His announcement, that a Labour government would increase the minimum wage to £8 an hour by 2020, did produce a flurry of interviews with assorted Mancunian youth, working in fast food chains, all saying that yes, £8 would be better than £6.50 (the minimum wage as of the end of October '14). It was 'not good enough' fumed Miliband, that one in five people in the UK were on low pay. His proposed increase would be higher than the rate of inflation.
The current inflation rate (August) is 1.5 percent. Miliband's raises will be higher. But every Economist and certainly every low paid worker knows that a percentage increase, even one slightly higher than our currently record low inflation figure, but that starts from a very low pay baseline, is guaranteed to amount to peanuts.
Miliband's legal minimum wage - will rise by 30p an hour each year for the next five years. (Of course this legal minimum is only one of the 'legal minimums.' If you are forced to take a full time working apprenticeship you are on a 'legal minimum' of under £3 per hour.) But just in case this lurch to the left by the worker's friend, Miliband, worries the bankers, shadow Chancellor Balls will announce today that Child Allowance will be frozen for years.
Who are these people?
On October 18 we must march against austerity among other things to make sure that the TUC stands by its policy of £10 an hour for the minimum wage today!
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