To mark London Living Wage week, we thought we’d provide a little background to this amazing organisation. The Living Wage campaign is an independent movement of businesses, organisations and people who believe a hard day’s work deserves a fair day’s pay. The real Living Wage is independently calculated based on what employees and their families need to live. This is why it’s higher than the government minimum wage.
Employers, including Impact, choose to pay the real Living Wage on a voluntary basis – it provides an ethical benchmark for responsible pay. Recognised Service Providers like Impact, work with the Living Wage Foundation to champion the Living Wage through their client contracts.
The campaign for a Living Wage was launched by members of London Citizens in 2001. Cleaners and other outsourced workers in East London found that despite working two or more minimum wage jobs they were struggling to make ends meet, and were left with no time for community and family life. It is an example of how civil society, businesses and organisations can work together to tackle in-work poverty. It enjoys cross party support, with public backing from successive Metropolitan Mayors and MPs across the UK, including First Ministers in Wales and Scotland.
The campaign for a real Living Wage has now delivered more than £1billion in extra wages to workers since it began in 2001. The movement has also lifted over 240,000 people out of in-work poverty.