Adult minimum wage to rise by 19p per hour

mattcanary

BillJones wrote: »

Wow, it's hard to know what to say to that.

I work 7-7 on a normal day (with no breaks), and this is pretty normal in my job. It's a hard, mentally challenging high stress job, yet I still find plenty of time to see friends, go out for a meal, get to the gym, and do all of the normal things that need to be fitted in outside the office, such as shopping, laundry, getting the car repaired, and so on.

I do wonder, with attitudes like you espouse above, how you manage to progress up through the ranks at work, and to get ahead. Don't you find your insistence on working a 37 hour week is holding you back?

It's just that I don;t consider life to be all about work.

furthest

BillJones wrote: »

Wow, it's hard to know what to say to that.

I work 7-7 on a normal day (with no breaks), and this is pretty normal in my job. It's a hard, mentally challenging high stress job, yet I still find plenty of time to see friends, go out for a meal, get to the gym, and do all of the normal things that need to be fitted in outside the office, such as shopping, laundry, getting the car repaired, and so on.

I do wonder, with attitudes like you espouse above, how you manage to progress up through the ranks at work, and to get ahead. Don't you find your insistence on working a 37 hour week is holding you back?

Working 7-7 wouldn't leave me much time to do anything outside of work. Throw in travel time, sleep, it hardly leaves any time at all. Then again, I work to live and not the other way around.

mattcanary

BillJones wrote: »

Wow, it's hard to know what to say to that.

I work 7-7 on a normal day (with no breaks), and this is pretty normal in my job. It's a hard, mentally challenging high stress job, yet I still find plenty of time to see friends, go out for a meal, get to the gym, and do all of the normal things that need to be fitted in outside the office, such as shopping, laundry, getting the car repaired, and so on.

I do wonder, with attitudes like you espouse above, how you manage to progress up through the ranks at work, and to get ahead. Don't you find your insistence on working a 37 hour week is holding you back?

How can you find time to get your car repaired when you are at work between 7am and 7pm? Service departments aren't open outside of these hours and you need to take your car to the garage and then collect it.
How far do you live from your place of employment?

If you can do this week in, week out, then that is pretty impressive in a way.
But the risk of burnout several years down the line must be high

simonhunter87

trollopscarletwoman wrote: »

I assume your excluding tax credits.

If so minimum wage at 35 hours is £6.31*35*=£220.00 per week, minus ni-£18 (not sure on that).

My council tax is £28-00 per week.

Mortgage £157 per month and that's after big lump sum.

Can you seriously argue that you can really live, and not just barely survive, on bare nmw?

your council tax will be paid for you as you will get council tax benefit. also you could sell your house if you can't afford the mortgage...housing benefit will pay for a house/flat for you.

without any children-minimum wage is perfectly livable on. i dont have experience of it with children though so can't comment really.

mattcanary

BillJones wrote: »

Wow, it's hard to know what to say to that.

I work 7-7 on a normal day (with no breaks), and this is pretty normal in my job. It's a hard, mentally challenging high stress job, yet I still find plenty of time to see friends, go out for a meal, get to the gym, and do all of the normal things that need to be fitted in outside the office, such as shopping, laundry, getting the car repaired, and so on.

I do wonder, with attitudes like you espouse above, how you manage to progress up through the ranks at work, and to get ahead. Don't you find your insistence on working a 37 hour week is holding you back?

I have never insisted on working a 37 hour week.

I have sometimes worked extra hours (for no extra pay). But I would find working 60 hours week in week out too much. Perhaps we're all made differently.

simonhunter87

it really annoys me that they can be ageist when it comes to national minimum wage. why should someone who is 16 and living alone in a rented flat get less then someone aged 25 doing the same thing?

gadgetmind

BillJones wrote: »

Don't you find your insistence on working a 37 hour week is holding you back?

My employees are contracted for 37.5 hours a week. Many do a fair bit more, particularly during crunch times, but I actively discourage people from doing silly hours just to impress me.

In jobs where you *really* have to use your brain, there are only a certain number of hours a day/week during which you can concentrate to the depth required. If you up your hours, you get a short burst of more productivity, but this quickly falls away as brains get fried and mistakes are made.

Our contracts also say that second jobs have to be approved and I don't approve any.

I tend to work more hours myself as management and meetings generally don't zap you to quite the same degree. However, if I have to (for instance) write a highly technical paper, or analyse a slew of complex patents, then I just can't get more than 7-8 hours of real laser beam focus from my head in one day.

furthest

mrmadcat wrote: »

your council tax will be paid for you as you will get council tax benefit. also you could sell your house if you can't afford the mortgage...housing benefit will pay for a house/flat for you.

without any children-minimum wage is perfectly livable on. i dont have experience of it with children though so can't comment really.

No, council tax will not be paid. You may get some sort of deduction, but it won't be much.

tomterm8

mrmadcat wrote: »

it really annoys me that they can be ageist when it comes to national minimum wage. why should someone who is 16 and living alone in a rented flat get less then someone aged 25 doing the same thing?

The reason that the labour party gave for the lower minimum wage for younger people is that they were disadvantaged in applying for jobs by lack of experience. They were given a lower minimum wage to increase their ability to get work.

gadgetmind

Butterfly_Brain wrote: »

inmmigrants finding work because most are exploited by employers who pay them less than minimum wage, use gangmasters and charge extortionate rents.

I employ a lot of people from elsewhere in the world as it's close to impossible to find enough people with the right skills in the UK even at graduate level. My cleaners however are all Yorkshire lasses, born and bred. Go figure.

OK, an anecdote isn't a dataset, but other countries do have good schools, many better than ours, where lots of people get a good education.

Does anyone have statistics handy regards pay levels for recent immigrants versus UK born people?