Sports field with goal posts and houses in the distance

Living Wage City Region action group 

Our campaign

Greater Manchester has been an accredited Living Wage city-region with the Living Wage Foundation since 2021. Our Living Wage Action Group is responsible for delivering the campaign’s key aims and targets. The group is chaired by Lou Cordwell, Chair of the Greater Manchester Business Board, and includes representatives from the public, private, and VCFSE sectors. Together, they work to ensure more people in the city region receive the real Living Wage and are offered living hours.

Key focuses

To focus efforts where they’re most needed, the Action Group has created three sub-groups targeting key areas of the Greater Manchester economy.

Localities

This group focuses on tackling low pay and job insecurity in areas where these issues are most severe, such as Tameside, Oldham, and Rochdale. These places have particularly high rates of low pay and need targeted action.

Hospitality and Retail

This group works to overcome barriers to engagement and develop strategies to improve pay and job security in the hospitality and retail sectors—key areas of focus for the campaign.

Health and social care

Building on previous success, this group continues to address low pay and insecurity in the health and social care sector, especially adult social care. While progress has been made, there is still a lot of work to do to address low pay and job insecurity.

Delivering good employment

The Action Group works in partnership with the Greater Manchester Good Employment Charter (external website), a voluntary membership and assessment scheme that aims to raise employment standards across the city region. Organisations of any size, sector, or location can sign up. The Charter outlines seven key characteristics of good employment, including payment of the real Living Wage.

By embedding the real Living Wage into its framework, the Charter directly supports the Living Wage campaign. This encourages more employers to adopt fair pay standards and helping build a more inclusive and sustainable economy.