Current Affairs - The Bear and Badger

RedDave2

Yossarian wrote:

I was debating with Cocko about the minimum wage a while back and took a look at inflation levels in the UK after it was introduced here and inflation seemed about the same before, during and after the minimum wage came in. I strongly suspect that the countries with the highest minimum wages have the highest minimum wages because they have the highest cost of living, not the other way around.

Thats not completely wrong, but I think you do have to be careful with a minimum raise. To me, its there to stop employers abusing hiring people on low wages when jobs are scarce. When Jobs are plentiful, no that it should be rolled back, but there is no need to keep raising it as the natural economy will do that (So in my sector, I have to offer more to gain a new employee so that sorts out the issue there)

I dont think minimum wage should be there to provide a standard of living. I know you dont agree with this outlook and thats grand. Just my own take.

Diluted Dante

If you can't afford to live off the wage of your job, what is the point of your job?

RedDave2

Diluted Dante wrote:

If you can't afford to live off the wage of your job, what is the point of your job?

Thats up to each individual person Dante. Not everyone's job is their sole form of income. Not every job can justify a full living wage. Lots of people work part time jobs because their spouse or parents provide enough to cover that aspect, or maybe they have hit retirement in their regular career and just want to keep their hand in. Maybe you are a student and 4-5 hours busing tables on a Friday gives you an extra bit of pocket money.

Every person gets to decide what their time is worth and if they take the money being offered. If an employer cant get anyone taking up a role because the pay is too low, they need to either increase pay or find another way to get the work done. But the job doesnt exist so someone can make a living - it exisits because something needs doing.

b0r1s

I read this and can’t stop seeing Shortround from Indy

https://news.sky.com/story/short-bus-driver-5ft-tracey-scholes-to-keep-working-after-she-risked-losing-her-job-in-manchester-in-height-dispute-12518950

Cos

RedDave2 wrote:

Diluted Dante wrote:

If you can't afford to live off the wage of your job, what is the point of your job?

Thats up to each individual person Dante. Not everyone's job is their sole form of income. Not every job can justify a full living wage. Lots of people work part time jobs because their spouse or parents provide enough to cover that aspect, or maybe they have hit retirement in their regular career and just want to keep their hand in. Maybe you are a student and 4-5 hours busing tables on a Friday gives you an extra bit of pocket money. Every person gets to decide what their time is worth and if they take the money being offered. If an employer cant get anyone taking up a role because the pay is too low, they need to either increase pay or find another way to get the work done. But the job doesnt exist so someone can make a living - it exisits because something needs doing.

I don't think the interpretation is that someone should be able to live solely off a part time wage so to frame your point in that way feels a bit disingenuous. Rather, any full time role should pay a wage that the person can live off and that wage should be pro-rata if the role is part time so that combining two part time roles for example should provide a living wage.

Your final point about jobs exist because something needs doing is right but seems like you're saying that doesn't mean a person should be paid a living wage to do that job (depending on what it is?). Not intending to put words in your mouth but generally not clear what your actual argument is, to me at least.

Paul the sparky

b0r1s wrote:

I read this and can’t stop seeing Shortround from Indy

https://news.sky.com/story/short-bus-driver-5ft-tracey-scholes-to-keep-working-after-she-risked-losing-her-job-in-manchester-in-height-dispute-12518950

Did they give her a booster seat?

RedDave2

@cos

You've mis-understood my point about the part-time aspect. I was raising the issue that not everyone needs a full time job. Both my folks have had a part time job in their retirement to earn a little extra cash on top of their pension (and to keep busy to be honest) There's also people who dont need a full-time job (or wage) because their spouse earns enough and again they just want to supplement that income.

What I am saying is I don't believe every job needs to be paid to a living wage standard. The living wage standard is based (at least the Irish version) on it being enough to sustain a Single Adult with Food, Clothing, Education, Transport, Housing (which I'll make a separate point on) and some Social/ recreation. Using this as the baseline I would put forward that not every employee has those needs for a variety of reasons which are unique to each individual. I dont believe every job has the same value, some are clearly entry level and are great training jobs but they are not meant to be roles that a person would stay on.

I would say that instead of focusing on making companies of all shapes and sizes pay a living wage, governments and their populace would be far, far better served reducing the cost of living accommodation be it rental or ownership. Nearly everyone I know who has to pay for their living space would site this as by far their biggest expense. If we take Dublin as a place, even the living wage would not sustain the rents here. Its the biggest drain on our economy and I would imagine the same for the UK. Bring that down and the other costs of living are more than manageable. Instead of a universal income, I would be much more supportive of universal accommodation support. If you have a place of your own, you can always build up (imo)

davyK

Paul the sparky wrote:

I read this and can’t stop seeing Shortround from Indy https://news.sky.com/story/short-bus-driver-5ft-tracey-scholes-to-keep-working-after-she-risked-losing-her-job-in-manchester-in-height-dispute-12518950

Did they give her a booster seat?

Heh.

She can drive only certain buses in the fleet due to the different locations of mirrors. The workaround is she starts early at the depot and gets a bus she can drive.

Bit of an industrial relations conundrum but at least there's a workaround. A booster seat would probably work!! We got a booster for one of our staff members for driving the van.

I can see min. height being added to the JD for subsequent recruitments though. That's a legal minefield getting that added in.

Cos

RedDave2 wrote:

@cos You've mis-understood my point about the part-time aspect. I was raising the issue that not everyone needs a full time job. Both my folks have had a part time job in their retirement to earn a little extra cash on top of their pension (and to keep busy to be honest) There's also people who dont need a full-time job (or wage) because their spouse earns enough and again they just want to supplement that income. What I am saying is I don't believe every job needs to be paid to a living wage standard. The living wage standard is based (at least the Irish version) on it being enough to sustain a Single Adult with Food, Clothing, Education, Transport, Housing (which I'll make a separate point on) and some Social/ recreation. Using this as the baseline I would put forward that not every employee has those needs for a variety of reasons which are unique to each individual. I dont believe every job has the same value, some are clearly entry level and are great training jobs but they are not meant to be roles that a person would stay on. I would say that instead of focusing on making companies of all shapes and sizes pay a living wage, governments and their populace would be far, far better served reducing the cost of living accommodation be it rental or ownership. Nearly everyone I know who has to pay for their living space would site this as by far their biggest expense. If we take Dublin as a place, even the living wage would not sustain the rents here. Its the biggest drain on our economy and I would imagine the same for the UK. Bring that down and the other costs of living are more than manageable. Instead of a universal income, I would be much more supportive of universal accommodation support. If you have a place of your own, you can always build up (imo)

Think you're right about a misunderstanding regarding the part-time piece so apologies if I jumped on that too heavily. However, based on the highlighted paragraph, the broader point about living wage as a whole seems to be the same. Perhaps we have different interpretations of living wage but my understanding is that any job (working full time hours) should pay enough for the person to live on. If it doesn't, then how can you reasonably expect a person to do that job?

I do agree there is a responsibility to tackle issues with cost of living via other arenas and places like Dublin exacerbate the issue, possibly making it much harder to achieve a living wage. There is still a level of responsibility on employers to not simply pay government defined minimum wage because they can. Not all employers are equal obviously but plenty will take advantage of low staff costs to improve their bottom line even at the expense of the staff themselves who may need to work multiple jobs (i.e. to work more than 40 hours a week) to make a living wage.

For reference, is the difference between universal income and universal accommodation support that the latter can only be used towards rents/mortgages?

RedDave2

I disagree that every job needs to fully support a grown adult living alone. I think if we take that approach we will both make it much more costly to employ and train low skilled and/ or inexperienced people and we make it more costly for smaller business to compete.

Like it or not in some roles, there is space for inexperienced people to work and learn. My local shop has a steady stream of young people - 17/18 year olds who get to work there, learn how to work in an adult work place and get a bit of pay. They are generally over staffed with these folk and I imagine if we raise the base cost they would lose at.

Again, I think a minimum wage is needed but it should not reflect the Living wage of a grown adult.

At the moment People before Profit are proposing a minimum wage in Ireland of €15 per hour for anyone which means (and I did ask to confirm) that an unskilled 17 year old would be entitled to €31,000 per annum. I think this is numbers picked out of the air. I also think it would discourage people from employing young people or those looking to get into a new field but dont have the experience yet.

As for income vs accomodation, I would not like to see it go towards rents as this would lead to rents just going up (we see this in Ireland already). It would never happen but I would like to see the Irish Government take over all rental property in the country. People could allow their property to be rented out by the Government but the government would have control of the rental market. Its a blight in this country that land lords still exist and can charge crazy prices (I would include commercial property in this as well)

I have no idea if the above is even possible, but in the last 3 months I've lost 6 good staff to the lack of rental property space in Dublin. None of them were on minimum wage with 4 on above living wage and full time hours. They wanted to stay in Dublin but unless you are on serious money it seems that getting a rental space is next to impossible. Its a huge problem.

Yossarian

RedDave2 wrote:

I disagree that every job needs to fully support a grown adult living alone. I think if we take that approach we will both make it much more costly to employ and train low skilled and/ or inexperienced people and we make it more costly for smaller business to compete.

This means that someone else has to subsidise the employee in order to be able to live something approaching a life. Why should any business expect to be subsidised in that way?

Escape

b0r1s wrote:

I read this and can’t stop seeing Shortround from Indy

For crying out loud, there's a kid driving the bus!

Hang on, lady, we going for a ride!

Does the bus CARRY FAA?

RedDave2

Yossarian wrote:

RedDave2 wrote:

I disagree that every job needs to fully support a grown adult living alone. I think if we take that approach we will both make it much more costly to employ and train low skilled and/ or inexperienced people and we make it more costly for smaller business to compete.

This means that someone else has to subsidise the employee in order to be able to live something approaching a life. Why should any business expect to be subsidised in that way?

Well the flipside is why does the business have to subsidise the employees lifestyle. I mean I'm being glib here but when you hire someone to do work on your house, you don't enter into some long term agreement where you agree to provide continuous funding to that person do you? You agree a price that suits both of you. What is so special about the employee / employer model? Its an agreement to do a job at a price. At any point if the employee isn't happy with the arrangement they can leave for another job.

Yossarian

I don’t think you can reasonably compare contracting out a piece of work to employing someone full time.

Yossarian

But yeah, here in the UK, the majority of people on universal credit are also working. Why should the taxpayer be expected to pick up the bill to ensure someone can live?

RedDave2

Yossarian wrote:

I don’t think you can reasonably compare contracting out a piece of work to employing someone full time.

Why not?

Yossarian

Because you aren’t entering into an indefinite relationship with them, that alone changes the dynamics.

GooberTheHat

RedDave2 wrote:

Yossarian wrote:

I don’t think you can reasonably compare contracting out a piece of work to employing someone full time.

Why not?

Because it's silly.

Yossarian

And again, why should the tax that I pay be used to subsidise employers’ shitty wages?

GooberTheHat

Minimum wage doesn't apply to under 18s does it? And is only at the "full" rate for over 21s I thought? So you can still employ young'uns cheaply.

Yossarian

That’s in the UK, things may be different in Ireland.

GooberTheHat

23+ 21 to 22 18 to 20 Under 18
(current rate) £8.91 £8.36 £6.56 £4.62 £4.30
April 2022 £9.50 £9.18 £6.83 £4.81 £4.81

RedDave2

Yossarian wrote:

But yeah, here in the UK, the majority of people on universal credit are also working. Why should the taxpayer be expected to pick up the bill to ensure someone can live?

Honestly, don't know the full situation there. If a company is using a loophole to keep wages low, government should close that loophole.

Just as a counter, I'm not against high wages for people - even with covid I've given pay rises to a sizable number of my staff and I have quite a few long termers so I can't be that bad a boss. I just don't feel the "living wage" notion works as anything more than a guide. Pretty certain if ireland raised its minimum wage to 12.30, within a few months the resulting price increases across the board would mean another bump needed. (And remember, it's not the increase for the minimum wage that causes the issues, its also everyone else who wants to keep their distance over that minimum rate. The guy on 20 euros will want a similar 2 euro bump if a basic 1st year apprentice can come in for 12.30)

Yossarian

RedDave2 wrote:

Pretty certain if ireland raised its minimum wage to 12.30, within a few months the resulting price increases across the board would mean another bump needed.

Gonna need more than a “pretty certain” on that, I’m afraid. There’s no evidence that I can find that suggests this to be true.

RedDave2

GooberTheHat wrote:

RedDave2 wrote:

Yossarian wrote:

I don’t think you can reasonably compare contracting out a piece of work to employing someone full time.

Why not?

Because it's silly.

Well if that's the argument....

Yossarian wrote:

And again, why should the tax that I pay be used to subsidise employers’ shitty wages?

You've lost me a bit here. How is your tax subsidising someone on minimum wage.

Yossarian wrote:

Because you aren’t entering into an indefinite relationship with them, that alone changes the dynamics.

I think you have to weight up how long the person might be working for you. I employ plenty of people on seasonal work. Not everyone is coming to work for me for the long term. I had one waiter work for me every summer for 3 years while he got his degree and then he was off.

Again, what makes this so special? In an age where very few people stay in the one career let alone company, why few all employment as some special relationship? Its a transaction - you agree to do a certain task for a certain amount of hours and in return you get some cash.

Yossarian

RedDave2 wrote:

GooberTheHat wrote:

RedDave2 wrote:

Yossarian wrote:

I don’t think you can reasonably compare contracting out a piece of work to employing someone full time.

Why not?

Because it's silly.

Well if that's the argument....

Yossarian wrote:

And again, why should the tax that I pay be used to subsidise employers’ shitty wages?

You've lost me a bit here. How is your tax subsidising someone on minimum wage.

As I pointed out up the page, the majority of universal credit recipients in the UK are in work.

Yossarian wrote:

Because you aren’t entering into an indefinite relationship with them, that alone changes the dynamics.

I think you have to weight up how long the person might be working for you. I employ plenty of people on seasonal work. Not everyone is coming to work for me for the long term. I had one waiter work for me every summer for 3 years while he got his degree and then he was off.

Again, what makes this so special? In an age where very few people stay in the one career let alone company, why few all employment as some special relationship? Its a transaction - you agree to do a certain task for a certain amount of hours and in return you get some cash.

To be honest, it’s not special. You shouldn’t be able to contract someone to do 100 hours of work for a tenner either.

RedDave2

No one is contracting someone to do 100s of hours of work for a tenner though are they. I'm completely for workers having rights and being treated with dignity. I just don't feel its a fair expectation that every job has to be enough to sustain a single adults life style. Unless you put a ceiling on what a person can earn or at least a rubber band link (ie top earner can only be x times minimum wage) than there will always be this problem and hiking the minimum wage up won't solve it.

And I said, with tax susbides being part of a person's wage, I'd agree that's more than a bit shit. I think that's a seperate argument and I'd probably not argue the merits on that. It's up to the employer to work out what they can pay that get that help from someone. If they can't afford the extra help, it's not on the government to fill the gap (with the exception if we are talking grants to help start ups grow to a point where they can employ more people on their own)

Yossarian

It’s not a separate issue, they’re intrinsically linked. Ultimately, of course it falls to the government to subsidise these wages, who else does it fall on if you don’t have family who can look after you?

RedDave2

Yossarian wrote:

It’s not a separate issue, they’re intrinsically linked. Ultimately, of course it falls to the government to subsidise these wages, who else does it fall on if you don’t have family who can look after you?

So it falls on the employer?

Why? Why is it their responsibility that you have enough to live on, just because you do work for them?

Yossarian

Because you’re profiting off their labour.

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