Minimum wage

[miasmum]

I'll be honest I have only heard the headlines, but surely to goodness no one actually thinks raising the minimum wage to £15 p.h. is good idea do they?

[Workingman]

Not me. A 60% increase is pie-in-the-sky and hardly any business will be able to fund it. Those overtaken by it will want their old differentials kept up so it spirals upwards and out of control.

[miasmum]

Thank you, exactly what I was thinking

Lukes care team are on £10ph, I think that is way too low for such a responsible job and the company are fighting to get it increased to £12 but £15 would destroy them

[TheOstrich]

£15 an hour for a 40 hour week is £31,200 a year. That does seem a bit OTT for a minimum wage, but when you get lorry drivers being paid £60k a year ......

[Workingman]

Imagine you are currently on £!2 hr through experience and longevity and someone joins on NMW - £8.91 - you have a differential of £3.09p. Suddenly they are on £15hr, a pay rise of £6.09p without any increase in performance or productivity. You are going to want the same, plus your differential.

This will cause friction right up the employment chain.

[miasmum]

Absolutely WM

[Suff]

The only thing this can possibly do to manufacturing is move it to robotics faster. This means NLW for those who can find work.

How do they think that we will become some super global exporter when the cost of the single most expensive part of manufacturing (the humans), goes up by 60%. How many people suddenly want to pay a large chunk of money more for supermarket goods simply because the staff costs surge so much.

Even then, as WM says, who is going to accept a differential which has closed by so much? Right now jobs are available and people are not. I'm seeing jobs offered where the employers have and have not accepted reality. For instance two companies looking for exactly the same skills. One is offering £380/£400 a day. Another is offering £700-£780 per day. Exactly the same role, different employers. You can guess who will win the right candidate.

Then we are already at risk of significant inflation if we don't bring things under control. Just how we do that with a 60% rise in NLW is beyond me. If we bake in that kind of inflation and interest rates begin to rise, people are going to lose their homes. We have had incredibly low interest rates for so long that most mortgages are based on that never changing. We all know the reality of that situation but younger people will have no clue, they have no reference point to understand it.

Labour Left and the unions, of course, don't care about that. They just want to find a way of buying votes. It didn't work so well for Corbyn, why they should think it would work again is a mystery to me. Clearly Starmer is wiser.

[Kaz]

Far too many smaller businesses would fold, so it's not realistic It's a shame really, as low-paid workers definitely deserve better pay.....

[Suff]

The current average salary is £31,461. Raising the NLW to £261 less than the current average wage would just push the average wage higher, cause inflation, raise raise interest rates, prices and devalue their increase.

We always knew that Labour Maths on anything to do with wages and wage rises was bad. This just proves it.

For instance in the 1970's there were wage deals which exceeded 30%. We had inflation which roared up to 26.9% and the country was, effectively, bankrupt.

Now Labour wants to give some 10% (or more) of our workers a wage rise of up to 60%. 7% certainly a 60% increase. How do they believe it won't totally destroy the economy with knock on costs and the attempts to use interest rates to stop the spiralling inflation?

Right, I get it, they don't care so long as it buys the votes!