LOW-WAGE work is the first step to a "poverty pay trap", a union has warned, after new research showed how many people were being priced out of the economy.
A survey of more than 2,000 workers earning £6.50 an hour or less showed that one-third cannot afford to shop where they work, and half did not know how much they would be paid from week to week.
The poll, for Unite, also revealed that most of those earning the minimum wage believed their employer could pay them more.
One-fifth of young minimum wage workers said they had been forced to turn to food banks in the past year.
Unite assistant general secretary Steve Turner said: "Government and business in this country are in danger of contriving a situation where hard work does not pay.
"Five million UK workers earn less than a living wage, consigned to an insecure income and increasingly shut out of the economy.
Many of these workers are employed in the shops and services that populate our high streets, yet they cannot afford to shop where they work."
"The crying shame is that low-wage work in this country is no longer the first rung on the employment ladder but actually the first step into a poverty pay trap."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article