Evening Telegraph (First Edition)
‘City needs to pay well and retain graduates’
Business chief Alison Henderson told the Tele the city needs to pay people well and retain graduates as a number of economic projects get under way.
By 2026, the partnership hopes to have caught up with national levels of productivity, cut unemployment from 7.3% last year down to 5.1%, and more than doubled the number of passengers using the city’s airport.
Alison said that the plan must ensure that nobody is left behind as the city’s regeneration continues.
She said: “The City Plan is a bit like a road map — the big picture vision. It’s about how all the partners in the plan all deliver. It’s not just reliant on the council saying to fix the unemployment figures — it’s about everybody working together.
“Dundee has an ambition to be a living wage city and we want to encourage that. We don’t just want to create entry level or low-paid jobs. We want sustainable, good, living wage jobs for people in every corner of the community. We have to take everyone in the city with us on this plan.”
DACC has helped to shape the fair work and enterprise priorities in the plan to ensure they’re fit for purpose and will make a difference to the city’s economic prospects.
These include supporting the Waterfront and the decommissioning hub Dundeecom as well as embracing its culture capital identity. And while Dundee’s unemployment has fallen by almost 2% in the last year, Alison said that improving productivity — how much each worker contributes to the local econ-economy — was important,tant, as job creators hadd to ensure the jobs theyhey were creating weree right for the city.
Alison added: “We’re at a relatively low unemployment rate but there’s a challengee in productivity lev-vels down to peopleple
DUNDEE needs to set its sights on becoming a “living wage city” and create quality jobs to thrive in the next 10 years.