Benefits scroungers.

[Workingman]

We are not talking about Wayne and Waynetta and their football team of children who have no intention of ever working. We are not talking of the Neets who, with their poor education, cannot find a job and give up looking. We are talking of companies making huge profits but who pay their employees such low wages those employees have to rely on benefits to survive.

The subsidy made by the taxpayer is said to be about £11bn. It goes to workers in the form of in-work benefits, without which many could not survive.

Meanwhile, back at HQ, obscene salaries are being paid to top management and share dividends are dolled out to spivs, sometimes known as shareholders or investors.

The first call on a company's profits should be pay-back of in-work benefits to its employees.

[cromwell]

Yes the state is effectively subsidising big business, which is a bit odd.

[Suff]

As I recall we have a minimum wage. This is supposed to provide the minimum basic living wage required by anyone to live and work.

Something, which I recall, has encouraged a huge immigrant market (who often don't receive it) and has created 0 hour contracts...

Meanwhile companies like Tesco still make losses and have changed management because of it.

Working tax credits are supposed to fill the gap between people who have benefits which are much greater than subsistence support, but actually represent a living wage in themselves and those who get paid the "living wage". If we didn't have such high benefits (in some cases, not all), then we would not have to have tax credits.

A far better result would be to drop corporation tax by 5% and ramp the minimum wage up. Of course this won't help the companies which are making a loss. BHS for instance, sold off for £1.

The only possible solution to this is full employment, which drives up wages. However with 11 million people not working in the 16/65 group, that is going to be a long time coming and probably not at all so long as the immigration floodgates remain open.

This is no simple case of obscene profits being paid to company directors whilst employees get hammered. If you consider the banks the only people likely to be on tax credits are the cleaners and the security guards.

I hate "all encompassing" statistics which try to show something that is not there. It's election month. Labour needs a boost. Of course we're going to see this kind of thing, true or not.

[Workingman]

How on earth does min (basic) wage of £6.50 an hour x 40 equal a living wage?

After tax that leaves £12,996 or just short of £250 per week. Take off £93.50 per week council house rent (Leeds) and there is £156.50 left. Take off the average Band A council tax of £17.54 and that leaves £138.96. Take off a Day Rider bus ticket of £4.20 per day to get to and from work and that leaves £127.96. Let us say that £15 on average is used for gas and electricity and there is £112.96 left. What about water and sewage, say £4, and the worker now has £108.96. How about food, say £40 per person, and new clothes at £?, and maybe a bit of 'relaxation' or 'entertainment'?

Is that the sort of "living" most of us would accept?

[victor]

quite agree with WM,management are taking the p*ss out of their workers.

when i took redundancy from work it was partly because i was totally jarred off working for a company that continually year on year GAVE all supervisory staff 5%-8% increases while shop floor were lucky if we got 2%.

even shop floor supervisors were embarrassed with the situation

this was a nice little aerospace company turning over 90,000,000 quid a year, always in profit ,til it was taken over by an American company ,who in the space of 4/5 years turned an 8,000 workforce into 3.000. and then the rot set in.

[Kaz]

Nobody can live on minimum wage unless topped up by benefits, it is ridiculous to say they can

Zero hours contracts should be illegal

[Diflower]

There is a 'living wage' which is what you're reckoned to need to actually live on, and which is higher than minimum wage.
Reason being, two people in same house can earn min wage; also one person can have more than one job.
Not saying it's right, but that's why different figures.

Btw I could be wrong but thought Tesco didn't made a loss, just less profit, which is quite different.
Why should companies be expected to make ever more profit?

[Suff]

Hence the top up, to bring people to the point where it is more beneficial to work than be on benefits...

As I have already said, I'd rather the minimum wage rose to £8 and taxes were lowered than people have to get handouts. The government would even benefit from that as they would get taxes on the increased wages and more NI.

But, of course, we can't do that can we, these companies are just extracting the Michael.

Yes Di, Tesco's did make a profit, jut 91% less profit than was projected the previous year. Also everyone, workers included, were given more because of the false profit figures. That was before tax. Profits after tax are even lower.

Even worse, this insistence on higher wages will drive more and more stores to close. To date, this debacle with profits at Tesco has closed 43 stores which are not making a profit. That's at least 2,000 people out of a job. Ask that 2,000 people whether they want a "living wage", no zero hour contract, or a job, I'm sure they will give you an interesting answer.

I have my own views about all of this. There were times in my life when I had to clothe the kids from the charity stores. There were times in my life where the income I made was not enough for more than a shared room in a large house. There were times for me when a "living wage" was enough to have accommodation, eat, clothe myself simply for work and to get back and forwards to and from work. It drove me to do things, learn things and work at things which meant, barring disasters, I'd never go back there.

Apparently that's bad

let's have a look at those Tesco exorbitant figures.


Salaries
Number of staff: 171,163
Total spent on wages: £3,015,000,000.00
Average staff pay: £17,614.79 *

Number of directors: 63
Directors' remuneration: £8,033,000.00
Increase over last 7 years: 23.49%
Highest paid director's salary: £2,009,000.00 **
Increase over last 7 years: 134.15%

Annual turnover: £38,027,000,000.00
Annual profit: £1,748,000,000.00 (pre tax)

I also looked at more detailed figures for the profit elsewhere and the post tax profit was £900 million.

So, with an overall employee wage bill of 3bn and a total directors renumeration which has only changed by 3.6% per year for the last 7 years, what does that really mean? Well if we had given all of the staff a 3.6% wage rise for the last 7 years, then 700 of that 900 million profit would be consumed. A profit margin which is so razor thin that Tesco would not be able to hedge it's fuel for the trucks which deliver your goods to your supermarkets. Not be able to even look at any store openings, or even renovations.

They are absolutely huge figures, but reality is that when the staff wage bill is 3.5 times the post tax profit, the company is in serious danger.

Of that 171,763 staff I suggest that 80% are low skilled workers on the minimum wage. After all, the average salary is not that much higher at 17.6k.

Crunching the figures on that is highly revealing. If they had 80% of their workers on the minimum wage (let's be aggressive and assume it's £6.5 for everyone even though we know they have a lot of younger workers.

So for 80% of the workforce working 40 hours a week, 220 days a year the wage bill, at the minimum wage, would be

£7.8 billion

And if we raised the minimum wage for these workers to £8 the bill would be

£9.6 billion.

So let's get a real "living" wage. Let's get rid of the Zero hour contracts and let's force every employer to employ staff for 40 hours a week with full benefits.

Then Tesco can get rid of 75% of their staff and close a couple of hundred stores and ramp prices up.

OR

We can pay three times as much for the goods we buy at these supermarkets....

Done deal. Works perfectly.

Or do we need to take a long hard think about our expectations and what we call "normal"???

After all, hey, we'll just get rid of all those exorbitant directors fees. All £8 million of them. Of course we won't have any directors any more. The accountants will be doing the deals for £38billion worth of turnover, planning the future campaigns, selecting the goods and the lines, balancing the business, planning for growth, or shrinkage.

Yes that will work. I mean, that £8million is..... A whole 0.26% of the staff wage bill at current rates. Or, put in other words, one 0.26% pay rise for everyone. Of course it would be the last for 60% of them as they would not have a job after.

I'm not sorry to say that the politics of this is ridiculous. Simple reality precludes the political hype. If I had to be the fall guy for £38bn turnover, I'd want a touch more than 0.005% of the value of that turnover to take the fall for it.

One last parting remark. I said, very clearly, that going after executives bonuses would only drive base salaries through the roof. Salaries which would be picked up no matter how well or badly they did. Just look at the 134.15% increase in the highest paid directory salary over the last 7 years. I rest my case.

[cromwell]

I can't help thinking of one of my wife's relatives. He is unlucky enough to live in Buckinghamshire. Unlucky because he has a low pay job and the cost of houses around there means he'll never be able to own one.
He has children with his partner but they live apart; deliberately, because that means she gets benefits and they can have a little more money coming in.

So yes, they are abusing the system. But he's not work shy. He does work but gets paid a pittance. Someone obviously knows what they are doing because his car was keyed outside her house recently.

So things aren't always black and white.

[Kaz]

No they aren't Cromwell xx