About half of British workers earn under £15 hour - new Living Wage?

Ah yes my maths was off, even more so you can see the issue then when you’re talking about those figures. It’s certainly not as simple as “raise the NNW”.

@Mrsttcno1

That’s simple and here’s an example:

Tesco’s

1 CEO
320,000 employees (roughly)

Lets say 250,000 of those are on NMW. You raise NMW to £15, so a £3 per hour increase.

250,000 people earning £3 more per hour, for 8 hour shifts, 5 days a week = £30,000,000

That’s £30 million more for 1 year. The CEO would need a hell of a pay rise to match that.

No, £30m is what it would cost per WEEK, not per year.

I run a small business and would struggle to increase wages but I support a higher minimum wage because above anything else the system is horribly biased against lower earners. They are stuck and it is very unfair. I'd rather be set if a society that is less brutal and less comfortable turning a blind eye to the realities of the system because the status quo suits them personally.

It should be £15 per hour. I’m sick of tax take subsiding in work benefits whilst big corporates pay staff too little to live on and if the workers are lucky, the state tops them up. I’m looking at you McDonalds. And just look at the profit they make and the dividends they pay.

Sure - so are you in favour of extending universal credit? Introducing universal basic income? Increasing tax on middle and high income earners to improve public services, with a focus on the needs of working class/lower income families?

Or would you pull levers such as capping private rental housing costs (rent control)? Or would you reduce the cost of living for the poorest by govt subsidizing or even just capping food and energy costs (tax burden will have to increase to pay for it sure, but putting money in the pockets of already wealthy preferred company shareholders, rather than the working poor, has to be paid for somehow, right)? (We saw how well that worked with the energy crisis)?

Because from where I’m sitting (as a middle income earner), something needs to change to help those least financially secure in our country. But it sounds like nobody (and I’m not singling you out - I am talking about posters on this thread in general- nobody wants to make any of the sacrifices necessary to pay for it…

which leads me back to my first point on page 2- which was that as far as middle class MN goes, the working poor can rot, for all they care. (Again not pointing a finger at this poster. Their post just initially precipitated this observation).

So £46 million in profit and 333,000 staff in total

@ageratum1 not all nurses work in hospitals doing night shifts! A nurse administering say chemotherapy should earn the same as someone on the til in B&M? Level of knowledge and responsibility are no where near the same are they?

And no - you don't get all sorts of enhancements and benefits. And yes the 1995 pension scheme was good - the 2015 not so good, many private pensions are now better as are teachers, police etc

I don’t think anybody wants people to be badly paid but the answer to reduce poverty is not a simple ‘put up minimum wage’.

Using the Tesco example, while the profit looks enormous, it’s only about a 2.5% net profit on its turnover. If it increased the pay to the vast majority of its workers without passing on the costs then it goes bust.

Companies also have to make enough profit to have sufficient cash flow to pay wages, taxes, utilities and suppliers etc as well as invest in maintenance of their buildings and equipment. Tesco are not just sat on piles of cash and running their hands together.

This has been super interesting.

Feels like lots of people think “some people just need to be badly paid/ poor” (“as long as it’s not me!”)

Im interested to know, of all the posters who say NMW shouldn’t be raised (and presumably believe that the state shouldn’t be topping up salaries with UC)- are you prepared to pay increased tax as a middle or high income earner, so that the poorest paid can have access to the best state provided housing, health and social care, education, public leisure facilities, libraries, parks, and so on, possible, and that they deserve?

This is surely the only possible compensation for these people who are taking those jobs that nobody else wants, that are keeping them trapped in a cycle of poverty, and that ultimately are leaving them with no opportunity to build assets and generational wealth, surely?

And if we all up sticks to better paid jobs there will be nobody to do the much needed job that I do. The vacancy will still be there and all children will suffer if it isn’t filled.

And TAs

As a TA I work the closest out of all staff with the children who have the most SEN, behaviour challenges and MH needs. I am left to deliver EHCPs, adapt lessons and the safety of children in a lot of need. I am the closest in line as regards the most challenging behaviour. The work I do enables classes to get on with their lessons without disruption.

I have a degree and several years teaching experience of my own yet I am paid less than those who work in Lidl.

I'm a childminder- my income is determined by pitifully low government funding from which I am then expected to fund my own lifestyle and equipment and activities to enrich the care of the children I have.
If NMW goes up would you expect me to keep my fees at the same low rate so more spare cash goes into your pocket?? Just curious of course.

Yes and No. If companies are forced to put wages up then they will only pass the costs onto consumers so items in the supermarket (for example) will get more expensive.

Best just to get a job which pays above NMW/Living wage and then you’re out of that and will have more money.

Look at the responsibility of say nursery workers, or care workers, particularly in homecare who are working unsupervised

Tesco annual profit £2.3 billion!

Is that your basic pay though? Don't nurses get all manner of pay enhancements for unsociable hours etc etc, sick pay, goldplated pension?
Also nurses are more generally respected than retail staff, and have the potential to earn a lot more as their career progresses

No because lower reversed will loose that extra in tax etc.
Raise the threshold instead

Some of the most stressful and hard jobs are the lowest paid. Being paid peanuts doesn't mean what you do is not important or valuable. Some of the lowest paid jobs are the most stressful ones. Carers etc.

Have you ever tried recruiting a senior role when you aren't able to pay to the market rate as your bosses are trying to save money? I have and it isn't easy. You can't find the people you want to do the job with thd right experience.
We had to offer the role as a 'development opportunity ' to get someone in on less money than the job was worth. The person was terrible and it was difficult and costly to let them go and replace them. By then, a certain amount of damage to business reputation had occurred.

A much better pension doesn't help with day to day living at the start of one's career. Nurses really don't earn as much as they should for the job they do and they have a lot of responsibilty. I certainly wouldn't stay in a job like that if I could get more in a less stressful job, where I could forget about it as soon as I finished for the day, no matter what my pension was.

As I said in an earlier post I am all for lifting the minimum wage, but you just can't lift it in one big chunk. People have told you time and time again that if the wage rose by that much then prices also rise so no-one ends up any better off, but you just can't seem to get it.

The post you quoted told you what they did. Honestly, if there were no businesses owned by someone, then what would the people who work for those businesses do to earn a living? Landowners also employ people. You really have a chip on your shoulder about anyone who has more than you have.

I agree with trying to lift people out of poverty, but have you calculated how much £15 an hour actually is?

Even if someone is only working 40 hours a week, that comes out as being more than £31,000 a year, which is an excellent salary.

If you're worried about poverty, your attention should be on people earning about half that.

The point is that if everyone on minimum wage is getting paid the same as nurses then the nurses will go off to other jobs where there is less stress and the work is easier - and how does that help anyone? You simply can't have people in basic skill level jobs being paid more than those who have invested in training, and who have jobs with a lot of responsibility.

For a minute I thougth you were a vicar! 😂