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?

"We are ALREADY seeing min wage people only buying basic commodity food, and so making it hard for businesses to make money as a result"

Basically...............capitalism eating itself.

helena

Vaguely related neice by marriage has an apprenticeship

In a cafe...

Can I say that if i were earning £30k doing a job that i really enjoyed that currently would pay £60,000 so that another three people in the team would also earn £30,000 where now they earn £20,000 if the team as a whole earnt twice as much for the company as a result, and every working day was being with equals playing to their strengths and enjoying being with each other instead of worrying about rank and promotions...

Yes i bloody would. I'd rather play for a basketball team that won the league and acclaim where weaker players got the same as good players than a dysfunctional team that performs below its combined performance should, but pays me a high wage for being 'the best' amongst demotivated and badly paid teammates who resent me..

A huge con Rufus. My first job after leaving school was in a garden centre.

Now that would likely also be an apprenticeship.

Absolutely helena

And i do think that some apprenticeships sound great and probably are great

But some of them are shit

I absolutely agree with you OP.

I've been in my profession (in the NHS) for coming up to 14 years. When I first started my salary was considered good and well above average. Now? With the minimum wage increases and the plan for £10 per hour against no pay rise for 3+ years and actually taking a pay cut - yes it does stink.

I don't for one minute begrudge the minimum wage being raised. It should be a knock on effect though as although every job, whether a domestic or a consultant is equally important - one is recognised as needing professional skills and qualifications which should be remunerated financially.

My biggest concern if the £10 mw came in, is the amount of small businesses that would go out of business. The ones I deal with do value their staff and already pay (slightly) over living wage, but really cannot afford to pay more. Reducing staff is not always an option as they already employ the minimum they need for running their business. Increasing prices is not always an option as they're usually competing with bigger companies so already charging more and people will only pay so much. The only option they will have is to close, putting themselves and their staff out of work - I can't see how this is ever a good thing.

With regards to cleaner/programmer/any other profession - I don't believe any job should be regarded as 'beneath' another, as they're all important in their own way. Personally a cleaner would be far more important, but that's because a programmer can't save me a few hours a week! Obviously some jobs have more responsibilities and risks and deserve an increased salary for this, but that does not necessarily mean they're more important.

I've no problem with taking the same wage for teamwork in the same job.
I do have a problem with apparently paying me the same but actually take home is less due to the additional costs loaded onto me to keep the same job.
And then giving me the more difficult aspects of the job.

There is a difference between the cleaner on £10 and hour and the newly-qualified graduate on £13 an hour though, isn't there?

In 10 years' time the graduate will have progressed in their career, been promoted, and be earning a very comfortable salary. The cleaner will still be on a minimum wage. No career progression for them, no matter how hard they work.

You hope getin
Often there isn't though. I'm still on the same grade 20 years later. My job has changed, but no more progression.

*gettinfedduppathis Fri 05-May-17 23:18:33
There is a difference between the cleaner on £10 and hour and the newly-qualified graduate on £13 an hour though, isn't there?

In 10 years' time the graduate will have progressed in their career, been promoted, and be earning a very comfortable salary. The cleaner will still be on a minimum wage. No career progression for them, no matter how hard they work.*

Oh come on - you seriously can't compare the two. Yes the domestic is as important as the consultant like I've said - but the consultant has undergone years of specialist training to gain the skills they have and naturally should be on a vastly higher wage - not to take anything away from the importance of domestics in the NHS, before I was qualifed and while my child was pre-school i cleaned offices to fund my courses.

There absolutely should be a tier of wages. Ridiculous to claim otherwise.

.

But the consultant would not be able to work without the hospital cleaner getting there and cleaning and decreasing the risk of infection.

I am undecided on this, but I was reading recently about the NMW in Sweden. Apparently lots of people are unhappy about it being so high because it means you practically have to have a degree to be a waiter. They have a really high number of unemployment among immigrants as it is quite difficult for them to get jobs without qualifications. I do tend to think there would be an increase in zero hour contracts here if the NMW was increased unfortunately.

It took Britain’s highest paid chief executive, Martin Sorrell, less than 45 minutes to earn what an average UK worker earns over an entire year, according to new TUC analysis of FTSE 100 directors’ pay published today (Sunday).
Mr. Sorrell, CEO of WPP, was paid £70 million in 2015 – more than 2,500 times the average UK salary.
The study shows that Mr. Sorrell’s salary in 2015 was the equivalent of £38,437 per hour. His annual salary could have paid the wages for 2,218 nurses, 1,920 paramedics, or 4,479 teaching assistants.

Keep looking below and fighting over the scraps, a race to the bottom is what those people above you want. Look up and ask why the sweat off someones back, the care gives to the young, old and ill, the nurses that look after you in hosptial, the teachers instructing your young is worth so much less than the guy in the C&P above.

Decent wages will not happen until tax credits are phased out. That is the aim politcally, the electorate are slowly realising that tax credits compensate poor wages for the qualifying people, for anyone child free they have been a disaster for earning power.
Ultimately when the current qualifying peoples children leave school then the tipping point will be realised.

Im childfree by choice and i dispute that. In the mid 90s (after the abolition of the wages councils) and before tax credits wages dropped. In the Job Centre there were ads for full time jobs paying £1.50 an hour £50 a week (i had to apply for this one and my rent was £48 a week back then with no other help. I didnt qualify as i had no kids. Then they brought in Working Tax Credit. Which helped a lot of low incomers without DC.

I didnt have to claim it in the end as i found a job in a sex chatline office (the only type of job in my area which was paying enough so i didnt have to)

From 15 December 1992. Way before tax credits.

Abolition of the Wages Councils.

www.heraldscotland.com/news/12577696.Abolition_of_wages_councils_and_threat_to_the_lower_paid/

Roomster im always seeing the assumption that low pay jobs are stressful. Believe me they are not

I'm not assuming. I'm talking from experience. I have done NMW jobs e.g. shop work, waitressing and bar work and found them to be much less stressful than my professional job. Not being responsible for people's health/lives was a weight off my shoulders. The only reason I went back to my professional job was the pay. If the NMW increased that incentive wouldn't be so strong.
Some NMW jobs may be stressful but I wouldn't go for those ones..

But isn't everything just supply and demand - there is no central 'planning' going on to agree everyone's wages - or calculate the perceived score based on value to society?

I work as a finance director, following study yada yada, - and also do DW office cleaning for her if she is poorly.

DW has many talents, but couldn't do my job at the drop of a hat.

Differentials will need to be maintained, if NMW rises to £10. My employer currently have skilled trades employed on not much more than that.

If our general yard hands get paid £10, then everyone else's shop floor salaries will have to rise.

The chances are at least one post would need to go to balance the books.

Martin Sorrell is an interesting case, but at least these days his board tend to sometimes vote down his proposed wage increase.

Not sure WPP employ that many people on NMW - but haven't looked into it.

NMW stands for " I would like to pay you less but legally i have to pay you NMW ".

Er supply and demand doesn't 'require' a differential.

If for every 40,000 workers you need a finance director, we only need 1000 finance directors. We have many tens of thousands of people capable of being finance directors, and we have a surplus of unskilled, skilled, and educated labour. Even if we only count masters accountants or Finance MBA graduates, so there is no market requirement for finance directors to be paid a premium at all, by supply and demand.

Small businesses (such as the one my DH runs) would really be affected, most of his staff are on Slightly more than NMW but less than £10ph at the moment. He isn't a greedy employer but putting up everyone's wages to £10 ph plus the recent pension scheme means that profits for him potentially will mean not worth the liability and he'll shut up shop.

Small business owners always say they'll shut up shop, but I'm amazed at how many small businesses keep going through thick and thin. I think many running small businesses do so more because they don't want others to tell them what to do than sheer profit maximising.

well that's ok then isn't it Scary? 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.

The irony here is, the majority of examples given are of the CEOs earning millions from huge organisations, the ones you appear to hate so much and yet it's the small business that will suffer not the larger ones.
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.