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AIBU?

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Original poster

Minimum wage

57 replies

knittedbreast · 04/05/2011 13:44

Is there anyone on here who dousnt agree that we should have a minimum wage? if so what are your reasons for it?

OP posts:
Original poster
knittedbreast · 04/05/2011 14:42

i was thinking you meant a month!

OP posts:
Ishani · 04/05/2011 14:43

Well as I say you don't need 10 years experience to manage a shop or restaurant the fact that people are on such appalling wages has got to be supply and demand.
Where we live I have 4 live grad positions to fill, they just need a pulse and to be 18-21 years old, it pays £20k and I cannot find anyone :(

Newgolddream · 04/05/2011 14:43

26minutes - "only £2000 left" Hmm Thats a fair bit of money to me!!! Did you mean £200?

noodle - not sure what you mean about only have £3000 left - thats even worse than 26 minutes Confused

Original poster
knittedbreast · 04/05/2011 14:44

where are you ashani? im 25 but could do that for you?

OP posts:
noodle69 · 04/05/2011 14:45

We both meant left over a year after rent/mortgage lol

DooinMeCleanin · 04/05/2011 14:45

Most people on minimum wage with children are entitled to Tax Credits, we get the full amount for two children, with a disability element and it's a fair bit of money, so I guess if you have a few dc and a small morgate you could easily have 2k per month left after morgate and tax. We don't, but we do manage to save about half of the tax credits (unless there is an emergency such as an unexpected boiler breakdown, the only buffer we have is the TC)

Newgolddream · 04/05/2011 14:45

Just read x post - like knittedbreast I assume you meant a month to!

noodle69 · 04/05/2011 14:46

Again Ashani depends on area I have a 2:1 so do a lot of my friends means nothing if you live in an area that doesnt have the positions. Average wage here is 19k across all ages and I only know a very small amount of people on that high. I dont know anyone at all on that wage in the pvi sector.

noodle69 · 04/05/2011 15:00

Just read dooinmecleanins post. We get nothing left over from tax credits. We have money towards childcare and that doesnt even cover the full cost. We both work on the minimum wage and we get no other benefits.

DooinMeCleanin · 04/05/2011 15:02

We have an impossibly small morgate to match our impossibly small house. I think the morgate is about £180 per month. We also don't need to pay for childcare. I work evenings and nursery hours.

noodle69 · 04/05/2011 15:07

We get £40 a week nursery costs and thats all the tax credits or benefits we get unfortunately and we are both on £6 and £6.50 an hour

Butterbur · 04/05/2011 15:10

Ashani why do they need to be 18-21? Isn't it illegal to try and recruit a particular age group now? Ageism in action!

26minutes · 04/05/2011 15:41

No, that's £2000 a year. DPs take home is £11,000. Rent is £9000 a year. We don't live in an expensive house. It is actually about £200 a month less than average round here. Basically if we didn't get benefits topping up his wages we would have £2000 a year to pay for food, electric, water, gas, phones, tv licence, clothes, haircuts, school trips etc. Minimum wage needs to be much much higher just to be able to survive, then there would be less need to use taxes to increase peoples incomes to a liveable amount.

noodle69 · 04/05/2011 15:46

I cant even afford to live in an actual house they are way out of my price range.

TotemPole · 04/05/2011 17:13

Where we live I have 4 live grad positions to fill, they just need a pulse and to be 18-21 years old, it pays £20k and I cannot find anyone

Do you mean graduate positions, so someone with a degree? You won't find many under 21 that have a degree.

Ishani · 04/05/2011 17:41

it's not ageism it's the age range you would expect to apply for the role and stay in it for 2-3 years before progressing, if you were 40 and could convince me that you would be suitable they would be considered along side anyone else but I would be very surprised if you accept that salary at that age with 20 years experience.

Ishani · 04/05/2011 17:42

No they can do a degree whilst they work for us, I have been to university I know when people graduate.

SecretNutellaFix · 04/05/2011 18:02

grad position refer to people who are doing a degree doesn't it? and post grad to those who already have one?

OP, I am on just above above the minimum wage as is my husband. Money is tight, but doable given that we live in what is classed as the least desirable area of the town. It is not a living wage by any means. Apparently that should be around £14,500 for a single person. We are each below that.

No minimum wage would mean the whole country would grind to a halt. I remember my mother working herself to the bone for £1.50 an hour as a cleaner and that was 15 years ago. That was at a caravan site. She also cleaned the health centre in the evenings for £2.75 an hour at the same time. she had no help with anything- never claimed benefits until she became too ill to work.

On that sort of wages, no one would choose to work.

noodle69 · 04/05/2011 18:04

'if you were 40 and could convince me that you would be suitable they would be considered along side anyone else but I would be very surprised if you accept that salary at that age with 20 years experience.'

This is very amusing you must live in a very affluent county. In Devon people would rip your hand off

alphabetti · 04/05/2011 18:19

Without minimum wage many people would be exloited. The problem is though that many employers do try to pay as little as possible but guess thats just part of business ie keeping costs down so as to make a bigger profit.

I think that the reason behind the minimum wage being lower for under 22s is to try to encourage younger people to continue in education longer.

vickibee · 04/05/2011 18:38

I think that the min wage approx £6 ph is set too low, anyone is worth that rate. I agree with the coalition that the threshold for tax should be raised to encourage peolple to take lower paid work. It is ludicrous that you should pay tax on low income levels and then claim tax credits etc. The only problem with min wage is that workers on rates of sya £8 ph never get a rise and are being caught up by unskilled workers.

26minutes · 05/05/2011 08:00

noodle, I'd rather own a flat than rent a house. (Incidentally if I still owned my old house, my mortgage would be less than £200 a month, rather than the £750 I'm paying on rent).

Minimum wage needs to be much higher, but unfortunately as long as we have conservatives in power it won't rise, they'll probably do all they can to scrap it.

NacMacFeegle · 05/05/2011 08:15

I earn less than I pay in childcare. Which is nice.

Luckily tax credits pays 70% or I wouldn't be able to afford to go to work.

sundayrose10 · 05/05/2011 08:19

I hate the tories.

frgaaah · 05/05/2011 09:46

I think that any situation where minimum wage laws have produced vast swathes of the population in a bog standard family setup (2 able bodied adults, say with 2 kids)... where they cannot afford even the most basic lifestyle in most of the country, that is a untenable situation.

E.g. earning above NMW, 6 quid an hour, 2 people, 37.5hr weeks like me = £450 income per week

£337 after tax/NI at basic rate

So £1350 every month.

Say also that they live in a shitty damp flat with a great mortgage/rent price of £450 (bargain!) like our first place 3 years ago.

That leaves £900.

Council tax takes £110 of that (going by ours in a shit area).

That family now has £790.

They spend £50 a week on food (you can just about do this with massive cut backs i.e. cheap meat or no meat, batch cooking, see Sainsbury's recent PR stunt)

That family now has £590 to live on.

£60 each commuting costs (going by my bus pass fares - i know you couldn't run a car on that, but let's err on the side of cheap caution here)

That family now has £470 to live on a month.

Cautiously spent utilities £80/month total.
House insurance £20/month.
School uniform/cheap Asda plain office work clothes easily £20 a month through the year.
One or two school trips in the year or books/pencils, say £5/month.

£345 left over.

You also have to pay for dental appointments/treatment, glasses, prescriptions, ad hoc emergencies like the front door's window getting smashed by yobs (guess what happened to us last month?), and so on from your excess £86 a week.

You can cut out haircuts, any food during the day, any luxuries at all.

But you still have to pay childcare, probably, unless you're lucky enough to have free childcare from your own parents/neighbour/they're in school and old enough to avoid that cost.

You cannot plan to put any money into savings to take advantage of cheap bulk buys at the supermarket, or buy 2 get 3rd free offers. You can't buy moer expensive ingredients which last that bit longer. You're probably already buying things that are reduced due to damage or on its food safety use date.

that situation above is what means we have such a thing as "working poor" in this country

And the scenario above even assumes you have 2 able bodied adults who can find fulltime jobs ABOVE NMW within cheap commuting distance (how many people are that"lucky"?)

IMO, NO ADULT in this country should be working fulltime and be unable to afford more than a subsistence style of living. and that's what it is on NMW.

This country needs to start paying its workers a living wage, not a minimum wage.

For too long, the country's lowest paid workers have effectively been subsidised by TAX PAYERS - the government didn't introduce a livng wage, so just to LIVE and EAT people have needed to rely on tax credits, child top ups, free eyecare and dental vouchers, and whatever.

What kind of mess are we in, where even if you work really really hard on this "minimum" wage you basically can't afford to live much above the threshold of poverty?