The CWU which included Capita employees protested against the company today, after they announced they would no longer be paying wages based on the cost of living.
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00:00 Hi, my name's Sam and I went to the CWU protest today which was against Capita
00:07 going against real living wage. Whilst there I spoke to employees of Capita as
00:12 well as local councillors for their reaction to the news.
00:17 So we're here at Indian Mill protesting Capita. They made a promise to pay
00:27 their staff the living wage. They made that promise two years ago. They've gone
00:30 back on that promise. That they can afford it, their staff deserve it and we
00:36 in Labour support staff, employees, hard workers being properly for a hard day's work.
00:43 I'm really hopeful that this will get the message across and doubt it because
00:54 at the end of the day, absolute influence, like Capita, are all about profits for
01:00 their shareholders and sadly the workers come second.
01:06 What do you think the Chief Executive's reaction to this will be? Do you think he'll be kind of understanding?
01:12 No, not really. No, not really at all.
01:17 They will be of the opinion. They're paying the going rate, end of. Any further
01:24 implications, they're not really interested.
01:29 So as one of the unions that represent workers within Capita, we're just doing a
01:42 small protest today because the Capita CEO, the new Capita CEO, was supposedly
01:48 here today. So this is just the start of the campaign.
01:53 So we just wanted to get a message over to him from the union and also
02:00 councillors, prominent political figures, that it's not acceptable for a company that awards its CEO a £1.6 million
02:11 bonus but isn't willing to pay the real living wage to those workers on the
02:16 front line who are generating the profits that enable them to walk away with that big fat bonus.
02:21 Capita are a huge firm. The cost of this rise would be I believe around £10 million
02:33 and it's something that any responsible company should be able to plan for, be
02:39 able to manage for and in the end the strength of any company is its workers
02:43 and if it's not supporting its workers then it's not in the end supporting its
02:47 customers. Do you think this will act as kind of a deterrent to work for companies
02:51 like Capita in the future if they continue to go against the real living
02:55 wage? Well I would just hope that most companies, I believe most companies do
02:59 actually recognise the importance of paying their employees properly, the
03:03 value that they get out of that if they employ their staff properly, the value
03:08 that they deliver to their customers if they do that well and therefore the
03:12 benefits of paying proper wages. I hope we don't have to do this sort of thing
03:16 again.