A 6.2% boost. One of Boris Johnson's first decisions after winning the British legislative elections in mid-December was to raise the minimum wage. From April, it will increase to 8.72 pounds an hour, or 10.26 euros. Crossing a symbolic milestone, it will exceed for the first time the French hourly minimum wage, which is at 10.15 euros gross. "And it will go up to 10 pounds (11.67 euros)"added Mr. Johnson on Tuesday January 14, without specifying the date by which this objective must be reached.
It is not a political coup on the part of the British Prime Minister, just a continuation of the approach of his predecessors. In July 2015, George Osborne, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, was facing the explosion in the number of working poor: those who, despite a job, are unable to make ends meet. For this father of austerity, this posed a paradoxical problem: more and more people at work were receiving social assistance, of which he was precisely seeking to reduce the envelope. Osborne therefore decided to make a major economic shift, promising a large increase in minimum income in the medium term. "Britain must move in the next five years from an economy with low wages and high taxes and social assistance, to higher wages, and lower taxes and social assistance", he explained. Objective: to reach a minimum wage at 60% of the British median wage by 2020. Successive Conservative governments have kept their word since, since 2015, the country's minimum wage has increased by a third.
A profound change in approach
To avoid over-politicizing the debate, its level is delegated to the Low Pay Commission, an independent body, which checks that it has no negative impact on employment. In October, the company proposed a 6.2% increase, which will hit exactly 60% of the median wage. Johnson only accepted this recommendation, like his predecessors.
For the United Kingdom, this is a major change in approach. The minimum wage was not created until 1998 by Tony Blair, then Prime Minister. At the time, faced with employers' complaints, it was set very low, around 46% of the median salary. Only 200,000 people were paid at this threshold. Today 1.6 million Britons touch it. The system is differentiated according to age: the minimum income at full rate only applies to people over 25 years of age. For the youngest, different categories (16-17 years, 18-20 years, 21-24 years) provide lower amounts.
