Pubs boss wage bleat is blasted
A MULTI-millionaire pubs tycoon was last night branded a ‘ hypocrite’ for moaning about paying his workers the living wage. Government plans in the Budget will force employers to pay at least £7.20 an hour from April next year, rising to over £9 by the end of the decade.
But JD Wetherspoon chairman and founder Tim Martin ( pictured) complained that paying staff more would hit the company’s profits.
He said that the new laws add ‘considerable uncertainty to future financial projections’ for the company. The pub chain’s lowest-paid workers earn £6.35 an hour if they are over 21, states its own website.
This means an employee working an average 35-hour week would take home £11,557 annually before taxes – more than 30 times less than the £353,000 collected by Martin last year.
In fact, Martin’s allowance for car and train travel is £29,000 – almost three times the total sum taken home by his company’s most junior employees.
Martin founded the company in 1979 by taking over a pub in North London’s swish Muswell Hill neighbourhood. It has since expanded to become a national giant with more than 800 outlets and annual profits of almost £80m.
The company’s success has helped Martin amass a small fortune. His shares in the firm are worth £237m, and he was 366th in the Sunday Times Rich List.
But he yesterday used its trading update to take a swipe at the National Living Wage policy, which Chancellor George Osborne said would give a pay rise to 6m workers. A statement from Martin, who in an unusual move refused to talk to the media directly, said: ‘Increased labour costs affect pubs with far greater force than supermarkets.
‘The average price of a pint in a supermarket is less than £1 and we estimate staff costs to be around 10pc or 10p. In contrast, a pint in a pub costs around £3 and staff costs are about 25pc or 75p.’
Martin says the difference between supermarket prices and pub prices is killing his industry.
He often highlights the tax bur- den borne by landlords, which includes beer duties and VAT on hot food as well as staff taxes
Almost 100 pubs close every week, according to industry estimates.
The enforced wage rises come on top of promises already made by JD Wetherspoon to increase pay for staff next month, as well as an extra 5pc minimum starting pay increase that was brought in last autumn.
The firm also says it pays around a third of profits to staff in bonuses and free shares, with 80pc of this paid to staff who work in its pubs.
But Luke Hildyard, deputy direc- tor of the High Pay Centre, said Martin’s comments were ill-judged and branded him a ‘hypocrite’.
He added: ‘There’s something pretty ugly about the multi-millionaire owner of a massive business bleating about having to pay his staff enough money to live on.
‘Everyone wants businesses to flourish, because this benefits the whole of society by creating jobs and growth.
‘ But if those jobs don’t even enable workers to put food on their table and a roof over their heads, then the benefits to society are lost and support for business-friendly policies is undermined.’
Martin’s attack on the Conservative plan, which was announced in last week’s Budget, came as the company reported that it had enjoyed bumper trading figures.
Sales rose 6.5pc as 26 new pubs were opened during the year.
The company also plans to increase the number of pubs it owns, with 20 or 30 expected to be opened in the next year.
Shares in JD Wetherspoon fell 65p or 8.4pc to 706p, valuing the company at close to £860m.