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Chris Key

How the Lib Dems can reach out to lower paid voters ignored by the Labour leadership

By Chris Key | Mon 12th December 2016 - 4:35 pm

 

This year’s revelations about Amazon and Sports Direct’s business practices have shown that even though we are in the year 2016 some companies still behave as if we were still in the Victorian age. As the Labour party drifts into an ocean of hard left anti-business irrelevance we in the Liberal Democrats have an opportunity to speak up for a better way forward.

In the area of low pay, many companies especially in the retail sector have taken advantage of the introduction of the living wage to chip away at other benefits. Take the example of Cafe Nero which took away the free panini from staff in response to the Living Wage.

Paying staff properly so that they do not have to take second jobs is good business sense. Making work pay reduces staff turnover and consequently recruitment costs as Costco found out in the US a few years ago.

We as a party should be calling for an expansion of the teams involved in enforcing regulations on pay and calling out companies who act in this way.

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