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

Some job rolls that require entry level qualifications are only paid 0.60p to £1 above minimum wage now. Because it's slightly above minimum wage and so business owners, think that's acceptable. It's not.

Top band 5 for NHS is £34581 bottom band 6 is £35392. What would be incentive of going up to a band 6 with all of the responsibility that entails if band 5 pay was uplifted?

They uplifted bottom of scale pay for teachers but not the top.

Not at our charity there isn't. We have around 50 employees, and a similar number of volunteers. No one earns much and the head of the charity earns nothing at all. Our main expense is wages. Any rise in NMW means redundancies and brings the whole charity close to bankruptcy.

Actually I hadnt realised how much this was, so for comparison a newly qualified SW in a good LA paying a good starting wage is on around £16ph

Theres no way that should be comparable with someone stacking shelves or moving trollies.

Same here I earn £14.40 per hour after years of training and experience, often dealing with difficult people day in day out.

The problem is not everybody gets an uplift, so the 'skilled' jobs get fewer as why be a headchef when the sous chef gets the same salary for less stress.

I'm near the £15 value for a strategy role, I'll be immediately applying for a basic admin position if they're £15 an hour, my role surely wouldn't increase the difference so I'm not dealing with that extra stress and expectation to work into the night for nmw

Switzerland is a good example. They have a very good level of minimum wage but it is hideously expensive to live there. We have relatives over there and went to visit, by god it cost us a fortune to eat out and buy food.

My lovely Mum is 70 next month and still works FT as a carer on NMW and whilst I totally agree it is not as simple as what you are saying. I have been a Nurse for 20 odd years and have worked my way up the banding. If you uplift the bottom you have to uplift all the bandings and tiers within it as the difference between them marginal. It will therefore cost the NHS ££££££ to implement and I cannot see that happening any time soon. But don't get me started on the billions spent paying private agency workers and their owners 😡

The starting pay for a doctor is about £14 meaning their wages will have to be raised as well- how are the government going to afford this? I think its unlikely labour would actually raise NMW

Hasn't Labour said they are increasing to an actual living wage? I'm sure I read it somewhere

Companies also shouldn't be allowed to pay out to shareholders while their staff are dependent on tax payer funded benefits because their wages are too low to live on.

This is interesting.

But higher wages wouldn't solve this. Landlords would just put the rent up.

I don't have the answer but the answer lies in bringing the cost of items down not in bringing wages up.

In a cafe, if everyone was on £15, the food would rise. The head waitress would want more than the new waitress, the cook more than the cleane, so prices would rise.

Whatever minimum wage is is what the poorest workers in society are on. Everyone else would get an uplift.

What people earn is less of the issue thsn what people have to pay for basics such as utilities, housing etc

I'm on a low wage. Everytime wages increase cost of living rises and UC goes down so I never improve my actual real situation.

Putting wages up only works if other costs don't rise alongside.

Unfortunately, increasing NMW on its own isn't enough.

I've always been a NMW earner and honestly, I'm no better off now than I was a few years ago when NMW was £8.50. I pay more tax and NI and the cost of living has increased significantly.

Honestly, when they announced the last wage rise, my response was "ffs", because I knew, that means an increase again in tax and NI, an increase in my supermarket shop, an increase in bills etc. The cost of raising the NMW is always passed onto the consumer.

Don't get me wrong, I don't know what the answer to the problem actually is, but it definitely isn't raising NMW alone

I agree.

I keep seeing all these jobs ads where employers ask for a fair amount of experience/skills and a long list of duties that one person is supposed to take on for very low pay in return.

Certainly not a salary that would not give anyone any kind of a decent living...

Charities, social care, schools, civil service, retail, hospitality, arts, libraries...all the sectors got used to paying peanuts for admin and frontline staff while people at the top make a lot of money.

There is a cost to us all as well become the tax payer also ends up having to contribute to prop up these low wages through benefits. That's a really perverse system.

There are too many inequalities now in the job market and that needs to be redressed.

But of course another big issue is the cost of living: utility bills and housing costs in this country are completely disproportionate to how much most people earn...

UC reduces by 45p for every extra pound you earn so there's no "big chunk" that you lose, it's very straightforward. There's no limit to hours you can work on UC.

The answer is housing reform not endlessly increasing wages and UC trying to keep up.

Please note that I said "original tax credits" which was a transparent system and you knew exactly what you got. No surprise bills for over payments etc. I haven't claimed UC but colleagues do and complain about losing big chunks of money if they work a couple of extra hours etc.
The point I was making is that it's the government that needs to look at this because NMW is just sending costs out of control.

Desirable in theory, but would cause big problems with care homes and nurseries in particular where the costs are driven by hours of minimum wage labour. If you think that private school parents have been kicking up a fuss recently, can you imagine the screams on here if nursery bills leapt by a third? (Assuming wages make up two thirds of nursery overheads and would be increasing by 50%).

Much of that cost would need to be paid for by the state as well, in the form of LA care home costs or UC childcare costs.

I'll leave Rachel Reeves to work out what's manageable.

Well I don’t know what the answer is but if increasing the NMW means fewer working people needing the state to subsidise them via UC then that is a good thing.

I think companies of a certain size or that earn a certain amount of profit or cash or something should be forced to pay their staff more. Smaller companies should then apply for government support to pay their staff more. So essentially raising the NMW but companies who can’t afford to pay it get subsidised, not people. Probably isn’t workable though and would be open to lots of fraud!

Working people should not be receiving UC top ups to fund corporate greed.

Also agree with PP that costs should be looked at too.

Agreed

Yes higher wages should be an aim for the government.

Two working parents should be able to afford average rent and bills. London is difficult as housing costs are so high, but something needs to be addressed if two working adults can't afford a modest life.

i earn less than £15 per hour and i am fairly senior in my role
there would be cut backs