A slap in the face for the poor

[ceres]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4296097.stm

Notice the image, with the salary of ?35k.

At ?5.05 an hour you would only need to work for 296, 24 hour days, straight to earn that much.
________
Glass Pipes

[Nodrog]

a) There shouldnt be a minimum wage, b) The people who generally work minimum wage jobs are not the nebulous 'poor', but rather students and people treating the job as temporary rather than as a career.

[JC]

Originally Posted by Nodrog

b) The people who generally work minimum wage jobs are not the nebulous 'poor', but rather students and people treating the job as temporary rather than as a career.

Most of the people that work at the same bar as me arent students and are doing this minimum wage work as a second job to supplement the crappy income from their main job. I think the minimum wage does effect a fair amount of normal working class individuals.

[sayonara]

Originally Posted by ceres

Notice the image, with the salary of £35k.

You mean the one that says "Basic pay: £26,936"?

[MrL_JaKiri]

I love the way that this thread isn't actually about the rise of the minimum wage, but is about the image on the BBC website.

[wu_trax]

i don't think a minimum wage that is decided by some random politician is a good idea. i'd rather try to give the people who work at that wage level enough power to negotiate with their employers about their payment. its still better than nothing though. all the people who are against this and for letting companies make even more profits should think about that those companies actually need people to buy their stuff / services.

[midge5]

Originally Posted by JC

Most of the people that work at the same bar as me arent students and are doing this minimum wage work as a second job to supplement the crappy income from their main job. I think the minimum wage does effect a fair amount of normal working class individuals.

According to the ONS and Low Pay Commission when first introduced it directly affected 6% of working people though this was apparently meant to be 8% but the ONS screwed up some of their surveys. Not sure how many people it now effects with the raises seen but the knock on effect for other low paid workers is supposed to have been minimal.

[IncubusGod]

Originally Posted by wu_trax

i don't think a minimum wage that is decided by some random politician is a good idea. i'd rather try to give the people who work at that wage level enough power to negotiate with their employers about their payment. its still better than nothing though. all the people who are against this and for letting companies make even more profits should think about that those companies actually need people to buy their stuff / services.

The problem is, if theres no min wage and you have people responsible for negotiating their own wages, that most companies will try to bully employees who have little other options in employment. If there is no legislation then the companies will exploit people at every oppertunity and pay them as little as possible.

A goverment ruling has far more clout than one person. The people this is designed to help are the those with little education and limited job prospects, they wouldn't be well versed on their rights and wouldn't generally be competant enough in negotiations to get their own pay rises each year.

[wu_trax]

well, you could have unions and stuff ... and no, i don't think that would be a step back

[Nodrog]

Originally Posted by JC

Most of the people that work at the same bar as me arent students and are doing this minimum wage work as a second job to supplement the crappy income from their main job. I think the minimum wage does effect a fair amount of normal working class individuals.

Then that isnt their career and they will most ilkely be looking for a better job (and if they arent then they deserve to be making minimum wage). As I said, its a temporary thing.

Isnt income mobility grand.

[Stew]

The more people are paid (as long as inflation is being controlled) the more people have to pay for goods and so consume more, meaning people can be paid more...

[Nodrog]

Originally Posted by IncubusGod

The problem is, if theres no min wage and you have people responsible for negotiating their own wages, that most companies will try to bully employees who have little other options in employment. If there is no legislation then the companies will exploit people at every oppertunity and pay them as little as possible.

A goverment ruling has far more clout than one person. The people this is designed to help are the those with little education and limited job prospects, they wouldn't be well versed on their rights and wouldn't generally be competant enough in negotiations to get their own pay rises each year.

Real people dont receive the minimum wage so this isnt really that important. I could apply for a summer job in McDonalds and earn above the minimum wage. If you are making that little in your main job then you have most likely failed badly at life, and all the government aid in the world isnt going to make you more competant.

[IncubusGod]

Originally Posted by Nodrog

Real people dont receive the minimum wage so this isnt really that important. I could apply for a summer job in McDonalds and earn above the minimum wage. If you are making that little in your main job then you have most likely failed badly at life, and all the government aid in the world isnt going to make you more competant.

The min wage isn't designed to make you more competant. It's designed to give you a little more money than you were getting before to adjust your wages just a little better to ease the burden of inflation.
However it usually fails to do so.
I'm not arguing that if your only options in life are min wage jobs then you seriously have to look at yourself, but that doesn't have much of an effect on the argument.

[Dante Hicks]

Originally Posted by Nodrog

Real people dont receive the minimum wage so this isnt really that important.

Are you actually arguing this from some sort of statistical basis, or on the basis that no-one you know works in a minimum job. You mentioned McDonalds, but McDonalds is a very wealthy corporation (OK, individual outlets are run by franchisees but I'm presuming there is some sort of central pricing / wages body for McD) so it's unsurprising they are able to afford to pay higher wages. Besides, if you check most "vacancies" in the restaurants they are usually for weekend or evenings which might be unsuitable for people with families and so on.

A couple of years ago I lost my job via redundancy and basically had to work a job which paid £5 per hour (less than the proposed new minimum wage level). I had not "failed at life", but the company I worked for previously had gone out of business. I had to work to pay the rent. Once in a job like that it's quite hard to look for new jobs (employment agencies are closed in the evening and on weekends) and you can find yourself in a rut. Sure, I only ended up doing it for a couple of month but it's not like my rent or transpotation got any cheaper during that period.

I'm not arguing that the minimum wage is a particularly brilliant thing (under our current system I mean) but I think you underestimate how many people it effects. Not just people who have "failed at life" but people with families, immigrants with poor social networks or command of the English language, or people who have simply been unfortunate.

[Sarina_Joy]

Originally Posted by Nodrog

Real people dont receive the minimum wage so this isnt really that important. I could apply for a summer job in McDonalds and earn above the minimum wage. If you are making that little in your main job then you have most likely failed badly at life, and all the government aid in the world isnt going to make you more competant.

I must know a shed load of fake people then.

What do you consider failure? I know many people earning the national minimum wage. The majority of them are women. The majority of them are working in hotel or cleaning jobs. They are mothers taking the only job they can get which fits in with school timetables and babysitters. They are not failures, and for you to claim they are shows an unbelievable level of arrogance on your part.

I am also part of the management team in a restaurant. We have a very limited control over wage rates - they are decided by head office. Waiting staff receive national minimum wage. Kitchen staff recieve 20p per hour more than this. If I remember correctly the original rate of the minimum wage was £3.60 per hour and it has risen annually since being introduced. I also remember that before the minimum wage was introduced our waiting staff were earning slightly over £3 per hour (I think the exact figure was £3.20 though I may be wrong). Were it not for the national minimum wage I am quite sure my company would currently be paying less than £4 per hour because they could get away with it. What you don't seem to understand nod is that there are people out there who aren't university educated (or onto their 5th attempt at a degree or whatever it is now) and who can't walk in to a 20k job and just working at all is a massive deal to them.

[Nodrog]

Originally Posted by Dante Hicks

Are you actually arguing this from some sort of statistical basis, or on the basis that no-one you know works in a minimum job. You mentioned McDonalds, but McDonalds is a very wealthy corporation (OK, individual outlets are run by franchisees but I'm presuming there is some sort of central pricing / wages body for McD) so it's unsurprising they are able to afford to pay higher wages. Besides, if you check most "vacancies" in the restaurants they are usually for weekend or evenings which might be unsuitable for people with families and so on.

I'm basing it on the fact that pretty much every single job listed in the average job centre pays above minimum wage, and even assuming you are unable to find one of these and have to start at the minimum wage level, if you havent managed to get a salary increase and/or promotion within 2 years or so, you are most likely shit at the job.

A couple of years ago I lost my job via redundancy and basically had to work a job which paid £5 per hour (less than the proposed new minimum wage level). I had not "failed at life"

But now you no longer work there, which hardly serves to refute my point about most people who work minimum wage jobs being either students or temporary workers.

Once in a job like that it's quite hard to look for new jobs

And yet you did.

[Nodrog]

Originally Posted by Sarina_Joy

I know many people earning the national minimum wage. The majority of them are women. The majority of them are working in hotel or cleaning jobs. They are mothers taking the only job they can get which fits in with school timetables and babysitters.

b) The people who generally work minimum wage jobs are not the nebulous 'poor', but rather students and people treating the job as temporary rather than as a career.

When I was born my mother took several years off her main job and got a temporary job at Safeways because they had flexible hours which allowed her to spend time with me. When I grew up, she left Safeways.

[Sarina_Joy]

I think what we're disagreeing on here is what we consider to be a career. A lot of people will never have a 'career'. They will go through their entire lives working minimum wage (or perhaps slightly above if they're lucky) jobs. These are not temporary jobs - this is what they do day in day out for the rest of their lives.

And I'd still like you to clarify what you mean by 'real people don't receive the minimum wage'.

[Nodrog]

Oh and Dante, you arent seriously claiming that the minimum wage has a positive effect on immigrants are you?

[Sarina_Joy]

Originally Posted by Nodrog

When I was born my mother took several years off her main job and got a temporary job at Safeways because they had flexible hours which allowed her to spend time with me. When I grew up, she left Safeways.

When I was a kid my Mum worked in an office on a low rate of pay (there wasn't a minimum wage in those days). When I grew up my Mum worked in an office on a low rate of pay. That's because this WAS her 'main job' .

[Nodrog]

Originally Posted by Sarina_Joy

I think what we're disagreeing on here is what we consider to be a career. A lot of people will never have a 'career'. They will go through their entire lives working minimum wage (or perhaps slightly above if they're lucky) jobs.

Most jobs, including many minimum wage ones, will allow salary increases and promotions for people who stick at them for a reasonable length of time. If someone went through life flitting between minimum wage jobs then I would have to conclude that either a) they were doing this out of choice (perhaps as some kind of conscious decision to drop out of the system, which would certainly be acceptable under some circumstances), or b) they were grossly incompetant.

And I'd still like you to clarify what you mean by 'real people don't receive the minimum wage'.

In the context, I meant people who were working a job as their main job, ie one which they could imagine themselves doing for a reasonable length of time.

[Sarina_Joy]

Originally Posted by Nodrog

Most jobs, including many minimum wage ones, will allow salary increases and promotions for people who stick at them for a reasonable length of time. If someone went through life flitting between minimum wage jobs then I would have to conclude that either a) they were doing this out of choice (perhaps as some kind of conscious decision to drop out of the system, which would certainly be acceptable under some circumstances), or b) they were grossly incompetant.
.

Many jobs will allow salary increases and promotions. Many won't. I know many people who have worked from their 20s through till their 50s in low paid jobs. This is all they know. I don't think it's a conscious decision to 'drop out of the system' I think it's simply a case of these being jobs they know they can do, they know they have a regular income and they can live. You seemed to be implying earlier in the thread that you consider these people to be failures. (?)

[Nodrog]

Unless they are doing the job because they actually enjoy it, they are certainly failures from a career point of view. Whether 'they' are failures would obviously depend on their lives as a whole, theres more to life than your job.

[Dace]

If i was in a minimum wage paying job i'd be estatic that i was getting £400 more a year.

Ohhhh wait no i wouldn't.

That's because my council tax has increased by £700 odd in the last 2 years.

[Nodrog]

The benefits of a civil service job come not from the salary, but from the pleasure derived from knowing you are doing indispensible work which benefits the whole country and enriches lives everywhere.

[Dace]

i make people's dreams come true

[Dante Hicks]

Originally Posted by Nodrog

And yet you did.

Will reply more fully later, but very quickly : No, I didn't. I didn't manage to get to a job centre / agency in my time in that job, so I couldn't look for another job. Every day was pretty apalling as I thought I'd be fired that day...fortunatley they offered me a higher paying job because I rock, etc.

[Yahwe]

let's get to the meat of nodrog's daily mail objection:

"its going to increase house prices and let in more immigrants"

[JBOY]

ITT Nodrogs mum adjusts his cotton wool blanket for him.

[roadrunner_0]

Originally Posted by Nodrog

a) There shouldnt be a minimum wage, b) The people who generally work minimum wage jobs are not the nebulous 'poor', but rather students and people treating the job as temporary rather than as a career.

christ nod you talk some shit, having come from a council estate backround with a hell of a lot of minimum wage employers in the area i can safely say that yes, a lot of people do have minimum wage careers, in fact, probably as many as have good careers.
You know nothing on this subject nod, all you see if the affluence that you can be kept in and assume that everyone has this, when they don't.

in short, your attitude disgusts me.


more on topic, it would be much better for the govt. if they really wanted to help low earners, to increase the wage threshold before tax (up to 6 or even 10k) and make more bands of income tax to tax the rich more efficiently.
But they will never do this, as even the labour govt. no longer represents 'the people' but rather its own interests

[LHC]

Originally Posted by roadrunner_0

if they really wanted to help low earners, to increase the wage threshold before tax (up to 6 or even 10k) and make more bands of income tax to tax the rich more efficiently.
But they will never do this, as even the labour govt. no longer represents 'the people' but rather its own interests

The rich are people too!

[Phang]

Originally Posted by LHC

The rich are people too!

yes, but they're also people who don't have a mortgage but do have a butler.

[ceres]

More effort needs to be spent on driving home the importance of education, so these people dont end up on minimum wage jobs.
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Stickywetcouple

[MrL_JaKiri]

Originally Posted by ceres

More effort needs to be spent on driving home the importance of education, so these people dont end up on minimum wage jobs.

Even with the best trained workforce in the world, some people still have to do the shitty jobs, and the economic necessity in many cases is for those jobs to be paid the minimum amount.

[ceres]

Originally Posted by MrL_JaKiri

Even with the best trained workforce in the world, some people still have to do the shitty jobs, and the economic necessity in many cases is for those jobs to be paid the minimum amount.

Yes i agree, there are jobs that need doing that will never attract a decent wage, but the problem i'm seeing is that the youth of today dont appreciate that unless they work hard during their time in education they will end up either living off state welfare or being in a low paid job. I put alot of this blame down to their parents and this post is probably more suited to idimmu's thread regarding parenting. Unfortunately this problem will show no sign of stopping as bad parents bring up bad children who in turn become bad parents who inturn! bring up bad children.

Thank god for gated estates.
________
AlwaysReady live

[roadrunner_0]

you would be better off putting more into vocational courses than trying to send more people to university. imo, you would even be better off with less people doing a levels, and encouraged into more different things.
There is nothing wrong with minimum wage i hasten to add, i have had to survive on it myself before, and run a house, which is why nods post irritated me so much

[Tactitus]

The flaw in minimum wage laws is believing that you can legislate the value of labor. Increasing the minimum wage doesn't make labor that much more productive, it just makes businesses that much less competitive--helping to increase unemployment and accelerating the movement of jobs to countries with lower wages.

Traditionally, the strongest supporters of minimum wages were labor unions--as a device by higher-priced labor to limit competition from lower-priced labor; but that works increasingly less well in a global economy.

[Dace]

Originally Posted by ceres

Yes i agree, there are jobs that need doing that will never attract a decent wage, but the problem i'm seeing is that the youth of today dont appreciate that unless they work hard during their time in education they will end up either living off state welfare or being in a low paid job.

exceptions prove rules

[Yahwe]

Originally Posted by Tactitus

The flaw in minimum wage laws is believing that you can legislate the value of labor. Increasing the minimum wage doesn't make labor that much more productive, it just makes businesses that much less competitive--helping to increase unemployment and accelerating the movement of jobs to countries with lower wages.

you use legislation and diplomacy to prevent this.

the state always wins in the end.

[MrL_JaKiri]

Originally Posted by Dace

exceptions prove rules

Only if by "prove" you mean it's historical meaning of "test".

[LHC]

Originally Posted by Tactitus

The flaw in minimum wage laws is believing that you can legislate the value of labor.

It doesn't even do this. Legislating the value of Labour would suggest some kind of 'valuation', which they make no attempt to do. Instead they choose an arbitrary figure, which depends on age and not the job.

[Dante Hicks]

Originally Posted by Tactitus

it just makes businesses that much less competitive--helping to increase unemployment and accelerating the movement of jobs to countries with lower wages.

This is probably true, but it also helps to increase the income of quite a few people without the recourse to stronger trade unions, which a cynic might suspect was some of the motivation behind such a polcy.

I'd personall prefer if all these interventions could be got rid off so we can get on with the class struggle proper. But while there are anti-union laws in place I'll take some benefits.

[Yahwe]

nonsense.
there is no need to struggle with class.
struggle with capitalism and multi national corporations. struggle with abuse. struggle with oppression.

class has nothing to do with such things.