Paddy Lillis – Usdaw General Secretary says: “The ongoing cost of living crisis is devastating for all workers, particularly the lowest paid who are often struggling in insecure employment. Skyrocketing prices, along with huge increases in energy and fuel costs, leave too many workers unable to make ends meet. Average household energy costs are set to rise by £500 per year in April, which amounts to a near trebling since last winter. So we need an increase in targeted support for low-income households and an end to rip-off prepayment meters. Labour is pledged to ratchet-up the windfall tax on hugely profitable energy companies to fund this additional much needed help.
 
“Short-term support with current cost of living pressures is crucial, but the Government needs to look at lasting solutions with a new deal for workers. This is because, at its heart, the cost of living crisis is a crisis of poor employment rights and low pay. We need a new deal that makes work pay, with an immediate £12 per hour minimum wage for all workers, regardless of age, as a step towards £15. Alongside this, we need an end to one-sided flexibility, with a ban on zero and short hours contracts to provide much needed security of employment and income. Labour will deliver a new deal for workers within the first 100 days of coming into government.
 
“Next month’s Budget is the last chance for the Sunak Government to show that they are on the side of working people, but we are not confident that this sleaze-ridden and incompetent Government will offer the change our members need. Usdaw will continue to mobilise for a general election because only Labour has the policies and ideas that can put the country back on track.”
 
Notes for editors:
 
Usdaw (Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers) is the UK's fifth biggest trade union with around 360,000 members. Most Usdaw members work in the retail sector, but the union also has many members in transport, distribution, food manufacturing, chemical industry and other trades.
 
Heart Unions’ week: www.tuc.org.uk/heartunions 13 to 19 February 2023 highlights the positive contribution that trade unions make in workplaces and across wider society.
 
Join Usdaw: www.usdaw.org.uk/Join-Us
 
Labour’s New Deal for Workers: www.usdaw.org.uk/LaboursNDW
 
For Usdaw press releases visit: http://www.usdaw.org.uk/news and you can follow us on Twitter @UsdawUnion