John Lewis faces staff petition over ‘poverty wages’

A petition demanding the Real Living Wage (RLW) for John Lewis Partnership employees has garnered over 30,000 signatures.

The petition which was launched on Organise Network has stated that one in five partners are paid below the RLW, which is currently £9.50 across the UK and £10.85 in London.

It added: “Without a living wage, full-time workers who are paid by the hour struggle financially and part-time workers with fewer hours struggle even more.

“Yet the Partnership says that we “cannot afford” to pay all partners the Real Living Wage – even though hundreds of partners at the highest levels are paid salaries of £100,000 or more.”

The petition noted that many partners are paid “poverty wages”, something those petitioning feel is “insulting” after many worked throughout the pandemic, “all keeping the business going”.

However, it added that the John Lewis Partnership has revealed it intends to pay RLW “when profits are high enough”, but that there was no date set for when this might be.

According to CityAM, a spokesperson for John Lewis said: “Our average hourly rate of pay for all non-management partners across the Partnership is £10.32, which is above the current Real Living Wage for the majority of the UK.”

This comes after the business was ‘named and shamed’ in a government list of employers found to be paying staff below the legal minimum wage.

It revealed that the breaches took place between 2011 and 2018 but expressed that not all minimum wage underpayments were intentional. However, the investigation pointed out that it has “always been the responsibility of all employers to abide by the law”.

Other businesses in the list included McColl’s, One Stop, The Body Shop, Pret a Manger, Sheffield United Football Club and Welcome Break.

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