How did people survive before wftc, ctc etc?

oh don't get me started on workfare.

aviva pays 8% less than the average £6.24 for a CS op.

but i don't think it's right to force the employers to pay a certain wage, it's not their fault that's it's not a living wage.

fine, big companies (the ones with shareholders), but smaller companies will go bust if they have to pay more out in wages.
it's not that a business isn't viable because they can't afford to pay a decent wage, it's that a business is only able to pay out what it can pay out.

The problem IS the greed of shareholders, in part, I agree, Nickel.

But something has got to give if we don't want to see poverty, true poverty, on a massive scale in this country.

Profit margins for businesses may have to be one of them.

At some point, employees will DEMAND a living wage, because with the advent of UC, it's either that or don workfare AND not be able to afford rent and food at the same time.

If employers close down their businesses because of that, then the whole country is screwed.

Shareholders will need to accept a loss in profits, or no longer BE a shareholder because the company has closed down.

If it wasn't for workfare, this UC thing might work.

But workfare is massively distorting the job market at the lower end. No Christmas jobs available locally as they were all filled by workfarers on 3-6 month placements.

Not one job in any of 4 local supermarkets for over a year.

Yet plenty of workfarers working there.

If workfare in ALL it's forms was stopped, these supermarkets wage bills will probably double. But the work would still need to be done.

People still want and expect their food to be on the shelf when they go in at 7.30am, or 4.30pm, or 6.30pm...there is a minimum number of staff that can achieve that.

So they HAVE to have a certain number if people doing the job. If they commanded a PROPER living wage, rather than JSA of £71 a week (works out to £1.89/hr for an average 37.5hr week - less if forced to do overtime that they aren't allowed to refuse), or NMW of £6.19/hr, they would STILL have to pay X number of people to do that job.

Shareholders would still MAKE a profit...just less of it.

But from that very same source about Tesco:

Tesco typically pays its employees 1% below market rate

And this is one of the most successful companies in the country!

"And you can't have a job if you are 'of no fixed abode', either. Or claim benefits. "
yes you can.

I used to work in the Jobcentre and we had loads of claimants who were of no fixed abode. they used to have to collect their money from the jobcentre, and were able to collect letters relating to benefits there.

i had my first child in 1997, our mortgage was £240 a month (2 bed terrace in berkshire) h earnt £190 a week. I am not sure how now looking back but we lived quite well. One child, house, at least one holiday a year and we ate well.

There was tax credits but we didnt qualify for them as we earnt too much at £190 a week.

£190 a week wouldnt even pay my rent now (divorced and not enough income to get another mortgage on my own), let alone rent/mortgage, food, utilities and be able to save for holiday or nice clothes etc.

My salary recently almost doubled before then i was on £30K plus, didnt qualify for any tax credits or housing etc and after paying the bills and shopping at aldi every week i barely had anything left at the end of the month and was stuffed if i had an unexpected bill or the washing machine broke down, or the car etc.

V sorry for the almost complete absence of plurals in that post. Typing malfunction!

In fact I often wonder about all these small businesses out there. I wonder how people make their money, because I have tried and tried to think of a business idea that I think could bring in a living wage for our family to allow me to step off the treadmill I'm on at the moment, and I cannot figure it out. I wonder what people actually DO to earn their money, and how all these business stay afloat.

I guess I have the approach to this that people say - but I disagree - that people should have before starting a family. That is, if I'm going to start a business I want to know it will be viable and not get me into debt. I think many business actually rely on debt to survive, pay themselves money they can't afford and it seems to just go on and on unchecked. Some of those same businesses have staff but they claim they can't afford to pay them a decent wage. Instead of realising - as MerryCouthyMow says - that their business is therefore not viable, they just go on taking and taking, paying staff a pittance and expecting the Government to top it up.

actually tesco pays their basic wage of £6.79

yes, i suppose ibn a way, it is a business subsidy.
but if you didn't have it, all those businesses would have to close.

take a care home - the residents pay for their board, and they have full time care.
If those carers had to have a wage rise, the business would have to pay for it, and the bills to the residents would go up, which they can probably ill afford anyway (MIL's care home bills are already more than she can afford)
OR they would employ fewer staff, and the residents wouldn't get enough care or help, and then the home could be forced to close as inadequate.
A business cannot survive on no profit (or on a loss), so that has to be taken into account.
If that care home closed down, the residents would have to be shipped to somewhere new, which would be upsetting for them, and the bills would probably be higher to make up for it.
Or the residents would end up in hospital because they weren't getting decent care.
so now you have, lots of residents who were happy in the home they're used to being cared for are now in hospital, using the NHS money to live, and you have 20 or 30 care workers on the dole.

MerryCouthyMows talks much sense and she is quite right.

WTC is propping up the viability of small businesses that can't afford to pay their employees a living wage, and it is propping up the profits of large businesses like Tesco et al, that COULD afford to pay their employees a living wage but don't.

my business isn't unviable because of that - all businesses look to cut costs and the first thing that goes is staff - that's happening in big companies too, not just small ones.
they make part-timers (it reduces employers' NI and tax contributions) and they have fewer older staff and fewer trained/experienced staff.

As it stands, I don't employ anyone.

I worked for loads of companies that reduced staff numbers and hours to get the place into profit (or getting a bigger profit for the shareholders)
If it weren't for greed of shareholders, a lot more companies could pay their staff a larger wage, but profit always comes before people.
always.

But you can't force businesses to pay higher wages, because all they'll do is refuse to employ staff or close down and then lots of people will be out of work.
See all those companies that went into administration? not all of them were in debt, just most of them weren't making profit. and they tried to reduce staff first.

But Nickel - if you as a business owner, can't afford to pay your staff a living wage, then surely your business is not viable.

(I'm not saying you shouldn't be running your shop, at all, honestly, btw).

But as an employee who has worked in retail, in many different shops, it doesn't make sense to me that in order to do the job AND rent a home AND feed my family, that I had my wages subsidised by the Government through WTC, when it should have been the EMPLOYER, not the TAXPAYER, paying ALL of my wages.

It just doesn't make sense, unless you see it as a business subsidy.

And as it is a business subsidy, enabling employers to pay their staff LESS than it costs to rent a house and pay for food, surely as an employer, you can see that if WTC was abolished tomorrow, people are ONLY going to be able to work in employment that covers their basic living costs for food and shelter? And that if a business owner CANNOT afford to pay that amount, then their business will become unviable?

I'm sorry, I really want to fight this one again, I really do but I just haven't got the will. I have said everything that is relevant here on another thread. It's the same old issues going round and round and round.

Privileged people, please inform yourselves and LISTEN to the less privileged people on this thread before mouthing off about what they should and shouldn't do/have done. You really have no idea how crazy some of your comments actually sound to people who can only dream of being in the position you have found yourselves in.

IMO, NMW should be the equivalent of whatever WTC maximum PLUS the current NMW.

I'll do the sums in a minute.

But that would allow everyone that CAN work (and find a job, which considering there are hundreds of people unemployed for every job available, of any sort, ISN'T going to be every unemployed person...) to survive without needing WTC.

WTC is just propping up employers. It is a BUSINESS SUBSIDY. Nothing more, nothing less.

Lets take Nickel. She says she can't afford to hire anyone over 20 as their NMW is too high.

Surely that means that her business is unviable, because she cannot afford her wage bill?!

Why are we allowing unviable businesses to be propped up by paying their staff FOR THEM, in part, by giving them WTC?

And as for CTC - surely that is just a way of increasing Child Benefit to allow for the increased costs of raising a child these days, whilst freezing ACTUAL child benefit?!

If they combined Child Benefit and CTC, it would instantly solve the two taxpayer issue where a couple on £30k each lose their child benefit yet a single earner family on £60k doesn't? Because then all child related benefits would be means tested, and dished out on a sliding scale.

The Government claims it would be too expensive to solve that issue. It's really NOT. The mechanism for delivering Child Benefit as a means tested, sliding-scale benefit ALREADY EXISTS.

Just stuff it in with CTC, and let the HMRC deal with it. Saves an extra layer of buerocracy, (I know that's spelt wrongly but I can't get the spelling correct!) in needing to pay it back out of your partner's tax etc, and puts it on an instant sliding scale.

Can't see why the government never thought of it, tbh.

That way, the smoke and mirrors over child benefit being frozen whilst CTC increases to cover the shortfall vanishes, AND it solves a huge issue that a lot of people have.

None of what this government are doing to the welfare system makes any logical sense.

And it doesn't make logical sense that instead of raising NMW to a liveable level, and letting some unviable businesses go to the wall, as a short term no pain, no gain measure to drastically lower the welfare bill and put the onus if paying a survivable wage back into the hands of employers, rather than subsidising the employer by paying part of their wage bill through WTC, they lower TC's to the point whereby the employee can't feed themselves and keep a roof over their head.

It doesn't make sense to reduce the amount that is being paid out in Housing Benefit without ALSO introducing sensible rent caps for LL's. Without rent caps, all cutting HB is going to achieve is more homelessness, even for families.

And you can't have a job if you are 'of no fixed abode', either. Or claim benefits.

oops Couthy - i misread your namechange

Mouthy - it's not high in relation to living expenses: remember I am coming from the POV of a business, of an employer. NMW is very high when you've got to employ people to do the job - employers want to pay as little as possible for staff - that's why they jhad to introduce NMW in the first place.

The Low Pay Commission reported that:

"As in previous reports, we define low-paying sectors as those with a large number or high proportion of minimum wage workers. By this definition the low-paying industries are: retail; hospitality; social care; employment agencies; food
processing; leisure, travel and sport; cleaning; agriculture; security; childcare; textiles and clothing; and hairdressing."

Full report is here.

So what happens if everyone decides not to do those NMW jobs??

Nickel, NMW is NOT high. Could YOU survive as a family on NMW? Could you afford to rent a house and feed your family of there were no TC's and you earnt NMW? I don't know many people that could...

NMW ISN'T high enough to provide food and shelter for a family when you consider housing costs.

Sorry, but it just ISN'T.

One of the differences between the past and now is the actual rich are far more rich percentage wise and the richest (not talking middle class people here!) are STILL getting richer, even now. So where's this trickle down effect then?

That's one of the things that pisses people off more now. And that austerity will work is a BELIEF, even though it FAILED in Greece the Tories have still pursued it with zeal, the question is why? Because in claiming "we're all in it together" they can inflict their ideology of privatisation on us all, to make a PROFIT out of us all, profit from our poverty, our illnesses, our disasters (looking at privatising the fire service).

and carers and health assistants

Nice - that's total bollocks.

NMW is so high these days that most people in retail (not managers etc) are on NMW, a lot of call centre staff, other clerical workers, council workers etc will be on NMW.
I bet most catering staff are too - I used to get £3.10 when I worked at burger king in the 90s, and the one in Nottingham paid £2.70 an hour. (it was about a quid less than the admin job i went into a few months later)

Nicecuppachar - but SOMEONE HAS to do those NNW jobs.

They still have to feed their families and keep a roof over their head.

Why should CHILDREN be pushed into poverty just because their parents made bad life choices?

Would you be happy to see a child with rickets at your DC's school, just because their parents 'made bad life choices'?

Would you be happy if that child you know whose parents are 'grafters' but lack the qualifications and ability to get anything but a NMW job, ends up homeless?

Do you think that people in NMW jobs DON'T graft?!

My Ex is currently working for the NHS as a Catering Assistant. Despite his chef qualifications, and 20 years of experience in cheffing.

The NHS are using him as a second chef. For two years now, they have refused to change his job title or pay him chefs wages. He still earns £16k pa, despite the fact that the job he is ACTUALLY doing usually pays more like £22-24k pa.

His Union have been trying for over a year to sort this out.

He has been loath to make a stand as jobs of ANY sort are hard to come by here, and would probably mean a wage drop of £3k pa.

He has now given them (via his union) until 31st March to pay him the extra, including back pay that he has been promised for 2 years, or he will 'work to rule' and simply do a Catering Assistants job.

If they have no second chef, no sous chef, and are relying on agency staff, they will be paying twice as much. Ex isn't even ASKING for the full £22-24k - he is asking for a wage rise to £19k. As they are getting the use if his cheffing skills for far less than they are 'worth'.

THAT is the truth currently facing the many 'grafters' out there.

Of course PEOPKE in NMW jobs 'graft'. It's stupidity to suggest otherwise. People working in manual, on their feet, NMW jobs have a far lower life expectancy and far higher risk of health problems than those working in an office. It's daft to suggest that they shouldn't be working in those NMW jobs, when somebody has to do them!

I'm presuming people still want their hair cut, their bins collected, meals when in hospital?