

Beyond numbers

 
What many don’t realise, too, is that a rock-bottom wage is accompanied by harsh realities that a mere analysis of numbers can disguise.

 
Minimum wage workers are often the victims of wage theft, and of physical and verbal abuse. Being forced to work long hours to earn enough to live on, they commonly suffer from exhaustion so acute that a normal family and social life becomes all but impossible.

 
UNITElive spoke to one former hotel housekeeper who can attest to the struggle of minimum wage workers.

 
Gonzalo Redondo was paid £6.18 an hour – the minimum wage at the time – to clean 32 rooms in a day.
“If you didn’t finish cleaning all the rooms, you couldn’t go home,” Redondo explained. “Do you know what it’s like cleaning that many rooms? It’s impossible. It’s a constant marathon. I was a slave.”

 
“You pay your bills, you buy food for the month and you’re left with maybe £40,” he added. “If you have an emergency expense, you’re screwed.”

 
What about his personal life? Redondo laughs. “I had no personal life. My entire life was the hotel. You make friends in the hotel, and they’re your only friends.

 
“In my 34 years of existence, it’s the worst job I’ve had in my life. I’ve never been under so much constant stress. To be honest, it’s probably the reason my relationship ended. I just didn’t have the time. I was always, always working.”

 
Many workers aren’t even paid the statutory minimum wage. If you’re a migrant domestic worker, for example, you’re submerged into an entirely different world that’s often beyond the reach of the law.

 
Amira Harrak* is one such migrant domestic worker. When she first came to the UK she had no knowledge of her rights. The vulnerable position she was in allowed her employers to pay her as little as £150 a week for 12-plus hour days with no days off – that’s less than £2 an hour.

 
Harrak, too, was the victim of abuse.

 
“When I first arrived, they showed me my room. It was a closet,” she recalled. “And I wasn’t even given the entire closet. There was a printer and a washing machine in there, too. Sometimes, I would try to sleep after working for 13 or 14 hours straight, and someone would come into my room and ask for something they had just printed.”

 
“One time, one of my employer’s sons took off his shoe and demanded I clean the sole. There was nothing on the bottom of his shoes; he just did it to make me feel bad,” Harrak said. “I got called so many names – dog, cow, donkey, things like that.”

 
Even in high street restaurant chains, ostensibly open to public view and scrutiny, minimum wage workers are still subject to a brazen theft of their already meagre wages.

 
A Unite campaign forced a several chains such as Pizza Express to buckle under the weight of public pressure last month, ending their policy of charging admin fees on waiters’ tips left on credit cards – but in all too many restaurants, the practice continues.

 
Unite regional officer for hospital Dave Turnbull explained just how absurd the practice is.

 
“Think of workers doing overtime,” he said. “Imagine if you’re getting overtime pay and your employer says to you that they’ll deduct 8 per cent from it just to process your overtime wages through payroll. It’s doesn’t cost that much to process and no one would consider this arrangement fair.”

“Cast-iron” case

 
In its submission to the Low Pay Commission, Unite has called for the National Minimum Wage to be increased by £1.50 to £8 an hour immediately – an entirely affordable hike that’s been confirmed by research.

 
“With a growing economy and the reductions in working tax credits, the case for the NMW to go up by at least £1.50-an-hour is cast-iron,” argued Unite general secretary Len McCluskey.

 
“This, in turn, will shake the economic recovery as it is the lower waged who spend in our high streets and communities,” he added. “When they have a few extra quid, they buy their kids shoes or a coat, unlike the rich, they don’t salt it away in a tax haven like the Cayman Isles.”

 
Unite has also called for a range of measures that go beyond a simple wage hike, including spending more resources on NMW enforcement, stronger action on unfair tipping practices and closing the gap between the apprenticeship rate – now set at £3.30 an hour – and the adult minimum wage rate.

 
Putting an end to bogus self-employment in the hotel sector, as well as pushing for legislation that protects migrant domestic workers and others vulnerable to abuse also tops Unite’s agenda in its support for those in low-paid, insecure work.

 
McCluskey highlighted that justice for low-paid workers was a matter of political will – one which the present Tory government has little appetite for.

 
“It will be low-waged working families who will suffer when chancellor George Osborne swings his public spending axe,” he said.

 
“Britain is the fifth largest economy in the world and we can be more generous in terms of pay – and under shadow chancellor John McDonnell polices will be developed to tackle head-on the gross inequalities in pay and tax which Unite will strongly campaign for.”

* Name changed to protect identity