Madam,

Liz Saville Roberts, Dwyfor Meirionnydd’s hard-working MP and Leader of Plaid Cymru in Westminster, is backing the Living Wage campaign (Cambrian News, 18 November, ‘MP supports Living Wage scheme’). As apparently does the Plaid Cymru-led Gwynedd Council, offering £7.9024 an hour (for the 37-hour working week) to its most poorly paid employees, compared to the Minimum Wage rate of £7.5000 an hour. The weekly wage for the worst-off Gwynedd Council workers is therefore £292.39 (37 times x 7.9024).

But wait! The Minimum Wage, which is seen as the minimum necessary, is £300 per week!

How can this be? It is because Gwynedd has divided its below-par weekly wage rate of only £292.39 by 37 hours, the length of the working week at the council. But the Minimum Wage calculations envisage a working week of 40 hours. (40 times 7.5 = 300)

Plaid’s deal for its worst-paid workers is ‘Work fewer hours but live below the weekly Living Wage’. On a weekly, and indeed on an annual basis, Plaid Cymru-led Gwynedd Council is paying its least-well-off workers less than the necessary minimum to sustain life itself adequately. As their work for Gwynedd continues, their lives are deteriorating week by week - not being properly supported - because Gwynedd is paying them less than their very lives require.

The self-same shortfall occurs at the annual level. Gwynedd pays £15,246. The Minimum Wage is £15,600.

The little improvements Gwynedd offers per hour to its workers are not enough to make pay come to as much as the Minimum Wage pays over the week.

This penny-pinching, exploitative sleight of hand by Gwynedd can be seen in its true perspective when we realise that the average per capita income in the UK, the amount every man woman and child would receive if the national income were divided out equally, is £31,855. Even the median (the measure which is at the exact middle of the spread of incomes (and used, I fear, by clever economists to gloss over our country’s inequality) is £21,000!

I have no doubt that the extremely conscientious and caring Liz Savillie-Roberts has Gwynedd’s Plaid Council in her sights. To secure the necessary basic £300 per week, Gwynedd should be paying £8.108 for each of the 37 hour of the working week.

Yours etc,

Ian MacIntyre, Shelbourne Court, St John’s Hill, Barmouth.

Have your say on the local issues affecting you - email [email protected] or join in the conversation on our Facebook page