Quote:
Originally Posted by [Phill]
I would ask him why he deserves £12 an hour.
I am starting a temp job next week whilst I line up a grad scheme and I will get paid a good amount less than that working as a pension administrator.
If I get the accounting grad scheme I want at British Steel, with it resting on an assessment day I have already landed after a successful interview, I will be barely making more than that per hour. Depending on how you calc hours out for the year it is £12.xx/hr starting salary.
Why should a cleaner be paid almost as much as an accountant in a global company? Where I will be working directly on accounts measured in tens and hundreds of millions helping to turn around a historic company (which represents much of the entire industry here) and I will have responsibilities that will directly affect thousands of workers. A position I will have earned with a three year degree at least 2:1, probably a First, experience working in three different summer internships/placements including working abroad and a huge amount of research and prep to get hired.
In what world is hoovering, squirting and wiping equal to this in value?
Quote:
Originally Posted by [Phill]
It doesn't depress wages. Many current £7.20 jobs just wouldn't exist at £12 an hour or whatever. That is the point, if you put up wages then either everything else rises in cost to compensate, making that £12 worth less, or the job just isn't filled. Or it is filled illegally
Lets put £12 per hour number aside for the moment and lower it to say, £8.30 rather than £7.20.
You've admitted that we
need working-class people to support the higher salaried employees. I'm off to work in the moment and the company employs cleaners in the office for instance. They're obviously totally necessary because obviously the kitchen will become uninhabitable and the toilets will be disgusting for any clients we host etc.
Suppose no-one will be a cleaner for £7.20 per hour, but there are a fair few people who would be cleaners for £8.30 per hour. Are you seriously telling me that a major international company in London is going to 1) take a huge risk by employing illegal workers or 2) ask its own staff to clean the loos?
Or will it 3) simply pony up and pay that little bit extra?
Its a bit of a case of Schrodinger's immigrant. Willing to "do the jobs Brits don't want to do" but having no effect on wages and conditions
There are no prices in the sky hovvering over people Phil. The word 'deserve' is completely subjective. The value of your job is the amount that you can force your employer to pay you - the amount that it
takes to get you to work.
The idea that cleaning is 'worth' £7.20 per hour and that any increase is somehow 'artificial' is completely baseless.
Regardless of whether its good for the economy as a whole or the costs of employing working-class low-skilled employees are passed on to the consumers, it is perfectly rational for working-class people to vote Leave.
PS: I'm glad to hear that you're well-versed in how scummy the Tube unions are. There should be so much more outrage about that.
PPS: For any foreigners reading the thread; yes. we're serious. London Underground drivers earn £52,000 per year and get something like 45 days per year annual holiday as well.