Multimillionaire boss of Next slams Living Wage campaign: '£6.70-an-hour enough to live on'

Tory peer Lord Wolfson, worth an estimated £112million, criticised those calling for firms to pay staff a Living Wage, set at £7.85 across the country and £9.15 in London

The Tory peer boss of fashion giant Next was slammed yesterday for claiming its £6.70-an-hour pay was “enough to live on”.

Lord Wolfson said the salary – just 3% above the minimum wage – was a decent amount for “a lot” of its staff.

He is worth an estimated £112million and earns a basic salary of £350 an hour.

Critics slammed his comments which came on the day Next announced its annual profits were up 12.5% to £782million.

Mick Rix, of the GMB union, called him “an out-of-touch arrogant hypocrite”.

Lord Wolfson criticised those calling for firms to pay staff a Living Wage, set at £7.85 across the country and £9.15 in London.

He said: “A living wage for a student is different for someone supporting a family. I think there are a lot of people for whom £6.70 is enough to live on.”

Lord Wolfson also said the clothing chain had 30 applicants for every job advertised and claimed increasing wages would prevent it opening more stores.

TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady said: “First a Conservative Chancellor tells families they’ve never had it so good.

"Then a Conservative lord tells his workers that poverty pay is good enough for them.”

Luke Hildyard, of the High Pay Centre, said: “Lord Wolfson sounds dangerously like a pub bore sounding off without knowing what they’re talking about.”

Rhys Moore, director of the Living Wage Foundation, said: “Thousands of Next’s staff need to claim benefits just to make ends meet. Very profitable companies are, in effect, receiving a taxpayer subsidy.”

Next’s £6.70-an-hour starting pay applies to workers aged 21 and over.

But it said once bonuses were taken into account, the average staff pay was £7.24, or 11% above the minimum wage.

The Government this week announced plans to increase the minimum wage to £6.50. Lord Wolfson pledged to increase Next’s minimum pay at the same time.

The Mirror revealed in November last year how Next was offering hundreds of jobs to Polish workers weeks before ­advertising them in Britain.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/lord-wolfson-next-living-wage-5367964

Another Tory who wants to keep his foot on the neck of the poor and step on them. In fact, because he only pays minimum wage, most of his workers will be getting working tax credit, so his business is being funded by taxpayers.

perhaps they shopuld tax him at 99% or so....since £6.70 is "enough"

Sounds like a plan to me!

what an idiot he is.

Bless him. He's forgotten what the real world looks like.