The UK's first Green Party led council, Brighton and Hove, pay all staff the living wage, including home carers working for contractors. The council's pay multiple - the difference between the highest paid and the average wage - has been reduced to 6.1:1 - see http://www.brighton-hove.gov.uk/content/council-and-democracy/council-finance/senior-officers-pay. We need progress like this in the north-west too, so MEP candidate Laura Bannister is working with campaign groups in Greater Manchester to write an open letter to the heads of all local councils, to pressurise them to take action on pay inequality. The letter and all responses will be available to see here.
Our MEP in London, Jean Lambert, has written to the heads of the UK's one hundred biggest companies, urging them to pay a living wage. See http://shareaction.org/blog/201110/why-i-support-living-wage to read about some of the responses she received, and http://www.theguardian.com/society/2012/nov/05/living-wage-adopted-government-boris for an example of how this idea is starting to go mainstream.
The Young Greens have launched a campaign to get fair pay on university campuses, where currently the highest paid earn over 18 times the pay of on-campus catering workers and cleaners. See http://younggreens.org.uk/news/2014/03/19/week-of-action.
In November 2014 we wrote to the leaders of the 10 Greater Manchester local authorities urging them to reduce the pay gap and ensure that all council contract workers are paid the Living Wage - see the letter here http://northwest.greenparty.org.uk/campaigns/fair-pay-letter.html
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