They have had their wages tripled, if my employer were to do the same to me he might get a bit more out of me,these days they pretend to pay me so I pretend to work.
If you pretend to work, I fire yer ass.
Nope,been there too long,got me rights.
When me and the Mrs came back to UK in the late 90s after a short career break to see the world, I did a few temp jobs before I decided whether to go back to the plumbing.
For a while, I worked at the huge car yards in Avonmouth near Bristol where Spanish built Vauxhalls are landed into the UK. The pay was rubbish - just over £5 an hour.
The company thought they were doing well by screwing their employees. Nothing could be further from the truth. Our attitude was the same as Enyams, rightly or wrongly there was the same pretence of payment and working.
Everyone was in slow motion, and they had to over-man the place because the employeees attitude was so laid back. The foremen were the same. They got paid more, but it was still peanuts for the responsibility.
The company took a second hit because the only way the employees (we're mostly talking middle aged people with kids, not students, casuals) could make the job pay was with overtime. The foremen encouraged people to go slow during the day so everyone got early starts, overtime after 4pm as well as double time weekends. The overtime bill must have been enormous.
Had they paid the staff more sensibly, and motivated them and the foremen, they would have cut the wage bill massively. Yes, there would have been fewer workers, but the work would have got done a lot more efficiently without the constant air of disgruntled, poorly paid staff, surviving on overtime.