MAJOR NEW REPORT: "Not Just for the Good Times - The New Imperative for Fair Pay
 FPN STATEMENT ON NATIONAL MINIMUM WAGE
The Fair Pay Network, whilst welcoming the fact that the government has resisted serious lobbying to freeze the national minimum wage, regrets that the increase falls short of what is required to safeguard the lowest paid in our labour market. The signal of direction of travel is an important one but we would argue, still not enough to safeguard the most vulnerable from the scourge of low pay.
As our patron Baroness Helena Kennedy QC said:
The current recession could easily be appropriated to provide a smokescreen for legislators and employers to freeze the lowest wages of those in most need who have played no part in engendering the economic crisis that is hitting them and their families so badly. This would be beyond, folly; it would be commercially dangerous and socially short-sighted.
An employee earning the new NMW rate, working full time will earn around £11,500 per annum, and yet anti-poverty bodies such as The Joseph Rowntree Foundation state that a single person living in council Housing needs £13,400 a year to afford a basic but acceptable standard of living. This latest increase falls short of that.
As is demonstrated again by KPMG in our report “Not Just for the Good Times – The New Imperative for Fair Pay”, fair pay makes business sense. At this difficult time, we urge employers to invest in their workforce and reap the benefits of ethical practice.
Click here to download the report (PDF format: 1.2mb)
Welcome to the Fair Pay Network website
Have you ever considered why 57% of British children who fall below the poverty line live in households where at least one adult is in work?
Have you ever wondered why certain jobs are deemed low-pay jobs, even when they involve roles such as caring for our loved ones in times of illness or old age?
Have you ever stopped to think about the consequences of in-work poverty and how much a low-pay culture costs each and every one of us?
The Fair Pay Network is a national coalition working to change the climate of opinion about low pay in the UK. We have brought together the key national organizations involved in the campaign against low pay into a single network, and are establishing a clearing house for information on fair pay.
We promote national concern to achieve better, fairer pay levels for all workers. We also work to raise awareness of low pay as a social injustice that adversely effects the overall national poverty equation.
We believe that the UK's high levels of wage inequality are not simply the result of immutable economic forces and that the responsibility for ending low pay should be shared among government, employers, local authorities, consumers and trade unions.
We encourage government, employers and consumers to support fairly paid work by highlighting research on and around issues of low pay and seeking to challenge false statements about low pay.
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