Labour and Green councillors secured a narrow victory in securing an investigation into low pay for cleaners, care workers and dinner ladies at Camden Council.  Despite opposition from ruling Lib Dem councillors, on the casting vote of the Labour chair of the Resource & Corporate Performance Committee the influential committee decided to press ahead with an investigation into the matter.
 
In a disputed decision, the Tory/Lib Dem run council will now research the issue of low pay at Camden Council in time to discuss the tendering of part-time worker contracts in July 2009. 
 
Cllrs Linda Cheung (Lib Dem, Hampstead Town) and Cllr. Nick Russell (Lib Dem, Kentish Town) voted against reviewing low paid contracts and the possibility of introducing the £7.60 an hour London Living Wage at Camden, while Cllr. Theo Blackwell (Labour, Regent’s Park) and Adrian Oliver (Green, Highgate) voted in favour.  The decision to go ahead with 2-2 was made by the casting vote of the Chair.  No Conservatives were present at the meeting.
 
Chair of the Committee and Opposition Finance spokesperson Cllr. Theo Blackwell said:
 
“It doesn’t surprise me that the Lib Dems are against the London Living Wage, they also oppose the National Minimum Wage.”
 
“The council outsourced residential caretakers and now wants to privatise Talacre sport centre staff.  They are doing so without a commitment to pay people a decent London minimum.  Everyone knows if you depress wages at the bottom it impacts on wages higher up the scale.  If you carry on like this pretty soon you’ll have a recruitment crisis, or no local people will be there to do these jobs.”
 
“It’s clear that the view from on high is that the council doesn’t want to open what it sees as a can of worms.  The council legal advice is suspect.  They say it can’t be done, despite other councils committing to this and the Mayor of London seeing the higher London rate as good morally good and for morale and productivity.”
 
In the 2009 Budget Labour proposed an amendment to stop bonuses for senior council staff (totalling £300,000 a year) until the issue of low paid had been addressed.  They also argued against proposals that 3 Lib Dem backbench councillors should be paid an extra £5000 a year for their work.
 
Cllr. Blackwell added:
 
“High wages and bonuses are no problem for the council, but when they consider low pay it suddenly becomes all to expensive.  Camden’s own figures for school cleaners, cooks and low paid carers show that this would cost £1 million, about 1% on council tax.  Last year Camden made a surplus of £13 million through cutting services and higher charges for the very services they continue to pay people poorly.”
 
Background
1.  Research into low pay will be discussed at the July 21 meeting.
 
2.  The Resources & Corporate Performance Scrutiny Committee had previously discussed a report in October 2008 on the Council’s contracts to assess whether the London Living Wage is the minimum paid by the Council and it’s contractors.  This also examined whether there is a legal basis for Camden to ensure that contractors pay the London Living Wage and for a review of the performance of the cleaning contract, including health and safety issues, and to assess whether there was a correlation between lower rates of pay for staff and performance.  It was agreed, subject to the new Committee’s agreement in the next Council year, that the issue would be looked in more detail.      The Camden report stated that the National Minimum Wage is the minimum paid by the Council and its contractors, rather than London Living Wage.  Camden’s initial report gave the view that, based on a small sample of indicative figures, applying the London Living Wage as a contractual requirement would result in a financial impact which could amount to a 20% increase on costs on contracts or £1 million a year (approximately 1% on council tax).  Low paid Camden care workers, caterers and cleaners are currently paid more than £1 an hour under the London Living Wage. 
 
3.  The National Minimum Wage is set at £5.73 and the London Living Wage, called the “minimum acceptable quality of life in the city” by Boris Johnson is now set at £7.60 (a difference of 30% between the National Minimum Wage and the London Living Wage).  City Hall estimates that currently almost half (47%) all part-time staff working in London and 15% of full-time workers are still paid below the London living wage. One in seven London employees is paid less than £6.65 per hour.

Tags: Low Pay