To disagree with the £10 minimum wage policy ?

[Spice22]

This is a genuine question - I've been reading some of the policies and I can't quite decide how I feel about this.

I have 2 key problems ;

1. Won't prices for everything just go up anyway, meaning there's no real change and people will still need tax credits?

1. My biggest concern if I'm honest. Will this not devalue professions? Currently, a cleaner may earn £7 and a programmer , for example, may earn £13 an hour. If the minimum wage rises to £10, there will be a £3 differential between someone who has gained qualifications and someone who is in a MW job. I really don't see many companies increasing the wage of the professional when they are faced with a huge bill to increase the wage of the MW worker. So why would anyone go to uni? Especially when they can work overtime and easily outearn the ones who did?

AIBU and why?

I totally disagree that unskilled low paid jobs are massively stressful, some more than others but stress is often related to responsibility and level of decision making. Busy is definitely different to stressful.

I know pre-school practitioners (not managers) who compare themselves to junior doctors which is frankly laughable, working in 830-330 term time only in a very busy and demanding job does not compare stress wise to a junior doctors working crazy shifts and responsible for potentially life or death situations. Working in a shop at Christmas is very busy yes but is not comparable to someone in a professional job responsible for multi million £ contracts working 13 hour days (overtime for no pay) so I just cannot agree it doesn't matter if the money is not much different.

I am in a professional job but I think it's a joke that I am paid more than a ward matron as I don't feel my work stress is comparable to theirs, they definitely deserve more than me but my qualifications are technically a higher level but neither job are close to minimum wage so I guess that's a totally different debate!

Us small businesses will continue to take bigger risks for less reward, some will make it, some wont - but who cares because you'll get £10 per hour whilst we face bankruptcy.

I'm sorry the business model you chose required you to 'underpay' your employees to make a profit. Never mind those people who cant afford to live on the wage their given they should be bloody well grateful that they have a job and that youre such philanthropists that you provide them with such

Agreed there needs t be a differentiation in hourly rates to distinguish between skilled/unskilled work but no-one who work full time in any job should be in a position where they can't afford to support their family and pay for basics like housing/rent/food which is the situation we currently have for those on a low minimum wage.

They therefore have to rely on tax credits to 'top up' their salaries which means in effect the the government is subsidising the salary bills of the often large companies/multi-nationals they work for. ie. Amazon whilst the companies themselves make huge profits and often don't pay corporation tax in this country.

JustAnotherPoster00

Have you considered that growing a business is difficult, and maybe you are in the situation where there is too much work for one person but the business can't afford to pay a second person.

Not every business is raking in the cash

Have you considered that growing a business is difficult, and maybe you are in the situation where there is too much work for one person but the business can't afford to pay a second person.

So you'd expect someone to work for next to nothing to help the business grow? Or would you choose to share the profits with them if the business became a million £ a year earner?

JustAnotherPoster00

The only option available to me is to profit share with them as minimum wage is more than i can afford

You are incorrect JustAnother if you had read my previous comments you'll notice that if the minimum wage increases to £10 per hour I'll also need to increase the wage of my skilled staff to justify them having the skills and the additional responsibility that comes with their job role.
You'll also note in the first year I made just £6 per hour myself, so I was paying staff more than me.
I am not for a second saying they should be grateful to me for providing a job, but I will happily say if anyone doesn't like my working conditions they are fully entitled to look elsewhere. I don't want to work with someone everyday who tells me i'm a crap employer in the same way they don't want to work with someone who tells them every day they are crap which is seems alot of poster ARE saying about their employers.
I do not want this taken out of context, I don't want this to be a 'don't like it, leave I'll get another minion' comment but I say this honestly. I do my best to be a good employer, I like to believe I am fair and building a business with a solid foundation that will last and provide a job for as long as someone wants it with us, but if people have bad employers then they can leave, they can look for another job and they can say 'I don't like they way you treat us' and who knows, maybe then the crappy employers will have to do something about it but by simply increasing the national wage it WILL erode all the other benefits and 'nice because I can' things that I do for staff and I can't guarantee there will even be a business

Kursk

Theres nothing wrong with that its then the individuals choice, but to underpay and then not recompense I find deplorable but nothing at all wrong with profit share in my mind makes the staff incentivised

AmIAWeed

But surely small businesses are a good reason for tax credits, I think I take more umbrage at the multi nationals who are using the loop hole for their shareholders benefit. Sorry if I came across harsh it tends to happen because Im a cunt

JustAnother The option to underpay and agree profit sharing isn't an option though. The National Minimum wage for employees isn't an optional thing.
The only way to do such a set up is for someone to be self-employed as a contractor because there is no minimum wage for self-employed people, which means the 'staff' are no longer employees and loose their employee rights, they don't get their pension or holiday pay....see where this is going?! It's a loophole for treating people like crap, not rewarding hard work, and what if the business doesn't make money? How do you recompense then?

JustAnotherPoster00

Yep down to the individual.

I feel that the companies that are listed on the stock exchange are the worst offenders

Meh, we're all cunts at times! My big concern is the increased minimum wage will affect the small and medium businesses the most and yet we're also the ones who can't dodge corporation tax etc, we don't have the money to pay accountants to swindle our money or hide it in off shore accounts.
I am all for tightening the rules around tax, making sure every business pays a FAIR tax, ditch the loop holes - have tighter restrictions on how pensions are handled etc to safe guard for the future.
Tax credits I'm undecided on....years ago as a single mother if I didn't have the working tax credit element there's no way I could afford for my kids to go to nursery and wouldn't have been able to work, so I was grateful, and we do need to find a way to make sure that people on low wages are incentivised to go to work, which with the current benefit level pretty much matching the minimum wage it is hard to incentivise people.

I can't imagine anyone would disagree that workers should be paid enough to live on regardless of any of their other views, that goes without saying.

I do think there is a big difference between small and medium businesses, and new businesses not yet turning over much profit, who may struggle to pay higher wages, and large and multinational businesses who have executives on very very high salaries and huge profits whilst staff wages are propped up by the taxpayer.

Definitely government assistance should be provided for smaller businesses to meet their wage bill. But large profitable companies like Tesco, Amazon etc should pay salaries that don't need topping up by the taxpayer.

Agree with hopelessly

I work for a large company but only 6 hours as they have dropped my contract down

I like the managers, supervisors other members of staff and usually the customers

I do not like the regular newsletters we get telling us how many millions they have made

I think more help should be given to small businesses to enable them to meet the wage bill

I think it does discourage those people whom go on to try and start businesses. If you are only going to make less than minimum wage then you might be less encoraged to start one. Our florist in our village has just gone due to that reason. Her employees were getting more than the owner, so she shut shop. Employees now out of work.

But that's a typical example of someone who isn't really a businesswoman, she is someone who wants to be a florist.

Zany Low paid jobs can be very stressful. Its bloody insulting to say they arent.

Ive worked in retail at Christmastime. There wasnt even time to fart.

Customers moaning and shouting at you. Abusive drunks coming in on New Years Day to place orders then change their minds then you shred the order form.............then they are back at the till to place their order again.

"I find the people who complain the loudest are often the lazy ones, the ones who moan but wont do anything to help themselves, who blame the world around them for their bad luck. If you don't like the conditions of your employer, look for a new one and quit complaining."

Yes people shouldnt complain about being on a low wage and choosing to either heat or eat. They should just suck it up.

The mother of a recent lottery winner worked in a supermarket. Upon hearing that her daughter had won the lottery and that she would be benefiting from it too she told her employer she would be finishing her current shift and that would be it. My first thought was i wondered how they treated her in said job.

HelenaDove - it's ok to disagree you know, I have worked in retail at Christmas and I can honestly say the stress is not the same as a corporate job but I am happy to have people disagree with me, that's the point of a discussion. I also did not say they weren't at all stressful if you read my post. In my opinion, being busy is not the same as stress, work stress is having huge decisions on your shoulders, being responsible for when errors occur and knowing that if you do something wrong it can have a huge financial impact but that is just my interpretation.

People throw the word stress around when they've had a really busy day and it really isn't the same thing. I admittedly do this at times.

I certainly have never found retail work anywhere near as stressful as my professional job. If they increased the wage to £10 an hour I would consider doing it instead. I doubt that I would be the only one... Therefore if they increased NMW to £10, they would end up having to increase all salaries which would have an impact on inflation and the cost of living. Ultimately those on NMW would be no better off.

Thinking back you your previous comments I don't think people are saying that they would just get minimum wage jobs as they are not stressful, the comments I both read and made were saying for an extra couple of quid will people really want to spend time/money doing extra training and having a more responsible job, possibly not. I don't see that as belittling unskilled jobs.

"I find the people who complain the loudest are often the lazy ones, the ones who moan but wont do anything to help themselves, who blame the world around them for their bad luck. If you don't like the conditions of your employer, look for a new one and quit complaining."

I find the sort of people who complain about the minimum wage going up are usually the sort of ppl who would complain about the low paid receiving tax credits too.

Zany i remember coming out in hives during one shift. That was stress.

If my ex had crashed the car and caused an accident while being harassed by his boss that he wasnt able to magic his way off a busy moterway that would have been down to stress.

I can assure you my minimum wage 'unskilled work' with complex teens in a special unit is very stressful.