Why do people only pay the minimum wage

lemonjelly

Malcolm. wrote: »

Isn't this age discrimination at it's finest? Wage (and by association minimum wage) should depend upon the job, and an individuals experience, not their age.

Shame on you government.

It isn't just restricted to this though.

Take benefits for example (at the risk of this thread turning into another one of those threads, but there you go)

Singles aged under 25 get JSA of 51.85 per week.
Singles aged 25 and over get 65.45 per week.

Excuse me? Is stuff cheaper when you're under 25? Is food & clothing cheaper? Do you eat less?

And of course, single people under 25 currently only get housing benefit restricted to cover 1 room for their sole use - the so called single room rent.

The government is well known for discrimination. They used to refuse to pay out widows benefits to widowers, because it is called WIDOWS benefit. I used to read the letters, & widowers were told they weren't a widow, therefore didn't qualify. (The week before 3 cases were due to reach the european court of human rights, they announced they were scrapping widows benefits & replacing them with bereavement benefits).

& of course, you have the different retirement ages for men/women, & this included getting travel support, winter fuel allowance and all other associated benefits, which women could claim 5 years before men could (until quite recently).

Malcolm.

lemonjelly wrote: »

It isn't just restricted to this though.

Take benefits for example (at the risk of this thread turning into another one of those threads, but there you go)

Singles aged under 25 get JSA of 51.85 per week.
Singles aged 25 and over get 65.45 per week.

Excuse me? Is stuff cheaper when you're under 25? Is food & clothing cheaper? Do you eat less?

And of course, single people under 25 currently only get housing benefit restricted to cover 1 room for their sole use - the so called single room rent.

The government is well known for discrimination. They used to refuse to pay out widows benefits to widowers, because it is called WIDOWS benefit. I used to read the letters, & widowers were told they weren't a widow, therefore didn't qualify. (The week before 3 cases were due to reach the european court of human rights, they announced they were scrapping widows benefits & replacing them with bereavement benefits).

& of course, you have the different retirement ages for men/women, & this included getting travel support, winter fuel allowance and all other associated benefits, which women could claim 5 years before men could (until quite recently).

Thanks for this LJ. It's truly dispicable that the government presides over age and sex discrimination. It's one thing I appreciate the european courts for, they seem to, in general, take a fairer view on such matters.

One further change I'd like to see is for maternity/paternity leave to be switchable between parents. I believe it to be fairer plus it would have the added benefit of decreasing employer discrimination against women.

bendix

Alternatively - and I truly don't want to !!!!! your sense of righteous indignation - but perhaps the minimum wage is lower for young uns for their benefit, because Govt knows it is hard for the young with no work experience to get jobs, and so it rigs the system in favour of youngsters to enable them to get a job.

I wish my world was as black and white as others' seem.

tomterm8

The minimum wage is a bad idea. The reason for the discrimination between younger and older people was that youth unemployment was (and a decade later, still is) significantly higher than 'normal' unemployment, and that letting the younger generation be exploited was better than having them unemployed altogether.

The_White_Horse

bendix wrote: »

Utterly stupid post.

I'm increasingly convinced you are actually a Labour supporter who adopts this tone in a pretty subtle attempt to portray your views as typical of conservative, libertarian thinking.

what is stupid about it? cleaners get 5.50 an hour because that is the minimum wage. if there was no minimum they would get less.

a cleaner is the lowest of the low job. it is paid so low, because everyone in the entire world could do it, including children and even some mentally challenged people.

the only reason people do such a job is that they get marginally more than they do sitting on their behind on benefits (unless they are a benefit expert scrounger). If there was no benefit system, then cleaners would be lucky to get £1 an hour.

nothing stupid about that.

cleaners should thank (a) the minimum wage and (b) benefits for ensuring their high pay. without them, they would be on far less.

that is a fact.

Malcolm.

bendix wrote: »

Alternatively - and I truly don't want to !!!!! your sense of righteous indignation - but perhaps the minimum wage is lower for young uns for their benefit, because Govt knows it is hard for the young with no work experience to get jobs, and so it rigs the system in favour of youngsters to enable them to get a job.

I wish my world was as black and white as others' seem.

I understand the argument for age discrimination - I'm not thick . However, it doesn't mean age discrimination is morally correct.

If one concludes that age discrimination is in fact correct, then there shouldn't be laws against such things.

It's hypocritical.

bendix

The_White_Horse wrote: »

what is stupid about it? cleaners get 5.50 an hour because that is the minimum wage. if there was no minimum they would get less.

a cleaner is the lowest of the low job. it is paid so low, because everyone in the entire world could do it, including children and even some mentally challenged people.

the only reason people do such a job is that they get marginally more than they do sitting on their behind on benefits (unless they are a benefit expert scrounger). If there was no benefit system, then cleaners would be lucky to get £1 an hour.

nothing stupid about that.

cleaners should thank (a) the minimum wage and (b) benefits for ensuring their high pay. without them, they would be on far less.

that is a fact.

i don't have a problem with the philosophical thrust of your argument. Indeed, I agree with it. For the record, I too am against the minimum wage for exactly the reasons others have outlined here. In my view it harms the young, more than help them, by keeping many of them out of work.

It's a stupid post in the sense that taking such an extreme view merely serves to alienate the saner members of the board who - frankly - could be won over to your way of thinking if you took a more sensible approach to your posting.

Hence my suspicion that you don't really believe what you are posting and are, in fact, adopting an extreme persona to garner support for those who oppose your onscreen views.

It's a double bluff, isnt it WH?

tomterm8

Well, I think if you look at it from a legal perspective, the laws about discrimination in general place a duty on public authorities to "reduce the inequalities of outcome which result from socio-economic disadvantage" according to the Equality Act 2010. While this is age descrimination, from a legal perspective it is discrimination whose purpose is to reduce socio-economic disadvantage, and so it is consistent with the requirements of the law.

abaxas

Wages should be relative to availability of skills and market.

Why should someone be paid more for something which is worth less?

tomterm8

I agree, abaxas, but I think to put it in prespective, the reason that the government introduced the minimum wage is that it also introduced a minimum living guarantee; the minimum wage is quite explicitly susbsidised by government through tax credits. Introducing a minimum wage put a maximum amount of money the state would subsidise employment.

If you want to get rid of the minimum wage, you need to get rid of the minimum income guarantee at the same time, or businesses will basically get free labour paid for by the state, which would cost the state a fortune.

The reason for the minimum income guarantee was that a lot of people were stuck on benefits, without it being worth actually getting a job. It was intended to make it pay more to get a job than stay on benefits witout people actually starving.

I don't think it worked, I just think that was the intention.