One of Scotland’s most prominent family firms is spending more than £1 million to help its entire workforce cope with the cost-of-living crisis.
Allied Vehicles Group, which is based in Possilpark in north Glasgow, is giving each of their nearly 600 staff a pay rise – a gesture that will cost the firm £1.25 million this year.
Pay for all employees will rise on a sliding scale weighted towards those who are lower paid.
Managing Director Peter Facenna said the move was a major investment in the company’s people after the pandemic, Brexit, the war in Ukraine and the resulting rampant inflation.
Every Allied employee will receive a pay rise this month, with the lowest paid seeing an increase of 10%, and higher paid staff half of that. The Real Living Wage, to which Allied is already committed, will also rise by 10.1% to £10.90 per hour.
Around two-thirds of the workforce will be given a minimum increase of 7.69%, and 43% of the workforce a rise of between 9% and 10%.
“This is a massive vote of confidence in all our staff who have shown tremendous mettle through the difficulties of the past couple of years”, said Peter.
“The triple whammy of Brexit, Covid-19, and the war Ukraine was bad enough, but the knock-on effects, including a shortage of new vehicles, rising energy costs, and rampant, double-digit inflation, have hit everyone really hard”.
“We were unable to source all the vehicles we needed to produce our specialised wheelchair accessible models and were losing money at the start of our financial year because of the shortage”.
“Our people stayed with us throughout, but like everyone else they and their families were suffering through rising energy costs and overall inflation.
“We have managed to source some vehicles to get our vehicle manufacturing going again, so we decided we had to do something to help our loyal workforce”.
“We came up with a sliding scale weighted towards lower paid staff, to ensure that everyone gets a rise. Every single person will receive a pay increase this month”.
Peter added, “The pay rise isn’t simply a one-off. It’s an ongoing commitment from the company that will impact on our wage bill going forward, but if we can help our people we feel it’s well worth it”.
