Alex Sobel, Parliamentary Candidate for Leeds NW, has joined Yorkshire’s Labour MPs to express concern at falling wages and the over-reliance of the region’s jobs market on temporary work.
Annual real wages in Leeds North West have fallen by a mind boggling 17% – or more than £5300 – in the last three years. This is one of the very highest percentage falls in the entire Yorkshire and the Humber region.
Real-term wages in the Yorkshire and Humber region as whole are now almost £2000 lower than they were in 2010, and well over 1 in 5 workers are earning less than the living wags [£7.65 per hour].
Alex says
‘While I welcome recent small falls in the overall unemployment figures, Labour has highlighted that 800,000 people – one in three workers in Yorkshire – are in part-time or temporary work. Worse still are the growing numbers in zero hour contracts who have no guarantueed hours of work week to week.
More than a third say they’re only doing temporary work because they cannot find a permanent position.
Then there is the problem of the long-term unemployed.
Labour’s compulsory jobs guarantee would take 220 people in Leeds North West out of long-term unemployment, by offering them a proper full-time job which is a proper alternative to the Coalition’s workfare where the long-term unemployed work for their benefits pumping up the profits of the employers.’
Adel and Wharfedale Branch 