General Chat

Corporates & Banks are the blue eyed boys are far as this government is concerned, that is the world David Cameron and George Osborne live in, they know no other, they both go on about wanting to help the hard working individual, what they dont tell you is that to be one of their hard working individuals you need to be paying tax at the top rate.

As for the banks, don't get me started, there is a report today claiming RBS put some good viable businesses into default to cut the risk of any possible losses and sold their assets to protect the banks profits, it is called cut and run, and it is nothing new, banks were doing this in the latter years of the Thatcher government and continued doing it throughout the time of John Major's government :-\

and without the small businesses there would not be an economy. and unemployed figures would be far bigger.
The government has done nothing for established small businesses. They offer help to the unemployed for business start ups but that is just to massage the unemployment figures.
The small businesses who have fought tooth and nail to survive the recession have been hung out to dry by the government and the banks.
If they continue this way there will only be large corporations left who take their business abroad to avoid contributing or even more cash in hand workers or those LTD companies who go into liquidation when the first tax bill is due, then Phoenix from the ashes. :-(

The situation on wages versus profits is all part of the Prime Minister David Cameron's plan for the economy.

Maybe he has forgotten what he said in October 2011 which was:-

"We are firing up the engines of the British economy, there is a step change taking place right now. This Government is not just sitting back, ministers want to do all the things to make it easier for businesses to start up, for businesses to grow, for business to employ people, to expand and to invest." :-S

Thanks for all the replies . sorry I had to post and run..
So if I paid the assumed living wage to my employees I have 2 options , get rid of 2 staff and make the others work harder or increase their wages and pass the cost onto my customers , who are also being assessed on their costs. (Social Housing).
Can I select companies who have signed up to the living wage agreement? Of course not because my clients are not in a position to do this.
I note it says these companies are insisting this from their SUPPLIERS .. what if your customers cannot or will not submit to this? Do I close down my business or cherry pick my clients? Of course I can't
they won't pay more as there are many one man bands out there with less overheads ready to jump in for a while until their overheads increase, then the next one man band appears
Now as a small business, if my employers NI contributions were reduced , the rate of VAT was reduced and all the cost of the red tape I have to conform to was reduced I might be able to increase wages , in fact I might be able to create more jobs..
It's a cop out , pass the buck yet again to the employer .. I could employ someone from the back to work project and get a renumeration after 12 months but then the people who are new to the job market have lost out.
I have tried this and it has failed miserably. the people I employed were virtually told to take the job or loose their benefits . They didn't want to work for me.and left within 6 months

The statutory minimum wage is £6.31 ph for 21+ across whole of UK.

The living wage rate, a voluntary rate, is £7.65 outside London for 21 and over. The London living wage rate is £8.80.

A total of 432 employers are now signed up to the campaign for a living wage, up from 78 this time last year. Together these 432 companies employ more than 250,000 workers and also commit to roll out the living wage with their own suppliers, by demanding in contracts that they also adhere to the living wage.

Yes the minimum wage should be paid to all employees. But many are now only paying the living wage which is far lower. And do not get me started on zero hours contracts (the governments new way of fiddling the jobless totals).

If the government and all tax payers want people off the dole then they must be paid a sufficient amount that they can afford to do so.

It is a catch 22 situation. You can live on the dole with all the added extras, but as soon as you work many of these are stopped or lowered. Suddenly you are in a job but are bringing home far less than if you did not work. No incentive to work then.

Are last 3 answers no, no and no :-S

( long, it is not a simple question. In a word though statutory minimum and living wages are a bad thing ESPECIALLY for the work force. )

If ( if ) you have a closed free market economy then wages will automatically settle at market levels and even at the lowest level workers will get a "living wage". that is what fresh young A level economics students are taught and Geo Osbourne believes.

However the UK labour market has never been either free or closed but rather more a battleground between organised labour and cartel capitalism. Currently capitalism is winning but is running into stiff head winds.

It has never been possible for labour to get a fair price in the market without organisation and some sort of closed shop.

You can say what you like about this but that is the way it is. Since Mrs T more or less abolished the organised labour movement the only groups which have maintained or improved their real remuneration have been doctors, dentists, bankers, commercial lawyers and train drivers all of whom have strong and well organised unions and a closed shop.

Otherwise most people from cleaners to architects are at the mercy of the short term labour market.

Employers have tended to drive down wages by a number of strategies. UK Gov has been deeply involved in these plans going right back to the "Empire Windrush".

Wrongly UKGov believes that cheap labour is the path to economic salvation. Not at all it is the path to economic ruin. Two obvious effects are that skilled labour tends to emigrate and demand for upscale products falls.

How is the market rate for labour driven down ?
The most obvious is simply to break trade union and professional organisations. Even better get professional ass. to side with the employers of which the best examples are the nurses' union and the NAS.

The next tactic is to open the doors to unlimited unskilled labour. The Tories love doing this despite all their rant to the contrary. That is what brought hundreds of thousands of people to the UK from the Caribbean in the 1950s and 1960s. It was Mrs T who demanded free movement for labour including Eastern Europe. She knew full well what she was doing.

Another new tactic is to "offshore" the industry.

There are various ways of doing that.
For information technology and help desks the work can be done, in say, India. It is well known that UK banks are doing this maybe a little less well known that UKGov is moving most of the DVLC and NHS back end to India as well. Draw your own conclusions about quality and data theft.

Another tactic is to threaten to close the plant and move it somewhere else. Michelin has used this against the French govt. and of course in the UK we have had the recent Grangemouth debacle which has left the labour movement as strong as a drunken toothless tiger.

In a world where WTO shiboleths such as very low duties are seen as a good thing then this sort of threat is inevitable. The current EU/USA "free trade" negotiations actually have clauses that if EU sovereign states or the EU itself pass laws against US interests and free trade then they can be sued for damages in court !!!

Last but by no means least is the threat not to pay any or very much tax. Starbucks, Amazon, Google, WalMart and the Republic of Ireland are past masters at this.

Realising that if the government did not intervene in some way there would be millions of people destiture Gordon Brown did what all politicians do which is to interfere directly in markets rather than hold the ring.

The unbelievably crass policy was the combination of the minimum wage and tax credits. This met the immediate political need of keeping as many unskilled people in some sort of a job as possible and via the device of tax credits avoided the minimum wage having to be a "living wage". As a bonus the Broons believed that most of those receiving MW/TC would vote Labour.

The immediately obvious downside for labour as Porky Pie says is that the minimum wage rapidly became a maximum wage and on top tends to drag down semi-skilled labour rates which are now not very far above MW.

A second and very serious consequence is that the economy has been grossly distorted in favour of supermarkets and ever more unskilled labour. There is a south coast town with < 50 000 people which currently has three supermarkets and 2014 plans to build FIVE more large units !

So there you go .... the demands for a " living wage" are unrealistic and an inevitable consequence of the Canute like idea of the minimum wage.

If people want the standard of living for ordinary people ( not only wages but education, health, pensions and so on ) to hold up then the current primrose path is not the way to go. It is ideal for making wealthy people even better off.

The Tory party is incapable of breaking out of this vicious circle because it believes that driving down wages will induce higher levels of production and thus grow the economy ( Say's Law ). The LIbDems are at 6s & 7s. UKIP of course believe we are better out, contradicting 500 years of English foreign policy and any amount of blood and treasure.

Deep behind closed doors and still smoked filled rooms Labour is beginning to swing the ship slowly on to another course. Much the same is happening across Europe where simply ceding the future to a corrupt India and Orwellian China is not seen as the way to go.

Meanwhile things are tough and most likely to get worse and a whole lot worse if the coalition somehow remain in power. OTOH if Labour win then returning to Broonite policies is not an option either hence the antipathy between Milliband, who understands this and Ed Balls, who doesn't.

Recasting the economy onto a new trajectory will be painful and difficult. Those on the MW or close to it and the state pension have little to look forward to before 2020. As most of this group are trying to survive to the end of next week no wonder that their distrust in politicians of all stripes is so high.

At any event it is a sunny day, I am going riding. rave Dave is not allowed to as riding a horse is now seen as politically incorrect what with News Int and police horses. Lucky me :-)

Newby,

It would be nice to answer your question by saying yes but it is not quite as simple as that.

To begin with what is a living wage? Is it the monetary amount sufficient for the wage earner just to house, clothe and feed themselves or is it to do those things plus own a car, buy the latest electronic goods (E.G. large screen TV, games console ect) and possibly take an annual holiday abroad? The cost of doing those things vary considerably depending upon where in the UK you live. It is easy for a group of civil servants or politicians in London to come up with their figure which they believe represents a living wage but how relevant is that to the needs of someone in who lives in North East England or Mid Wales?

Wages can only be paid if the employment generates the profit needed to pay them. How relevant would an arbitrary figure for a living wage be when imposed upon such diverse employers as a small corner shop owner and a multi national company employing 1,000's? The overhead costs and profit potential of which are likely to be vastly different from one another.

On reflection I think that because of the above I will have to answer your question by saying no. This is not because I think that anyone should be paid less than they are worth but because I believe that it is impossible to define what a fair for all living wage should be.

NO they should not,

The minimum wage should never have been introduced in the first place,

When government tell employers how little they have to pay their employees then thats what they will pay,

overall wages were much higher when there was no minuimum wage,

The market should be the deciding factor in what an employee is paid and everyone who has shopped around for a cheaper product as apposed to paying the RRP has to take some responcibility because that has also had an effect on wages if you want a cheaper product then the producer has no alternative but to cut the cost of producing it and wages have always been a large part of those costs.

Roy

Would we need it if we didn't have to pay so much tax? :-|

'Immigration would decline if the minimum wage was enforced'.
(Yesterday's Newspaper.)

In my opinion, no one in our so called advanced society should be paid less than what has been called - the living wage.

The rate could be calculated regionally basis on the cost of living in the area. I accept that this raises the issue of cost to the employer, having said that I think it could be done without increasing an employers costs through some sort of rebate system through either the corporation tax or VAT systems, a sort of tax credit for employers, this could be revenue neutral to the Treasury due to savings on benefits.

They should, but could they afford to?

If they need to raise the cost of the goods or services they provide, demand could fall pushing many companies into bankruptcy.

No. Not so sure minimum wage is a good idea either. £5 an hour is good in places, £15 in not sufficient to live in others.

I think employers should be challenged if profitable businesses do not pay living wages, because taxpayers usually have to stump up difference. Though an awful lot of large companies pay most of staff well above minimum wage, and give a lot of fringe benefits too.

But SME's often have to pay very little and have zero hours contracts, pay mimimal amounts into pension pot etc to survive at all and to get their business off the ground. Employees working for them need to take a gamble on the business succeeding and them getting rewarded subsequently. And, in my experience, that is how a lot of good jobs have been created over the years.

Straight question
Do you think all employers should pay this?