Shameless labour

Rochdale_Pioneers

abaxas wrote: »

Or as the millions of lazy, pretending to be disabled, jobless slackers are about to find out.

Yes! When that Quadraplegic little girl with Epilepsy was discussed, instead of feeling sorry for her, the media should instead have hounded her for pretending to be disabled.

With that level of human kindness, you really are the Tories model for the Big Society. Are you Eric Pickles?

ILW

Rochdale_Pioneers wrote: »

Yes! When that Quadraplegic little girl with Epilepsy was discussed, instead of feeling sorry for her, the media should instead have hounded her for pretending to be disabled.

With that level of human kindness, you really are the Tories model for the Big Society. Are you Eric Pickles?

What about the bad back brigade?
It is well known that doctors in many areas of high unemployment were signing off their clients as unfit for work when there was very little wrong with them, but the doctors saw it as doing them a favour.

StevieJ

IronWolf wrote: »

The french working class are mainly farmers, subsidised by the EU might I add, but food is different to manufacturing.

The % of the French workforce in agriculture is 3.8% not quite mainly. BTW for industry it is 24% compared to the UK of 18%, I wonder what those figures were before they started shipping out the jobs?

asc99c

IronWolf wrote: »

so you'd prefer us to abolish the minimum wage and treat the working class like slaves in order to compete?

I don't get what you think our unions did to stop that happening, if anything they made it even less attractive to manufacture in the UK.

Manufacturing in the UK isn't impossible or even unprofitable. Just look at Rolls Royce or Honda. But the key is that productivity has to keep on increasing, with substantial automation and computer control. So in addition to a skilled design staff, the factory floor workforce needs a substantial proportion of skilled engineers.

Unfortunately I think without the unions a lot of industries could have been saved. Honda's Swindon factory is massively productive, as are various foreign manufacturers' plants here. Yet the more heavily unionised British manufacturers have disappeared.

StevieJ

ILW wrote: »

What is the current unemployment rate in France?

Do you mean full time jobs and including those in sickness benefit?

Rochdale_Pioneers

ILW wrote: »

What about the bad back brigade?
It is well known that doctors in many areas of high unemployment were signing off their clients as unfit for work when there was very little wrong with them, but the doctors saw it as doing them a favour.

What about them? Should we abuse and persecute the disabled because there are a few fakers?

ILW

StevieJ wrote: »

Do you mean full time jobs and including those in sickness benefit?

Whatever you have as a comparison to the UK.

IronWolf

asc99c wrote: »

Manufacturing in the UK isn't impossible or even unprofitable. Just look at Rolls Royce or Honda. But the key is that productivity has to keep on increasing, with substantial automation and computer control. So in addition to a skilled design staff, the factory floor workforce needs a substantial proportion of skilled engineers.

Unfortunately I think without the unions a lot of industries could have been saved. Honda's Swindon factory is massively productive, as are various foreign manufacturers' plants here. Yet the more heavily unionised British manufacturers have disappeared.

I agree, we can compete with advanced technology and skilled manufacturing, but there is no hope for mass manufacturing now, that's been lost to the developing world, and many of the technological advances of the last 20 years have meant we need less people to do produce more in the manufacturing industry, the low skilled manufacturing jobs of the Thatcher years are just obsolete nowadays.

I was looking at some steel production figures ages ago, and we produce far more now than 20 years ago, but with a fraction of the workforce.

StevieJ

ILW wrote: »

Whatever you have as a comparison to the UK.

9.5% but don't know the make up of it.

WHITEVANMAN

IronWolf wrote: »

so you'd prefer us to abolish the minimum wage and treat the working class like slaves in order to compete?

I don't get what you think our unions did to stop that happening, if anything they made it even less attractive to manufacture in the UK.

Some Industries are working around the minimum wage and making the working class work like slaves right here today.

Ive recently left the Overnight courier industry after 15 years, over the last 6 or 7 years i've watched major players in the industry force out their own workers often of 20 years plus standing with the same company, for workers who are not legaly entitled to work the hours they do.
Replacing PAYE workers of 45 hour week basic plus O/T with Non EU 'Students!' in Unskilled labour.
These new workers were deemed by the major's as self employed and often given work for over 60 hours a week, and often only paid rates that after all expenses, including supplying a brand new fully liveried van often rented to said worker at extortionately profitable rates, in the main companies colours that couldnt be used for any other purpose leaving them earning around £4.00 ph on a good day.

These workers used to be subbed directly to the main companies involved, but as legislation got a little more threatening they put in a middle man, a contractor who had to be a registered Ltd company who would take over all the subbies to put a layer of protection in against themselves from prosecution for employing those workers.
When they did this, they squeezed rates even further.
Many nationals now quietly operate on this method, prosecutions never come after many reportings, and regular tax paying subbies running legitimate business for cover / relief and supply drivers can now no longer compete on competitive terms.
Many UK subbies remain because they cant afford to leave forced to do ever more for less and less, tied into leases and fearing unemployment. Ive recently been informed the company I sold on my rounds from in 2010 is now paying rates 5% less than I was charging in 1996.

The latest way they get around minimum wage, is to offer a lot of new online home delivery orders out to private individuals, who while using their own cars are paid rediculously low rates, and given the most unreasonable terms on which they are to be paid and operate.
They entice people in by suggesting it is very casual with great potential, yet in real terms the teamsters who manage these people, use bullying tactics to get the ever increasing workload done.
Most of these people dont even understand the tax implications of their operations.

It may be annoying to see the Post Office workers continually threatening to Strike, but these are the sort of practices that the workers fear will transcend into the business.
Some would say its market forces, but the market is skewed by blackmarket labour.
Ive interviewed many eastern europeans for positions under the terms I was forced to finally operate, and they wouldnt even think of taking the jobs, and I was paying better rates than most, in the end I struggled to keep genuine legal workers, and pay rates that they could operate on, rather than sell myself out and follow the unscrupulous practice of others, I sold on.