Sir, – I am both saddened and encouraged to see Ireland finally exploring the concept of living wages (Carl O'Brien, "The living wage", Weekend Review, September 27th). As a recently returned emigrant from Vancouver, Canada, where I was a living wage campaign organiser for the last five years, I have seen at first hand the negative consequences that increased low-wage poverty has on all members of society, not just the low paid.
We all lose out due to less money circulating in our local businesses, increased child poverty and homelessness, requiring more costly state supports and eroded community and civic bonds as more people work multiple jobs. This ultimately threatens our future prosperity; as the OECD has concluded, “failure to tackle poverty and exclusion . . . is not only socially reprehensible, but it will also weigh heavily on countries’ capacity to sustain economic growth in years to come”.
However, while working on the living wage campaign I was encouraged by the many local and international business I engaged with in Vancouver that recognised the value of paying a living wage and were willing to pay it to all their staff, including contracted service staff.
The US federal government and many local authorities in the UK are also coming up with innovative ways to ensure that no worker receives poverty pay on taxpayer-funded projects contracted to the private sector. There is no reason why the same can’t happen in Ireland. This makes sound economic sense; in 2009 Goldman Sachs reported that increasing the income of people with lower wages has a proportionately larger stimulating effect on the economy than increasing the income of those with high incomes. – Yours, etc,
MICHAEL McCARTHY,
Moygaddy,
Maynooth,
Co Meath.