Many colleges are still refusing to pay all of their employees the national Living Wage. This comes two weeks after Cambridge City Council voted unanimously to ensure a minimum rate of £7.20 an hour for all workers, rather than the legal minimum wage of £6.19 per hour. Many other councils have followed suit, with Newcastle and Edinburgh voting to do the same in the past week.

As Living Wage Week gets into its stride across the country, politicians have been lining up to pledge their support to the campaign to put pressure on employers to adopt the living wage rather than the minimum wage. This week, the rate has been increased by 25p to a new mark of £7.45. 

However, as of 30 October 2012, Varsity has learned through Freedom of
Information requests that the University and individual colleges still pay hundreds of staff below even the older figure of £7.20 per hour.

The University alone pays 145 staff below the Living Wage. Suzanne Fowler, University Remunerations and Employee Relations Manager, explained that: “there are 23 additional staff who have not been included in the above data because they have not undertaken paid work in the University for at least 6 months.”

This not only represents a failure to raise wages for employees living in one of the most expensive parts of the country, but is in fact a rise of 33 from the 2011 figure of 112.

Gonville and Caius have also seen a rise in the numbers of staff paid under £7.20, with the number now totalling 42. The college claims that: “this is higher than last year because we now employ more cleaners on the staff rather than using contract cleaning companies.” Fitzwilliam College revealed that it now pays 23 workers below the Living Wage, down from only 24 last year.

Some colleges, however, have made efforts to dramatically improve the wages of their most poorly paid employees. Queens’ College paid 33 staff below the Living Wage in 2011, and now pays only 4 trainees under £7.20 per hour. Similarly, Corpus Christi have dropped from a total of 22 to 6 workers paid less than the Living Wage.

Other colleges have been less forthcoming with their statistics. For example, Clare claimed that all permanent employees were paid “above the Living Wage”, but did not reveal how many ‘casual’ workers the college employs, who might fall below this level. The figure for 2011 stands at 21 casual waiters, and 11 casual housekeepers. Peterhouse disputed the 2011 figures, claiming that the number includes student library helpers, but did not provide a correct figure for non-student employees, obscuring their accountability.

The BBC reported on 6 November that one in five workers in the UK is paid below the Living Wage. Ed Miliband, who has claimed that the Living Wage forms part of his “One Nation” strategy, responded by saying: “There are almost five million people in Britain who aren’t earning the living wage: people who got up early this morning, spent hours getting to work – who are putting in all the effort they can –but who often don’t get paid enough to look after their families, to heat their homes, feed their kids, care for elderly relatives and plan for the future.

“Too many people in Britain are doing the right thing and doing their bit, helping to build the prosperity on which our country depends, but aren’t sharing fairly in the rewards.”

Archbishop of York John Sentamu has said that it is an “absolute scandal” that one in five people working in the UK are not paid the Living Wage.”

This figure has been calculated using the old rate of £7.20 per hour: under the new readjusted figure the proportion of people paid less than the Living Wage would be even larger.

The estimate for the South East is 16%. In one of the most expensive (and prosperous) aresa of the country to live in, rich colleges are still offering only the absolute minimum to their most poorly paid workers.

Mr Miliband’s brother David told the the Observer: “Our living wage campaign involving unions, students and voluntary organisations is sometimes quietly, sometimes noisily, changing lives”.

Since the Living Wage was introduced in 2005, an estimated 11,500 workers have benefited. The Living Wage Foundation has published a new trademark design that accredits ‘Living Wage Employers’, like the City Council. The Foundation hopes that this will soon become as recognisable as the Fair Trade logo.

However, the battle for the Living Wage is far from over. Polly Toynbee wrote in The Guardian earlier this week that “The living wage tide is turning, but it’s not enough”.

She warned that “paying the minimum required for survival is only part of the cure for Britain’s dangerous levels of inequality”. This inequality is at its most noticeable when some of the lowest wages in the country are paid by Britain’s richest university.