Conservatives refuse to accept immediate move to minimum wage

Conservatives at Thursday’s district council meeting refused to back proposals previously agreed by one of the council’s committees to move immediately to a living wage for all council staff and contractor staff.

​Lib Dem Cllr Aislinn Lee​ said: ‘This issue has been around for 33 months. I really thought that when George Osborne announced the National minimum Wage the Conservatives locally would finally understand the issue and fall into line.

‘​Instead of supporting many very low paid employees (via our contractors) they have pretended that the issue needs yet more work. ​What a message to send out to these residents!

‘They also complained that the “task and finish” group of councillors which looked into this had done a bad job – despite this never being mentioned to anyone before Thursday.’

Chris White, Lib Dem Group leader, added: ‘I often wonder what the difference is between “procrastination” and “prevarication”. The Conservative wrecking motion manages to be both.

‘We need to look after poorer members of society and recognise that it is no longer acceptable for the state to have to use the benefits system to pick up the excessively low wages paid by employers.’

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.