"Just get a better paid job"

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I'm genuinely interested in how, the people who post this on benefits threads, envision society working if everyone entitled to top-up benefits took their advice and got a better job.

That would be the majority of care workers, nurses, police, retail staff, street sweepers, refuse workers, factory workers, delivery drivers, hairdressers, childminders, etc etc etc e.g the people who keep our society running. The people who, not so long ago, everyone was applauding and hailing as heroes.

Could you even get to work without them?

Ditto the people who post things along the lines of "You should have thought about this before you had children. I don't want to pay for your kids."

Do you genuinely believe the childcare worker, TA, school nurse, etc who looks after your children while you work shouldn't be entitled to raise a family of their own?

And if they didn't, if only those who can afford to live without government top-ups had children would we have enough people being born to maintain society given that we are already short of young, able-bodied people to care for our elderly.

I agree the system is broken, unnecessarily complex and expensive to run but pointing that out isn't the same as telling someone on a low-income to get a better job.

For a lot of these workers to get more pay we'd have to pay more tax (public workers eg nurses, refuse workers, etc) and pay more for services (childminders/hairdressers/care workers etc) Either way, the "taxpayer" wouldn't save anything. They can either pay via paying towards the benefit system through taxes or they can pay more for services.

What they cannot do is not pay but still expect the same services to be available.

I was on UC for a while whilst being self employed and it did seem like a ridiculous system - I'd pay my tax and then I'd got 0.45p in the pound of it back to me in UC? As someone said upthread just reduce my tax burden then?

There's a big problem with that though. Pay agricultural labourers, factory workers, warehouse operatives, delivery drivers, shelf-stackers and checkout operators a living wage, and what happens to the prices in the shops?

Any increase in wage is offset by an increase in the cost of living. No point in earning another £20 a week if your food bill goes up by £20 a week is there?

Catch-22.

Like I said before during the pandemic the high earners that work for the mega companies were quite disappointed at how much (lack) of respect there was for them .They don't really keep the country running .

Younger generations can come and take the more junior roles whilst some of the more experienced staff can move onto supervisory roles. Granted not all of them, but to say there is never an opportunity to move off the very bottom bracket just isn't correct. It's not a static workforce.

And don't get me started on using taxpayer money to top up the wages of employees of companies raking in millions in profit, not to mention the public sector costs of administering the system.

Agree with PP that just increasing the income point you start to pay tax would be must simpler.

The system is broken.

Also people on min wage don't always get UC, it seems to be a presumption on here that you do
I have a mortgage, no UC and earn min wage, live alone and pay everything myself

Totally agree op, if only it were that simple. Many on good wages gave no idea how hard it is.

I agree and disagree.
I have no problem with UC topping up a full time wage, it shouldn't be needed but it is so fair enough.
It does however massively grind my gears that so many (mainly women) absolutely will not work more than 16 hours per week as they will lose money.
We should never have got into a situation that actively pays people to work less. It has become a trap for many, members of my family for example. They got a job as a school dinner lady so they only worked term time and the rest was made up from UC. It seemed great at the time but now the kids are getting older the benefits are tapering off and all they have to show for it is a CV with 15 years of cleaning jobs, dinner lady etc.
Even if this person was academically able they would struggle to walk into a well paying job but take into consideration they left school with mostly D's at GCSE level and they have no chance, this is the kind of job they will be doing until retirement. So the cycle continues...they will soon be claiming UC to top up their full time wage.
I appreciate not everyone is in the same situation but in my rather deprived northern town there are many examples of the 16 hour max work week.

Maybe the increase should come from all the bonuses the bigwigs are paid rather than stiffing those at the bottom.

I had that comment made to me while I was working as a carer by the daughter of a lady with dementia that I was caring for. She started speculating on my life choices, out loud wondering why I had ended up “like this” as I didn’t seem “common” (bad things, love), pondering why I didn’t get a better job, was I just stupid? Did I not want more from life?

It was the straw that broke the camels back for me, not my finest moment, but I told her to clean up her mums shit herself and walked out. I ended up having a breakdown, so it wasn’t my finest hour, but I was ill and she tipped me over the edge.

The 16 hours cut off doesn't apply with UC. It uses a sliding scale instead so you're always better off working more (even if only by a small amount).

You are right, but I think the theory is that all these minimum-wage jobs should just be done by people without skills and experience and that people shouldn't be spending their entire working lives at those low wage levels. It's whatever the UK version is of "the American Dream" - that with grit and determination it is possible to start at a minimum wage role on the bottom rung and you work hard, prove yourself, have your talents recognised and get promoted and eventually you get to the sunny uplands of wealth and prosperity. It's not a theory that works in practice but people enjoying wealth and prosperity like to believe it's a status that anyone can achieve if they work for it. The idea that there are some people who simply will never get there is very uncomfortable.

I wanted to suggest that the solution could be with ammending minimum wage levels so that after someone has 5 years of experience in a particular type of minimum wage role they qualify for a higher tier of minimum wage which is an actual living wage. But even writing that I realise that there are some kinds of roles where honestly it doesn't matter how much skills or experience you gain, the actual task to be done is of such low value it doesn't make sense to pay more for skills and experience for those roles.

Should more onus be put on employers to create more accessible upward trajectory pathways out of minimum wage employment. ie that if you have more than Xx employees getting minimum wage (or within a set range so that they can't evade this responsibility by paying 2p more) then you have to offer progression pathways to higher paid work (getting at least the living wage) which must recruit say 10% of the minimum wage workforce each year?

Single claiment needs to earn roughly £869 and couples need to earn £1437 between them to be in light touch and not be pushed to earn more. The 16 hour thing is not relevant anymore.

The times I’ve read here someone unemployed should just get a shelf stacking job. So insulting.
Where I live working for Tesco is a decent permanent job and vacancies never come up anyway.

Wow. I’d say that definitely was one if your finest hours at the very least! Well done.

A private school paying you NMW is outrageous.

People who are clueless and out of touch say this. They have no idea of the state of the country that our most valued are paid the lowest..

Full time nurses needing food banks--- we should be ashamed and embarrassed at the state of this country.

People love saying just. They seem to think it excuses them applying critical thinking skills to what they saying.

’Just get a better job’’
’Just leave’
’Just move house’

The magic word ‘just’ is used to disappear the very real challenges and obstacles and outright blocks people face to all those things.

I agree! Well done that poster!

The elephant in the room is, as always, housong.

In timea gone by a lot of lower paid jobs and keynworker jobs would come with free or heavily subsidised accomodation, often on site. A lower wage is a lot easier with low housing and commuting costs.

My dad is a tenant farmer and his farm has two cottages included. He used to let them at very low cost to workers on the farm as part of the contract. His (my dad's) landlord decided in the 90s at a rent review he wanted more money from my dad and demanded that the cottages were let out at market rates. So my dad was no longer able to offer emplyment contracts that included cheap accomodation.

Re: moving up in a role, a lot of the "low value" roles benefit greatly from experience.

Care work, for example. An experienced care worker knows their resident's needs inside out. They befriend them and come to genuinely care about them as they care about their own relatives.

They know what medications their residents are on, how they like tea made/toast cooked, what they like to wear, how they like their hair, who their friends and relatives are, and what they enjoy doing. And most importantly, they know when their residents are feeling down or developing illness or worsening symptoms because they know their usual personality. They are the ones who can push for early medical intervention when things go wrong.

Having a high turnover of staff in a role like that is dangerous for the service users and the care workers themselves.

Gets you nowhere though. You are still treated like a piece of shit by management and spoken to like you are thick by the families and anyone else who finds out what you do for a living.

If I had a penny for everytime I got a condescending head tilt and an, “oh, that must be soooo rewarding” in a patronising voice, I’d be a millionaire.

The turnover is high becuase it’s shit job, with shit pay, shit hours and no respect.

And it’s really upsetting when you are on the inside seeing how elderly people are actually treated. no once cares. I’ve worked for some of the largest, “luxury” chains and some small, “family” run ones. Wouldn’t have boarded my dog at any of them.

I was sacked from two places for whistle blowing. Management and owners only care about money, not the residents or staff. Thank god I don’t do it anymore.

I agree, but since the rich bigwigs are the ones making the decisions, it ain't going to happen any time soon!

@AGodawfulsmallaffair I work for a high end car brand and it's min wage too
There is bonuses but not guaranteed and likely to be £200 a month or so so nothing massive

The problem is a 'decent' salary is no longer enough to live on. I earn what I consider to be an ok salary, around 38k. Am a single parent with a teen.
The government takes 8k of that and my landlord takes 15k. Which leaves just over 1k a month before council tax, utilities and other bills which doesn't leave much for food, clothing and other essentials and certainly doesn't allow for savings or pension contributions. I reckon i would need to earn nearer 50k to be at the point where I'm not counting up my food shop to make sure I have enough and unfortunately that is not going to be possible in my profession as I'm 30 years in and this is the max i can earn without retraining, which i couldn't afford! The issue for me, and many others, is housing costs (and of course food costs which have soared). My rent has gone from 8k to 15k in the space of 2 years. I keep seeing so called increases of 5% etc when in reality my increase is almost 100%. I'm in my 50's, I work incredibly hard, have done for 35 years and I'm exhausted. All just to pay for the absolute basics.