Jenny Jones for London

We want to make London a Fair Pay City, starting with a 10:1 maximum pay ratio for employees of organisations within the GLA group.

Launching the campaign at City Hall

This would mean that no City Hall cleaner could earn less than a tenth the Mayor’s salary, and the Commissioner of the Met Police couldn’t earn more than ten times a young recruit.

London is the most unequal region of the UK, with a fifth of people working for less than the London Living Wage, and a tiny minority at the top getting inflation-busting pay rises.

If London were more equal the evidence suggests we would probably all be healthier and happier with less violent crime in the city.

During Boris Johnson’s Mayoralty the number of people within the GLA group earning more than ten times the Living Wage has risen by 56% (from 62 to 97) and the number of staff in City Hall earning more than £100,000 has risen from 16 to 28.

My colleague on the London Assembly Darren Johnson has shown how we could support and promote a Fair Pay Mark for companies that adopt this policy, asking the twenty companies who between them took over £9bn over three years from the GLA group to sign up.

Unfair pay in London’s councils

The biggest gaps in pay between the top and bottom are in the private sector, especially the big corporations. But councils should be leading the way, and as we’ve found they have a very mixed record:

• Only 15 out of 33 councils publish easy-to-find information about senior pay, and only one (Camden) shows its residents the difference in pay between the highest and lowest paid staff
• They paid 6% more staff over £150,000 in the last financial year compared to the previous year
• Only six have taken steps to pay the London Living Wage to all employees and subcontracted workers like cleaners, carers and park wardens. They are Ealing, Lewisham, Tower Hamlets (all now paying the living wage on some contracts); Islington (who brought cleaning in house to pay the living wage); Southwark and Haringey (who have adopted a policy but not yet changed any contracts).

Here’s a complete rundown of the councils in 2010/11, all this data was taken from their Statement of Accounts.

* Total remuneration excluding pension contributions.

Help us clean up the air near schools – sign the petition.

London’s dirty air can take years off your life expectancy, significantly increases the risk of heart disease, and costs the NHS billions every year. Research shows that children living near the busiest roads can have 20% less lung capacity.

You can also download a copy and take it around to parents at your local school, your high street or your friends’ parties. Make sure you get full addresses for every signatory (otherwise it can’t be submitted to the Mayor). Send the signatures to “Dirty Boris, The Green Party, Development House, 56-64 Leonard Street, London, EC2A 4LT”. The deadline to get any signatures to our office is the 17th February 2012.

To field tricky questions, take a copy of this handy briefing with you – it puts all the key facts at your fingertips.

We could fix this! The really terrible thing is that Boris and the Government could have sorted this out with simple steps like:

• Making sure all new buses are clean hybrid, hydrogen or electric buses
• Helping taxi drivers upgrade their vehicles or trade them in for a cleaner alternative
• Reducing traffic across London by doing more to make it safe and pleasant to walk, cycle and use public transport instead of putting motorists first

Read More

Read More

Read More

Read More

Read More

Read More