Employers expecting people to work for £6.50 an hour!!

emilyteach1

Person_one wrote: »

Many 16 year olds are also fully independent, living away from parents of guardians and paying their way. At 16 you are allowed to work full time and pay tax, get married, live in social housing etc.

If we're going to let 16 year olds live and work as adults then we should give them the same rewards for their hard work as adults rather than a situation where they are earning less than the 30 year old 5 feet away doing exactly the same job.

I don't necessarily agree with paying under 18's less [I'd rather they received more, any day], but I can understand why they get less. Independent 16 year olds are a lot rarer than independent over 18's, so the independence factor doesn't apply to the majority. Still, though, those who are independent lose out by a good few quid!

There are still loads of families who subscribe to the 'you're working, so you pay x-amount of the household bills' mentality [which is absolutely fair enough!].

If they insist on age 'discrimination' in NMW, I think personal circumstances should be taken into account.

I think there's too much of an assumption that when under 18's work jobs, they're doing it for a bit of pocket money and not for 'adult survival'.

kr15snw

Actually thats a good point, why are 22 year olds paid more than a 21 year old? And why arn't tax credits awarded until you are 25?

markbass

Googlewhacker wrote: »

Mark, without being an @rse please answer the question that I have asked a few times. Have you done anything to further yourself to get a better paid job or are you just moaning for the hell of it?

Also let's know abit more about you, do you have a family to support or do you live on your own?

Yes i'm a qualified cabinet maker (city and guilds)

That was some time ago though and i'm thinking of getting back in to it all...i'm currently taking my CSCS card.


But your missing the point, this thread wasn't started because i'm !!!!!ing about my own circumstances, although it's ended up that way because i'm making comparisons to how i couldn't live on £6.50 an hour, i do have qualifications such as the city and guilds even various computer literacy certificates and over average grades from my school days, it's just whilst looking for work it winds me up how these wages can be offered for jobs that i know to be hard and deserve allot more money.

I did make an example of a few of the jobs i had come across earlier in this thread, like the company offering £260 a week for a driving job that would more than likely exceed 50 hours a week because of the delivery round radius, and employers get round it by offering this fixed sum of £260...not even an hourly rate (although £260 works out at 40 hours £6.50 an hour)...so the employee is being exploited for those extra hours because he or she has signed a contract for the agreed wage of £260 per week and they won't get paid the extra hours...some employers advertise it in a £13.500 per annum way, and again i know these jobs to be lengthy in hours (due to previous personal experience working this type of work)....

I feel the current situation with the lack of jobs is being exploited by certain employers, damn well knowing they will get good workers for little pay, and they even get them to work the extra hours with no extra pay by the wage contract outlined above.

Yes i am looking to better myself with even further qualifications on top of what i have because i have to, i couldn't live on £6.50 an hour but i still feel an honest days work should be rewarded with an fair days pay, and much of the time it's not (regardless of whether it's a skilled job or not) people cannot live on that money alone without benefits from the government (if their eligible) and thats wrong,...£6.50 is bordering on criminal.


But to repeat myself, this isn't so much a personal thread but a generalized one for all those out there that just want to be able to pay their bills and put food in their families bellies and have a roof over their heads...and come on..unless your paying £175 a month on rent or mortgage..it's not possible.

markbass

teabelly wrote: »

It was in the press recently that an organisation had calculated that for a single person to have a reasonable standard of living, not including running a car, it required a salary of £14k. That is more than minimum wage. I would have said that was the basic minimum salary. Why should people be forced to live a life of penury because they're not the brightest? Not everyone has the brain to get A-levels, degrees and so forth to get the better paid jobs but it shouldn't mean they have to have a miserable existence.

Wages are far too low. The value of money halves roughly every 15 years. The average wage in 1995 was 17k. Just to keep up with the loss in value of money average wage needs to be £34k.

The UK should stop competing with sweat shops and start paying decent wages. Then we wouldn't need to pay money out on tax credits and other wastes of money. Employers should be paying decent wages in the first place. Why should the tax payer be subsidising these low wage merchants? Either raise the NMW or raise taxes on profits on organisations that have more than a certain percentage of employees eligible for tax credits because the full time salary is too low.

Exactly!! i rest my case.....


END OF.

DCFC79

markbass wrote: »

Exactly!! i rest my case.....


END OF.

theres nothing you can do about it, some firms dont have the money to pay people alot of money so they give them nmw at £5.80, wish i earned £6.50, you should take what you cn get in todays world

teabelly

Taking what you can get and suffering bullying, poor treatment and exploitation is part of the problem! Employees pay rubbish wages because there are people that will work for them. Soon as people refuse to be treated badly then conditions will improve. Unfortunately in tough economic times desperation outweighs the desire for decency so workers put up with being taken for a ride. The job centre makes it worse by forcing people to take any old job at all rather than anything half way decent so you have people that can do much better jobs being trapped in low paid NMW jobs when those that can only do unskilled jobs are left unemployed and skilled jobs are vacant! It's daft.

Googlewhacker

Person_one wrote: »

Many 16 year olds are also fully independent, living away from parents of guardians and paying their way. At 16 you are allowed to work full time and pay tax, get married, live in social housing etc.

If we're going to let 16 year olds live and work as adults then we should give them the same rewards for their hard work as adults rather than a situation where they are earning less than the 30 year old 5 feet away doing exactly the same job.

The problem is a 16 year old generally on the whole IMO does not work as hard as a fully fledged working adult and the ones that I work with whilst they work hard their production is less than a full time member and as such should be paid less

Googlewhacker

Thanks for posting Mark, I still disagree that people cannot live of NMW and really it is adjusting to that way of life but we won't convince each other so I won't post on that again.

However I do agree that some jobs take the p1ss, especially the driving ones which we blatently know will be longer hours than stated.

Person_one

Googlewhacker wrote: »

The problem is a 16 year old generally on the whole IMO does not work as hard as a fully fledged working adult and the ones that I work with whilst they work hard their production is less than a full time member and as such should be paid less

That's a massive assumption, you wouldn't say that about all 25 year olds or all 37 year olds.

If you think people should be payed on productivity there needs to be a massive shake up of nearly all employers, and youth certainly isn't the only risk factor!

Googlewhacker

Person_one wrote: »

That's a massive assumption, you wouldn't say that about all 25 year olds or all 37 year olds.

If you think people should be payed on productivity there needs to be a massive shake up of nearly all employers, and youth certainly isn't the only risk factor!

Its an assumption on experience.