Minimum Wage,£7 an hour

[paulw123]

Its like everything in life, work harder and get rewards. I was on minimum wage for a couple of years, worked hard worked by way up the company and then started my own. Hard work but it paid off.

Jobs that require no training, skills or knowledge should pay what the person is worth to the company IMO. Used to work with a few guys who weren't even worth £5 an hour

[Grandfondo]

paulw123 said:

Its like everything in life, work harder and get rewards. I was on minimum wage for a couple of years, worked hard worked by way up the company and then started my own. Hard work but it paid off.

Jobs that require no training, skills or knowledge should pay what the person is worth to the company IMO. Used to work with a few guys who weren't even worth £5 an hour

There's plenty of "workers" who take minimum to be the effort that is put in and can't understand why they stay on it forever!

[David87]

No chance - my mortgage is more than that alone! Sucks.

[JagLover]

RYH64E said:

I'd be happy to see the minimum wage rise, but I'm not sure that it's practical for it to rise to a level that would allow someone in the south east to pay a mortgage, run a car, and raise a family.

As a second income, for a young person living at home, for someone at the beginning of their career, or for someone prepared to live in a shared house, £6/£7/£8 is acceptable (imo), but a true living wage would probably be double our current minimum and that would be difficult to justify in terms of international competition.

The problem with a national minimum wage.

In much of the south-east even a rise to £7 would still mean a wage considerably below even a 'basic' standard of living. In many parts of the rest of the country it is a 'living' wage.

[New POD]

Due to tax credits, and having children, I could live on that I think.

But if you are single, house share, then why not.

I pay £350 for an all inclusive rent, which I only use 4 nights a week, with no sharing, on a farm 4 miles from Derby. So after food (150 a month), I'd have a decent disposable amount.

[eccles]

[redacted]

[Jonny_]

After tax and NI, assuming a 37.5 hour working week, you'd take home £1019 a month.

Currently this would just about equal the mortgage payment.

However, drop down to an old 2 or 3 bed terrace half a mile away, mortgage would be more like £400 a month, council tax perhaps down to £70 or £80, so £500 a month for food, bills, clothing. Should be manageable, just about, even with a child. Tight budgeting required, though. Would be an existence rather than a life, though. Forget cars, gadgets, holidays...

This is in a Yorkshire ex-mining town, though. London, you'd be fked.

[GT03ROB]

[redacted]

[matchmaker]

otolith said:

Live a frugal life with parents / in a shared house / in a bedsit / as a lodger? What lifestyle should the least useful of employees be able to afford? What should the entry level standard of living be?

"Least useful"? An insult to the many hardworking people who get minimum wage!

[RYH64E]

GT03ROB said:

Fair question. One that can be equally applied to benefits. I wouldn't like to guess what the answer should be, however minimum wage should pay more than benefits.

Or, benefits should pay less than minimum wage.

[98elise]

Minimum wage is a good thing, but cannot be to high. We need entry level McJobs for a variety of reasons. People starting in the workforce, saturday jobs, second incomes etc. with too high a minimum wage a lot of these would cease to exist.

I've run a retail business, and we employed local students on adult minimum wage. They were happy with the flexible hours, and we were able to run a business. Its not like we were making huge amounts from them, we often took nothing home on a poor weeks trading, but we all got some pay.

I'm currently the main bread winner in our family, and my wife does a minimum wage part time job. All of the other people there earn minimum wage (except the owners) and none are the main breadwinner. That business would die if minimum wage went up too much, and around 10 people would be unemployed.

Minimum wage jobs are not a career, they are either a start, a stop gap, or a secondary income. If you are stuck in a minimum wage job then do something about it. Move, do some training, change careers etc but hoping for a significant rise is not the answer. My current job is the other side of the country to where I live, so I spend a lot of time in stty hotels living out of a suitcase.

[soad]

98elise said:

Minimum wage jobs are not a career, they are either a start, a stop gap, or a secondary income. If you are stuck in a minimum wage job then do something about it. Move, do some training, change careers etc but hoping for a significant rise is not the answer.

Nicely worded.

[GT03ROB]

RYH64E said:

GT03ROB said:

Fair question. One that can be equally applied to benefits. I wouldn't like to guess what the answer should be, however minimum wage should pay more than benefits.

Or, benefits should pay less than minimum wage.

I didn't want to be too mean, but I prefer your view!

[GT03ROB]

98elise said:

Minimum wage is a good thing, but cannot be to high. We need entry level McJobs for a variety of reasons. People starting in the workforce, saturday jobs, second incomes etc. with too high a minimum wage a lot of these would cease to exist.

I've run a retail business, and we employed local students on adult minimum wage. They were happy with the flexible hours, and we were able to run a business. Its not like we were making huge amounts from them, we often took nothing home on a poor weeks trading, but we all got some pay.

I'm currently the main bread winner in our family, and my wife does a minimum wage part time job. All of the other people there earn minimum wage (except the owners) and none are the main breadwinner. That business would die if minimum wage went up too much, and around 10 people would be unemployed.

Minimum wage jobs are not a career, they are either a start, a stop gap, or a secondary income. If you are stuck in a minimum wage job then do something about it. Move, do some training, change careers etc but hoping for a significant rise is not the answer. My current job is the other side of the country to where I live, so I spend a lot of time in stty hotels living out of a suitcase.

Well put

[S798]

JagLover said:

A key point about the minimum wage is that the vast majority are not condemned to earn it forever.

Indeed.

I left University in 2007, moved in with my girlfriend and started my first job. I earned £14.5k a year for a 40 hour week and my partner earned £15k for the same. This is circa the £7/hour proposal. I took on a second job for 8 hours a week which earned me about £3k per year.

We had no debts, aside from my student loan, and lived comfortably renting a two-bed flat in the south east, paying all the bills, going out and socialising as much as we wanted and included running two cars and a motorbike. In two years, we holidayed in the south of France, two 5* hotels in European cities and spent two weeks in the Maldives together. I went on two lads holidays too in that time. Despite this, we still managed to save just under £20k between us in 2 years as a deposit for our first place.

Anyway, we weren't stuck on this wage forever. Despite it being the start of the so called credit crunch, I increased my salary by working hard to push myself up the ladder. This not only involved working hard during work, but spending a lot of my free time doing voluntary things that would help my CV. I also took a couple of risks by moving companies a few times, but they paid off. Less than 7 years later, I'm lucky enough to earn just shy of three times my first salary and a reasonable age. I am far from alone, and many of my friends/University peers have done exactly the same.

My first manager is still in the same role he was in when I left and despite being middle aged, very experienced at what he does and with kids, earns under £25k. He's too scared to move jobs to earn more money and 'doesn't have the time' to better himself by studying or doing things to gain further experience outside of work.

The minimum wage should be seen as a temporary solution for a few years and not a permanent way of life, unless you make the concious decision to chose it long-term which removes the ability to complain!

[Richyboy]

Surely its a cost of living issue, not a wages issue when a retailer can just claw back the increase from the consumer. Always a sign of a crappy politician, touting policies that look good on the outside but rotten on the inside. I think they should take a larger percentage of people's house price inflation and use it to reduce living costs of people. All that house price inflation from london could help the rest of the country. Problem is most these scumbag politicians are up to their eyeballs in property.

[mph1977]

The_Burg said:

Why? I'm interested. How could anyone live on it? Much fuss about it being too high and stifling industry. But could anyone really live on it? Locally even rent for a st 2 up 2 down is more than my mortgage.

How do folk live on such low income? If they could pay the deposit on a mortgage it is far cheaper than rent. Where would they live in the time to save?

Clearly some do, how? I'm regularly taken the pish out of for being a tight wad by my Mrs and step son. I earn i suspect way above average. Own a modest house, (well eventually). I do own quite a few cars / bikes but total probably under £6k, (shed addict).

the current minimum wage relies on topups from the state to provide the 'living wage'

a couple with one minimum wage earner working more than 30 hours and one not working ( kids or not) would get at least partial housing benefit if renting as well as a fair chunk of working tax credit ( assuming they haven't been in a job that paid above the cut off in the previous tax year)...

[crazy about cars]

Richyboy said:

Surely its a cost of living issue, not a wages issue when a retailer can just claw back the increase from the consumer. Always a sign of a crappy politician, touting policies that look good on the outside but rotten on the inside. I think they should take a larger percentage of people's house price inflation and use it to reduce living costs of people. All that house price inflation from london could help the rest of the country. Problem is most these scumbag politicians are up to their eyeballs in property.

+1.

[Negative Creep]

mph1977 said:

the current minimum wage relies on topups from the state to provide the 'living wage'

a couple with one minimum wage earner working more than 30 hours and one not working ( kids or not) would get at least partial housing benefit if renting as well as a fair chunk of working tax credit ( assuming they haven't been in a job that paid above the cut off in the previous tax year)...

Whereas a single person working full time will likely get no state assistance at all

[crankedup]

eccles said:

pork911 said:

rover 623gsi said:

problem is - we live in an (increasingly) hourglass economy. There are jobs at the top and at the bottom bit fewer and fewer in the middle as semi-skilled positions disappear and more and more companies develop flatter structures.

Furthermore, more jobs are now part-time. In retail it's very rare now for jobs below management level to offer full time positions and when you think that the the big four supermarkets alone - Tesco, Sainsbury's Morrisons and Asda - employ 1 million people it brings it home just how many people are working in low pay, short hour positions. So, there are plenty of people on minimum wage who don't even get the chance to work full time, let alone do overtime.

(My wife works at Asda and even over the xmas period they were asking staff to go home, or not come in in order to save money on wages so don't kid yourself that you can just rack up loads of overtime.)

As a second family income, minimum wage is okay - depending on the income of the other wage earner.

If you're a young person living at home, and are lucky enough to be working full time on minimum wage then you can have a pretty good, fun life. If you want to leave home then you can probably forget it.

how many of those supermarket workers (and other part time workers) are receiving working tax credit?

I think many of these part time, low wage jobs are dependent on the staff topping up their salary with benefits. So in a way, we are subsidising large businesses.
If the benefits were cut, then people wouldn't be able to afford to work in these sort of jobs, so either the business would fail, or they'd have to up their hourly rate.

Spot on Eccles, its one of the Government policies which really irritate me, benefits paid to people on low wages. How many of these Companies make fat profits I wonder, supported by tax payers of course.