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Jasnah · 29/10/2024 19:41

The law of unintended consequences, as always.

More staff will be let go, and the rest will have to work even harder to keep costs down, especially in small businesses which cannot keep absorbing the cost. Fewer staff will be hired in the first place.

Prices will rise everywhere due to larger overheads at every stage in the chain. Inflation will increase. It will be interesting to see what the BOE make of this when they announce their next decision on interest rates.

And my personal bugbear: most people's wages above NMW will not have gone up by as much, therefore, once again, narrowing the gap between new and experienced workers, and those who have invested time and money into gaining qualifications. Of course, if you are a top earner that will not bother you too much, but those on the lower rungs will soon be among the ever-growing percentage of people who earn NMW in the first place.

toomanydicksonthedancefloor1 · 29/10/2024 20:43

So the last time it went up, as a small business (11 of us) it left us with unskilled drivers who have a really easy job and no responsibility or stress earning the same as some quite specialist and skilled admin and customer service people. They do have heavy workloads, it's really important their work is compliant (FCA) and they're dealing with sensitive and financial information. So we had to increase everyone's pay to make the different pay grades fair. This had a knock on effect that our wage bill increased so much (along with all other increased overheads) that when a sales team member left we haven't replaced them. Im sure other businesses are the same. Next we will be paying more Corporation tax, more employer NI, more employer pension contributions. It will get to a point where we would have been much better me and my husband working from home self employed, rather than taking a risk and employing local people. We already pay ourselves (me and DH) less than the General Manager and not much more than sales people.

toomanydicksonthedancefloor1 · 29/10/2024 20:45

Jasnah · 29/10/2024 19:41

The law of unintended consequences, as always.

More staff will be let go, and the rest will have to work even harder to keep costs down, especially in small businesses which cannot keep absorbing the cost. Fewer staff will be hired in the first place.

Prices will rise everywhere due to larger overheads at every stage in the chain. Inflation will increase. It will be interesting to see what the BOE make of this when they announce their next decision on interest rates.

And my personal bugbear: most people's wages above NMW will not have gone up by as much, therefore, once again, narrowing the gap between new and experienced workers, and those who have invested time and money into gaining qualifications. Of course, if you are a top earner that will not bother you too much, but those on the lower rungs will soon be among the ever-growing percentage of people who earn NMW in the first place.

So yeah agree with everything you said - and as a consequence we now have more work to do as we have less people.

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Cost of living
Leafstamp · 29/10/2024 20:46

Very similar thread already going here

www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5198490-nmw-to-increase-again-next-year-to-ps1221-ph?page=1

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