Divide & conquer

carolt

bendix wrote: »

I would, but outside frightens me. It's full of people. Some of them are fat.

Oh the horror of having to witness it.

How do you get to work?

More to the point, how do you manage to work in the law, yet avoid fat people, whom you have a self-confessed fear of?

Must be very tricky.

ninky_2

michaels wrote: »

Sadly though in general small business create jobs and big businesses reduce head counts with efficiency savings (and yes this can go on indefinitely as growing small businesses are taken over by big ones who then cut jobs to increase margins)

oh silly me i thought it was just the public sector that created non (essential) jobs and the entire private sector was terribly efficient.

ninky_2

vivatifosi wrote: »

Very large companies, be they Tesco or HSBC, have large numbers of poorer paid staff that bring the average salary bill down, .

anecdotal myth. http://www.bis.gov.uk/files/file38303.pdf

In general, SMEs pay lower wages than larger firms; therefore, smaller firms may be last in the queue for highly skilled labour.

i was talking to someone who worked in starbucks recently. i thought they'd be on minimum wage. in fact they were on over 8 quid an hour. compare that to many small independent coffee shops that genuinely pay the minimum wage and often try to employ teenagers just to get the rate even lower. okay we're not talking a fortune but when you are on a low wage every small increase helps.

bendix

carolt wrote: »

How do you get to work?

More to the point, how do you manage to work in the law, yet avoid fat people, whom you have a self-confessed fear of?

Must be very tricky.

I go to work very early . . I've found that the tube before 7am is predominantly a lard-!!!! free zone.

I also live in Notting Hill - no chubbies around here, unless you turn left at the end of the road and find yourself going past the council estate.

And at work? Easy, I work in the corporate law side. We're all lean, mean and hungry in corporate. It's the rather ghastly litigators who have girth problems. And bad suits.

bendix

ninky wrote: »

oh silly me i thought it was just the public sector that created non (essential) jobs and the entire private sector was terribly efficient.

On the contrary. The large law firm I work for has all sorts of public-sectorish non-jobs, from secretarial managers to three people employed in the Diversity Team (!!!!!!?) and even things call community liaison officers. Don't get me started on the non-jobs in HR and IT.

But, then again, the difference is that we're not using public money to pay for them.

michaels

Lets see how big firms create jobs shall we:


Oh - looks like it is the small firms who create all the jobs. Make staff too expensive of course and they won't be able to recruit new staff.

Want an empirical example - look at France - higher minimum wage but massive unemployment of the low skilled and young. It may be a better trade off but it is disingenuous to suggest these is no trade off.

Thrugelmir

ninky wrote: »

i was talking to someone who worked in starbucks recently. i thought they'd be on minimum wage. in fact they were on over 8 quid an hour. compare that to many small independent coffee shops that genuinely pay the minimum wage and often try to employ teenagers just to get the rate even lower. okay we're not talking a fortune but when you are on a low wage every small increase helps.

Then you also to need compare selling prices of the products.
On the whole the independant coffee shops and cafes are far cheaper than the big chains. ( at least around here).

Starbucks is also a highly profitable company. So can afford to recruit, train and retain its staff.

vivatifosi

ninky wrote: »

anecdotal myth.

No not anecdotal myth.

Big companies can benefit from economies of scale and scope. That is true. However small companies can benefit from being in a niche.

The point I was making, which I assert remains the case, is that the biggest drivers of salary are the type of industry and the type of job, not the size of the company, which is the third issue.

Thus if you wish to work in retail, unless you are absolutely at the top of your game (say Terry Leahy or Philip Green), then you will probably earn less than someone who works for even a small PE firm or offshore engineer. This is because these are high paying niches. That's why I said that the field in which you work and the job you do (eg manager vs shop floor) are more important than the size of business.

Anyone can test this by going to their local business library and asking to use FAME (better still - go to a local business library that has FAME) and use the software to model the Companies House data on salary bills to work out average salaries for businesses. Put in whatever salary level you like. If you put in a really high salary, then only premiership football clubs will come out. If you put in an average salary of over £70k for example, you will get companies predominantly in knowledge-based industries of all different sizes. Incidentally, anyone looking for a new job should do this too, it shows which are the highest paying companies in the industry they are looking for jobs in.

Coffee shops like Starbucks may well pay more than others. That's because they operate on economies of scale. However, if a competitor found a niche that made them different to Starbucks - then they may be able to pay those staff more if they are able to enhance that competitive advantage. If the niche then becomes big enough to take business from old industries (eg Amazon taking business from WH Smiths) then they can become big players in their own right.

Yes, small companies are at a disadvantage to larger companies in terms of access to capital etc, but the picture is far more complex than just saying "they are a small company therefore they will pay lower wages".

ninky_2

michaels wrote: »

Want an empirical example - look at France - higher minimum wage but massive unemployment of the low skilled and young. It may be a better trade off but it is disingenuous to suggest these is no trade off.

it will be interesting to keep an eye on australia where the minimum wage has just gone up to $15 an hour. that's over £9 in a straight currency conversion. will unemployment go up as a result?

bendix

That's a bit disingenuous ninky. It's gone up from $14.31 since the last increase over two years ago.

Furthermore, the £9 figure is based on an Aussie dollar currently at 25 year highs. On a true more natural sterlng / aussie dollar rate that $15 is worth a more reasonable £6 an hour.