270,000 Civil Service Workers To Strike For 2 Days

Kohoutek

lemonjelly wrote: »

The private sector is profit motivated. Nothing else comes above profit. The main cost experienced by any organisation is staff wages. Therefore private industry will have its main focus getting costs (wages) to the lowest possible level, & charging the highest possible price for their goods/services.

Exactly. But that's why the minimum wage is bad for employment - because it encourages car manufacturers to ship jobs to Hungary and BT to ship call centres to India.

Labour's policies have encouraged the benefit trap by raising the minimum wage, abolishing the 10% tax bracket and making people lose benefits too dramatically when they start earning money. I read that there is an effective 70% marginal tax rate for people on the boundary between being eligible for tax credits and not.

If the government wants to encourage work, not welfare dependence, it should raise the personal allowance and/or reduce the minimum tax bracket to 10% or 5%, and change the balance of the benefits system to reward those that work, and be harsher on those that do not work, unless they are prevented to from disability. If it left the minimum wage as it is for a few years without adjusting for inflation that might help more jobs stay in Britain.

I don't think we can realistically expect any government to choose what wage businesses pay their employees or to change businesses from being solely motivated by profit. It sounds harsh, but you have to be realistic. The best way they can help people on low wages it to make taxation very minimal for them and to retain some benefits. At the moment, we have one of the least progressive tax systems in the West - even in the US, income tax has 10% and 15% bands. Our tax system goes from 0% to 20% (and NI), which is very harsh.

lostinrates

lemonjelly wrote: »

The private sector is profit motivated. Nothing else comes above profit. The main cost experienced by any organisation is staff wages. Therefore private industry will have its main focus getting costs (wages) to the lowest possible level, & charging the highest possible price for their goods/services.

I don't think this is always true....of course profit is a motivator, but not all private sector answers to shareholders. Some investors and entrepreneurs in fact steer towards other goals than just profit. Think on the most human scale, a peron employing one person, as ..domestic help: cleaning, nannying, or childcare...profit is not the motivator...people want value, but they also want reliability and trustworthiness, and are often willing to pay one person/business more for that.

In the same way, in choosing employment in the private sector: pay might be the single biggest motivator in choosing when there is a choice of employer, but its not the only factor....creating a previous work history that shows some loyalty might in the long term pay off for an employee, as might work life balance or other perks

ILW

Kohoutek wrote: »

Exactly. But that's why the minimum wage is bad for employment - because it encourages car manufacturers to ship jobs to Hungary and BT to ship call centres to India.

.

Don't think your are quite right there. Most manufacturing jobs are quite a lot above minimum wage and would not be affected. Oddly enough, the real low paid jobs are in services such as the care, hospitality, and retail sectors which cannot be shipped overseas. But strangely our government would rather import workers from aboard to do these jobs, whilst paying the people already here to sit at home watching the telly. I really do not get it.

Kohoutek

ILW wrote: »

Don't think your are quite right there. Most manufacturing jobs are quite a lot above minimum wage and would not be affected. Oddly enough, the real low paid jobs are in services such as the care, hospitality, and retail sectors which cannot be shipped overseas. But strangely our government would rather import workers from aboard to do these jobs, whilst paying the people already here to sit at home watching the telly. I really do not get it.

Yeah I agree, we have real skills shortage in those areas which the government does nothing to address.

I think the minimum wage has an indirect effect on jobs that pay above it - because by its nature its a benchmark to which other salaries are set. Even in jobs where that is not the case, I think the government could do more to retain jobs in the UK - like offering tax breaks to employers.

DaddyBear

Well I can't say I noticed any difference today. They may have to strike for a year before anyone gave a !!!!!!.

Optimist

drc wrote: »

I spoke to a very nice lady last week regarding a PAYE query and she said that not only are they striking but almost the whole of the UK has been sent the wrong tax code due to a computer blunder. She said HMRC is in utter chaos.

Well quite a lot have, not sure its most of the UK but IR are not doing anything about it. They run on the basis its up to you to check the codes are correct. Of course if the error is in your favour a couple of years down the line you will get a demand for payment

ukcarper

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

But ten or twenty times the money someone working in the private sector would get.

You public sector people are in for a very rude awakening over the next few years.

Can you show me how you cam to those figures

Kohoutek

ukcarper wrote: »

Can you show me how you cam to those figures

In the new system the government is proposing, public sector worker earning £30,000 or less are entitled to a maximum of £60,000 in redundancy pay or two years pay.

If you are made redundant on £30,000 in the private sector are only entitled to statutory redundancy pay (using the example of age 45, 20 years services), you are entitled to £8,360.

What was the old system? This is still incredibly generous, subsidised by the taxpayer of course.

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

ukcarper wrote: »

Can you show me how you cam to those figures

As in above post..

104 weeks pay for those on 30k, and 156 weeks pay for those on 30k or below in the public sector.

Versus just 10 weeks pay for someone with 10 years service in the private sector, or 20 weeks pay for someone with 20 years.

I mean, seriously, in what bizarre fantasyland existence does any public sector worker think they are entitled to 3 full years of full pay as a redundancy payoff?????

Get off your ar5e and find another job !!!!!!!!!!!!

It truly boggles the mind that anyone expects more than 3 months pay for getting laid off.

StevieJ

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

As in above post..

104 weeks pay for those on 30k, and 156 weeks pay for those on 30k or below in the public sector.

Are you saying that someone on 29k gets more severance pay than someone on 31k.
If that is true the ones who proposed that should be first on the list