[The Economy] 6.2% living wage increase

Thrugelmir

Zero_Sum wrote: »

Most of the McDonalds staff round my way are teenagers getting £4.35 p/h
And i reckon a fair chunk of high street retail jobs are done by under 25's

Self ordering machines are far more reliable

Next will be machines that cook perfectly everytime

Jonathan_Kelvin

PasturesNew wrote: »

While the wife of the boss is out tossing away money buying another £15k handbag she'll never use... the boss is at work turning down a worker's request for an extra 50p/hour, "we can't afford it"

You seem to have quite an outdated and sexist view of the world there.

I’m a boss in my bank and my wife is so while I’m out there running my business she’s out there doing the same with hers. She’s also not a fan of very expensive hand bags.

snowqueen555

The grocery chains have already planned this in, a lot of them already pay over the living wage, but have cut things like like overtime, unpaid breaks, introduced zero hours. The local Tesco near me had almost the whole 35+ staff members leave they chose not to take the new contract. Everyone now working there seem quite young, and are on less generous contracts.

Retail will be fine, they will find other ways to save money.

And let me say the reason why retails chains go out of business isn't because of wages. Think about like Toys R US, BHS, Comet, JJB, Blockbuster, Past Times, Staples, Maplin.

They all failed to keep up with the times and innovate.

Debenhams are struggling as well, if they were not bought out I am sure they would be folding.

Arklight

Lol, imagine if "Bojo" is actually a radical leftist and this was all a genius machination to improve the lot of the worker.

Considering the horrified reaction to a modest increase in in-work poverty pay from the forum Tories, you'd think he'd just announced he was going to nationalise Waitrose and paint a hammer and sickle on every school playground.

Well, don't worry chaps. We've got an enormous windfall coming from Brexit in 29 days so we'll all be rich. Remember.

[Deleted User]

Zero_Sum wrote: »

Most of the McDonalds staff round my way are teenagers getting £4.35 p/h
And i reckon a fair chunk of high street retail jobs are done by under 25's

For reference Tesco pay a 18yo on the shop floor the same as 50yo, £9.00per hour.

[Deleted User]

michaels wrote: »

It is not as if we haven't already seen hundreds of thousands of jobs lost in retail and casual dining and no doubt this will push a few more over the edge. So 95% of those on minimum wage will benefit whilst 5% will be unemployed. Is that a price worth paying?

So what are you saying?

what hourly rate would you like to see paid to the low earners that find a equal balance between a living wage and not laying someone off?

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

CreditCardChris wrote: »

Small businesses are saying they're going to have to cut hiring rates, even let some people go, cancel investment plans, lower the quality of training and equipment etc...

So what's the solution here? To keep people on sub par wages forever and ever because your business isn't good enough to pay them what they need to survive?!

Seriously I don't get it... What do these small business actually think the solution is here?

I am the owner of several small to medium size businesses.

We pay our staff well over £1m a year. We pay over £2m a year in tax.

A 6% rise in our wage bill is more than I paid myself from the business last year...

What do you think the solution is?

[Deleted User]

Unfortunately Businesses never like increased costs, whether that's through rate rises, tariffs, commodity prices etc etc. To me its called "cost of doing business"

Who knows what the impact this rise makes but the Government has to find a right balance of allowing businesses to grow and to give people some sort of a living wage.

sevenhills

ruperts wrote: »

You might not be aware that the minimum wage has been rising ahead of inflation in Britain for about ten consecutive years. The pro-business lobby said it would cause high inflation, but it hasn't. They said it would cause high unemployment, but it hasn't.

The home owners on here will be happy, because wage inflation will push house inflation.

triathlon wrote: »

I run a few small businesses and I very much welcome moves like this.

Bring it on I say, more of it

George Osborne in 2015 promise that the minimum wage would be £9 per hour by 2020, so we are a little behind.
The media seem to forget some things when it comes to the Government in power.

Malthusian

If the Tories had announced another cut to benefits, would the forum Labourites expect the poor as a group to a) welcome the cut and admit they don't deserve the money they're getting or b) be angry or at least annoyed?

If the answer is "b", why do they expect small business owners to welcome a dramatic increase in minimum wage? Why do they expect small business owners to act against their own interests but not other groups?

(If small business owners wanted to pay higher wages they'd already be doing it. So people like triathlon who say "bring it on" are post-rationalising to make themselves feel better. Rewriting their beliefs so that something they formerly viewed as a negative - paying minimum wagers a 6.2% increase - is now a positive. And there's nothing wrong with that, it's a good and rational psychological strategy. It doesn't alter the fact that until the moment the Tories announced a compulsory 6.2% increase, they believed that paying minimum wagers a 6.2% increase would be a bad thing. Unless they were already paying 100% of their staff 6.2% above minimum wage so the increase has no effect except to damage competitors.)

Making small business owners (or any business owner) annoyed is expected if you increase minimum wage, the question is whether it is worth the cost to society. (Higher unemployment, higher grey market employment, and boosting big business at the expense of small business.)