Milliband promises to increase minimum wage if elected

[Guy Fawkes]

But if self-employed people cannot pay themselves then they also have an unviable business. If they choose to prop it up by doing silly hours that's their choice I guess. We did away with child labour. Low paid work is next.

I'd also like to see a Fair Pay stamp. This would be similar to Fair Trade and enable me, the consumer, to determine which business pay their staff a decent wage.

So are you saying they should just go onto benefits rather than do something to earn money and support themselves?

 

[Mellor 3 Ward 4]

I think the bigger issue is that large companies pay the minimum wage in the knowledge that working tax credits will top up the wages of these workers.

Who and when were these introduced?

 

[Winker]

Total horseshit.

You're assuming that those in low paid jobs are unskilled and unqualified when this is far from the case.

The BBC did an interesting survey last year on what the new supposed classes are. In this they came up with alternatives beyond working, middle and upper class, with categories such as emergent service workers. These people are usually skilled, intelligent and university educated. They just have no choice but to work in a massive industry in which nobody is paid fairly.

What's more the cost of training in a discipline that would potentially improve your earning potential is prohibitive to those who need it. It's also pure fantasy to suggest such training schemes are easy to come by, or even worthwhile. Often times these much advertised City & Guilds type schemes exist solely to fulfil government set quotas on opportunities. You ask a tradesman if he'll take on some youngster who has passed a three month training course in plastering and he'll tell you to go back to the drawing board because all too often these people know nothing of the practical side of the jobs they've supposedly been trained to work in.

I will reply to your last paragraph as it is the only one that I recognise with my own experiences; when I was made redundant a few years ago I undertook one of your much maligned NVQ/City &Guilds Courses and it set me on a completely different career course. OK, so I have since been made redundant again and taken a similar job for another company but my options are now open for future opportunities in this new field. I am paid the going rate and it is up to me to train again for a better level. If my current company are not happy with my current capabilities it is up to them to improve them or I am off. If I relied on the Government for my career path, then I would probably be sifting for gold in the Peacehaven sewage outfall by now.

 

[Dorset Seagull]

With respect, that is utter utter garbage. People who take on lower paid work (such as myself) do so, not because the job makes us warm and fuzzy at night, but because circumstance dictates that we do so, be it through qualification, career change, the hours involved etc. Put it this way- could YOU afford to live on barely more than minimum wage, and if, as is likely, the answer is no, would you not welcome an increase no matter how small? I find it astonishing that in the 21st century, the divide between the have and the have nots grows higher day by day. Minimum wage is NOT a liveable wage, and I personally feel that companies do a disservice to themselves by not paying a liveable wage, as staff retainment becomes harder, more would be spent on training new people, and that's before you get people calling in sick. My view is, you pay peanuts and you'll get chimps. Pay a competitive wage, and you will generate staff loyalty, a higher level of dedication and a better quality of staff

*puts soapbox back into the cupboard*

With respect I disagree. If you had read my posts you would see that I earn less than my staff which is about the minimum wage. Just because you can't live on that it doesn't mean the rest of us can't. I DO NOT EXPLOIT MY STAFF. They have a choice to work for me for what I pay or work for someone else who will possibly pay them more. Also If I could pay them more I happily would.

My staff have never complained that they earn too little and most have been with me for many many years. You seem to assume that the rest of the country need to earn the money required to live in an expensive place like Brighton but that is just not the case. Many small businesses in my part of the world pay little over the current minimum wage and I am sure larger employers pay a lot more however I have never struggled to attract staff. There may well become a point though where the minimum wage reaches the level that makes it unsustainable for a small business to survive so the staff will have to find employment elsewhere or just rely on benefits

 

[cunning fergus]

With respect I disagree. If you had read my posts you would see that I earn less than my staff which is about the minimum wage. Just because you can't live on that it doesn't mean the rest of us can't. I DO NOT EXPLOIT MY STAFF. They have a choice to work for me for what I pay or work for someone else who will possibly pay them more. Also If I could pay them more I happily would.

My staff have never complained that they earn too little and most have been with me for many many years. You seem to assume that the rest of the country need to earn the money required to live in an expensive place like Brighton but that is just not the case. Many small businesses in my part of the world pay little over the current minimum wage and I am sure larger employers pay a lot more however I have never struggled to attract staff. There may well become a point though where the minimum wage reaches the level that makes it unsustainable for a small business to survive so the staff will have to find employment elsewhere or just rely on benefits

Interesting, best of British to you mate.

This is the problem with politics by sound bite/media; it's the total lack of appreciation about the detail.

For example, I know of a number of companies that have offshored work, and the reality is that for many in those low paid jobs that can be offshored, not only are they competing with an increasingly competitive UK labour market driving wages down they are also competing with workers in countries with even more competitive labour rates.

It's not ideal and I am sure there is not a perfect solution, however if you don't try and manage the labour market in your own country globalisation will swallow you up.

Labour embraced globalisation in all its forms while they were in power, and they cast the British working class to the wind........the milk was spilt and the horse has bolted........punting out an £8 p/h min wage is just insulting.

 

[Beach Hut]

I think the bigger issue is that large companies pay the minimum wage in the knowledge that working tax credits will top up the wages of these workers.

Who and when were these introduced?

Err...

Things can only get better

 

[Soulman]

Ed Milliband....promises.....great background.
Red Ed and his commie father.
Ralph Miliband was a Marxist and did indeed, hate everything about the country that was good enough to take him in.
He spent most of his life lecturing to impressionable students at the London School of Economics and converting them to his communist way of thinking, he left the Labour party in the seventies because they were not left wing enough for him.
An internationalist, he advocated the destruction of the British people and their customs, values and traditions; after illegally entering Britain with his father Samuel in 1940, in a diary entry, he wrote, 'The Englishman is a rabid nationalist. They are perhaps the most nationalist people in the world... When you hear the English talk of this war you sometimes almost want them to lose it to show them how things are.'
In around 1966 Ralph travelled to Moscow for the launch of one of his academic works for Soviet readers, on the trip he held a clandestine meeting in the Lenin Library, adjacent to the Kremlin, with a distant relative called Sofia Miliband; she is a distinguished academic who had hero-worshipped Stalin and has recently had meetings with both Ed and David Miliband.
Right up until his death in 1994 he never apologised for his Marxist views so it can reasonably be assumed that when he died he was still wanting to change and re-arrange the British establishment and its people and traditions into the Marxist state that he and his family so desired.
If Red Ed really wants to be elected to the highest office of government in our country, then his upbringing and family ties and history are of vital importance, especially as Ed the Red is the one that keeps telling us all what a great influence his father was upon him.

 

[e77]

It amuses me that people think that mass immigration into this country since the Eastern European countries joined the EU is a left wing conspiracy. It happened because the Labour government completely underestimated it and was definitely more cock up then conspiracy. However, there hasn't been a serious attempt to reverse it as big business likes a cheap pool of labour, which is hardly a Socialist plot.

In my working career (I am 40) business has in the main abandoned any sense of social responsibility or duty of care for it's workers including abandoning sick pay (granted some people did take advantage of this a bit too much), not giving meaningful wage rises and giving out zero hour contracts. Any shortcoming has been picked up by the taxpayer (i.e. me and you) in benefits such as tax credits and housing benefit. This is state aid for businesses by a different name.

Also, people seem to forget that lower paid workers spend most or all of the money they are paid so any wage rises go nearly straight back into the economy.

That said, I suspect the lower living standards are probably here to stay as the rise of China and India is causing something of a global balancing of resources.

 

[drew]

Ed Milliband....promises.....great background.
Red Ed and his commie father.
Ralph Miliband was a Marxist and did indeed, hate everything about the country that was good enough to take him in.
He spent most of his life lecturing to impressionable students at the London School of Economics and converting them to his communist way of thinking, he left the Labour party in the seventies because they were not left wing enough for him.
An internationalist, he advocated the destruction of the British people and their customs, values and traditions; after illegally entering Britain with his father Samuel in 1940, in a diary entry, he wrote, 'The Englishman is a rabid nationalist. They are perhaps the most nationalist people in the world... When you hear the English talk of this war you sometimes almost want them to lose it to show them how things are.'
In around 1966 Ralph travelled to Moscow for the launch of one of his academic works for Soviet readers, on the trip he held a clandestine meeting in the Lenin Library, adjacent to the Kremlin, with a distant relative called Sofia Miliband; she is a distinguished academic who had hero-worshipped Stalin and has recently had meetings with both Ed and David Miliband.
Right up until his death in 1994 he never apologised for his Marxist views so it can reasonably be assumed that when he died he was still wanting to change and re-arrange the British establishment and its people and traditions into the Marxist state that he and his family so desired.
If Red Ed really wants to be elected to the highest office of government in our country, then his upbringing and family ties and history are of vital importance, especially as Ed the Red is the one that keeps telling us all what a great influence his father was upon him.

Do you have any of your own opinions or do you just regurgitate drivel from the Mail?

 

[e77]

Ed Milliband....promises.....great background.
Red Ed and his commie father.
Ralph Miliband was a Marxist and did indeed, hate everything about the country that was good enough to take him in.
He spent most of his life lecturing to impressionable students at the London School of Economics and converting them to his communist way of thinking, he left the Labour party in the seventies because they were not left wing enough for him.
An internationalist, he advocated the destruction of the British people and their customs, values and traditions; after illegally entering Britain with his father Samuel in 1940, in a diary entry, he wrote, 'The Englishman is a rabid nationalist. They are perhaps the most nationalist people in the world... When you hear the English talk of this war you sometimes almost want them to lose it to show them how things are.'
In around 1966 Ralph travelled to Moscow for the launch of one of his academic works for Soviet readers, on the trip he held a clandestine meeting in the Lenin Library, adjacent to the Kremlin, with a distant relative called Sofia Miliband; she is a distinguished academic who had hero-worshipped Stalin and has recently had meetings with both Ed and David Miliband.
Right up until his death in 1994 he never apologised for his Marxist views so it can reasonably be assumed that when he died he was still wanting to change and re-arrange the British establishment and its people and traditions into the Marxist state that he and his family so desired.
If Red Ed really wants to be elected to the highest office of government in our country, then his upbringing and family ties and history are of vital importance, especially as Ed the Red is the one that keeps telling us all what a great influence his father was upon him.

So you believe in punishing the son for the 'crimes' of his father?

 

[yxee]

He won't be happy until he decides the price of everything

 

[dingodan]

Politician makes pre election commitment involving other peoples money shocker.

 

[melias shoes]

It usually goes up twice a year, will be past 8 quid before 2020 at the current rate.

Seems a pointless statement from him

Is the correct answer.

 

[Soulman]

Do you have any of your own opinions or do you just regurgitate drivel from the Mail?

I do not read the Mail

 

[Soulman]

So you believe in punishing the son for the 'crimes' of his father?

No I believe he is like his father

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

So are you saying they should just go onto benefits rather than do something to earn money and support themselves?

You cannot rely on cheap/slave labour to prop up a business. And people below the living wage are not supporting themselves are they? They will be relying on the tax payer for help with tax credits and hosuing benefit. And as Collosal Squid pointed out the nation will do away with all the associated government bureaucracy of dolling out these various payments as well.

I firmly believe that better, more efficient, smarter businesses will move into the space vacated by lumbering dead wood companies and we will all be better for it.

 

[Dave the OAP]

The discussion is about how much humans should get. Inefficient workers and technology is a different issue.

I actually do not think it is. I think it goes hand in hand with this discussion.

The company I work for is a multi billion dollar company who have had to change the way they do business because of new technologies. Those changes mean offshoring to India , downsizing to make more profit, and to employ less UK based employees. With cloud computing, we as a country are not that far off having a data centre that would have employed 500 to 600 people, to one that employes 5 people. I know this is becoming the norm.

 

[The Birdman]

In one hand take it away with the other hand.

 

[drew]

No I believe he is like his father

Where is your evidence that he is like his father?

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

With respect I disagree. If you had read my posts you would see that I earn less than my staff which is about the minimum wage

Do you take any dividends from your business?