Campaigners calling on all top-flight clubs to pay the living wage in the wake of its bumper £5.3bn domestic TV deals have expressed disappointment with the reaction of the Premier League following a meeting this week.
A delegation of Citizens UK members who have been working on a campaign to persuade football clubs to commit to paying the living wage met Premier League executives on Thursday and delivered a Change.org e-petition that had reached 65,000 signatures.
But the campaigners said the league’s response was inadequate. While the organisation is believed to pay the living wage to all its own staff, it remains reluctant to seek accreditation as a living wage employer.
The league also feels unable to take a position on trying to persuade its 20 members to adopt the living wage because it maintains that employment matters should be handled solely by its individual clubs.
Chelsea remain the only top-flight club to have been accredited as a living wage employer, guaranteeing all its contracted and non-contracted staff receive the London minimum of £9.15 an hour. Outside London, living wage employers guarantee to pay at least £7.85 an hour.
Several clubs including Manchester City, West Ham and Everton are believed to be engaging with Citizen UK members and the Living Wage Foundation over adopting the standard for directly employed staff.
The refusal of Richard Scudamore, the Premier League’s chief executive, to promise to persuade clubs to pay the living wage the morning after announcing its £5.1bn live domestic rights deal with Sky and BT became a lightning rod for criticism. “At the end of the day there’s a thing called the living wage but there’s also a minimum wage, and politicians do have the power to up that minimum wage. That’s entirely for the politicians to do, that’s not for us to do,” he told the BBC following the announcement of the record TV deal. David Lammy, the MP for Tottenham, responded that Scudamore should feel ashamed of not backing the Living Wage campaign.
Before the Premier League unveiled the £5.1bn domestic live deal, the BBC had already agreed to pay £204m to retain the rights to highlights from 2016-17 to 2018-19. Once income from international sales is added, the total is expected to top £8.5bn.
Martin Wroe, a vicar and writer from London who chaired the meeting with the Premier League, has estimated that there are approximately 40,000 workers within the Premier League currently working below the living wage. “With the recent announcement of a TV deal of £5.1bn it seems unjust that the Premier League can’t encourage the clubs to adopt the living wage or at least themselves become an accredited living wage employer,” he said.
“This campaign is not about bashing clubs about their high-paid stars, it’s about lifting the floor to ensure those at the bottom are not forced into poverty because the clubs continue to pay wages too low to allow for a decent standard of living.”
Campaigners are expected to step up their campaign to target specifically clubs such as Arsenal that have so far refused to engage and encourage those who have shown an interest to become fully accredited for all full-time and contracted staff.
Sophie Stephens, the lead organiser on the Citizens UK living wage football campaign, said: “We hope by the end of the season we will have more than just one living wage champion in the Premier League and we envisage a future where the living wage is the norm in football. “But this takes courage, demonstrated by Chelsea, and we are calling now on all the clubs to show their true colours by stepping up to the plate and working to lift low-paid staff out of working poverty.”
