CWU protest against Capita going against the Real Living Wage
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.