Politics
Party Calls for Living Wage This Year
As things stand, from April 1, Manx workers aged 21 and over will be legally entitled to a lower hourly wage than their counterparts in the UK.
The Manx Labour Party has said it wants to see the minimum wage aligned with the living wage this year.
This week the Minimum Wage Committee has said it is unable to make a recommendation on whether to increase the minimum wage or not.
As things stand, from April 1, Manx workers aged 21 and over will be legally entitled to a lower hourly wage than their counterparts in the UK.
The UK’s minimum wage for over 21s will be £11.44 an hour. By contrast, Manx workers over the age of 18 would only be legally entitled to £10.75 an hour.
UK workers aged 18 to 20 would be entitled a minimum of £8.60 an hour, while those under 18 and apprentices would be entitled to £6.40 an hour. On the island, the only other minimum legal requirement is for those over the school leaving age, but under 18, which is £8.05 an hour.
The MLP, which says that member Sarah Maltby’s (Douglas South) role within Treasury has ‘no doubt’ helped to secured the last two increases, which the party said ‘gave hope to the lowest paid workers that someone was listening to them’.
The Party said: ‘This delay will be very concerning to the lowest paid workers on our Island who continue to find themselves having to rely on Social Security to meet their basic needs. This will continue to be the case until we implement a Living wage. The MLP stands firm that this should be brought forward to 2024.
‘The MLP accepts that the MWC does have statutory responsibility to consider the social and economic impact of any potential recommendation in respect of the rates of the minimum wage. However, this request for additional time to understand the potential impact should have been predicted and not left until such a time that will now almost certainly impact workers and their families who work increasingly harder for the bare minimum wage.’
The Liberal Vannin Party has along previously called for the minimum wage and living wage to be aligned before next year’s commitment.
