HARD-PRESSED retail and hospitality workers bearing the brunt of the Christmas rush deserve the real living wage, the Scottish Greens demanded yesterday.

Low pay and insecure work has long been endemic in the sectors, with young workers often paid just the £10-an-hour minimum wage for under-21s, rather than the real living wage of £13.45 and zero-hours contracts.

Scottish Greens MSP Lorna Slater said: “Without hospitality and retail workers Christmas would be very different. Yet it is the very same workers who face the injustice of low pay for maximum effort.

“All too often they are expected to accept poor working conditions, zero-hour contracts and minimal opportunity to question bad practice without fear of losing their jobs.

“It is time for us to finally see hospitality and retail workers being treated better by their employers and the UK government. It is time for these workers to be paid a fair wage.”

Arguing that it was the workers themselves who would deliver that change, Unite Hospitality chairman Nick Troy told the Star: “Hospitality workers are a critical component of the contemporary Scottish economy, contributing £7-8 billion every year. 

“It’s only right that should be reflected properly in our pay packets as well as our conditions in work. That means job security, improved health and safety, and safe transport home for late-night workers.

“But we’ve learned already through government failure to implement health and safety and basic employment law in our sector that its not going to come from the top down and it’s something we’ve going to have to demand and fight for in every workplace.

“It’s going to be a unionised hospitality workforce that’s going to change that and not the whims and statements of politicians.”