She argued that calls for living wages were simultaneously being localised through specific campaigns to establish living wages in particular sites of employment (such as Homerton Hospital, and Queen Mary, University College London) and globalised through campaigns on labour standards in global supply chains. This latter point resonated strongly with Impactt’s work which covers assessing the labour standards of agency workers in the UK as well as factory/farmworkers across China, Asia Pacific, the Middle East and North Africa.      

The lecture raised some challenging questions about our society given that some workers are unable to sustain themselves whilst working 40 or more hours per week. A person earning the UK minimum wage would have to work for just over fifty years to earn the amount of Sir Fred Goodwin’s annual pension.  A sobering thought we think.