Labour are going to crash the economy/jobs market.

[Batmanisaplaceinturkey]

Just a few of the changes
-Making it harder to dismiss a bad hire.
-SSP a percentage of earnings, available from day one of sickness.

And now plans to raise employers NI.

All very well if the employer is Amazon or Google but not so much the independent coffee shop down the road, the plumbers merchant, the cobblers, the florist etc. More expenses and red tape for them but who cares eh. Even if they do survive their costs will have to rise.

Labours plans will have unintended consequences.

And when they do they'll blame it on '14 years of Tory rule' and the '£22 billion black hole that was left in public finances'.

The potential increase in employers NI will have serious consequences. But they are hamstrung in what their manifesto stated pre election. Even this is crossing the line of their pre election promises.

An increase in employment costs will simply keep wages down and deter additional recruitment / stimulate job losses. It depends at what percentage they levy additional NI costs.

Yanu. Workers should have rights and ti's is actually what a Labour government should be doing.

What they are deliberately ignoring is that when a company hires somebody they consider the total cost. It makes no difference to them what is classified as employers'/ employees' NI. Effectively the tax is paid by the employee because it is deducted from the total the company is prepared to pay for their services. It is a stealth tax to hide the real rate of tax on earnings.

All that will happen is that salaries for existing employees will be depressed, and new hires will be fewer. And even Paul Johnson stated that it would be a straightforward breach of their manifesto pledge no to raise NI (there were no caveats about the pseudo employer/ employee split).

Strange way indeed to go about generating economic growth.

If they had any sense at all they would be removing the distortions in the tax system that are holding back productivity gains and economic growth, as economists have told them: abolish the cliff edges from withdrawing the personal allowance, child benefit etc. Make them universal again. And also massively cut the universal credit taper rate. These measures are easy to implement and would increase productivity at all earnings levels almost instantly.

We have lurched from one group of extremists with nonsensical, ideologically-driven policies to the same at the other extreme. Why can't we get any competent politicians who make evidence-based, rational decisions for the general good rather than trying to please extreme minorities?

I didn't say workers shouldn't have rights. They already have rights.

I'm having flashbacks to the 90s when everyone said this would happen with the introduction of the minimum wage. It didn't.

The economic conditions of the 1990s are not remotely comparable to today. If you think things are going to be like the '90s today you're going to be extremely disappointed.

Do you mean like the Tories have done?

I remember clearly the apocalyptic levels of doom that were being predicted at the time and then…. nothing.

The UK is extremely reliant on FDI to plug its enormous trade deficit and current account deficit. The economy is very vulnerable, exacerbated by Brexit.

High taxes alongside failing services and crimbling infrastructure, huge skills deficits that are increasing as skilled people are not paid market rates for working here and subjected to some of the highest tax rates in the whole world, plus self-erected trade barriers with lucrative external markets doesn't make the UK a very attractive investment prospect.

So do I. I had a part time bar job at the time, and I remember the ranting and raving about how 'we'll have to shut!', because it meant the greedy, lazy cunt would have to pay us more than £2 an hour.

The pub is still open.

They're doing what I would expect from them, and this is why I voted for them. Workers rights are important.

At some level there was an impact: NMW for a lot of employers simply became the ceiling of what they would pay and reduced competition in the market. It also coincided with a floodgate of cheap labour from the newly ascended EU countries which kept wages low, and the tax credit regime which heavily subsidised all these poor wages. We’re still feeling the impact of that legacy now with long term depressed wages and employers still reluctant to pay more than NMW for many jobs.

The NI increase in employer contributions is a concern (the rights, I agree with). I did have a little resigned chuckle, along with a big sigh, when on the same BBC homepage, it mentioned the NI increase (for employers), and then had a news article about the BoE being pressured to cut interest rates quicker, due to the slowing of wage growth.
Higher NI contributions will surely not help wage growth? Employers will not all be in a position to increase both wages and NI contributions. I doubt that simply lowering interest rates will be the best solution either.

I remember that when the Minimum Wage was going to cause a load of business to go bust (it didn’t)

Workers should have rights, and should be protected. They should also be paid a proper wage - why do we, as taxpayers, need to pay benefits to people who work full time, so Tesco etc can pay their shareholders more ?

Too long we have been led by Capitalism .. and where had it got us .. low wages, low skill, high cost of living, huge amount of money being paid from the public purse to fund high payouts for shareholders, recession, broken public services, polluted rivers

The current system isn’t working, so quite right we should try sometime else. The first responsibility of any government should be the people.

Of course they are but job creation is also just as important. Its a delicate balance.

YABU

HTH

Will it? Demand creates jobs in the economy, not employers. I'm guessing that Labour's plans for investment are aimed at generating that demand. I'm not convinced they'll be ambitious enough though.

Although the employment rights from day 1 thing is all very well intentioned, it will lead to employers being reluctant to take people on, having even lengthier more convoluted hiring processes than now and probably find a way around it by sourcing labour through self employed routes. So less rights in the long run

This is the problem. You're talking about the big gun employers forgetting that small and medium employers do exist and will feel the impact much more.

This. Employment lawyers will be very happy.

Too long we have been led by Capitalism .. and where had it got us .. low wages, low skill, high cost of living, huge amount of money being paid from the public purse to fund high payouts for shareholders, recession, broken public services, polluted rivers

This isn't because of capitalism. Economies in prosperous European countries that used to be our direct comparators but are fast pulling away on PPP and standard of living have none of these issues but are still capitalist economies. They also, mostly, have stronger workers rights. What they do have is proper regulation that is enforced (not the likes of the Environment Agency, Ofsted etc who do nothing to enforce regulation therefore resulting in a wild west free for all of law breaking in their respective industries); proper long-term industrial strategies; coherent tax systems without arbitrary cliff-edges, a far broader tax base where everyone contributes and most services are universal not subject to arbitrary limits and therefore everyone feels they have both responsibility for and benefits from the system; and haven't decided to leave the most successful and prosperous trading block in the world resulting in a compounding loss of 4% of GDP.

I’m currently job hunting and there is barely anything around locally to me (searching 25 mile radius)

I haven’t known the job market to look
like this since about 2009ish when I had to relocate to London just to find a job and survive…

No idea what’s happening and why though. Not here for a political fight just my own observation!

Decent employers won’t be worried about Workers rights

Instead we have a Government that was even contemplating penalising pension saving (when UK savings rates are already among the lowest in the developed world). What do they think pension funds do with invested money? A very strange way indeed to stimulate economic growth and investment.

There seems to be no joined up thinking whatsoever and no understanding of the very obvious fact that tax policies etc affect people's decisions and behaviour.

Where are the innovative policies to support and grow SMEs in key growth sectors? Where is the rationalisation of the income tax rates/ cliff edges? Where are the plans to enforce education laws, provide appropriate specialised schools to foster the varying talents the modern economy requires and link education properly with industry to provide high quality technical apprenticeships etc? Where is the support for start-ups and the investment grants to develop the technologies of the future? Where are the reforms to make it easier for smaller enterprises to raise capital so they aren't all sold off to huge international competitors? Why are large chunks of our energy, water and infrastructure run for profit by companies owned by foreign states so that they can subsidise these services for their own citizens while we receive sub-standard services at exhorbitant cost? What's their plan to close the trade deficit so we stop importing inflation due to reliance on imports of essential goods like food and fuel? What's their plan for water and food and energy security as the climate change issue bites? What are they doing to reform healthcare into the far superior models elsewhere in Europe with better health outcomes? What are they going to do about the shambles that is SEN provision in UK schools and lack of any suitable provision for children with different needs? What's their strategic plan for exports given their inexplicable refusal to rejoin the SM and CU and that the UK cannot fund itself without plugging the self-inflicted trade deficit? How do they intend to address the UK state pension and public sector pension ponzi schemes that cannot be sustained, like Australia did successfully decades ago? How do they plan to increase the UK birth rate given the importing immigrants will be nigh on impossible in 30yrs time given birth rates are dropping off a cliff everywhere outside sub-Saharan Africa?

These are the questions that need to be answered. Their only answer so far is tumbleweed accompanied by attempted distractions with trivial things that will make not one bit of difference to the UK's long-term prospects.