Suspend the National Minimum Wage? NO.

Julie Hepburn, the next MP for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth & Kirkintilloch East, highlights the scandalous and outrageous proposal by the British Chamber of Commerce’s Mr Frost (or is that Scrooge?) to suspend (or freeze) the National Minimum Wage.  

Frost isn’t very festive when he makes this suggestion.  While businesses (particularly those in the retail sector) are suffering during the current recession, it is their workers who are facing uncertainty and hardship. Making a profit is important to firms, but business ethics is just as important to society at large – and the individual workers who would be affected by an unethical suspension of the NMW. 

Freezing (or Frosting) the National Minimum Wage would equal a reduction of low income workers’ wages in real terms.  With inflation and the current low returns on savings, wages should be increased – not frozen. Also this proposal would affect women, many of whom work in minimum wage retail jobs, disproportionately – so it would be sexist.

Let’s see whether Labour, which as the Bishops rightly said is “beguiled by money”, caves into Mr Frost’s ludicrous demands.

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