Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
The TUC has chosen its moment well. With Britain gripped by a cost of living crisis, the umbrella body for trade unions has called for the minimum wage to be raised from £9.50 to £15 an hour as soon as possible, and by 2030 at the latest.
It is an ambitious target, as the TUC openly accepts. The minimum wage is now 64% of median earnings. A £15-an-hour minimum wage by 2030 would be 75% of median earnings, the highest of any of the 38 members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development group of rich countries.
The minimum wage should be increased to £15 an hour as soon as possible to help millions of low-paid workers struggling amid the cost of living crisis, the TUC has said.
In a move that opens a fresh policy gap between unions and Keir Starmer’s Labour party, the TUC has thrown its weight behind calls for a more ambitious legal floor on pay rates. The union body said the government needed to draw up plans to get wages rising as workers suffer the biggest hit to living standards on record.
Exclusive: Earnings of lowest paid could rise by £832; lower rates for 18- to 22-year-olds to be scrapped
Labour has drawn up plans to put hundreds of pounds into the pockets of the lowest paid by instructing the Low Pay Commission to factor in living costs when it sets the minimum wage.
They also want to scrap the lower pay categories for workers aged between 18 and 22, so they would all be paid at the higher rate.
Workers at big chains struggle to make ends meet as prices increase but their wages have not
Minerva Rodriguez has worked at McDonald’s in Houston, Texas, for more than 23 years. She is paid $12 an hour and says she is doing the work of two to three people because the restaurant is chronically understaffed. Now she, like many Americans, is facing another crisis: runaway inflation. And while she has noticed the food prices at her store have increased, pay has not.
“The wages are incredibly low and not sufficient for the work we do,” said Rodriguez, who joined the Fight for $15 and a union movement to push for higher wages and better working conditions. “They don’t want to lose that extra money. If they can have their present workers do double the job and not have to pay another worker it’s a benefit for them, but what happens with us? With food costs rising and gas prices rising, how are we supposed to live?”
Britons face a shock as household costs soar – and some unexpected items such as beer also go up
It’s been dubbed “bleak Friday” by some: pre-announced price rises for many household bills are to take effect on 1 April, adding to the misery for consumers who are already paying more for goods and food than this time last year.
Betts asks Harrington how many people have actually arrived in the UK under the Homes for Ukraine scheme. Harrington says it is too early to say, but he says he may be able to tell the committee at the end of the week.
Harrington said that he agreed it took too long to fill in a visa application form. He said at the weekend he spent just under under an hour filling out one out himself, and he was in a more comfortable situation than the refugees who have to fill them out. He said the government was looking at what it can do to make the forms shorter.
RMT says agency rates for seafarers are ‘gut-wrenching betrayal’ of 800 sacked British staff
Seafarers from abroad brought in to replace the 800 sacked British P&O Ferries crew are being paid as little as £1.80 an hour, unions have claimed.
The news emerged as Labour accused the government of doing “absolutely nothing” when it learned of the planned sackings, as a memorandum with the “game plan” of P&O was circulated on Wednesday evening.
Many women working in restaurants and bars say men routinely asked them to remove their masks in return for tips, putting their lives at risk
After working as a bartender in Washington DC for many years, Ifeoma Ezumaki’s body reached its limit during the pandemic. For Ezumaki and millions of other restaurant employees, working during the pandemic – often, in the US, for a “sub-minimum” wage – became a source of immeasurable suffering. Tips went down because sales went down, while customer harassment and hostility went up. Ezumaki and her colleagues had to become public health marshals, in addition to cocktail servers; she was asked to enforce social distancing, mask wearing and even vaccination requirements.
One evening, a customer at the bar asked her to pull down her mask so that he could see her face – a request that became so common from male customers during the pandemic that hospitality workers started referring to it as “maskual harassment”. When Ezumaki refused, he said: “Well, I guess you’re not going to eat tonight.”
Younger staff in London follow revolt in US offices over remote-working conditions
The reputation of Goldman Sachs as the most desirable employer for aspiring investment bankers is at stake. Legendary for its pulling power with the best graduates, the bank is now facing a rebellion in its lower ranks.
Junior staff who used to tolerate long working hours thanks to office camaraderie have been forced to manage burnout at home, alone, throughout the pandemic. Some have started demanding change, while others are plotting their exit. What began as a little local trouble at a US office in February has now spread to the UK.
A Senate official has ruled that the plan for a $15 minimum cannot be passed with only a simple majority but the fight is far from over
It was a major plank of the Democratic plan to “build back better” – raising the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $15 an hour as a way of boosting the economy during the pandemic and tackling poverty and income inequality. But on Thursday the much-vaunted plan hit a roadblock in the US Senate, which has knocked the proposal sideways.
As Biden tours a food bank in Houston, Republicans are taking turns railing against his administration at the annual CPAC conference. David Smith sends another virtual report from the gathering.
Speakers at CPAC continue to pledge fealty to former president Donald Trump. Matt Gaetz, a congressman from Florida, told the audience: “My fellow patriots, don’t be shy and don’t be sorry, join me as we proudly represent the pro-Trump America first wing of the conservative movement.
“We’re not really a wing; we’re the whole body. We’re the main attraction in the greatest show on earth.”
Gaetz, a self-proclaimed “Florida man” wearing blue jacket and purple tie, lashed out at “cancel culture” and “lockdown governors” including Democrat Andrew Cuomo of New York. He also defended Republican senator of Ted Cruz of Texas.
“It was awful the way the media treated Ted Cruz,” he said. “I mean, the left and the media were more worried about Ted Cruz going to Mexico to spend his own money than about the caravans coming through Mexico to take ours.”
If Congresswoman Liz Cheney, who voted for Trump’s impeachment after the 6 January insurrection at the US Capitol, were on the CPAC stage she would be booed, he predicted. The party’s true leadership was not in Washington, Gaetz said.
He also described the biggest threats to freedom as big government and big business, in particular big tech. “There are no checks and balances when they can control-alt-delete anyone for any reason,” the congressman warned.
NEWS: Several Republicans in the House have skipped Friday's votes and enlisted their colleagues to vote on their behalf, signing letters saying they couldn't attend "due to the ongoing public health emergency."
But those members are scheduled to be at CPAC
US Treasury secretary Janet Yellen has announced sanctions on former Saudi intelligence deputy chief Ahmad Hassan Mohammed al Asiri and the Rapid Intervention Force (RIF), known as the ‘Tiger Squad’ which supplied much of the hit team that killed Jamal Khashoggi, the US-based dissident who was murdered by Saudi operatives in Turkey in 2018.
US Treasury announces sanctions on former Saudi intel deputy chief Ahmad Hassan Mohammed al Asiri and the Rapid Intervention Force (RIF), known as the 'Tiger Squad' which supplied much of the hit team that killed Khashoggi https://t.co/pjXruJhUxv
It hasn't been out long but so far seems like view is a mix of relief and frustration: the US calls MBS a murderer, but stops far short of taking actions against him that would in effect change the line of succession.
But that is the snap judgement. Will this report stop business leaders like Steve Schwarzman from meeting with MBS in Riyadh? Will it stop MBS from stepping foot in the US? TBD
The fast-fashion retailer Boohoo has been selling clothes made by at least 18 factories in Leicester that audits say have failed to prove they pay the minimum wage to workers, a Guardian investigation has found.
Third-party audit reports produced over the past four years make claims of “critical” issues over record-keeping and working hours at the time they were written, suggesting that in parts of the supply chain workers may be paid as little as £3-£4 an hour.
Leicester workers allegedly paid £3 an hour in ‘miserable conditions’, with other serious labour abuses suspected in the north-west
Concerns over the ongoing situation of up to 10,000 garment workers in Leicester, who are feared to be trapped in conditions of modern slavery and paid £3 an hour, have been raised in Parliament.
Andrew Bridgen, MP for North West Leicestershire, raised a question on Tuesday about the continuing state of working conditions in factories supplying the UK’s booming fast fashion industry, and sought a meeting with business secretary Kelly Tolhurst for clarity over enforcement of the national minimum wage.
The Guardian’s just published a leader on Labour’s universal credit policy, concluding that the “plan makes sense”.
The shocking failings of universal credit are justly blamed on the government having listened to the wrong people when setting it up. The sensible reforms set out by Labour show that the opposition has been listening to the right ones. Never mind that the package of changes announced by Jeremy Corbyn on Saturday was misleadingly described as a plan to “scrap” universal credit. His party’s proposals to end the five-week wait for initial payments, scrap the benefit cap and two-child limit (and heinous “rape clause”) are sound. So are promises to review the sanctions system, ditch the “digital only” approach and hire 5,000 new advisers to help those who struggle with online applications.
The army’s zero-tolerance drugs policy has been scrapped less than a year after it was introduced, the defence secretary has confirmed.
Speaking at a ConservativeHome fringe event at the Conservative party conference in Manchester, Ben Wallace told Tory members he had changed the policy because it should be for commanding officers, and not the government, to decide to strip an individual of their job.
I changed it. I took the view that some people are young and irresponsible and it should be up to their commanding officers to decide, whether it’s a young lad or girl who’s made a mistake, whether they should be allowed to remain in the armed forces or not.
And people who have left and want to rejoin, the same should apply to them as well. I think, you know, that doesn’t mean to say you should be able to do drugs in the armed forces.
It should be up to commanding officers to understand their workforce, to understand whether that individual is the problem, or if there’s a medical problem and they think they need help, or whether indeed it was a mistake.
A bill making its way through the Senate would set the hourly wage at $15 nationwide, to be enacted over six years
Maria Torres followed eight sprinting co-workers into the kitchen’s walk-in fridge, screaming “Gun!” They locked the door against an armed intruder.
“He was threatening everyone with a gun,” the 58-year-old McDonald’s cook said, recalling that morning last December in the Princeton Park section of Chicago. “He came in very erratic. We couldn’t understand what he was saying.”
The New York congresswoman serves food and mixes drinks in a restaurant as part of an effort to promote increased wages for tipped staff. Ocasio-Cortez told cheering workers the federal tipped minimum wage of $2.13 an hour was equivalent to 'indentured servitude'. She worked as a bartender before getting elected to Congress last year.
Legal adult minimum of £8.21 an hour still leaves millions struggling, say campaigners
Almost 2 million workers in the UK are in line for a pay rise on Monday as the legal minimum wage increases by nearly 5%.
Adults on pay rates rebranded as the “national living wage” will receive a 4.9% rise from £7.83 to £8.21 an hour, worth an extra £690 over a year and affecting around 1.6 million people. The hourly rate for 21- to 24-year-olds will go up from £7.38 to £7.70, and for 18- to 20-year-olds from £5.90 to £6.15 in increases that cover about 230,000 people.