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?

With the living wage - I would say that you shouldn't expect to stay in a minimum wage job for the whole of your working life. It should be possible to start on a low wage if you're unskilled/no qualifications when you're young and just supporting yourself, and move on up as you up skill. I don't know how easy that is now though for lots of people.

Eg a warehouse operative should be able to train onto fork lift trucks, supervisor etc

I run a small company, two of us employees. Non profit making so pay ourselves through payroll. We don't make £10/hr, and a lot of our work is made possible through public grants and subsidy which is clearly not going to increase. It would put a strain on us for sure.

mrsdv smurf said So what if the cleaner and the executive get paid the same per hour? This implies ,to me, that you think there is nothing wrong with them earning the same. Hence my question - to answer yours ,though you haven't answered mine Smurf -or MrsDV for that matter - I do believe a CEO needs to earn more than an unskilled worker (I don't know about 500% but I would argue that is up to the shareholders?).

I am not sure if a minimum wage works or not in that I wonder if it drives all wages down to a minimum. I do believe strongly that if you are a full time cleaner there is some sort of moral duty to be paid enough to live off and to have sick pay, maternity rights etc same as anyone else and that the gap between a cleaner and the highest paid person in company shouldn't be ridiculously large as it is so often these days. It makes me so cross that we society seem to feel if you do minimum wage work you should be living on the edge of poverty because its your choice and you could just get a better job. Its not always a choice and these jobs need doing. The person doing them deserves a decent life. In the OPS example I think going to uni for 30% extra pay, a more interesting less physically demanding job, with more potential to increase you earnings is worth it. Pay is not the only motivator in what job people choose.

Mrs DV I'm a Registered Nurse, working in a highly specialist area, my basic pay is £11.4854 per hour. I get enhancements for nights and weekends, but that's my day rate.

Perhaps you need to be a little bit more inventive then IamaWeed You probably have a high turnover of staff anyway if they are in the main unskilled.

I would love to know what you think about maternity pay.

What is your point Iam?
Why on earth do you think you deserve to be paid more than someone else?
Presumably you have a reason for starting your own business, you are not doing it for altruistic reasons are you?
You want to be successful and make money.
Money for yourself and your family.

If its not working out for you perhaps you should look elsewhere?
The same as the rest of us.

Don't get me wrong, I wish you every success.
But I don't see why that success should be at the expense of others.
If you can't afford a workforce, you can't afford to run a business.

Where does it all end? Sainsburys recently took a massive dive in profits.Perhaps they should expect their shelf stackers to come in for nothing to make those losses up?

£10 an hour is not a great deal. I think people should be paid enough to live on and not have to rely on benefits which in effect are propping up certain employers.

By the way my DD is doing a 5 year degree to become a vet and at the end of it will be no better off than some of the clerical staff at my workplace who don't need degrees. A career is not just about money.

Self service at tills, more use of technology, lower staffing ratios and higher workloads

That will already happen. When was the last time an attendant filled up your car with fuel? When was the last time you withdrew money from a bank without using the ATM?

Koki that's a valid point - it may be low at the start but salary may rise in time. What about those in sectors where it won't rise?

brasty a NMW that requires qualifications ? I wouldn't spend years studying for a NMW , especially if I had to pay for it. And everyone I know is the same. I can only speak based on what I've observed here at uni and the conversations I've had with people now entering their careers etc.

Can someone please show where my chain would break on the example I showed above?

That pretty much proves my point lougle
You are a nurse despite other people who do far less important work than you earning far more.

The OP's argument is that everyone would stop being nurses and doctors because they wouldn't be richer than everyone else anymore.

well if you are happy, to keep people paid very poorly in our comparatively rich economy, and on not even a proper living wage simply because they couldn't for whatever reason (being raised in poverty perhaps, or not being so clever as the next person, or perhaps they are a bit fucked up emotionally after abuse, or maybe school isn't really for them, or they can't afford it - whatever there are loads of reasons) get tertiary educated, even though they are working full time - then you're an arsehole aren't you.

You're in good company it seems as there are many who agree with you - I think they are mainly called Tories.

You want to see how important some minimum wage jobs are to your lives? Just imagine the bins didn't get emptied for a month and the rubbish didn't get collected. And there was no one to serve you a latte in the morning, or clean the restaurants you eat in, or the lectures theaters you attend classes in. Wouldn't life be jolly for us all then?

One of the main things that gets on my tits is when people say "oh I deserve XYZ as I work so hard for my money". Implying they deserve to be paid so much because they work really hard. And I'm sure they do. But don't think for a second that the Mum who is up in the middle of the night getting 2 buses to her minimum wage cleaning job isn't working just as hard, or those undertaking the back braking labour of picking fruit and vegetables, or the people doing long shifts driving trucks, or working in the hell that is all too often retail, having to be nice and polite to every flavour of overly entitled "I earn lots so I am more fucking special that you are" arsehole they encounter during their days. They are all working really really hard. And many of them aren't even earning a decent living wage despite all that hard work.

Now what was unfair again?

spice
Health care workers have to gain qualifications and they have to pay for them.

Still not seeing your argument working out.

Yes, when BHS went bust 17,000 people lost their jobs. All going onto subsidies. Meanwhile the poor darling lost millions last year and it was a mere drop in the ocean of his wealth. No one person should be allowed to earn that much money.

It's a nice idea, but when I worked out my hourly rate as a teacher I was getting about £4.50 an hour. Lots of salaried people will earn far less than this as they are not paid by the hour by just expected to get through their workload in their own time. i also think they need to seriously think about the effects of the public sector wage freezes. It's not just nurses who have had an effective 14% pay cut in the last few years.

You don't sound as if you have had much experience of work spice

Do you know anyone who has a job or is it just students you hang around with?
Students who won't consider doing a job unless they get paid more than a pleb doing unimportant work like cleaning or caring for the elderly, kids in care, sick children, animals, keeping our environment safe, teaching our children, helping addicts, homeless people etc etc etc

but yeah lets pay people less, and then uses tax credits to prop them up so they don't starve or become homeless - after all why should tesco cover the actual cost of it's actual business out of it's actual turnover, when the govt can prop up their profits by subsidising their work force for them?

What if care workers no longer were there. What if they thought I'm leaving. Who would take care of the elderly? Would it be in the main, men?

Elendon you appear to have missed the point of my post. I do pay minimum wage to the unskilled staff, we also provide additional benefits to all staff - this is where we get inventive as we find ways to motivate our staff in ways that isn't purely money. If the minimum wage increased to £10 an hour I wouldn't be able to afford the additional benefits.
In terms of staff turn over, we currently have a great team of 4. In the past 2 years we have had 2 people leave. One because he was unhappy he did not get paid the same as the qualified staff, he was with us less than 4 months, the second we let go due to poor performance.
Maternity pay to date has not been an issue, although one staff member did take 2 weeks paternity and 2 weeks holiday. His gf was very poorly throughout her pregnancy and unable to drive, we adjusted his hours allowing him to do the school run.

Why do university students have this overwhelming sense of entitlement?

Don't forget that tax credits are being cut and probably abolished.
So we will be left with families with not enough to live on.
Having to leave their jobs that don't pay them enough, going on out of work benefits and going back to do those jobs for free on workfare.

That should please the OP. No worries about cleaners getting paid almost, somewhere near her starter pay.

Imagine the ignominy of being paid only about a fiver more an hour than a cleaner for the fist couple of years of your career. How would someone get over that?

@Kursk perhaps your husband's boss ought to brush up on his employment legislation. It is illegal to penalise employees for being members of a union.

What additional benefits AmIaWeed do you supply to your staff?

Personally, if you are such a small company and you've hired in a person who within weeks declared himself above his station, something is going wrong somewhere and you would not be a company I would want to do business with.

This argument reminds me of the days when it was usual an expected for a man doing the same job as woman to get paid a lot more because why the hell would a man bother doing something if they only got paid the same as some Lass?

A man with a family would be paid more than a single man doing the same job too.

As things become more equitable (I know we have a long way to go) have men just given up working because 'its just not worth it if I am only going to be paid 30% more than a girl'

MrsDV The point of my post is not every boss is making millions, not every company owner thinks only about the money - but at the end of the day my staff come in and they get paid their wage, regardless of whether or not I made money that week, I however can go weeks without being able to pay myself.
I do it because after being made redundant I wanted more control over my life. I love what I do, but it isn't easy and small business owners like myself make a huge part of the employers of this country, many of whom would be put out of business if the minimum wage is continually increased