Potential pay rise for union bar staff?

At last Monday’s Union Council meeting, the question was raised as to whether the union should be paying student bar workers the London Living Wage.

At the moment, student bar staff are paid the compulsory minimum wage for adults aged over twenty-one, regardless of the student’s age; this is £6.70 an hour. With holiday pay at 12%, the actual hourly rate student bar staff recieve is more like £7.30. The London Living Wage is £9.15, and a policy change could see student pint-pullers getting a bumper 25% pay rise.

Students are unlikely to be solely reliant on their bar wages

A union insider told FELIX that since the union funds its activities on profits made at the bars, if the London Living Wage was adopted, either drinks prices would have to be raised or fewer students employed in order to avoid making a loss. It is widely agreed that the national minimum wage is almost impossible to live on without subsidy, especially in London. However, money earnt from working at union bars is unlikely to be a student’s only source of income, since most rely on loans or grants to support them through university.

The London Living Wage is calculated by the Greater London Authority every year, and is supposedly the minimum hourly rate required to survive in London. This calculation takes into account increased costs of transport, housing and other essentials in the capital. Outside of London, the living wage is £7.85, still higher than what Imperial students are currently paid. Around 400 companies in London have signed up to pay their workers the London Living Wage. It’s a voluntary scheme, but many large companies are not on the list, and it’s estimated that one in four jobs in London don’t make the cut.

At the end of the discussion at council, although no concensus was reached, the Deputy President of Finance and Services, Chris Kaye, said he was happy to look into the issue.