uginhoMar 19
Emeritus Prof Christopher May

As more employers (from Harvey Nichols to Hays Travel Agency) are identified (named & shamed) for not paying the minimum wage, often citing 'technical errors' now corrected.... we are also seeing claims (due to legal shifts) young people are *too* expensive to employ.

But, we're never told mid-level or top executives are too expensive to employ, nor that shareholders are too expensive to reward (via dividends); no, its always the low paid who must adjust!

#workers #politics
h/t FT

Mar 19 at 6:05amWeb
Show threadPatrick HadfieldMar 19
@ChrisMayLA6 if their business model relies on cheating low paid employees to keep going, I can't help thinking maybe it isn't a viable business. (Similarly, relying on government to top up wages through tax credits.) Just a thought...!
Show threadEmeritus Prof Christopher MayMar 19

@patrickhadfield

Exactly.... I agree

Show threadManc AvGeekMar 19
@patrickhadfield @ChrisMayLA6
This is another thing I complain about - these businesses, and their owners, complain that they are paying too muuch tax, and too much of that is going into paying benefits, especially top-up benefits to workers in the form of tax credits.
"That's just giving people handouts!" they cry.
But the people who benefit most from the tax credits are the big mega corps who can get away with paying people subsistence level wages.
A high Minimum Wage level tends to hurt small businesses - I can think of several small shops and takeaways near me who would go under if they didn't have their teenage children manning the tills or stocking shelves -- but low levels lead to exploitation by the big employers.
I don't envy the people who have to judge where Minimum Wage levels have to go, but I also know what it is like being paid far too little for backbreaking work.
Show threadEmeritus Prof Christopher MayMar 19

@mancavgeek @patrickhadfield

Exactly: in-work benefits are essentially corporate welfare for low-wage employers, subsidising their profits....

Show threadSteve WoodsMar 19

@patrickhadfield @ChrisMayLA6 Same thing applies to businesses who rely on in-work benefits to top up the abysmal remuneration they pay.

As for a different rate of minimum wage for young people, that's just ripping off those who have made it onto the bottom rungs of adulthood. It should be abolished.

Show threadJayne 🇪🇺🏳️‍🌈Mar 19

@patrickhadfield @ChrisMayLA6

Exactly what I’ve been saying ever since Blair introduced working tax credits 🤦

Show threadAndii אַנדִֽיMar 19
@ChrisMayLA6
Similarly, it seems to me that in fact so-called AI could probably do CEO work pretty well, but those jobs seem magically ringfenced from consideration.
Show threadManc AvGeekMar 19
@ChrisMayLA6 I've pointed out, loudly and repeatedly at work, that Head Office is filled with people who have never worked on the shop floor (literally - I'm in retail) in their lives, but think that an ability to push numbers around a spread sheet means that they know how it works and what the customers want.
In the past 10 years or so, there have been 3 different attempts to set up very small, corner-shop-syle stores - the first 2 were abandoned very quickly, with a combined write off of ~£1Billion.
They tried dipping their toes into the E-tail market by, erm, buying an American company, then trying to adapt it's succesful "American) working practices into something useable over here, then writing the whole thing off.
They then bought a succesful British E-tailer, tried to capitalise on it's name by opening physical stores all over the UK, totally ignoring the reason the company was succesful in the first place, then replaced their whole online back-end and increasing prices, and the whole thing rapidly fell apart, and was sold back to the original owners for a fraction of the original purchase price.
This is just a handful of examples, but every time money was wasted like this, when pay negotiations came around for staff, the cry from Head Office was "We're making a loss, we can't afford to give you a raise."
Instead, job losses, mostly through natural wastage (people retiring or moving on to other jobs), without vacancies being filled.
They expect the same job doing as 10 years ago, when there were at least 50% more staff, while wanting to pay less, taking away overtime and unsocial hours payments, taking profit share payments and folding them into normal wages - that was the fustercluck that finally destroyed the union's reputation at work! - among other things.
Stores are, generally, making big profits, it's Head Office that is responsible for most of the losses with their wild and crazy schemes that can't possibly work.
Show threadEmeritus Prof Christopher MayMar 19

@mancavgeek

This confirms what I've always thought about management (especially top management); without actual shop-floor (or equivalent) they are rescued to management by spreadsheet, and therein lies the problem for the UK.... its the corrosive effect of management being seen as a non-enterprise specific skill (and as taught to MBAs).

Show threadManc AvGeekMar 19

@ChrisMayLA6 "So, just leave!" I can hear people saying.
But it's not that easy.
Most of us have tried to get out, but the only things we are qualified to do want to pay less than minimum wage (which these people have considered several times, but have concluded the cumulative fines would be worse than just paying us!), and most of us have had prospective employers tell us that we have been here for so long we have become effectively institutionalised, that we are stuck in "The [redacted] corporate mindset."
When the Minimum Wage came in, we were earning ~10% above that level - now, we're bang on it.
And don't get me started on The Union - at this point, they are little more than a confidence scheme, they say they need more members to get a decent deal, but they roll over at the first hurdle set up by the company and recomend deals that leave us worse off.
We received better pay deals from succesive Tory Governments increasing Minimum Wage than we ever got from the Union netotiators - I actually had one of them approach me in my local kebab house one night (it was 1030PM, I had just finished work, and was still in my uniform) to ask what I thought about the pay iuncrease - "What pay increase?" I asked, pointing out that they had negotiated away overtime and early/late/weekend, unsociable hours payments in favour of a slightly larger base rate.
It was great if you worked Monday-Friday, 9-6, but anything byond that, not so great.
I worked all weekend, and most days I either worked 6-3, or 1-10, which meant that, for exactly the same job and hours, I was earning £200 a year less.
He wasn't impressed at being told the truth.

So, yeah, the people doing the actual work get screwed, the people in the nice air conditioned offices get all the money.
And they treat us an an inconvernience, as if they would make more money if they could just get rid of us.

Show threadEmeritus Prof Christopher MayMar 19

@mancavgeek

exactly; workers are seen as a cost to be reduced, not a vital resource for the enterprise....

Show threadShadSterlingMar 19
@ChrisMayLA6 failing to pay the minimum wage is a crime, right? How many people arrested for that? Did the companies have to pay back pay with interest?