Starbucks pledges living wage and interest-free housing loans to workers

Under George Osborne’s budget proposal, a new minimum wage for workers over 25 will be £7.20 an hour from April and could reach £9 an hour by 2020. The new wage rate would be set at 7.20 pounds an hour.

Starbucks, which now has a market capitalisation of $86.6bn (£56.9bn), has undertaken a number of social impact schemes through its United States outlets. Supervisors are getting £8.72 an hour, a 52p pay rise.

Those working in London will also get a premium although the level of this is yet to be announced.

Howard Schultz, chief executive of Starbucks, has previously claimed that said that the coffee chain, which boasts 22,000 stores worldwide serving 80 million customers a week, has become an agent of social and political change.

According to the Financial Times, the company will also begin offering its workers interest-free loans – repayable over 12 months – to help them put down rent deposits. After successfully launching the scheme with our own staff in 2013, it’s great to see that Starbucks are following suit and helping their staff to move home without worrying about how they’ll cover the cost.

“We know the cost of living is a key concern for many, with the average rental deposit in England now at £1,226. And with over half of our partners being under 25 years old, that rent affordability especially is an issue that affects them, ‘ Starbucks” EMEA president Kris Engskov said in a statement.

The scheme if the first of its kind to be launched by a private company in the United Kingdom, and the group has taken inspiration from housing charity Shelter which launched the loan for its own staff in 2013.

The first Starbucks opened in Seattle, Washington, on March 1971.

This could be at odds with Costa Coffee whose boss, Andy Harrison, said it planned “some selective price increases” to combat the increased cost of paying the Living Wage.