Living wage

[Rizla]

Living wage increase today £9 to £9.30.

Well done Hearts the first Scottish club to get involved in 2014.

[Justin Z]

6 minutes ago, Rizla said:

Living wage increase today £9 to £9.30.

Well done Hearts the first Scottish club to get involved in 2014.

 

And still the only football club in Scotland to be Living Wage accredited:

 

 

Source: https://www.livingwage.org.uk/accredited-living-wage-employers

[milky_26]

the fact that dulwich hamlet and fc united of manchester can do surely more clubs should do it. especially the mega rich ones in england

[Rizla]

9 minutes ago, milky_26 said:

the fact that dulwich hamlet and fc united of manchester can do surely more clubs should do it. especially the mega rich ones in england

I think Crystal Palace joined today.

[hughesie27]

Pretty sure Hibs and Celtic do actually pay the living wage rate but for whatever reason have chosen not to become fully aligned with it.

[milky_26]

17 minutes ago, Rizla said:

I think Crystal Palace joined today.

they are on the list posted above just not their crest yet

[milky_26]

Just now, hughesie27 said:

Pretty sure Hibs and Celtic do actually pay the living wage rate but for whatever reason have chosen not to become fully aligned with it.

isn;t it they dont require all their contractors to pay it, so if say their catering staff are contractors they might be on less than the living wage

[hughesie27]

Just now, milky_26 said:

isn;t it they dont require all their contractors to pay it, so if say their catering staff are contractors they might be on less than the living wage

Could well be.

[¼½¾]

1 hour ago, Rizla said:

Living wage increase today £9 to £9.30.

Well done Hearts the first Scottish club to get involved in 2014.

 

Hearts were actually the first club in the UK to be an accredited living wage employer.

[Rizla]

7 hours ago, Lemongrab said:

 

Hearts were actually the first club in the UK to be an accredited living wage employer.

👍

[Captain Sausage]

Bit of a disgrace that all the Premier League clubs aren’t on it. 
 

The sheer size of their payments from television should see the FA mandate it on them. It’s all well and good paying your star player £250k a week and a £50m transfer fee. Make it £49m instead and you’ve probably got enough to cover the living wage requirements for the year. 

[¼½¾]

Celtic and Rangers pay the living wage, but as i think someone else mentioned, they can't be accredited as the dont pay it to contractors.

 

When Celtic started paying the living wage, back in 2016, they removed low paid workers from a bonus scheme which higher earners continued to have. Classy.

[redjambo]

14 hours ago, Lemongrab said:

 

Hearts were actually the first club in the UK to be an accredited living wage employer.

 

I hope that this isn't taking money away from the first team! We have priorities you know - we are a football club!

 

Signed, a frothing-at-the-mouth member.

[¼½¾]

27 minutes ago, redjambo said:

 

I hope that this isn't taking money away from the first team! We have priorities you know - we are a football club!

 

Signed, a frothing-at-the-mouth member.

    

[SE16 3LN]

I only dream of the living wage.

[The Gorgie]

Great news but would be more helpful to people if it was the minimum wage.

[Herbert.]

It's still not much. Would that be just under 300pw after tax? 

 

Minimum wage should be 20k a year.

[Ray Gin]

19 minutes ago, Herbert said:

It's still not much. Would that be just under 300pw after tax? 

 

Minimum wage should be 20k a year.

 

Works out just under £20k per year working a 40 hour week.

[A Boy Named Crow]

Who decides what the living wage is? It seems mental that there’s this level that is deemed what you need to live on, but the government sets the minimum wage well below this. What’s the government saying about people in minimum wage, they don’t deserve a life?

[redjambo]

27 minutes ago, A Boy Named Crow said:

Who decides what the living wage is? It seems mental that there’s this level that is deemed what you need to live on, but the government sets the minimum wage well below this. What’s the government saying about people in minimum wage, they don’t deserve a life?

 

Living Wage Foundation.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_Wage_Foundation

[Unknown user]

 

11 hours ago, Herbert said:

It's still not much. Would that be just under 300pw after tax? 

 

Minimum wage should be 20k a year.

Which would be 9.62 ph for a 40 hour week

[IronJambo]

54 minutes ago, A Boy Named Crow said:

Who decides what the living wage is? It seems mental that there’s this level that is deemed what you need to live on, but the government sets the minimum wage well below this. What’s the government saying about people in minimum wage, they don’t deserve a life?

I agree in theory. In practice there's some small businesses that can't afford to pay the living wage and if it was minimum wage then they'd either stop employing or just pay a lower wage off the books. Can't pay or won't pay.

This already happens with the minimum wage. It's a huge can of worms full of illegal immigrants, people traffickers, modern slavery etc. Set the minimum wage too high and it's counter productive.

[Unknown user]

2 minutes ago, IronJambo said:

I agree in theory. In practice there's some small businesses that can't afford to pay the living wage and if it was minimum wage then they'd either stop employing or just pay a lower wage off the books. Can't pay or won't pay.

This already happens with the minimum wage. It's a huge can of worms full of illegal immigrants, people traffickers, modern slavery etc. Set the minimum wage too high and it's counter productive.

 

Then these businesses are surviving through their employees' poverty, that's not right.

Wasnt there a study in Germany recently that's showed a higher minimum wage didnt actually have the catastrophic effects that were feared?

[Herbert.]

2 hours ago, Smithee said:

 

Which would be 9.62 ph for a 40 hour week

 

 

I ment after deductions.

[IronJambo]

2 hours ago, Smithee said:

 

Then these businesses are surviving through their employees' poverty, that's not right.

Wasnt there a study in Germany recently that's showed a higher minimum wage didnt actually have the catastrophic effects that were feared?

Not necessarily true. Many "one man band" type businesses pick up a wee bit more work than they can manage and take on someone to help. In doing so they might not make any more money than they did beforehand. But someone else has a job, right? If they're managing to pay them minimum wage through the books then that's great. Remember the employer has tax, NI and pension to add onto that wage cost. Adding £1.60ph onto that could be the difference between a young lad having a job or his employer finding that it costs more to have him and the extra work than he's making. 

His employer should raise his prices, right? Not if it means competition will pick up his work he can't. A larger business would easily steal his work.

[IronJambo]

47 minutes ago, Herbert said:

 

 

I ment after deductions.

That's an annual salary of £24,212. £2027pm/£465pw/£11.64ph. There's not an accountant in the world that's going to be able to make those figures work for menial jobs that anyone can just walk into and do with no training.

[doctor jambo]

45 minutes ago, IronJambo said:

Not necessarily true. Many "one man band" type businesses pick up a wee bit more work than they can manage and take on someone to help. In doing so they might not make any more money than they did beforehand. But someone else has a job, right? If they're managing to pay them minimum wage through the books then that's great. Remember the employer has tax, NI and pension to add onto that wage cost. Adding £1.60ph onto that could be the difference between a young lad having a job or his employer finding that it costs more to have him and the extra work than he's making. 

His employer should raise his prices, right? Not if it means competition will pick up his work he can't. A larger business would easily steal his work.

TO me that means that the businesses are not viable.

If you cannot afford to pay your staff enough money to feed themselves, pay household bills etc, then you should not be in business.

What this amounts to is government  ( taxpayers) paying your staff, so you can make profit.

 

[The Brow]

3 hours ago, Smithee said:

 

Then these businesses are surviving through their employees' poverty, that's not right.

 

 

Every single service job in the US. Why the **** am I paying their bar and restaurant staff when the place is heaving? 

 

Another shitty thing about the yanks. 

[Herbert.]

1 hour ago, IronJambo said:

That's an annual salary of £24,212. £2027pm/£465pw/£11.64ph. There's not an accountant in the world that's going to be able to make those figures work for menial jobs that anyone can just walk into and do with no training.

 

Why not? Would the same not have been said about minimum wage when that came in? Half the people earning minimum wage work harder than the guys at the top.

[IronJambo]

1 hour ago, doctor jambo said:

TO me that means that the businesses are not viable.

If you cannot afford to pay your staff enough money to feed themselves, pay household bills etc, then you should not be in business.

What this amounts to is government  ( taxpayers) paying your staff, so you can make profit.

 

It's not really as black and white as that though is it. 

The point is that if minimum wage is set too high it has the opposite effect of its intentions. Rather than people getting paid more, they either get bumped off or work on reduced hours and take home the same. Neither is helpful. 

 

[doctor jambo]

Just now, IronJambo said:

It's not really as black and white as that though is it. 

The point is that if minimum wage is set too high it has the opposite effect of its intentions. Rather than people getting paid more, they either get bumped off or work on reduced hours and take home the same. Neither is helpful. 

 

The difficulty is though that it is so easily abused

Many huge companies returning massive profits pay minimum wage.

That means you and I supplement the profits of such profiteering corporate leviathians.

And personally that utterly stinks to high heavens!

Minimum wage should be set at what someone can live on- otherwise what is the point in it?

It means you and I are paying someone elses wages in effect via our tax.

So that they can make profit....

Sports Direct/ Asda/Tesco and so on

[IronJambo]

50 minutes ago, Herbert said:

 

Why not? Would the same not have been said about minimum wage when that came in? Half the people earning minimum wage work harder than the guys at the top.

Minimum wage was around a fiver per hour when it came in so I doubt anyone would have said it was too much. 

 

6 minutes ago, doctor jambo said:

The difficulty is though that it is so easily abused

Many huge companies returning massive profits pay minimum wage.

That means you and I supplement the profits of such profiteering corporate leviathians.

And personally that utterly stinks to high heavens!

Minimum wage should be set at what someone can live on- otherwise what is the point in it?

It means you and I are paying someone elses wages in effect via our tax.

So that they can make profit....

Sports Direct/ Asda/Tesco and so on

I agree entirely. It must be a minefield for government policy though.

 

Edit: I'm not so sure about Asda here though. They may have had bad press over contract changes recently but they were regularly voted as a great employer by their staff for many years.

Edited November 15, 2019 by IronJambo

[Sawdust Caesar]

I job I used to do, many years ago, when I worked for the Inland Revenue was take legal action against employers who were not paying the minimum wage to some of their staff. I only did the small amounts, less than £5,000 owed to however many staff so it tended to be small companies with only a handful of staff.  Sometimes, after a sheriff officer had served the summons, I would get the employer on the phone. The conversations tended to follow the same pattern - "I can't afford to pay the minimum wage, I'll have to let some staff go. You are actually making things worse for these people cos they wont have a job now", and so on and so forth. My response was to tell them it wasn't the IR who set the amounts etc but the govt. Anyway, what some of those employers didn't realise was I had seen their latest tax returns and they weren't making peanuts, they were making, in some cases, high 5 figure/low 6 figure sums after all their expenses/wages/costs were deducted.

I particularly remember one guy who phoned me and made the standard complaint, he owned a few, different types of businesses. After the phone call I read the report from the sheriff officer, which they send after they've served the summons. The reports can be quite informative and include details of the size of house, the estimated value of the house, what type of neighbourhood it is located in and the make and models of any cars parked outside. This guy lived in a 3 storey detached villa, approx. value £450K and there was a 2 year old Range Rover, a 1 year old mini  and another car which I can't remember its make and age. This guy wasn't struggling and clearly his business wasn't either.  What I found galling was he only underpaid the staff member by around £1,500 over 18 months and he was complaining about it.

He was more the exception rather than the norm but in my experience plenty of those employers could afford to pay the minimum wage but chose not to. There will be some who couldn't afford it but, as has been mentioned, they don't have a viable business plan.

[Unknown user]

3 hours ago, IronJambo said:

Not necessarily true. Many "one man band" type businesses pick up a wee bit more work than they can manage and take on someone to help. In doing so they might not make any more money than they did beforehand. But someone else has a job, right? If they're managing to pay them minimum wage through the books then that's great. Remember the employer has tax, NI and pension to add onto that wage cost. Adding £1.60ph onto that could be the difference between a young lad having a job or his employer finding that it costs more to have him and the extra work than he's making. 

His employer should raise his prices, right? Not if it means competition will pick up his work he can't. A larger business would easily steal his work.

 

If the cost of that business continuing is employee poverty then it isn't a cost worth paying.

[Unknown user]

1 hour ago, IronJambo said:

Minimum wage was around a fiver per hour when it came in so I doubt anyone would have said it was too much. 

 

I agree entirely. It must be a minefield for government policy though.

 

Edit: I'm not so sure about Asda here though. They may have had bad press over contract changes recently but they were regularly voted as a great employer by their staff for many years.

 

People did complain about minimum wage when it came in, with the same arguments we see people coming out with now. 

 

I work for asda by the way, they're wankers. In my time there hours have been reduced,  overtime too, staffing levels dropped so everyone's having to work harder. It's probably been with a view to reducing costs so the books looked better for the proposed merger but it's the punters on the floor that suffer, as usual.

If you didnt sign this new contract you were immediately out on your arse, no matter how long you were there.

They can claim it was a positive move but why then would they sack anyone who didnt fancy it?

[Herbert.]

2 hours ago, IronJambo said:

Minimum wage was around a fiver per hour when it came in so I doubt anyone would have said it was too much. 

 

I agree entirely. It must be a minefield for government policy though.

 

Edit: I'm not so sure about Asda here though. They may have had bad press over contract changes recently but they were regularly voted as a great employer by their staff for many years.

 

 

Were people not getting like £3odd a hour before it came in? So that jumps not really that much different.

[IronJambo]

33 minutes ago, Herbert said:

 

 

Were people not getting like £3odd a hour before it came in? So that jumps not really that much different.

Maybe not to you and me but it is to them that are paying it. It took us years of fighting to get the living wage for the cleaners at my work. I really don't disagree that people should be paid more but I'm pragmatic enough to see the issues in trying to force it through as policy. Regarding the cleaners at my work, they were paid a pishy wage and the company hid behind it being because they were sub-contracted. 

 

I've no idea what some were getting paid back then. I worked for sports division when I was 15 (1993/94) and got £2.52ph. After that it worked in an office for a whole £120 a week which probably amounted to £3ph. I was 17 then though and it was way before the minimum wage. Perspective is called for though, it was £7 to get into Tynie, less than £2 for a fish supper and it was £1.20 for a pint. 

Edited November 15, 2019 by IronJambo

[hughesie27]

When I first started working 12 years ago at 16 minimum wage was about £4.15 or so for an under-18.

[ri Alban]

My first joab before I started my apprenticeship. I was on £35 a week.

10 Club were about 67p back in 89.

Edited November 16, 2019 by ri Alban

[kila]

The higher the minimum wage the more money there is to be spent by the population. 

 

If employees are in poverty and cannot afford anything then the whole system fails and the richest keep winning.

[jamie1874]

On 15/11/2019 at 16:27, doctor jambo said:

The difficulty is though that it is so easily abused

Many huge companies returning massive profits pay minimum wage.

That means you and I supplement the profits of such profiteering corporate leviathians.

And personally that utterly stinks to high heavens!

Minimum wage should be set at what someone can live on- otherwise what is the point in it?

It means you and I are paying someone elses wages in effect via our tax.

So that they can make profit....

Sports Direct/ Asda/Tesco and so on

 

But you will still pay it one way or another 

 

if margins are squeezed in retailers (the example you use) then they will increase prices to recover those losses. (shareholders expect dividends)
 

Therefore you will still be paying for the increase in wage either through benefits or increase prices.

 

Or even worse case, the profitability of each site becomes tougher, more stores close and you pay anyway as people end up on benefits

 

Just look at the last 4/5 years, it’s not just online (as often publicized) that has been the demise of the high street and many retailers. 
 

 

[Hannibal Lecter]

On 16/11/2019 at 02:43, hughesie27 said:

When I first started working 12 years ago at 16 minimum wage was about £4.15 or so for an under-18.

Not true as the current mininum wage for somebody under 18 is £4.15. Around 12 years ago it was £3.53.

[Phil Dunphy]

On 15/11/2019 at 13:55, IronJambo said:

Not necessarily true. Many "one man band" type businesses pick up a wee bit more work than they can manage and take on someone to help. In doing so they might not make any more money than they did beforehand. But someone else has a job, right? If they're managing to pay them minimum wage through the books then that's great. Remember the employer has tax, NI and pension to add onto that wage cost. Adding £1.60ph onto that could be the difference between a young lad having a job or his employer finding that it costs more to have him and the extra work than he's making. 

His employer should raise his prices, right? Not if it means competition will pick up his work he can't. A larger business would easily steal his work.

 

So don't take on the work and don't exploit someone else's need for work.

 

I know this is hypothetical, but I don't buy this "I can't afford to pay you properly" line that any business would trot out. Pay people what they deserve.

[AlphonseCapone]

2 hours ago, Hannibal Lecter said:

Not true as the current mininum wage for somebody under 18 is £4.15. Around 12 years ago it was £3.53.

 

I was going to question that myself. My first job at 16 around 15 years ago I was getting £3 something.

[ri Alban]

The Real living wage. How many pay this?

[Hannibal Lecter]

22 hours ago, AlphonseCapone said:

 

I was going to question that myself. My first job at 16 around 15 years ago I was getting £3 something.

 

I was getting something around £3.15 an hour back in the early 00's.

[William H. Bonney]

1997 I was 18 and I was earning £3.10 an hour at mr bonis . 
I seem to recall some staff there getting £1.97 an hour 

[Jambo-Jimbo]

My first ever weeks wage packet in 1977 (used to get paid weekly back then) was £13.47. 

£13 fecking quid thought I was as rich as feck, more money than I'd ever had in my life, mind I was only 15 at the time.

 

[ri Alban]

10 hours ago, Jambo-Jimbo said:

My first ever weeks wage packet in 1977 (used to get paid weekly back then) was £13.47. 

£13 fecking quid thought I was as rich as feck, more money than I'd ever had in my life, mind I was only 15 at the time.

 

Shite wages meant nae dig money. 

 

Edited November 19, 2019 by ri Alban

[Jambo-Jimbo]

36 minutes ago, ri Alban said:

Shite wages meant nae dig money. 

 

 

Did get off paying digs until I turned 16 and my wages went up, think I was paying £5 a week digs but by then I was earning the huge sum of around £35 per week, which pretty much doubled once I had completed my training by the age of 17.