NMW to increase again next year to £12.21 ph.

Are you honestly throwing your toys out of the pram over people being paid better and maybe not struggling as much as a result?
Are you seriously saying that those that haven't trained in something deserve to be paid badly so you can feel better about your job/wage?

Ok then 🙄

Exactly- it’s 80p!

Indeed. I suspect those saying they would have to raise their prices etc would have done it anyway.

Nmw goes up every April. Why is everyone being so dramatic about this one

You'll be lucky to have a local pub if the budget goes as anticipated. NMW is all well and good, except the reality is the cost of everything goes up in response and we are not actually gaining as much as the government want you to think.

Tories increase NMW = good
Labour increase NMW - bad

A country that can’t pay its lowest paid a decent wage that keeps up with the col is already on its knees and a shit show.

This is a good point.

I got made redundant just before the second lockdown and worked in a supermarket for "the duration" and it was soul destroying. Boring beyond words. I had never thrown a sickie in my life, but did three in 2 years at that job just because I hated every single sodding boring boring boring second.

Now I am NMW in a pub doing my old job (but without the management bullshit) and love it. So no, it isnt just about the money.

Dh is planning to cut hours. He makes no profit as it is (manufacturing) and the NI and the MW increase is unaffordable. Yes, perhaps the company is destined to close anyway and he shouldn't be in business, but he's kept it hanging on to keep 20 staff in work, some of them have been there 40 years. I will be encouraging him to close the business. The most recent Tories were no help for small manufacturers and Labour are worse.

A typical band 6 was starting on £35k plus where I worked so that's the average household income and not far off twice the minimum wage.

I'd look for a new employer.

So do I. We have thread after thread on here about the squeezed middle and how people are finding it difficult to manage on £70k plus yet people begrudge some of the most vulnerable in society a small increase?

Their kids have to eat too fgs.

The disconnect is real.

I've just been looking at Civil Service pay grades, admin roles are very close to NMW, an admin officer who in HMRC has to know a hell of a lot about taxation laws is only earning £1k above annual NMW. I can remember when NMW was introduced, we had to have a pay increase as we were paid well below the legal amount.

covid proved that only a fraction of the population is required to run the essential services of society, the rest of the unnecessary businesses are expendable assets eg cinemas, fast food etc , .;

No, it will increase the benefits bill because jobs will go and unemployment will rise.

“Well, they have their minimum wage and queue enter… no jobs, zero wage, no innovation, no creativity, no ambition, so their community is now dead.”

There is little empirical evidence that minimum wage increases destroy communities, reduce innovation, or eliminate ambition.

“The wage before this increase wasn’t below subsistence, neither was the one before that or the one before and so forth.”

This assertion overlooks regional variations in the cost of living and the evolution of economic needs over time.

Minimum wage laws and welfare programs have, in fact, played significant roles in the growth of several economies by reducing poverty, increasing consumption, and promoting stability.

“Rhetoric is no substitute for reality.”
― Thomas Sowell

“One of the sad signs of our times is that we have demonized those who produce, subsidized those who refuse to produce, and canonized those who complain.”
― Thomas Sowell, The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy

No society, community or country ever grew by imposing minimum wage or dishing out welfare benefits.
Working is not slavery. It's ignorant to use that word in the way you have.
Most people don't stay on the wage they started for the rest of their lives. it will increase naturally but with a high minimum wage, they won't even get a leg on to the employment ladder and remain stuck on benefits.

The wage before this increase wasn't below subsistence, neither was the one before that or the one before and so forth.
Well, they have their minimum wage and queue enter..... no jobs, zero wage, no innovation, no creativity, no ambition so their community is now dead. They abandoned it in spite of the redeeming and clever minimum wage.

“It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.”
― Thomas Sowell

Upskilling or learning a new skill or trade that the market values is what creates wealth and independence. Politicians have instead killed industries, manufacturing and farming. Replacing them with welfare.

Great solution

And what will happen when you call the ambulance or police but nobody attends because they've all taken your advice?
Look at teaching for example - thousands have left the profession on the last few years and its a complete shit show getting worse every year. You want to do that with all the emergency services rather than increasing their wage slightly?

It's easy to be sniffy about people's main reason for working being money and not, what, job satisfaction or a lovely glowy feeling if you earn enough of it.....

Also you're deluded if you think most or even many paramedics are on anywhere like £70k plus, that is a tiny minority. But if paramedics aren't a good enough example for you try police officers or there's a poster upthread who is an experienced social worker presumably at the top of their LA banding still only earning £2.20 more than MW....

As opposed to playing into the hands of big and small businesses and poverty at the moment? Do you think low paid workers are ok or something?

Have you not heard about people in work using food banks and not being able to afford rent so having to live with their parents or in shared accomodation forever so they can never really start their lives? What are you arguing for?

Should low paid workers just live in poverty out of the goodness of their hearts to prop up the business owners forever? What exactly makes them so deserving of charity, slave labour and government subsidy?

Well said! It appears those supporting this wage increase don't even analyse at all.They're playing into the hands of big corporation, big business, wastage and poverty for the majority.

I predict on the back of this that lots of smaller businesses will fold, and lots of staff laid off in those that survive. If businesses have to increase wages, then they pass the cost to the consumer. Restaurants and cafes are already struggling because they’ve had to hike prices in line with gas and electric price increases, and decreasing footfall due to cost of living. I had half hoped that Labour might not do too much damage in the five year term they have, but I reckon at the rate they’re going, the country will be on its knees within a year. What a shitshow…

How would keeping a starving class of local workers doing slave labour on below subsistence wages have helped matters?

At the very least I'd expect the holiday makers to object to having to step over their shanty town tent encampments and emaciated, disease ridden children...you know eventually.

“Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good.”
― Thomas Sowell

A quick trip to seaside towns and the like is a good example of how minimum wage has destroys economies. Cleaners, waiting staff etc are too expensive for the business so most people fly to cheaper countries wit no minimum wage for their holidays.

Most of these towns are now full of asylum seekers being feed and housed by grafters taxes.