Job Fears: I am about to become part of the working poor?

sniggings

I agree, and whats even worse is the cost of paying people on the min wage benefits. People say the min wage can not be raised as it would end up costing up more in inflation etc, surely the cost of benefits and the cost to administer them is greater than just making these big businesses pay a decent wage, I'm said it before but it's a scandal that Morrisons have 40% of their staff on apprenticeships paid for by the tax payer! 40% of staff need to be on an apprenticeships to fill shelves...yeah right!

wantsajob

Companies take advantage wherever they can. You just need to look at http://www.boycottworkfare.org/

dandelionclock30

Thats dreadfull about Morrisons, I didnt know that! How greedy.
Also where I live lots of NMW wage jobs are part time 10- 15 hours per week. A lot of people need full time jobs not a couple of hours here and there.
The whole system is shot away.

re OP, I dont think you can leave a dog, unless its very old by itself for 12 hours per day either. You would have to pay someone to look after it and take it for walks if family and friends are not obliging.

Also 24 miles on a bike ie 12 miles there and back is not difficult for a fitish adult. If your working in a sports centre you will be doing a lot of supervising not hours on the treadmill and doing weights yourself. You might take a class and show someone how to use equiptment but this shouldnt tire you out.

Sounds like you dont want to do it and perhaps as another person said you would be better off with part time work nearer to home. What about going back to college?

sniggings

dandelionclock30 wrote: »

Thats dreadfull about Morrisons, I didnt know that! How greedy.
Also where I live lots of NMW wage jobs are part time 10- 15 hours per week. A lot of people need full time jobs not a couple of hours here and there.
The whole system is shot away.
?

I should say to be fair that Morrisons pay the wages but they get a Government grant for each staff member on an apprenticeship, which for 40% of staff is a lot of money, the staff were not new staff either, most were already working there which to me makes it worse as they got the job in the first place but then suddenly they needed all this training. Morrisons aren't the only ones too, next time you here Cameron etc say how they have improved the apprenticeships figures you will know now what crap they are talking, cos to me these aren't apprenticeships.

Hillbilly1

I have not followed all of the thread but I feel I have 2 points to make

1) You CANNOT leave a dog for 12-14 hours a day, either in a garden or in a flat. That is cruelty. Can you see if you can trade favours with people to walk your dog, maybe do some personal training?

2) I changed career 11 years ago, had to do training at NMW (well actually less for a while as it didnt exist) and then on a low salary for 2-3 years. Due to my hard work I now have the ability to apply for a job earning up to £52k with pension, sick pay, health care free gym etc...

If you never take a job you will never advance. The highly paid superjob is not out there for you if you have limited experience and live far from opportunities. Take a hit for 6 months and try it.

dktreesea

OP, I am not sure what you do in the fitness industry, but across the road from us is a guy in a similar situation to yourself, with a dog and a spoilt rotten by the rest of the street cat that thinks its the bees knees. He is living on his own and is self employed, only has a couple of dozen clients from what I can see, just does his 24 to 30 hours a week, charges £7 to £9 an hour, is well under the threshold for net income for both working tax credit and housing benefit. His main expense is his car, a wee smart car which costs him next to nothing to run, he says, but he claims the usual 40p per mile mileage allowance on his tax. Half of his clients come to him. If they don't like dogs, too bad, they don't need to be his client (his words).

He was telling me one day he could get a job in a gym paying better than what he earns, but why should he? The benefits system make up the short fall, and he wants his 3 day weekend. I would think for the vast majority of the self employed who are also in recipient of benefits like working tax credit, housing benefit etc, they have made a lifestyle choice.

It's the same with having children. If you have low earnings, then having a child is likely to be the biggest pay rise you can give yourselves. If you work from home you don't have to entrust your children to strangers. You can take care of them while you work. Yes, of course, you have to actually work. You do have to have revenue to declare to the HMRC in order to maintain your self employed status. But it is yet another example of the social welfare system supporting individual choice when it comes to how people want to support themselves. Even if the work they do wouldn't even net them enough money to pay their rent, let alone their cost of living.

As to "if you never take a job, you'll never advance" (post No. 206, Hillbilly1), fiddlesticks! The world is littered with people who have wasted their lives bored out of their brain in dead end jobs because they couldn't be bothered to think for long enough out of the box and come up with a way to work for themselves at something they would find fulfilling.