Jobcentres send you 90 miles for job?

Oldernotwiser

Marisco wrote: »

I agree with you up to a point FBaby, but there are some NMW jobs that will have no hope of progression "up the ladder" i.e cleaners, shop workers etc. .

I can't see why you and others say this. Any decent sized shop will have supervisors, team leaders, section managers etc. There's really no need to see retail as a dead end job and it does a great deal of harm to describe it in this way, particularly to young people.

HappyMJ

Oldernotwiser wrote: »

I can't see why you and others say this. Any decent sized shop will have supervisors, team leaders, section managers etc. There's really no need to see retail as a dead end job and it does a great deal of harm to describe it in this way, particularly to young people.

I don't and many people do not have the ability to lead. I will never be and never want to be in that position.

seven-day-weekend

Oldernotwiser wrote: »

I can't see why you and others say this. Any decent sized shop will have supervisors, team leaders, section managers etc. There's really no need to see retail as a dead end job and it does a great deal of harm to describe it in this way, particularly to young people.

My son has been working at Morrisons for one year after being made redundant from matalan. He has been trained on four sections (Checkouts, automatic checkouts, frozen foods and Oven Fresh where he works now), They have trained him for the Level Three Food Hygeine Certificate which he passed with flying colours. There is talk of him being a Supervisor on either Checkouts or Oven Fresh in the future. He earns more than Minimum Wage (Permanent 25-hour contract).

There is plenty of scope in retail, even for those without degrees.

Oldernotwiser

HappyMJ wrote: »

I don't and many people do not have the ability to lead. I will never be and never want to be in that position.

Well great, that's your decision.

Marisco

Oldernotwiser wrote: »

I can't see why you and others say this. Any decent sized shop will have supervisors, team leaders, section managers etc. There's really no need to see retail as a dead end job and it does a great deal of harm to describe it in this way, particularly to young people.

Because it's true! I've worked in retail, but always in small shops. The last one I worked in had a manager and 3 staff. Of course the prospects in a large shop/supermarket are greater, but going by the posts on here, it seems that some expect people to take any job, regardless of prospects or wage, no matter how far away it is!

Put another way, if I had a career and there was a likelyhood of progressing to the "dizzy heights" in that career, then I would walk for 90 mins to work!! But if it was just a job to make ends meet, then it would be foolish to spend half or more of your wage on travelling, especially if you would have extra childcare costs as well.

On the local news last night, it said how dire the work situation is for young people up here, according to them, the worst in the country. I don't know if this is true or not, but it is very bad. It seems to me ridiculous, asking people work until they drop, when so many young people are out of work, this can only make a bad situation worse!

Oldernotwiser

Marisco wrote: »

Because it's true! I've worked in retail, but always in small shops. The last one I worked in had a manager and 3 staff. Of course the prospects in a large shop/supermarket are greater, but going by the posts on here, it seems that some expect people to take any job, regardless of prospects or wage, no matter how far away it is!

But obviously you have to aim to move to a situation where there are prospects if you want to progress. You might start of in a small shop but your skills would transfer to larger one if you wanted to develop your career.

You have to start somewhere and look on it as the opportunity to progress in the future; too many people take too much of a short term view of things.

DannyboyMidlands

HappyMJ wrote: »

Yes around £7.50 per hour isn't that what tax credits are for to give people more of an incentive to come off from JSA and into work.

After the first full year of work they will reduce to about £10 per week and housing benefit will go up to about £15. Hopefully by then the employee as you say should have found some new prospects in this work and increased their wage by £27 per week (to £6.80 per hour) to offset that loss so they will still be on the same rate of pay of £7.50 per hour. Hopefully then by the third year they should have another pay increase to £7.50 per hour then all benefits will stop.

Why don't they just set the minimum wage now to £7.50 per hour then there would be no need for in work benefits?

Or alternatively they could just slash benefits so that the workshy have to get a job to support themselves rather than sponge off others.

Marisco

Oldernotwiser wrote: »

But obviously you have to aim to move to a situation where there are prospects if you want to progress. You might start of in a small shop but your skills would transfer to larger one if you wanted to develop your career.

You have to start somewhere and look on it as the opportunity to progress in the future; too many people take too much of a short term view of things.

Oh I agree, if you want a career, but if you just want money from work without the career, then it's a different matter. Certainly young people who have prospects should be willing to travel and put up with a bit of hassle, but I'm probably thinking more of older people who have, perhaps, had a career and been made redundant at 50/55, and don't want to start again, but need money to live.

I just don't think it's useful to have a blanket "everyone should be prepared to travel" without taking individual circumstances into account. But there again, people do it for everything i.e single mothers (benefit scroungers) disabled (swinging the lead) etc, so no change there then!!

Marisco

DannyboyMidlands wrote: »

Or alternatively they could just slash benefits so that the workshy have to get a job to support themselves rather than sponge off others.

My god, why didn't anyone else think of that!!!!!!

2sides2everystory

Oldernotwiser wrote: »

I can't see why you and others say this. Any decent sized shop will have supervisors, team leaders, section managers etc. There's really no need to see retail as a dead end job and it does a great deal of harm to describe it in this way, particularly to young people.

This is dangerously out of date wishful thinking again. Take SportsDirect.com - a supposedly successful company. Huge bonuses paid in 2011 to staff who had been with them 2 years or more apparently.

It is a part of retail you will find up there in every important shopping mall.

Walk into one. Look around. Where are the "managers"? Tell us what you see. Talk to some staff. Do they impress you? Are they recognised for being impressive ? Are they tolerated when they are not impressive? Tell us how motivated they seem. How many even see six months out do you think? How many are informally training the constant influx of new joiners because of the huge staff turnover? How many of those trainers receive recognition for their skills. How many on NMW? How many under 21 or under 18? How many of the staff are on zero hours contracts?

Walk into any bank. The cashiers are largely graduates. They dream of being personal bankers in maybe 3 years if they are lucky. What's the training period necessary for someone "lucky enough" to be recruited directly in as a personal banker from outside? Significant you expect? Wrong. You could do it with your eyes closed ONW but you wouldn't last long because you wouldn't be "hungry enough" and malleable in the way you might promote or discard your values. Those kids, those graduates, those cashiers are stressed to hell to come up with sales leads and it is very wrong. They call it retail banking. Banks like retail people. Like mobile phone salesmen. They like immigrants, Eastern Europeans, and not necessarily EU either, they like South Americans, Iberians - hungry people. People who will just 'take' and knotch up 'sale' after 'sale' from customers even if it is just making twenty quid stick in a new savings account for three months by hook or by crook. Because that's the way retail likes it and that's the way retail rewards the hungry economic migrant labour.

Retail is not all John Lewis, not all 20 years ago M&S, not all 30 years ago Sainsburys. It is a ruthless business now.


Look too at agriculture. Where are the jobs now? 35 years ago a thousand acres needed three or four full time employed men or women to plough the fields and scatter and bring the harvest home. Now farmers congratulate themselves on employing no-one at all permanently, on employing Eastern Europeans dirt cheap. Never mind pick your own being the only way it could work, get Eastern Europeans to pick the harvest for peanuts. They don't even have to speak any English and boy do they work. They don't even go out on a Friday night - too tired, and they save their money. Good good.

The Farmers Weekly Interactive magazine held its annual awards recently at the Dorchester I believe - and who won the 2011 Farmworker of the Year Award? Indeed, what sort of person wins that? It's all computerised this and GPS that and super complex chemicals the other, plus you almost have to have half the technical knowledge of an old style veterinary surgeon to get the best out of your livestock in 2011.

Well there are other skills needed too now. It might be good to be able to talk to the animals, but seriously, the winner is a multilingual lady - 5 languages I think - fascinating how the required skillset has changed. Seen as a firm but fair person - yes more good stuff - but what does she do?

Well actually she organises the labour for fruitpicking - she's from Ukraine I think I read and she speaks all the languages that the current (in season) active agriculltural labour market speaks.

Good on her. They work hard. They live in tough conditions. They work very long hours. They send money home. They even go home for most of the year or they find other work. Amazing how many black economy painting jobs can be found when fruit-picking is done, and kitchen fitting and making two bedrooms out of one for BTL landlords, turn their hands to anything they will. Good on them all. But the old agricultural labour market is totally wrecked. The more ruthless farmers grin constantly like Cheshire Cats. The construction labour market is wrecked too - how many truly local residents got jobs at the Olympic Park? I could have worked there, but not their unofficial minimum 10 hours a day, 7 days a week for weeks and weeks which is what the faceless labour-gangers were insisting upon. No silly overtime rates, just wall to wall work for those willing to do it. And who really pays?

I would have liked to work on the Olympics site. Instead I am surrounded by foreign labour that lives 5 people to a room, feeds the unscrupulous BTL market with any old tenants, coming and going at all hours, constantly moving in and moving out - transients - little control - they don't mix with neighbours - we don't know who they are or what they really stand for because they are, as I say, somewhat transient, inadvertently messing up the decorations with their bikes and and their constant removals in apartment-land stairwells that decent people have to pay far too frequently to redecorate after they have gone, littering the streets with beaten up white vans.

And yet, huge parts of the UK don't ever have to see this. They may not even believe it is a feature of the landscape. They live in their baby boomer years acquired houses in nice areas and if they feel uncomfortable with not hearing any English spoken in the aisles of their local supermarket, they simply drive their Prius to a Waitrose where only successful babyboomers can afford to shop.

Ah yes, and Waitrose is part of John Lewis, proper retail, good job advancement prospects, right? Yes indeed, for the lucky few.

Meanwhile, please spare a generous thought for the far greater numbers of decent people whose lives were wrecked when the various labour markets I have mentioned were wrecked one by one. People who became dinosaurs, not because they needed to upskill, but because they held outdated mindsets which contained maps of what was once ingrained as decent. Decency has become a serious hindrance to those who need to get rich quick. Get rich quick is good business. Get rich slow is bad business. So decency is out the window. All that labour now needs to survive is sufficient hunger to work like transitory economic migrants, travel to work like them, and of course to do ruthless employers' biddings meekly, and without question. Keep our mouths shut. Don't even think about taking holidays unless the boss loves those dates for you - the ones where the work is slack anyway and when the boss doesn't need you to cover for some more favoured persons holiday. Easy. Let's all just do that, and we'll get on fine and the 'economy' will grow - black, or ungreen, or crystal clear that there's no more when that lot's finished - it doesn't really matter because it's "jobs" and its entrepreneurs and its not hindered by inconvenient workers rights, nor that bloody daft 'elf n' safety - it'll be vibrant - you'll see