Barefoot bishop backs living wage

Wellington's barefooted Anglican Bishop Justin Duckworth has thrown his weight behind a campaign for a 'living wage', which has just been recalibrated at $19.25 an hour.

The new rate, adjusted up from $18.80 last year in line with the increase in average wages, is defined by its supporters as "the income necessary to provide workers and their families with the basic necessities of life".

About one-third of all Kiwi workers earned below the new rate, research leader Rev Charles Waldegrave of the Anglican Family Centre in Lower Hutt said.

Bishop Duckworth, the guest speaker at an event to launch the new calculation yesterday, said his diocese was committed to paying the living wage in all "diocesan entities" by later this year - although Anglican schools, aged care homes and social services such as the Wellington City Mission are not bound by the policy because they are independent entities.

"The City Mission are wrestling with this issue as well. Most of the diocese are wrestling with this issue," Bishop Duckworth said.

He has also made a personal commitment to base his own income on the living wage, although the issue is complicated because the church provides him with accommodation.

"I, like every high income earner, needs to reflect on their own personal commitment to supporting the living wage in their organisation, and therefore the appropriate policy that they might have in relation to their wage," he said.

The living wage was first set at $18.40 an hour in 2013 based on actual spending by couples with two children in the lower half of income earners. That spending was translated into an hourly rate that both parents would need to earn if one parent worked 40 hours a week and the other worked 20 hours.

Updates, to $18.80 last year and now to $19.25, have been based on simple percentage increases in average ordinary-time hourly earnings, keeping the living wage at 68.2 per cent of the gross average wage. Fuller spending-based reviews are planned every five years.

Mr Waldegrave said it would be unrealistic to raise the legal minimum wage to that level, but he said the living wage was meant as a voluntary "aspirational" target.

"If employers want to make sure the people working for them are taking home enough money to look after their families, they should be paying a living wage," he said.

"The key group we want to get are the ones that are using public money, which are the local authorities. They should be leading the trend, as has happened elsewhere."

Wellington City Council lifted all its 450 employees to the original living wage of $18.40 by last July but has not yet extended the policy to its council-controlled organisations and contractors, such as cleaners.

Auckland Mayor Len Brown proposed a living wage of $18.40 for his council staff before the 2013 council elections but the proposal has not yet been implemented.

* On the web: www.livingwage.org.nz

By Simon Collins of the New Zealand Herald

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