Should the minimum wage be scrapped ?
ThinWhitePuke
Posts: 358 Forum Member
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Apologies if this has been done before but my pc is exceptionally slow tonight so search won't work for me.
With so many immigrants undercutting UK workers and working below minimum wage or around minimum wage should the minimum wage be scrapped to level the playing field ?
In these difficult economic times it is hard for many companies to justify £5.93 an hour for a low skilled/unskilled position plus if the minimum wage was scrapped an employer might be able to hire 2 people off the dole queue at £3 an hour as opposed to 1 person earning nearly £6 an hour.
If minimum wage is scrapped then there is more chance of English competing with immigrants,more likelyhood of companies recruiting and someone doing a 40 hour week at £3.50 an hour is still going to get double what they would get on JSA
Should the minimum wage be scrapped ?
With so many immigrants undercutting UK workers and working below minimum wage or around minimum wage should the minimum wage be scrapped to level the playing field ?
In these difficult economic times it is hard for many companies to justify £5.93 an hour for a low skilled/unskilled position plus if the minimum wage was scrapped an employer might be able to hire 2 people off the dole queue at £3 an hour as opposed to 1 person earning nearly £6 an hour.
If minimum wage is scrapped then there is more chance of English competing with immigrants,more likelyhood of companies recruiting and someone doing a 40 hour week at £3.50 an hour is still going to get double what they would get on JSA
Should the minimum wage be scrapped ?
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Comments
Basically the government are subsidising low paid employment when very possibly employers could well afford to pay a living wage.
Couldn't the employer hire them for £1.50.
Also, immigrants can't work for less than the minimum wage.
The point is if the minimum wage is being under cut, then that should be addressed, not reducing others to compensate
This can only go well.
I suspect that far less people will be going for jobs at £3 an hour, and it'll lead a race to the bottom. Why bother? Better off on benefits. And if benefits are stopped because I refuse a job, crime will pay more. If I get caught and go to prison, free food, free shelter, TV, games console for good behaviour.
Who can afford to live on such a low wage? It'll cost far more for the state to top up their wage with council tax, housing benefit, tax credits and so forth, and the tax take will also fall as they end up paying little or no tax because they'll be around the income tax threshold and National Insurance take will be minuscule.
Some people are only prepared to pay 75p an hour for "work experience", so go figure, that's what they'll do and one MP boasted during a debate about scrapping the minimum wage about how he paid around 80p an hour to one of his employees in the past. Cheap exploitation of the worst order.
If you're interested in this, read about the Employment Opportunities Act 2010, where the MP suggests that the minimum wage infringes a jobseekers human rights! Unbelievable... In 2011, we could well see the end of the minimum wage, God help us all if that happens.
This must be a wind up?
Some will not be happy until every social advancement of the last hundred years are abolished it seems.
If you're under 25, you don't get it regardless. Tax credits are a unfunny joke.
It depends on where you live. £6/hr goes a lot further in Hartlepool than Hamstead. Perhaps we should consider a regional minimum wage?
Serious. Dead serious.
1m out of the last 1.2m jobs created in this country went to immigrants so something needs to be done to get Brits competing with immigrants at the bottom end of the scale, we can't ban immigrants from working so we need the low paid Brits to be more realistic about their expectations and compete with the immigrants and having a free market without minimum wage and pressure from Job Centres then the Brits have more chance of a job.
Does the government not offer any top ups then if you work less then 30 hours and you are single,my friend worked 37 hours a week and got a top up,if he worked less hours ie less income he would not have survived without substantial help either with rent/council tax or wages.
Yes i did know about the under 25 rule and you are right that would be an unfunny joke as bills would be the same for under 25s,i do not know a council/landlord offering discounts for the under 25s,nor indeed any supermarkets.
I'm working in a "professional" Science job - but on minimum wage.
If MW was scrapped - the company would have no qualms in dropping the wage.
Well maybe it could be bought in for new jobs as opposed to existing jobs or something
The fact that 5 out of every 6 low paid jobs are going to immigrants means 1m more people on benefits as immigrants took 1m out of the last 1.2m jobs created, we need to be getting the Brits into these jobs
That would seem to make sense but would require lots of backroom staff to impliment but i am not entirely against this suggestion,as yes you are right it costs more to live in some parts of the country then others.
In the south east where i am it is quite expensive,but i guess if you lived in say Hull your housing bills would be cheaper,not sure about council tax though or essentials like food do tescos charge less in the north then the south possibly but i do not know.
Yes we need to get brits into jobs but those brits also need to live and this cannot be done on thin air ie £3 an hour or so,are you having a laugh.
JSA = £65 a week
40 hrs work @ £3.50 = £140 a week less NI
Employee gets double the money he got on JSA and is no longer a drain on the taxpayer
Getting rid of the minimum wage, goes against the governmens whole "Making work Pay" thing. It may never acheieve that, but it would be foolish to make that problem work.
why would the company hire 2 people, when it only needed 1?
But neither wage is a living wage!
You might as well just not work for the little cash you'll get. I'm not saying it's right but it's to be expected.
I know of 1 such company atm that a friend of mine owns, he really needs 2 employees (packers/warehouse) but can only afford 1 at minimum wage and this 1 person is going to have to work like crazy as there are only 2 warehouse people, he would love to take on a 3rd but can't justify it, if both were getting £3.50 an hour he could
Wouldn't that mean employers could pay whatever wage they wanted which could then lead to the exploitation of employees. However they could bring in job sharing which would also get people off the dole and into work.
Most families i know would require much more then 40 hours work at £3.50 an hour to actually live on, one housing association near me charge £128 per week rent alone for a house that would be nearly all the earned income,so would require massive subsidies once again from mr taxpayer,so the employer would be getting cheap labour whilst mr taxpayer picks up the tab.
Lots of people who come here from eastern europe live several to a house and can split the bills and still afford to send money home,realistically the uk nationals cannot really compete with that.
1) £3 an hour in the north, £6 in the south and £4.50 in the middle.
2) Or £6 an hour in the north, £8 in the south and £7 in the middle.
Which do people think more appropriate?
People have a moral duty to work even if paid work meant less disposable income than on benefits, working gives people self respect, social interaction, removes the stigmas that being unemployed carry and so on.
Everyone who is capable of work has a moral obligation to apply for and accept work
It interests me that desipte all the work that needs doing, he does not have the income to pay for that work to be done, maybe your friend needs to work out where he could be earnnig more money to pay his staff.
I'm not doubting your friend but how much profit did his company make last year? (rhetorical question)
If there is actually work for two people then two people should be doing it and getting a decent wage for it - perhaps he could make savings elsewhere?
(I do understand that all this is so much easier said than done though)