Bankers at HSBC have threatened to strike with immediate effect unless significant progress is made during talks with the Board of Directors regarding their demands for an increase to the Chelsea Living Wage. This comes after the bank announced they will be introducing the London Living Wage of £8.30 per hour for all ancillary staff working in the capital, a move which will lift many cleaners and kitchen assistants out of poverty.
The credit crunch and increases in the taxation on bonuses have seen many bankers’ overall remuneration packages fall in the last couple of years, and while ingenious accounting practices have allowed the effects to be minimised, HSBC staff living in Chelsea are struggling to make ends meet. Indeed a report from GLA Economics suggests an hourly wage rate of 855 per cent above the National Minimum Wage is required in Chelsea to keep bankers comfortably in Lamborghinis and yachts.
Mayor Boris Johnson is campaigning for an increase after finding out many of his friends living in SW3 were feeling the pinch. “At a time when London’s economy could do with a boost, a group of our fellow citizens are helpless as they watch top-end shops on their high street being replaced with merely high-end ones. Two Ferrari dealerships have been wound up in the last six months alone and yet I notice the Evening Standard has no plans to establish a Dispossessed of Chelsea Fund.”
Local resident Margaret Williams, 42 from Carlyle Square, has seen at first-hand the scale of the problem after reopening an old soup kitchen to hand out truffle burgers to a number of needy local bankers and their families. “It really is shameful that this can be allowed to happen in this day and age. The Cohens up the road don’t know where to turn and have reluctantly decided to rent out their third garage for £3000 per month.”
The Mayor continued, “These bankers are not asking HSBC for any more than they need to continue living in the opulence to which they have become accustomed. It is simply inhumane to leave them as they are, struggling to keep the wolf from the front door of their five-floor Victorian mansions. One chap I know at HSBC is so strapped for cash he’s had to trade in his Chelsea tractor for an actual tractor. The half-mile school run will never be the same again.”
