About half of British workers earn under £15 hour - new Living Wage?

[Melisha]

At the moment about half of the workforce earns under £15 an hour. We need to increase national minimum wage to £15 an hour, lifting many of the workforce out of poverty.
Do you agree NMW should be £15 an hour?

I agree in theory but then what happens when that amount is more than a trained nurse gets. Then there is little incentive to become a nurse over something less stressful

There are lots of jobs paid under £15 an hour that are very stressful.
And nurses on the lower bands are already paid less than £15 an hour. This would increase the starting pay of qualified nurses.

I agree that many low paid jobs are stressful. I started on £12 per hour on band 5. The point I was trying to make, albeit not well (dyslexic) is that if everyone is paid the same then will the higher earners also get an uplift? Other wise if they have worked their way up the bands for an increase but end up on the same as everyone on min wage they may feel it is a bit unfair.

Those salaries would rise as well, but it may take a bit of time.

Where do you think the money is going to come from for that? Labour is the biggest expense for most businesses, so it'll just get passed on as large prices increases in goods and services. And then people will be complaining that they need a pay rise because everything's got more expensive...

How are small businesses going to afford this?
It seems on MN, it is thought that anyone on NMW is working for a big company with a millionaire CEO.

@XenoBitch I work for a small company as the majority of people do.

You don't run one though.

I don't think the problem is simply that some people are paid too little, some people are also paid too much. The problem in the UK is high inequality.

This is not to say that some people shouldn't earn more, but it should be within reason (e.g. the highest earner in the company is not earning more than 5 times the salary of the lowest earner). We need a maximum wage as much as a minimum wage.

Companies also shouldn't be allowed to pay out to shareholders while their staff are dependent on tax payer funded benefits because their wages are too low to live on.

That magic money trees out again. The cost will be passed onto the customer. Go ask how ridiculous minimum wages are working out in california

@iamtheblcksheep somehow there is always enough money to pay senior staff and CEOs very high wages though.

It's not just the UK where that happens, and I agree, some people are paid too much. The minimum wage here is quite a bit less than what OP is suggesting, and while it sounds wonderful - and I am always in agreement with raising the minimum wage - that sounds like too much to me. Small businesses wouldn't be able to afford it, so would shed staff, and yes, the costs will be passed onto the customer so people would be no better off.

Not all businesses have senior staff and CEOs!!

Well it certainly seems that loads of people earn 6 figure salaries and are paid for their expertise and thinking, enabling them to work for about 2 hours a day. The money's evidently there to pay them.

The NMW is pretty pitiful but any big sudden uplift puts pressure on meeting increased wages for those who currently earn just above it. I don't know what the answer is.

Funny how people paid £120k posting on MN are always arguing they are struggling and should be paid more, while people on £15 per hour would be being paid too much.

It just doesn't work like that because typically those roles are service roles, which means the cost of providing the service massively increases. And that means nursery fees, care home fees, getting your hair cut, buying groceries, eating at a restaurant etc all massively increase. It also means that public services are reduced because they don't have the option of just increasing their income, so they have to trim the workforce to maintain their overheads at a sustainable level.

And small businesses would be priced out even further than they are now because their price increases would be more pronounced than big businesses.

And that's before you even get to what it would do for morale and worth of people in more skilled or professional roles who would rightly be pissed off at only earning a couple of quid an hour more, but shouldering masses more responsibility, having had to train for x years to do their job etc. The absolute last thing we need is to compound our skills drain, given we already can't fill teaching and nursing vacancies.

@MartinsSpareCalculator you do realise this would give qualified nurses on the lowest grades a pay rise? Qualified people with responsibility are also paid less than £15 an hour.

@MartinsSpareCalculator and no many of them are not service roles.

I Was a doctor on less than that for nights and weekends.
unless all wages rise fairly then no I don’t think it should rise.

our nurses should not be paid the same as the Costa barista.

Steady on OP! If those on a low wage get an increase to £15 per hour they may edge towards being able to save for a house deposit so that they can buy instead of renting.

They would, of course then pay less pcm on a mortgage than on rent, but what about all the landorrds who rely on rental income to maintain their lifestyle and pay off their mortgages?

On a more serious note I despise people who won't acknowledge the brutal unfairness of a set up where the lowest earners can't buy a home and instead pay a higher monthly payment to rent than they would on a mortgage. All whilst working their asses off doing a valuable job and pouring most of their income into renting and lining the pocket of someone else. Ugh.

👏👏👏👏

I support people with autism and have endless trainings, experience, responsibilities, qualifications related to my role. My work is physically and mentally risky, staff are regularly assaulted and injured or reach the limits of emotional resilience. We get paid around the minimum wage. Although I love what I do, I feel so used by the company and society. There is so little financial respect for what we do.

Based on what?
Is £15 just an arbitrary figure ?

You could just have easily written the same post with £150 per hour (and more people). What's the justification for that figure?

A lot of people are employees of small self employed businesses.
There are 4 million self employed people who employ staff, average self employed wages/profits are 36,000 a year.

If the wages they pay to employees go up £10,000 a year where do you think it’s coming from?? From the wages of the self employed owner.
I certainly wouldn’t be able to run my small retail business anymore. If every small business employs around 2 people then it affects 8 million employees and would be catastrophic.

Two words:
Inflationary Spiral