Council workers’ pay rise proposals rejected at meeting

Councillors have rejected proposals to give their lowest-paid workers a minimum wage of £10 per hour.

Cllr Ed Murphy told Peterborough’s Full Council meeting: “You call your workers ‘heroes’ for the work they do for this council, so pay them accordingly.”

He called on the council to support pay claims submitted by Unite, GMB and UNISON on behalf of council and school workers for a £10 per hour minimum wage.

In a supplementary clause he also called for a 10 per cent pay rise for all council staff in 2020/21. It was this 10 per cent uplift that most councillors found impossible to support, even though Cllr Murphy proposed it be paid by central Government.

He said: “If you pass this motion, we will be calling upon central Government to fund any pay award, and I think most people will agree that those workers who are struggling on the lowest incomes should have a ‘living wage’ of £10 per hour.”

However, Cllr Mohammed Farooq said: “This councils’ strategy since 2011 has always been to protect the lowest paid of our workers, which is why we already have a minimum wage of £9 per hour. If we pass this motion it will cost the people of Peterborough or Central Government about £4.4m which will have an inevitable impact on other services we provide.

“That represents adult care home packages for 142 over-65s, or waste collection from every single household in the city, or road resurfacing of 7.25km or the equivalent of making 130 people at Peterborough City Council redundant.”