Oi, you, get back to work!

[Deleted member 174758]

Exactly, why pay more.

Common decency? To motivate the workforce? To reward people for their efforts? To encourage staff to stay with you?

Or perhaps you think that they should be grateful for any scraps they are given?

An example of this is the way site labourers are treated in my own industry: pay them the bare minimum and you'll get the bare minimum of effort out of them - pay them better and you'll get at least some who will work harder and make the task of running the job easier because you don't have to be on their backs all the time. The ones who don't pull their weight you need to replace (it's a tough business, and we use agency staff a lot of the time)

The (management) skill is always to motivate staff to maximise performance, but with bare minimum wages you motivate absolutely nobody

 

[Brigadier]

You're presuming lower wages means more profit

No, I'm not.

 

[JohnD]

“It is a serious national evil”, he famously thundered, “that any class of His Majesty’s subjects should receive less than a living wage… It was formerly supposed”, he went on, “that the working of the laws of supply and demand would naturally regulate or eliminate that evil. But where you have what we call sweated trades, you have no organisation, no parity of bargaining, the good employer is undercut by the bad, and the bad employer is undercut by the worst…. Where those conditions prevail you have not a condition of progress, but a condition of progressive degeneration.”

Churchill, the crisis and a better deal for Britain’s low paid • Resolution Foundation

www.resolutionfoundation.org

 

[fillyboy]

Common decency? To motivate the workforce? To reward people for their efforts? To encourage staff to stay with you?

Or perhaps you think that they should be grateful for any scraps they are given?

No, I'm simply saying that if you set the bar at a certain height, that's exactly the height companies will aim to meet, and if all companies aim at the same bar, wage competition goes out of the window.

Before the minimum wage was introduced, I knew of very few, if any, people who earned below the minimum wage, I know quite a few now who are on minimum wage, the only pay increase they will see is when the govt increases the level, without the minimum wage companies would be forced to pay more to compete in the labour market, and there is a shortage of labour.

 

[gas112]

minimum wage more or less gone in all warehousing and factory jobs around my way massive shortage of labour so some of them are now advertising 12/13 quid an hour with time and a half for overtime . Sending light aircraft up with banners and one very good thing a lot are now employing directly instead of through agencies finally realising employ people directly and you get a more committed workforce

 

[FiremanT]

benefits were around quite a bit before them.

True. I don’t know how they compared ££wise, though.

Just before leaving school on ‘76, with my apprenticeship organised starting in August 23rd, IIRC, I was talking to my Art teacher (Good guy, but my 5 year old grand daughters drawing is better than mine now)
who asked me if I was going to carry on my part time job (4 x 1 hour after school and all day Saturday) between leaving in June (?) and starting mynproper job. I replied that it is not worth it - I will get more on the dole.
He smiled and said that attitude will probably change after I have paid tax for a few years.

Footnote: I did leave the part time job, got one dole Giro then started a full time temp job as Garddeners assistant for the Council. Hated it but stuck with it during the blazing summer of ‘76.

 

[JohnD]

There have always been employers who seek to exploit workers and pay the least they possibly can that will still bring in a struggling few desperate for the smallest crumbs. Minimum wage puts a meagre bar under the least they can legally pay. Some still fail to meet even the legal minimum.

Gone seems to have that attitude.

Not all employers need the force of the law to make them treat workers properly.

 

[Deleted member 18243]

Possibly, I've always thought the introduction of a 'minimum wage' has held back wage growth.

I reckon it has also created unemployment. There are, believe it or not, people who would work for less than the minimum wage but cannot legally do so.

 

[Deleted member 174758]

I reckon it has also created unemployment. There are, believe it or not, people who would work for less than the minimum wage but cannot legally do so.

Sorry, Andy, but that sounds like pure Daily Mail fantasy.

 

[JohnD]

There are, believe it or not, people who would work for less than the minimum wage but cannot legally do so.

And there are employers who would expoit the desperation of the poor.

 

[Brigadier]

There are, believe it or not, people who would work for less than the minimum wage but cannot legally do so.

What f#####g use would that be to either them, or the country?

 

[carmanmemoranda]

And there are employers who would expoit the desperation of the poor.

Many. Too many.

What is wrong with paying a minimum wage, let alone a living wage.

If you don't want people on benefits, reward them for work

 

[FiremanT]

I reckon it has also created unemployment. There are, believe it or not, people who would work for less than the minimum wage but cannot legally do so.

Some will work for less if they have to. Doesn’t make it right or fair to be able to pay even less

 

[Deleted member 18243]

Some will work for less if they have to. Doesn’t make it right or fair to be able to pay even less

"Have to" is the operative word (or phrase) there.

 

[FiremanT]

"Have to" is the operative word (or phrase) there.

Yet you suggested that some “would” do.

Are you suggesting that because someone is desperate it is reasonable to pay him a rate that will never allow him to find his feet?

It is because of employers with your mindset that employment laws are necessary.