Islington Greens last week called for Arsenal Football Club to pay all of its staff the minimum London Living Wage, currently set at £8.80 an hour, after it came to light that the football club were not paying their lowest paid workers the London Living Wage.
Islington Green member Charlie Kiss called for Arsenal to pay its workers a decent wage, saying: “The moral and economic case for paying a Living Wage is undeniable. During Living Wage Week, Islington Council has rightly been encouraging local businesses to sign up to be Living Wage employers and has pointed out that Arsenal has not been paying their lowest paid workers a Living Wage.
“Arsenal, one of Islington’s largest businesses is clearly able to pay their main footballers millionaire salaries. The national minimum wage is just not enough to live on whilst the cost of living in London is growing ever larger, this gap is being plugged with tax credits and other welfare benefits so why should tax payers be subsidising Arsenal through the benefits system?”
The Green Party have long advocated paying a Living Wage: it was pressure from Green Party members of the London Assembly that first got the GLA Living Wage Unit set-up, Green-run Brighton and Hove Council this week celebrated signing up their 100th business to pay a Living Wage.
Charlie said: “We wish Islington Council well with their Living Wage campaign and hope that Arsenal and other employers do the right thing by residents in the borough. There are currently only 35 Living Wage employers in Islington, surely we can at least match Brighton and Hove and get one hundred Islington businesses signed up?
“Currently our social security system is subsidising large companies who can well afford to pay the Living Wage by providing support welfare for under-paid individuals. In effect this is ‘corporate welfare’ not social welfare; a taxpayer intervention to allow businesses to get away with paying low wages. The Green Party believes a compulsory Living Wage would bring significant benefits to our economy, through decreased need for benefits payments, an increase in tax paid to the Treasury and through workers spending in their local area. Please – let’s make real progress with the Living Wage.”
