Fergal Quinn wants to scrap the min wage

realitykeeper

alastair wrote: »

Because lack of oversight has worked out so well before.


Oh wait...

If you are referring to the failures of the financial regulator may I remind you it is part of the public sector. Regulation is too important to be left in the hands of the government.

Shelflife

The problem I have with the min wage being set as high as it is, is that in a labour intensive business it leads to alot of inequality.

For example you have 50 people working for you all on min wage. Some are clearly going to be better than others, you can't reduce anyone's wages and you may not be in a position financially to increase wages either.

So now you have John working for you for 5 years and does a great job and gets €8.65 and then scobie starts and can just about do the job and he too gets the same wage.

The min wage sets a false floor where John may be worth €9 per hr but in reality scobie is only worth €7 but we have to pay him above his worth because of the law.

Market forces and demand should dictate wages, in the Celtic tiger our wages grew due to the shortage of labour, but now that there is a recession and plenty of labour we can't reduce their wages without their agreement.

Mr. teddywinkles

Shelflife wrote: »

The problem I have with the min wage being set as high as it is, is that in a labour intensive business it leads to alot of inequality.

For example you have 50 people working for you all on min wage. Some are clearly going to be better than others, you can't reduce anyone's wages and you may not be in a position financially to increase wages either.

So now you have John working for you for 5 years and does a great job and gets €8.65 and then scobie starts and can just about do the job and he too gets the same wage.

The min wage sets a false floor where John may be worth €9 per hr but in reality scobie is only worth €7 but we have to pay him above his worth because of the law.

Market forces and demand should dictate wages, in the Celtic tiger our wages grew due to the shortage of labour, but now that there is a recession and plenty of labour we can't reduce their wages without their agreement.

This is not about worth. Its about being able to live on the monies you receive for an honest days work. And if scobie is a messer let scobie go then. :rolleyes: Make it worth a persons while to travel to work get up early, do an honest days work and go home. Jesus theres people out there on triple that rate and do F**K ALL! every day.

Shelflife

Mr. teddywinkles wrote: »

This is not about worth. Its about being able to live on the monies you receive for an honest days work. And if scobie is a messer let scobie go then. :rolleyes: Make it worth a persons while to travel to work get up early, do an honest days work and go home. Jesus theres people out there on triple that rate and do F**K ALL! every day.

In a business its all about worth, i never said that scobie was a messer, i said that he was just about able to do the job and that John was better. Are you suggesting that we sack someone because someone else can do the job better?

If the min wage wage was lower we could pay scobie €7 and pay john €10 to make it a fairer reflection of their worth to the business. scobie always has the opportunity to work harder and make himself more valuable to the business.

Mr. teddywinkles

Shelflife wrote: »

In a business its all about worth, i never said that scobie was a messer, i said that he was just about able to do the job and that John was better. Are you suggesting that we sack someone because someone else can do the job better?

If the min wage wage was lower we could pay scobie €7 and pay john €10 to make it a fairer reflection of their worth to the business. scobie always has the opportunity to work harder and make himself more valuable to the business.

well my experience with employers is if he/ she could pay you nothing they would no matter the effort you put in.
You said it yourself, the empolyer is only concerned with profit margins. You have a lot of faith in an employers moral obligations to increase Johns wages because he works harder.
These laws are in place to protect the worker.
I'm not advocating sacking people because they don't perform as good as the next person but at the end of day that's at the discretion of the employer too.

Shelflife

theres no "moral" obligation to it at all. there are staff you want to keep and staff that if they left it wouldnt be the end of the world.

those you want to keep will be paid more. the min wage law thats put into place to protect workers can as you can see in my example work against those workers as well.

i also know of one business that needed to reduce its wage costs in order to stay afloat, the staff agreed to work for €8 ph and no redundancies, nera stuck their oar in and said no , thats illegal. the end result was that one person was laid off and the whole roster had to be changed upsetting everyone.

Having a minimum wage set as high as €8.65 creates problems as thats the base rate, in order to show appreciation to a worker who shows loyalty or a good work ethic when they go the extra mile now becomes very expensive for a employer.

I believe that it mitigates against the good worker as the employer can only afford to pay €605 per week for two workers (35hr week x €8.65).because he has to pay scobie €8.65 he has no way of rewarding the better worker, in effect john is subdsidising scobies pay.

as an aside the min wage of €8.65 is a bit of a fallacy. if you pay someone €8.65 x 35hrs x 52 weeks (35hr week x 52 = 1820 hrs paid for)and add on the 10% employers levy you get €17317. however the employee gets 20 days holidays and 9 bank holidays so the actual hours worked is 1617. so the actual cost per hours worked is €10.70 to the employer.