Bridgend Council is to apply to become an accredited Real Living Wage employer (pdf).
All employers have to pay the minimum wage, but the real living wage is a wage deemed to be the minimum needed to guarantee a “decent standard of living”. As of November 2020, the Real Living Wage was judged to be £9.50-per-hour.
BCBC is already committed to paying the Real Living Wage to employees and since April 2021 all employees on Grades 1 and 2 of the council’s salary scale have been paid at least £9.50-per-hour.
Meeting this requirement for 2021-22 has cost £100,000, but the report warns that realigning all pay grades to take the living wage into account “could again create a significant budget pressure, potentially millions of pounds, which is not currently factored into the Medium Term Financial Strategy (Council Budget).”
If BCBC’s accreditation is accepted, they will pay the revised Real Living Wage rate from April 2022.
One downside is that pay rates in organisations procured or commissioned by BCBC won’t be counted as part of the accreditation process. This means BCBC could still be considered an accredited “Real Living Wage” employer even if some of the services outsourced by BCBC currently pay less than the living wage.
To address this the report says BCBC will seek “fair work” and “community benefit” clauses into new procurement contracts, but they can’t change existing contracts to ensure outsourced workers are paid the living wage.
