Time to scrap the minimum wage

[espadrille]

I have wondered about this too.

As a small business myself to afford to pay someone for a 40 hour week at nearly £6 an hour would be nearly £240 and all the admin costs associated with that.I would have to raise the prices of the services that I offer and that( many of my customers are in statutory sector) would mean that their costs to train staff would go up. This would mean that if they didnt have the increase in their budget then they would not take up the training. If they just had enough then savings would have to be made elsewhere.

However, if I could undertake someone to do a piece of work for me and pay them a set fee then I would be able to keep the costs down.

It is all swings and roundabouts I suppose, but that begs the question how would the employee that I took on to do the work be able to afford to live on an adhocbasis?

I guess it would be just like being self employed really:huh:

[Cyclone]

I am fine with minimum wage being scrapped as long as...

 

1) Companies are willing to adopt genuine profit share schemes. Workers, as far as possible, ought to be remunerated based on capital growth and not treated as rented tools (i.e. wage labour).

 

And the reward for the people who actually risk something in starting and running a company?

[Bonzo77]

I have wondered about this too.

As a small business myself to afford to pay someone for a 40 hour week at nearly £6 an hour would be nearly £240 and all the admin costs associated with that.I would have to raise the prices of the services that I offer and that( many of my customers are in statutory sector) would mean that their costs to train staff would go up. This would mean that if they didnt have the increase in their budget then they would not take up the training. If they just had enough then savings would have to be made elsewhere.

However, if I could undertake someone to do a piece of work for me and pay them a set fee then I would be able to keep the costs down.

It is all swings and roundabouts I suppose, but that begs the question how would the employee that I took on to do the work be able to afford to live on an adhocbasis?

I guess it would be just like being self employed really:huh:

 

If people were employed on this type of contract, they would never be able to get any credit or a mortgage! It's just not viable. People need a contract & a minimum wage.

[epiphany]

And the reward for the people who actually risk something in starting and running a company?

 

The lion's share of the profits of course. But there's something we need to acknowledge here. Not every business in operation today has been set up, at full risk, by the people who currently own it. A lot of these businesses, or at least the wealth that controls them, have been inherited by family members, cutting out the most significant aspects of risk most start up businesses face today. There is a huge difference between the two as far as risk goes.

[Organgrinder]

I don't accept your argument because how many people are genuinely struggling to pay for genuine essentials? Go into any house in a supposedly poor area and you're certain to find the occupant owns luxuries such as a plasma TV, Sky, laptops, ipods, the latest mobile phone and they can always find the money for beer, fags and often drugs as well.

 

Take away all the luxuries and a single person could live comfortably on, say £160 a week (based on working 40 hours for £4 an hour). Unfortunately the £4 an hour job he needs is based in Mumbai and will stay there unless companies are free to offer the market rate for their workers in the UK.

 

 

I gather you will be the first to volunteer to work for £160 a week then?

 

Another "Do as I say, not as I do" merchant!

[espadrille]

If people were employed on this type of contract, they would never be able to get any credit or a mortgage! It's just not viable. People need a contract & a minimum wage.

 

Well I would like the luxury of that but being self employed that aint gonna happen is it?

 

We didn't have a minimum wage years ago did we and survived then. Wasnt it about 13 years ago this was introduced?

[Alex C.]

If your theory is that the minimum wage has forced call centres to be moved abroad, why is it that very few call centre jobs actually pay minimum wage? The average for a call centre job is around £14-15k - rising higher when bonuses are included. That's certainly true down here, where I don't think I've ever seen a call centre job advertised at £5.80 an hour.

 

Call centre salaries were on average £12,500 7 years ago source and salaries for Indian call centre workers were £1,200 annually when that was published. Presuming they've stayed relatively the same, are you really suggesting that people could get by if we paid the same wages as in India?

[NoddyHolder]

Yep the call centers are now in Pakistan ,India etc etc reducing wages to lets say thirty bob an hour,sounds good but I didn't see the cost of electricity,gas etc being handed down to the customer at the same rate

[Cyclone]

I have wondered about this too.

As a small business myself to afford to pay someone for a 40 hour week at nearly £6 an hour would be nearly £240 and all the admin costs associated with that.I would have to raise the prices of the services that I offer and that( many of my customers are in statutory sector) would mean that their costs to train staff would go up. This would mean that if they didnt have the increase in their budget then they would not take up the training. If they just had enough then savings would have to be made elsewhere.

However, if I could undertake someone to do a piece of work for me and pay them a set fee then I would be able to keep the costs down.

It is all swings and roundabouts I suppose, but that begs the question how would the employee that I took on to do the work be able to afford to live on an adhocbasis?

I guess it would be just like being self employed really:huh:

 

If you were confident about the level of business you could get then you'd employ someone to do the same work as you, but you'd agree a fixed compensation scheme in advance.

If you didn't have enough work then they'd still get paid at your expense, but if you did have enough work you'd reap the benefits of their labour since you're the one who's created a company and taken a risk on offering them a fixed salary.

If you paid them as a share of profits then you may as well gift them half of your shares and call them a joint owner of the business, at least that way they share half the risk as well as half of the profit.

[slimsid2000]

NuLabour did lots of disastrous things in their 13 years in office, but none was worst than the introduction of the minimum age.

 

It sounded a fine idea in theory but in reality was fatally flawed, because a minimum wage will only work if every other country in the world also has a minimum wage.

 

Inevitably, when the minimum wage was brought in, many companies decided to shut down their UK operations and move their factories, offices and call centres overseas. Why pay someone £6 an hour to do a manual job in Britain when you can pay someone in India or China to do the same job for a tiny fraction of the cost?

 

In the forthcoming budget I would like to see Cameron and Clegg scrap the minimum wage and at the same time lower unemployment and child benefits (so no-one would be better off on the dole than working). This would lead to more jobs coming back to the UK from abroad, meaning more people get back into employment and saving the state millions in benefit payments.

 

Rubbish. If other countries want lower wages that is up to them but we are better off with benefits rather than lowering wages here. Besides lower wages overseas mean cheaper goods here so that in turn helps benefit claimants by making things more affordable for them.

Edited June 8, 2010 by slimsid2000