Cash nightmare for shopworkers

Sunday

We revealed earl ier this year how Home Office off icials wanted to throw Denzel Darku out of Scotland despite him having lived here since he was a young teenager.

The 23-year- old carried the Queen’s Commonwealth baton as a schoolboy in 2014 and was a member of the Scottish Youth Parliament (SYP) as well as volunteering for charities.

But he was forced to put his dream of becoming an NHS nurse on hold and leave Stirling University in 2016 when the UK Government ordered him to return to Africa. Millions of shopworkers are struggling to make ends meet because of low pay and “exploitative” zero-hours contracts, say a union.

More t han t h re e - quarters have been forced to rely on payday loans and other unsecured borrowing to pay household bills over the past 12 months, say shopworkers union Usdaw.

And 63 per cent of shopworkers say that financial worries are having an impact on their mental health. The findings come as Usdaw launches a Time for Better Pay campaign at the TUC conference in Manchester today.

It calls for a £10 per hour minimum wage for workers o v e r 18 , m i n imum contracts of 16 hours per week for all employees who want it, and an end to zerohours contracts.

Usdaw general secretary Paddy Lillis said: “Low paid and insecure work is a growing problem and a scourge on society that’s holding back economic growth and affecting the well-being of the workforce.”