Oldham Council’s Town Hall Cinema tenant chooses to pay minimum wage rather than join OMBC’s higher paid living wage scheme

Oldham’s new Town Hall Cinema which is being built at a public expense of some £37 million has proven the point we predicted three years ago that it will create mainly minimum wage employment as positions are now being advertised paying between £5.76 and £7.20 per hour. It speaks volumes that Oldham Council’s much lauded old town hall cinema tenant, Odeon, although having had bespoke premises designed to their specifications have decided not to sign up to the council’s scheme of paying the “living wage” which is a minimum of £7.85 per hour. This is just another economic policy failure to add to the “Our House” bankruptcy and the £9 million the Council, as developers, will be paying to M&S to cover the fit out cost of the new store at Mumps in the town centre.

This summer the Odeon & UCI Cinema Group became foreign owned for the first time in its 100 year history when it was sold to AMC Entertainment, the US chain owned by Chinese conglomerate Dalian Wanda.