With adult minimum wage rates going to £5.80 an hour, we ought to be prepared to justify in business and social terms how it is that some people are being paid five, ten, twenty or a hundred times that amount. We have spent so much time on ‘equal pay’, and this has brought only mixed results. Perhaps we should now turn our attention to ‘unequal pay’. We need to be sure we are not simply funding a ‘people-like-us’ wage spiral that has no underlying financial or commercial objective for the organisation, or indeed the nation.
Annabel Kaye is Managing Director of Irenicon Ltd, a specialist employment law consultancy. Tel: 08452 303050 Fax: 08452 303060 Website :
www.irenicon.co.uk.
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