EASTBOURNE BOROUGH COUNCIL: 42% of staff paid less than Living Wage
EAST SUSSEX COUNTY COUNCIL: 27% of staff paid less than Living Wage
EAST SUSSEX HOSPITALS (DGH): 11% of staff paid less than Living Wage.
As it is Living Wage week, we were keen to look at the situation for workers in Eastbourne. Eastbourne has many staff employed in the hospitality, leisure and retail sectors, all of which have traditionally been low-paid- although Morrisons and Lidl have recently joined the ranks of Living Wage employers. A number of other employers active in Eastbourne have also signed up to the Living Wage foundation's Living Wage accreditation, paying all staff over 18 £8.15 or more. You can read these here
Brighton and Hove City Council is accredited as a Living Wage employer, and Hastings Borough Council pays all of its directly employed staff above the Living Wage rate. So the public sector is setting a good example, yes ?...... Sadly not in Eastbourne !
East Sussex County Council employs a total of 16,200 people (many are part time and/or casual- the full time equivalent is 8,717 ) Of these, a staggering 4,373 were paid below the living wage rate- then £7.85- in August, that's 27% of the council's workforce.
Eastbourne Borough Council employed 741, and 314 of these were paid less than the living wage. This equates to just over 42% of the council workforce.
Of those, we established that 27 were under 18 (the age at which the Living Wage Foundation expects their accredited employers to pay the Living Wage.)
Shockingly, the Borough Council still takes advantage of the lower rates within the national minimum wage to pay under 21's even less: 47 staff were paid less than the adult national minimum wage of £6,50 !
Perhaps the NHS would be better ?
Sussex Community NHS Trust, the main provider of NHS community health and care services across West Sussex, Brighton & Hove and High Weald, Lewes and Havens area of East Sussex has been paying the Living Wage since 2013. Sussex Partnership NHS Trust which provides services for those with mental health problems, learning disabilities or an addiction to drugs or alcohol have agreed to do the same at Board Level and are currently looking at the logistics around implementation.
As for the good old East Sussex Hospitals NHS Trust, which runs Eastbourne DGH- not such good news..... as we reported earlier, of a total workforce of 7314 across the trust (including the Conquest Hopsital in Hastings) 790 people were paid less than the Living Wage: around 11% of the workforce.
Trades Council secretary, Dave Brinson recalls: "I was in a meeting a couple of years ago, when an official of the Borough council berated me for suggesting that the town was a 'low wage' economy, This would seem to prove a point- and the Borough Council itself is at the forefront of perpetuating it !"
Source for EBC and ESCC information: FoI request by Dave Brinson, covering August pay period. Source for NHS information, FoI request by Unison.
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