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Labours pension threat - daily express
Comments
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Thrugelmir wrote: »One suspects that the influence will come from the granting of increased Union powers. Given history not a welcome thought. Corporate accountability and governance issues can be addressed through other avenues without the need to hit shareholders.
It's very welcome to me given how superbly well similar models work in the present day for employees in places such as Germany, where workers are paid substantially more than their UK counterparts while working fewer hours, and consumer prices are also lower meaning they're better off in every way.0 -
No I have not made anything up. I've said that the method of acquiring the shares has not been confirmed and that it seems likely to me that they will be purchased at market rate. You on the other hand have pretended to know without doubt that the shares will be taken without compensation, something for which you have no evidence at all; you simply made it up. If you'd given that as your opinion, then it's a different story, but you presented it as a known fact when it's anything but.
“We will legislate for large companies to transfer shares into an ‘Inclusive Ownership Fund’. The shares will be held and managed collectively by the workers.”
https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/jeremy-corbyn-government-would-force-all-big-firms-to-hand-over-10-of-shares-to-workers_uk_5ba7c8f9e4b0181540de1bf3
“Workers would get up to £500 a year under Labour plans to give them a share of the profits made by employers, Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell is to announce.
Large firms would have to GIVE AWAY shares to a new fund created for the benefit of staff.”
“They’re likely to go down badly with existing shareholders. Business leaders may also point out that they already contribute to society by paying corporation tax on profits, national insurance on staff they employ and business rates on properties they use, as well as creating jobs.”
https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-news/labour-give-workers-up-500-15189343
So, every single source, including McDonnell, states that the transfer will be by legislation forcing companies to do the transfer. Not one source except you is talking about buying shares. That qualifies as “made up”, see item 2. https://www.yourdictionary.com/made-up
On a side note, the last article talks about the limit of 500 pounds per employee, the rest going to the state. That’s important because in practice the vast majority of the 10% ownership will be with the state. In other words “nationalisation”. Worker ownership is a cover.0 -
My employer like many other large companies already have a profit share, it's not contractual but has paid out well over £500 most years in the 15 years or so it's been running. If this daft scheme ever came about, I really doubt they'd keep the profit share going together with this, so the workers would get less than they do now.
It's basically a thinly disguised hike in corporation tax with the govt getting most of the money, with a few crumbs for the workers which will probably get taken away in other ways.0 -
I'm certainly not in agreement of enforced purchase of 10% of a company being handed out to all employees but I worked for a large canadian company many moons ago. Yearly during the salary increase period, sometimes more often if share price was doing well, every line manager was given a small amount of shares/share options relevant to the size of his department for him to distribute as he saw fit between his direct reports.
I'm sure the amount given to managers/directors was a lot more, however, it was nice to be given 100-200 shares every so often (if your face fit/work was regarded as good of course). At least the average joe working in tech support (for example) felt that he was valued and even if higher management kept getting their 1000's of share options at least 'some' of the company profits made it's way all the way down the ladder. As opposed to every other company I worked for where shares & share options were only ever given to managers starting at a fairly senior level.
The company did go bankrupt about 5 years after I left though(probably not because of some free shares handed to lower paid employees however)
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Deleted_User wrote: »People don’t click based on a webpage address. Address can be fgrthrthr55445 for all one cares. Google lists websites based on key words, which have nothing to do with the address.
So, it's irrelevant that they put the State Pension phrase in their URL as opposed to a random set of letters / numerals then is it?
I'm sure your proposed URL would have been just as effective at generating click throughs once shared on social media - NOT.0 -
Yearly during the salary increase period, sometimes more often if share price was doing well, every line manager was given a small amount of shares/share options relevant to the size of his department for him to distribute as he saw fit between his direct reports.
)
This typically happens in software or other business start-ups, when the company is short of cash but has big hopes. A large business paying bonuses with shares rather than cash usually indicates cash flow problems.
Share options or discounted share purchase schemes are different and are usually designed to attract good managers, try and align staff interests with those of the company and enhance retainment of key staff. All of it is basically pay, which is not enforced by the government. Good businesses do it in a way that does not dilute shareholder ownership. If they do dilute then the markets punish them. Then there are partnerships which have key employees buy into the business.
None of it resembles robbing retirees via enforced confiscation of 10% of equity in established businesses and transferring ownership to the state with a token nod to workers. Those kinds of experiments are not done in Canada. That’s Venezuela style nationalisation, when the government was taking larger and larger stakes in major companies.0 -
It's very welcome to me given how superbly well similar models work in the present day for employees in places such as Germany, where workers are paid substantially more than their UK counterparts while working fewer hours, and consumer prices are also lower meaning they're better off in every way.
Germany didn't even have a minimum wage until January 2015. Prior there were 3 distinct classes of pay rates. Needless to say those (i.e. Turkisk immigrants) in the bottom tier were treated very badly. Used effectively as cheap labour.
The German economy appears to be stalling more recently. Perhaps the increased wage pressures have reduced competitiveness. Even Luthansa has rebased it's engineering division in Asia. As cheaper to perform routine maintenance there than in it's homebase.
Much of the old East Germany is in serious and terminal decay. The people trapped there might well disagree with your assertion that everything is better.0 -
No I have not made anything up. I've said that the method of acquiring the shares has not been confirmed and that it seems likely to me that they will be purchased at market rate.
You think that it is likely that Labour will pay taxpayers' money to bankers and rich people to acquire private company shares.
Okily dokily then.
What you personally choose to believe does not alter Labour policy.
Which is as stated by McDonnell to confiscate 10% of shares of any company with more than 250 employees and pay the dividends to the state (minus an irrelevant pittance to the workers, which will be absorbed into their general remuneration, i.e. wages will go down to compensate).0 -
Yearly during the salary increase period, sometimes more often if share price was doing well, every line manager was given a small amount of shares/share options relevant to the size of his department for him to distribute as he saw fit between his direct reports.
[...]
The company did go bankrupt about 5 years after I left though(probably not because of some free shares handed to lower paid employees however)
I'm sure those lower paid employees who didn't or couldn't sell their shares in time were delighted to have been paid in worthless toilet paper all those years instead of cold hard cash. Meaning they spent a proportion of their time, equivalent to the proportion of their remuneration they accepted in the form of shares, working for free.
This is why the majority of workers aren't paid in share options already. They don't want them. And with good reason. They aren't responsible for whether the company succeeds or fails so it's not equitable to be paid based on something they have 0.01% control over. And the lower your pay, the less capacity you have to absorb the loss of part of your remuneration if the company goes bust.
Directors are in control, and as they are highly paid, they can still afford to hire someone to play the world's smallest violin for them if their incompetence leads to them losing thousands or millions in personal wealth.
Companies would be very happy to save money by paying the rank and file in potentially worthless share options rather than more expensive cash, but they can't get away with it, except at the top level.
And the odd exception like your doomed Canadian employer, who are the exception for a reason.
ShareSave type schemes only make sense for an employee if you get a tax incentive and/or free shares from your employer to compensate you for the risk. Without those things you are just being paid with a spin on red or black instead of cash, which is worth less than the equivalent amount of cash. And even if you do have access to ShareSave, you should sell the shares and reinvest in something more diverse as soon as you can do so without penalty.0 -
I do love how baby boomers are blamed for - well just about anything really. I was born not long after the end of the war. Anybody able to figure out why I grew up shorter than my younger sister? Nothing to do with genetics, just diet. I was 7 when meat rationing stopped & even then my mother used to say be nice to the butcher (yes back then you actually had to speak to someone to buy meat) so he will sell us a nice joint. She wouldn't go in on her own because she was a very good looking woman. Never took my sister in! She too is a baby boomer but is really a totally different generation.
But I did used to get almost all the families sweet ration so I'm one up on her there!0
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