Low Paid In Wakefield District

EDM number 661 in 1989-90, proposed by David Hinchliffe on 06/03/1990.

That this House notes with extreme concern the analysis of the Department of Employment's new earnings survey for 1989 undertaken by the West Yorkshire Low Pay Unit which indicates that in the Wakefield district 4,400 men and women earned less than ú100 per week before stoppages, around 20,000 workers earned less than ú140 per week, with the figure rising to over 25,000 when overtime earnings were excluded; further notes that average adult full-time earnings in Great Britain for the same year were ú269.5 for men and ú182.3 for women and the Council of Europe's decency threshold is ú163 per week; and calls upon the Government to recognise the plight of the low paid in Wakefield and elsewhere, to drop proposals to abolish wages councils and instead extend such coverage to other known groups of low-paid workers, bring parity of employment rights to part-time workers and introduce as a matter of urgency a statutory minimum wage.

This motion has been signed by a total of 26 MPs.