Edinburgh Fair Work Action Group

About us

The Edinburgh Fair Work Action Group is a collaboration of employers, public sector bodies, trade unions, social enterprises, and business organisations, all committed to the promotion of Fair Work.

The group originally formed as the Edinburgh Living Wage City Action Group in 2020 in response to the Edinburgh Poverty Commission’s work. This highlighted the need for urgent action to reduce the number of residents experiencing in-work poverty in the city.

The Action Group worked together to set out an Action Plan to outline what we wanted to achieve for the city and how we intended to get there. A core target of this plan was to reach 900 accredited businesses in Edinburgh in 2025.

In 2024, we widened our remit to cover all aspects of Fair Work, becoming the Edinburgh Fair Work Action Group. This was in response to the recognition that reducing in-work poverty requires changes across a wide range of areas including wages, security of hours, flexibility of working arrangements and progression opportunities.

Our aims

The Edinburgh Fair Work Action Group aims to:

• support more Edinburgh employers to understand and adopt Fair Work practices,
• reduce the number of Edinburgh workers earning below the living wage, and increase the number who experience fair work,
• make a critical contribution to the city’s goal to End Poverty by 2030.
• increase the number of employers in the city with Fair Work accreditations including Living Wage, Living Hours, Living Pensions and BCorp.

Our actions

The group does this by taking co-ordinated action to reach our targets by:

• learning about the Fair Work landscape in Edinburgh,
• promoting and encouraging Fair Work practices within Edinburgh employers,
• celebrating employers who have committed to the Fair Work movement including accreditations such as the Living Wage and BCorp,
• responding to national consultations and calls for views to raise the profile of Fair Work.

For example, we recently submitted a response to the UK Government’s consultation on the Pathways to Work: Reforming Benefits and Support to Get Britain Working Green Paper. You can see more of our consultation responses and minutes from our latest meetings here.