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A Senator is pushing for all public-owned bodies to pay the Living Wage to their employees by the end of the year – four years after a proposition urging them to do so only led to two adoptions of the scheme.
Senator Sam Mézec’s proposition follows a previous one from his Reform Jersey colleague, Deputy Geoff Southern, which received the full backing of the States Assembly in 2018.
Deputy Southern’s proposition requested that the Treasury Minister urge the bodies of which the States are the shareholder representative to seek Living Wage accreditation.
However, it emerged during the latest States Assembly meeting that, in the four years since the proposition was adopted, only two have done so.
Deputy Susie Pinel said that all employees of the wholly-owned public entities are paid the living wage level and “many of them” above.
She added that Jersey Telecom and the States of Jersey Development Company (SOJDC) are officially accredited with living wage employers, whilst Ports of Jersey and Andium Homes are working towards obtaining their accreditation in 2022.
Living Wage accreditation is currently managed by the charity Caritas. Accredited employers must commit to ensuring that all their staff are paid at least the Living Wage, which is currently £11.27 an hour, and that their sub-contractors also pay their staff the Living Wage when working for them.
In the report accompanying his proposition, Senator Sam Mézec, the Party Leader of Reform Jersey, said: “At £9.22 an hour, Jersey’s Minimum Wage is a poverty wage. On a fulltime contract, a single worker would not earn enough to achieve a basic standard of living without having to resort to seeking welfare. In essence, this ends up being a taxpayer subsidy of poverty pay employers.”
He commented: “The current Jersey Alliance government has failed to make any meaningful progress in improving life for the low paid. Despite committing at the start of this term to encourage businesses to sign up as Living Wage employers, there is no evidence that they have actually done so.
“Reform Jersey wishes to see the end of poverty wages here, and we have brought forward numerous propositions in the Assembly to move the Minimum Wage towards the Living Wage, but we have been thwarted each time. Now, in the dying days of this electoral term, we are asking the States to make at least one positive move to help secure improved conditions for some workers in Jersey.”
"We have to understand Jersey has become an unbelievably expensive place to live"
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