Glasgow Living Wage – Thank You Event

As a thank you for our continued commitment to paying the Glasgow Living Wage the B-DACS team were not only invited to attend a Thank You Event at the City Chambers in Glasgow our Director Diane was asked to make a speech about how signing up to the Glasgow Living Wage has benefited our company.

Linzi our Office Manager and Cheryl our Business Development Manager attended the event alongside Diane to show our support for the Glasgow Living Wage.

The event was opened with a welcome by Councillor Gordon Matheson CBE, Leader of Glasgow City Council where he thanked all attendees for not only their commitment to paying the Living Wage however for creating jobs, opportunities and developing the skills of the people of Glasgow. He added how enormously important this is to the well being of the people of Glasgow and reflected on the type of City that Glasgow is, a City which makes things and always has, a confident City with a strong sense of pride.

Glasgow City Council were the first council to sign up to the Living Wage in 2009. The City of Glasgow has really paved the way in embracing the Living wage and now has over 350 Employers signed up to paying the Living Wage as they believe in a fair days work for a decent pay which has more than doubled this year alone. Those 350 employers employ 80,000 employees meaning Glasgow are tackling the current household poverty issues felt across the length and breadth of the country making Glasgow the largest Living Wage City in Scotland. Did you know that the majority of households who live in poverty at least 1 adult is in full time employment?

Next to speak was our Director Diane who discussed how B-DACS felt it was important to keep the family values the company was founded on along with having an ethical business model and when we discovered the Glasgow Living Wage a few years back felt it was the right thing to do. Diane went onto describe how at B-DACS we reward for attitude as we know we can train the skills for the roles. Diane advised that she believes the Glasgow Living wage has contributed to us having the workforce we have today, in the past three years we have tripled the turnover, tripled the staff we employ and kept healthy profits and good cash flow. Diane finished with saying that our people are our assets and we believe by paying a fair and reasonable wage we get a good honest days work.

During the event we also heard from Janette McAllister the MD at McAllister Litho who are a printing company based in Glasgow. Janette has recently introduced the Glasgow Living Wage at the start of the summer after a pay review and has quickly seen the benefits both in terms of morale within the workforce and also absence and sickness levels.

Last to speak was the Chief Executive of the Glasgow Chamber of Commerce Stuart Patrick who discussed the challenges that many companies face in introducing the living wage especially in retail, hospitality and care sectors and this could be through a number of reasons one of which included high property costs. Many of the Chamber members have reported that by paying the Living Wage it would have an impact on the staff benefits that they currently provide such as bonuses, life cover and health benefits. Therefore Stuart Patrick highlighted that there was still a lot of work to do to help companies which have these challenges.

If you would like to find out more about the Glasgow Living Wage and how it could benefit your business, you can find more information at www.glasgowlivingwage.co.uk