Enough is Enough

Did I say they shouldn’t? No.

Agreed HousePlantQueen. Pulling the ladder up after themselves so that others can’t use it!

Germanshepherdsmum

The consumer will pay for a £15ph minimum wage.

The consumer already pays; it is called Universal credit which tops up wages too low for anyone to run a home and fed themselves/family without it. What is it about people who presumably have earned more than £15 per hour themselves that makes them think that others shouldn't?

Doodledog

If someone can't afford to pay employees a living wage, they shouldn't be in business, IMO. So many people claim that they can't afford to pay enough for their staff to live with dignity, get sick pay or maternity leave, yet they go on holiday, send their children to fee-paying schools etc. I'm not against profit, or against people getting rich, but it shouldn't be at the expense of others.

Agreed, and so many employers, including the big supermarkets are happy for you, the taxpayer, to subsidise low wages with Universal Credit.

rosie1959

Whitewavemark2

Expecting someone to provide their labour for a wage that is not sufficient to feed them or keep them warm is both immoral and exploitation.

I do not necessarily disagree with your sentiment but has that much changed over the last 40 years.
For instance when we were first married I obviously worked full time in a reasonable job as an accounts clerk. Now there was no way I could have kept a roof over our heads on that salary. It took my husbands income at the time to pay the mortgage ect He had a manual job at the time no special training needed but it was exceptionally hard work paying probably 3 times the average salary.
The same among our friends they had a few years at work by this time and had progressed to higher salaries.
Has it ever been possible to run a household on a minimum salary
The wasn’t the benefits then of working tax credits ect

Well yes, it was possible. Many women didn’t work. People had decent lives because they didn’t have to pay extortionate rents if they were unable to afford to buy their own houses, and the money earned was enough to pay for food and essentials. What happened -Thatcher. I just don’t see how anybody can justify not paying people enough to survive on when they are on minimum wages, expecting food banks and charities to bail them out is a sad indictment of our society.

DoodleDog You are right about an increased minimum wage and your comments regarding small businesses. If employers cannot afford to pay £31k pa then maybe they shouldn't be in business?

The owners/directors of too many companies are forgetting that they need decent staff, well paid, to help their businesses continue successfully.

Thank you VioletSky

I can't attend but a huge thank you to everyone willing to fight for a fairer way forward

Whitewavemark2

Expecting someone to provide their labour for a wage that is not sufficient to feed them or keep them warm is both immoral and exploitation.

I do not necessarily disagree with your sentiment but has that much changed over the last 40 years.
For instance when we were first married I obviously worked full time in a reasonable job as an accounts clerk. Now there was no way I could have kept a roof over our heads on that salary. It took my husbands income at the time to pay the mortgage ect He had a manual job at the time no special training needed but it was exceptionally hard work paying probably 3 times the average salary.
The same among our friends they had a few years at work by this time and had progressed to higher salaries.
Has it ever been possible to run a household on a minimum salary
The wasn’t the benefits then of working tax credits ect

Regarding profits being passed on to consumers, I heard the head of Iceland saying yesterday that the large supermarkets have to be willing to accept less profit during this economic crisis. IMO, he is an honourable man and a good example of how business can work both for profit and for the consumer. Regarding the Enough is Enough campaign, for anyone who’s interested, you can follow them on Instagram, where you can see clips from last night’s rally. They are intending to hold 50 rallies across the country in the coming weeks / months. This is about the ordinary ‘man in the street’ speaking out.

Expecting someone to provide their labour for a wage that is not sufficient to feed them or keep them warm is both immoral and exploitation.

People can't choose everything they consume, Casdon. They have to eat. They may need to use public transport or put fuel in a car. And those on the minimum wage will also find themselves paying for the increase.
icanhandthemback makes good points.

There are always excuses to pay people less.

Germanshepherdsmum

The consumer will pay for a £15ph minimum wage.

Of course, but nonetheless that’s no reason to exploit workers. People make choices about what they consume, so if they can’t afford goods they won’t buy them. There’s no excuse for paying people insufficient for them to survive on.

But it isn't only "business for profit" who need to find the minimum wage. Elderly people and the disabled who have some savings are paying for carers would need to find that money on top of the already increasing food and energy bills. As they are employers they also need to find statutory holiday pay, tax and NI.
If you put up the wages, you put up the prices for everybody and nobody wins. The differential between the lower paid and the higher paid in companies with pay scales will have to kept and so that will increase the wage bill. Any extra money put into the economy by these means will only be for a very short time until prices catch up.
I think the energy crisis is the important thing we should be campaigning about.

It sounds like something my father would have called "The Dippy Hippies", looking to find something to protest about and when asked they don't know why they are.
I'll wait and see what happens when the new P.M.
is appointed and what they implement.
The only protest I have ever been on was when the NUT called out all teachers in the Queens Silver Jubilee year can't even remember what it was for . Our head said if we did not go to school we had to go on the March. I was so embarrassed when I saw T.V. cameras I took a shortcut home through a department store.

The consumer will pay for a £15ph minimum wage.

rosie1959

I was just pointing out that some small businesses could not afford a jump like that in the minimum wage and would probably cease trading
Liz Truss made those comments quite a while ago and if I am correct it was a conversation about migrant workers taking all the jobs.

Only yesterday Liz Truss refused to retract her statement that British people needed to work harder.
www.itv.com/news/2022-08-17/labour-slams-liz-trusss-claim-uk-workers-needed-more-graft
Hundreds of thousands of small businesses will fail in the next few months I’m sure, but that’s not a reason to not pay employees a living wage is it? We are in for a very bleak time.

I would be happy to support new businesses with grants towards paying a decent wage for the first few years, so long as the owners were not paid more than the staff, and all profits go back into the business (as opposed to salary). If they are not able to do so after that, I would withdraw the grant, as I really dislike the way some companies rely on the taxpayer to ensure that staff earn enough to live on via top-ups whilst the owners make large profits.

I don't know how migrant workers are involved, other than that some of them have no choice but to work for low pay, and I wouldn't use anything Liz Truss says as a yardstick for very much .

I was just pointing out that some small businesses could not afford a jump like that in the minimum wage and would probably cease trading
Liz Truss made those comments quite a while ago and if I am correct it was a conversation about migrant workers taking all the jobs.

No doubt they do, which is why someone needs to act on your behalf.

I'm sad to say that the Labour Party doesn't seem to be doing that, so this lot have stepped in to plug the gap. I hadn't heard of them before this thread, and there might be sinister forces behind them somewhere, but there is no evidence of that yet, and their demands seem perfectly reasonable to me.

Doodledog

I can only see events in London, so I son't be going, but the aims of the organisation are sound:
1. £15 an hour minimum wage to give people a real pay rise
2 Restore the price cap to slash energy bills
3 Free school meals and community kitchens to end food poverty
4 More council houses, a rent cap and a renters' rights charter to provide decent homes for all
5 A crackdown on tax evasion and higher taxes for the top 5% of earners - tax the rich

None of those are unreasonable, and they are not just slogans, but have measurable objectives against them. If they were a political party they would get my vote.

If only!!.. I am a carer on minimum wage and there is no way I would strike and I think the powers that be know that…

If someone can't afford to pay employees a living wage, they shouldn't be in business, IMO. So many people claim that they can't afford to pay enough for their staff to live with dignity, get sick pay or maternity leave, yet they go on holiday, send their children to fee-paying schools etc. I'm not against profit, or against people getting rich, but it shouldn't be at the expense of others.

rosie1959

£15 an hour sounds lovely but can business afford it especially the small employer that’s just over £31k a year

Well you know what Liz Truss says rosie59, make everybody work harder. Why don’t we just scrap maximum working hours directives and expect those on minimum wage to work 60 hour weeks to survive. That’s fair, isn’t it?

£15 an hour sounds lovely but can business afford it especially the small employer that’s just over £31k a year