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?

Funny though that these low waged workers are quite often providing the services that are relied upon, needed and wanted - no one seems to have a problem with using these services to their advantage, for those services being available, complaining that they're not good enough, yet seem to deeply resent those providing them for earning a low wage whilst providing it, calling them failures while using and benefitting from the service they provide.
Oh and don't forget we don't want people doing jobs like social or child care for the money, because they're not in it for the right reasons then. If they're not happily living in poverty and debt while providing a service and grateful for the opportunity, they're in the wrong job.
But they're only in poverty and debt because they're a failure.
And they should just go and get a better job if they need to be topped up with tax payers money because others shouldn't have to subsidise them......... But it's ok for the lower waged workers to subsidise these services by way of not being paid enough to live on, they should just do so quietly and when not required to deliver the service, disappear and not be heard because the better in society don't want to think they might be exploiting people to get the work that they want and need done, done.

I think minimum wage is a double edged sword. On one side the government introduced it to protect employees and demand this is the absolute minimum someone should be paid to prevent exploitation, but on the other, too many employers looked and thought 'ha - that's at I can get away with paying someone'.

Too many jobs today (advertised on indeed) demand 2years experience, plus qualifications, to only pay NMW and that's is so wrong. NMW should only be given to those starting out - no qualifications, no experience kinda work - fruit picking for example.
IMO, you pay minimum wage, you get minimum employee. Employers need to start paying people their worth.

I once crunched the numbers of Tesco's annual accounts. If the total amount paid out as dividends and wages to the senior Board members was zeroised and instead paid out to the staff, it worked out about £1 per week per employee pay rise. That's how fine the margins are and how the numbers work, i.e. the sheer number of staff they employed! Prices would inevitably have to rise by a large amount to pay all their staff more, which would stoke inflation.

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

I think be careful what you wish for here. I’m not able to have children so in reality I’m not entitled to any state benefits, even when I was privately renting on NMW (to be fair this was a few years ago so I don’t know if it’s the case now, but I have a mortgage). If a business needs 10 members of staff it can employ 10 of me and no tax payer benefits, but if it employed 10 single mothers then it would have to pay an awful lot more for those people before the people at the top will get their dividends. I think this will cause a lot of stealth discrimination against parents. I might be wrong but if I can see that despite being on the ‘right’ side of being employed in this situation then business owners will too. Even with not being able to ask about your family position at an interview, this then just potentially widens to women of childbearing age. I think it’s an interesting discussion point but I worry not great in practice.

Massive expansion in housing stock is what we need really tbh.

Yes, but what about a higher band nurse/pt/ot/salt who currently gets about £17 an hour? You say it will take time for the rest of salaries to rise. How much time? And where is the incentive to study for 3-5 years to get paid the same as a supermarket checkout person (less, considering student loan repayment)?
I’m not saying people shouldn’t be paid more. But, as ever, everyone is forgetting about the guy in the middle. The government didn’t have money to raise nurses pay to match the inflation levels last year. How likely is it that they will find money to raise every public sector employee’s wage proportionate to NLW?

No, £31k a year should not be minimum wage. Unless all wages rise accordingly but that will just leads to high inflation and we all
know how well that goes for everyone.

Even if that's the minimum worked out that people need to live on? Not saying it is but with COL, min wage is tough to live on alone

That’s not how the economy works. The prices of everything will just go up proportionally so your £15 will buy no more than £11 does now.

When people complain about shareholders they need to realise that it's not individuals holding all these shares. Pension funds, where do you think that money comes from?

But if you pay everyone more, prices go up, so people will be no better off. It's basic economics.

If a company can not pay a realistic living wage to every employee, its not a viable business.

Well said!

So many threads on here complain about the 'top ups' some low earners receive but when it is suggested wages are raised and more people can be taken off benefits/pay more tax that gets complaints as well.

You are right in that people want others to do these jobs but not actually live comfortable lives in return.

So how do people survive? We are meant to work to pay for things and maybe you know be able to have a meal out etc

So many threads on here complain about the 'top ups' some low earners receive but when it is suggested wages are raised and more people can be taken off benefits/pay more tax that gets complaints as well.

well said ^

you can't have it both ways

Creepybookworm

Thats NMW here - so its illegal

And then everyone bemoans all the shop closures, pub closures, inability to find a decent tradesman, etc., long delays in getting orders, etc etc.

The real problem is that people won't pay the "right" price for things, and because of that, businesses have no choice but to cut corners, cut staff, pay the least they can get away with, etc etc.

Housing costs need to come down, rather endlessly trying to catch up.

We are currently in a cost of living crisis so things are tougher than normal right now, but there have always been low paid jobs and highly paid jobs, there’s lots in the middle, and people live to their means or if they want more/better they improve their salaries through training, promotion etc.

What other posters have said which is absolutely correct is that just “raise the NMW” doesn’t work because all that does is inflate everything. They can increase the NMW to £15 but the consequence will be that because Tesco are now having to pay staff that they are charging £1+ extra per item to cover their increased staffing costs, the restaurant where you want to go for a meal are now having to pay their staff £15 so instead of it being £50 for a meal for 2 it’s now £65, the bus you take to work is now £6 a day instead of £4 a day because the drivers are having to be paid more. The consequence is that your £15 an hour ends up being worth exactly the same as your current wage is, if not less because with all companies paying more across the board they are more likely to boost it that bit extra.

That’s not to mention the fact that raising the NMW means raising everybody else’s salary as well because otherwise what’s the point training, studying, taking on student loans etc if you’re going to sit on the same salary as someone without all of those things?

There’s no perfect answer and at least right now in the UK we are in more difficult times that usual with cost of living crisis but the answer is not just increasing the NMW.

I just don't think minimum wage is enough at the minute
By the time my pension and student loan has come out. Then to pay mortgage, bills etc .. it's tight
But I don't know what the answer is

This is an interesting discussion. Two things I hope someone can explain is why us it only the bottom rung that fuel inflation but ceo pay is getting bigger and bigger and doesn't.

I also dont quite get the idea that minimum wage has to be enough to support someone financially. Some people even say support a whole family. There are lots of people who just need a second income or who are living at home still and need experience. I started work before minimum wage and wages seemed to be a lot less homogeneous. Like a small corner shop might pay half the amount a brand shop, which might pay a little more than entry level office, but not as much as a few years office. It's like the first 10 rungs all squished together.

@Spendonsend

This is an interesting discussion. Two things I hope someone can explain is why us it only the bottom rung that fuel inflation but ceo pay is getting bigger and bigger and doesn't.

Isn't it obvious that it's the numbers!

There is a tiny proportion of CEO's and tens of millions of ordinary workers.

Double the pay of a few hundred CEOs and it makes an insignificant difference to the amount of money in circulation. Increase the pay of millions of workers, and there's a sudden influx of money into the economy, businesses suffer a sudden and drastic loss of income, both of which cause rampant inflation.

That’s simple and here’s an example:

Tesco’s

1 CEO
320,000 employees (roughly)

Lets say 250,000 of those are on NMW. You raise NMW to £15, so a £3 per hour increase.

250,000 people earning £3 more per hour, for 8 hour shifts, 5 days a week = £30,000,000

That’s £30 million more for 1 year. The CEO would need a hell of a pay rise to match that.

£15.44 here for years at Uni, years of training and years of experience. I carry a lot of stress as the 2nd most senior individual in an SME. There's only the MD above me, and he's certainly not coining it in with a huge paycheque and dividends, plus his home is on the line as the surety for our bank overdraft.

No-one in our company is paid only the min wage as a point of principle but boy is that costing us work now. The marketplace doesn't value the role we sell at the cost it now is - they do without it instead.

Raising the min wage devalues skills, education, training and experience and does nothing to solve the problem. Costs are only ever passed on to end users and entry level jobs get cut reducing job availability and service standards for everyone.

Raising the min wage will never solve the problems of the bottom 10% because there's always going to be a bottom 10%, whatever the figures.

Four things that might:

Freely available good quality social housing that anyone can access - as it was intended to be.
Max wage/dividend caps for business to reduce inequality.
Tax breaks for SME's to incentivise above min wage pay whilst keeping them competitive.

Ironically I think Tesco pay all their staff above minimum wage anyway. They seem like a very fair employer. But I see what you mean.

I suppose nlby CEOs I was thinking the whole board of directors and layer below.

I think actual minimum wage is about 5% of the workforce so I guess I meant the corresponding top 5%.

The gaps just going to get bigger and bigger isn't it. If we can't fuel inflation.