Waterstones Staff Are Demanding to Be Paid The Living Wage

Waterstones staff are demanding to be paid the living wage. Management say the company can’t afford it but an investigation by Corporate Watch published today has found:

• Waterstones’ new owner – US hedge fund Elliot Advisors – has set up an offshore financing scheme that could see it make £17 million a year from the bookseller.
• Managing director James Daunt’s £1.6 million pay packet is over 100 times more than staff on the minimum wage receive.
• Elliott Advisors is a notorious ‘vulture fund’, chasing the debts of crisis-hit countries like Argentina. It is run by Paul Singer, a US billionaire and major conservative donor who has funded Donald Trump, George W Bush and the Koch brothers.

In short, Waterstones sums up capitalism in Britain today: billionaire owners and millionaire executives living off a workforce on poverty wages.

Click here to read the full investigation.

Meanwhile, cleaners, security guards, catering staff and other workers at the University of London are campaigning to be directly employed by the university, rather than through outsourcing companies.

University management says it cannot afford the extra costs that would involve. But a Corporate Watch investigation found:

• the university has substantial cash reserves, with £45 million in the bank.
• financial problems used by management to argue against in-housing have been a direct result of their own expansion strategy.
• many of the staff at the consultancy chosen to review the costs of in-housing used to work for outsourcing companies.
• the university has refused our Freedom of Information request for a copy of that review. Similar reviews by other universities found in-housing would not be significantly more expensive.

Click here to read the full report.

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