The TUC are pushing for the minimum wage to rise to £6 by 2006.

Sounds fair to me, although will it be enough?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4001855.stm

It's becoming quite high. Pushing up the wages of the lowest paid jobs will inevitably lead to increases in all salaries, and if this happens too quickly there may be the risk of triggering large increases in inflation. As well as that, there is the chance of this encouraging more companies to outsource more jobs to countries where wages are much lower.

Don't get me wrong though, it would be a good thing if it can be done without the above happening.

With the introduction of the working time directive complete with the number of hours an 'employed person' is legally allowed to work, this means that a wage increase should really compensate for this.

There are of course a few other alternatives such as:

The Government takes less tax
The employers make less profit
The employee works illegally to make up the difference.

Out of the above 3, which one do you think is more likely? ;)

Option 3 - always has been the case. In the first programming job I worked in we worked out that were we working the same hours in McDonnalds (or similar - its just McD was recruiting at the time!) on minimum wage we would actually be much better off!

What really needs to happen to combat that though is it become cheaper for an employer to emply 2 people working reasonable hours rather than emply 1 and work them every hour god sends!

Originally posted by evildrneil
Option 3 - always has been the case. In the first programming job I worked in we worked out that were we working the same hours in McDonnalds (or similar - its just McD was recruiting at the time!) on minimum wage we would actually be much better off!


Do you find that whenever you tell people you're a prgrammer (I'm one too) they always say "Ooh, you must be earning a fortune" ?
I wonder where they get that idea from ?

I suppose there must have been a point where being a computer programmer was a well paid profession - now however we are churning out far more programers than we actually need (thank you Tony Blair and the everyone must go to uni brigade!) along with the fact that companies are starting to outsource their programming to the Indian subcontinent means that wages are going to fall as more and more programmers are fighting over fewer and fewer jobs. If your doing a computer science degree at the moment, make sure you pay attention in your sys admin, netwroking and project management lectures - there where you are going to need to be looking for a job in the near future I think...

I have to wonder if there is any point to it.

Seems a lot of people on current minimum wage are entitled to Child Tax Credit, Working Tax Credit, and other means tested benefits to bring them in a "living wage". Raising their actual earnings could take them over the entitlement threshold for some of these benefits and leave them where they were, or even worse off.

And as T020 points out, it could lead in the long term to job losses, because employers of low wage labour are effectively being subsidised by the tax and benefit system.

Sounds good initially, but I reckon it would lead to job cuts as companies try to make up the increased expenditure on wages.

Originally posted by Greybeard
I have to wonder if there is any point to it.

...

it could lead in the long term to job losses, because employers of low wage labour are effectively being subsidised by the tax and benefit system.

But unless wages or tax benefits provided to workers go up sufficiently, then we're not going to encourage the workshy into employment when they're better off on the dole.

Originally posted by evildrneil
I suppose there must have been a point where being a computer programmer was a well paid profession - now however we are churning out far more programers than we actually need (thank you Tony Blair and the everyone must go to uni brigade!) along with the fact that companies are starting to outsource their programming to the Indian subcontinent means that wages are going to fall as more and more programmers are fighting over fewer and fewer jobs. If your doing a computer science degree at the moment, make sure you pay attention in your sys admin, netwroking and project management lectures - there where you are going to need to be looking for a job in the near future I think...

programming can be highly paid, it just depends where you work, my aunt who works for yorkshire water is a system analyst/programmer and is on around £30k a year excluding the money she gets when she's on call and overtime!

but I do agree there are too many programmers, I'm doing a software engineering course, and there are like 300ish people on my course in my year... the majority couldnt even understand basic concepts before they started, some still dont...

that means when I leave Uni theres going to be about 200 people leave with the same degree as me, about 150 of which will still suck, and 50 which were already good and just needed a degree to prove it and information on other areas like networking and systems design and development etc...

personally I'm looking at games development, trying to get into 3D graphics and animation as well as programming as theres much more of a need for that than a bog standard programmer for some random small company

Given that your average Indian earns about £2-3,000, which is well below even the current minimum wage, companies can still make savings and any of them who want to offshore work will do it regardless of any increase in the minimum wage.

Originally posted by Funky Dave
Given that your average Indian earns about £2-3,000, which is well below even the current minimum wage, companies can still make savings and any of them who want to offshore work will do it regardless of any increase in the minimum wage.

But surely you can see that they are more likely to offshore work if the minimum wage is increased even further? From my understanding, the current minimum wage is £4.80 and the TUC want £6.00 by 2006 - a 25% increase. Surely this can only encourage more offshoring and potentially trigger inflation?

I do see your point. However, there was plenty of uproar from businesses about how much damage having a minimum wage would do to the economy, and that damage never occured. Besides, I would have thought that basic admin jobs, which generally pay a tad more than £6.00 per hour were the most likely things to be offshored, and the people who would benefit from the raise would be those in unskilled labouring jobs.

Mind you, I'd still prefer the unions to focus on "quality of life" issues, such as confronting the government on the pensions mess, or dealing with pressures in the workplace, rather than raising the minimum wage.

I have very mixed feelings about this - six pounds an hour seems a not unreasonable minimum wage (especally given the obscene wages company directors get!) however I can't see it working in the real world where employers would simply officially employ someone for X hours but 'unnoficially' require them to work Y hours where Y is greater than X!

Yes, that does happen. It's a sad fact that the minimum wage "problem" can be got round by companies who are devious enough.