Ireland- Minimumwage Land

LuasSimon

Speaking to younger people seeking employment these days it appears a huge number of jobs are at minimum wage level of 9.80 Euro an hour .Many jobs that previously were reasonably paid jobs are now classified as unskilled or low skill levels . We all started on lowish money but we had enough to go out a night or two a week , young people now have to scavenge in Lidl or Iceland for cheap frozen burgers to not go hungry .
Bottom line the amount of jobs at minimum wage or minimum wage plus 10% at best is growing and growing. How are any of our sons and daughters going to have a reasonable existence going forward ??

Boxing.Fan

Race to the bottom. People coming to Ireland willing to work for peanuts and share apartments with 10 people. An employers wet dream.

Fr_Dougal

Scavenging in Lidl for burgers, the mere thought of it!

cgcsb

7.6% of workers receive the minimum wage.
The biggest challenge facing young people today isn't wages, it's the fact that there is nowhere to live.

Assetbacked

This is the cost of unrestrained and dogmatic "growth", particularly in Dublin. We are beyond full capacity in terms of infrastructure yet there is no sign of an end to more jobs and immigration of workers to Dublin. As a result, workers are getting more and more hammered. A slowdown would be most welcome.

Your Face

There is no real representation of working people, of all pay levels, in politics at the moment.

LuasSimon

cgcsb wrote: »

7.6% of workers receive the minimum wage.
The biggest challenge facing young people today isn't wages, it's the fact that there is nowhere to live.

I would suggest that 7.6% is growing and if you capture within 10% on top of minimum wage the percentages are far far higher.

Many employers on the other hand are getting richer and richer.

cgcsb

LuasSimon wrote: »

I would suggest that 7.6% is growing and if you capture within 10% on top of minimum wage the percentages are far far higher.

Many employers on the other hand are getting richer and richer.

That's just incorrect

https://www.cso.ie/en/statistics/labourmarket/lfsnationalminimumwageestimates/

Q4 2017 to Q4 2018

Employees earning the minimum wage: -10.6%

a sharp decline by all measures.

TheDiceMan2020

It's not merely minimum wage. It's the amount of jobs that pay just above it.

Dawido

even with having wage larger than minimum wage it is practically impossible to find accommodation, it's a failure of the state like with other things lice hospitals, police force, public transport. For sure it's going to get even worse.

James Brown

Your Face wrote: »

There is no real representation of working people, of all pay levels, in politics at the moment.

I find a lot of formally known as 'working class' people believe they are 'middle class' as that's been the drive for the last decade or so. This makes people want to distance themselves from any party seen to represent workers like 'workers' is a dirty word.
Unfortunately when you support politicians who are looking after the actual upper middle and top tier wealthy you are left with 'the squeezed middle' which is essentially the working class IMO. These are hard working people on reasonable salaries who need state aid in some form, (Small business, rent etc.) to get by. Many believe supporting politicians who support 'workers' just means forever homes and big Christmas bonuses and the like because that's what we are told.
IMO, Labour truly dropped the ball. They could have been champions for the majority, people who simply want to work, pay their way and not need any hand outs in the process.

Auguste Comte

How much would a warehouse worker or a shop assistant get paid in Amsterdam or Milan or Brussels for contrast?

For Forks Sake

Auguste Comte wrote: »

How much would a warehouse worker or a shop assistant get paid in Amsterdam or Milan or Brussels for contrast?

€9.44 p/h in Holland, 9.49 p/h in Belgium. Italy doesn't have a minimum wage.

Ireland is 2nd highest in the EU (after Luxembourg, which doesn't really count)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_Union_member_states_by_minimum_wage

amadangomor

TheDiceMan2020 wrote: »

It's not merely minimum wage. It's the amount of jobs that pay just above it.

One sub contractor where I work that pays minimum wage and a 25% shift allowance to make it up to respectable level for the work. I find this aggravating as they should pay a fair amount for the work 28-30 k and then add the 25%.

Shift work is not easy - changing between days and nights every month so this would be fairer.

Most foreign workers are great but they make up 90% of the people in this company and them accepting these wages is driving down wage standards and letting this company get away with murder.

cgcsb

I think the OP is barking up the wrong tree here. Wages are relatively high in this country, compared internationally, and the amount of people on low wages is small. Our only real problem is that there are no homes for the population to live in. If you could rent a small one bed apartment in Dublin for €600 p/m, the issue of 'low wages' wouldn't be a thing. The fact that such an aprtment costs €1600 p/m is where the problem lies, and the only way for that to be fixed is for the government to build thousands of social and affordable homes, stop putting families in hotels and paying millions in HAP to landlords. Alas, this government is ideologically opposed to the population having affordable housing, they think that goldman sachs profits are more important.

Twenty Grand

I would say the biggest change for younger people is that entry level jobs have all but disappeared for many.

There's nowhere now where you could start on the bottom rung with no education or experience and work your way to the top.
Many of the entry level and no-skill jobs have been automated away. Now you need a degree to get a foot in the door, and work from there.

But that's just the way of the world now. Low and no skill jobs have been professionalized as there's more value in it.
Before you could look after child for a 50 euro a week by putting an ad in the paper. Now you need accreditation, insurance, a premises with fire exits, ramps etc, but you'll earn 200 euro easy.

Richard Hillman

It's not just the minimum wage, employers of low to minimum wage jobs are not giving out the traditional 39 hour week. A few years ago 37.5 became the norm, now its down to 32 and 35.

Good luck finding a 39 hour week job at minimum wage now a days. They barely exist. And the higher the minimum wage goes up, the more hours that will be reduced. The more hours that are reduced, the worse the working environment will be. For your 6-7 hours a day, you'll be doing more work because you're constantly understaffed.

Ever notice the way queues in places like Coffee shops, Fast Food outlets, retail shops are getting longer and slower?

InTheShadows

Your Face wrote: »

There is no real representation of working people, of all pay levels, in politics at the moment.

In the private sector no. Employers have been coining it for years now and IBEC routinely lobby the government of the day. It's one of the reasons when you talk out against uncontrolled migration into this country the media jump down your neck and call you a racist.

InTheShadows

TheDiceMan2020 wrote: »

It's not merely minimum wage. It's the amount of jobs that pay just above it.

Or give you 20 hrs a week. Funny that as it's just enough to keep you off the unemployment figures.

Auguste Comte

Twenty Grand wrote: »

Now you need a degree to get a foot in the door, and work from there.

I'm not two sure about that, it's possible to get a gig as a government minister with nothing more than an average leaving cert.

amcalester

Maybe we should be teaching our kids to aim higher than minimum wage jobs?

InTheShadows

Richard Hillman wrote: »

It's not just the minimum wage, employers of low to minimum wage jobs are not giving out the traditional 39 hour week. A few years ago 37.5 became the norm, now its down to 32 and 35.

Good luck finding a 39 hour week job at minimum wage now a days. They barely exist. And the higher the minimum wage goes up, the more hours that will be reduced. The more hours that are reduced, the worse the working environment will be. For your 6-7 hours a day, you'll be doing more work because you're constantly understaffed.

Ever notice the way queues in places like Coffee shops, Fast Food outlets, retail shops are getting longer and slower?

There is also the getting paid to take people off the live register scam which has been in full force the last few years. I know of several employers who hire people keep them for the bare minimum (think it's 9 months on this but open to correction) and once the money is deposited into the bank off the employee goes and onto the next one. Think it was 10k as i had a potential employee come in for an interview last year who advised me about it but i already knew and we'd rather someone who fits the role.

topper75

Our kids' futures seem to be sacrificed on a Diversity altar, cheerlead not just by a highly concentrated media (you'd expect that) but also by all left-wing political parties on the island with no exception.

The real sad thing is that nobody from the establishment in Ireland has ever stopped to explain WHY we ever needed that diversity in the first place. We never ran colonies in other parts of the world but we are made to feel like we owe this outside world something.

This will all continue unabated up to the point where being seen to be 'nice' and 'right-on' is not as important as our own economic well-being. But by my reckoning that day is far off yet.

DEFTLEFTHAND

topper75 wrote: »

Our kids' futures seem to be sacrificed on a Diversity altar, cheerlead not just by a highly concentrated media (you'd expect that) but also by all left-wing political parties on the island with no exception.

The real sad thing is that nobody from the establishment in Ireland has ever stopped to explain WHY we ever needed that diversity in the first place. We never ran colonies in other parts of the world but we are made to feel like we owe this outside world something.

This will all continue unabated up to the point where being seen to be 'nice' and 'right-on' is not as important as our own economic well-being. But by my reckoning that day is far off yet.

Irish will do whatever their bosses in Europe tell them to do.

We love being under the thumb. Left one Empire to join another.

What has happened is that all the heavily unionised well paid unskilled or semi-skilled jobs have gone.

30 or 40 years ago how many people in the fire services would have degrees or mastre in engineering when they applied for the job all those type of jobs have become more complex. There are hundrets of examples like that.

4068ac1elhodqr

No one has mentioned the zero-hours contratcs, we're steadily entering an automated gig-economy,
whereby you won't know exactly how many hours you'll work in a week until that week is over.

The uk has it more complicated, Bojo is offering to abolish the upper (crust) tax rate upto 80k (90€),
another chap suggested raising min wage to the world's highest, all while also steering towards corporate tax-haven status.

cgcsb

Richard Hillman wrote: »

It's not just the minimum wage, employers of low to minimum wage jobs are not giving out the traditional 39 hour week. A few years ago 37.5 became the norm, now its down to 32 and 35.

Good luck finding a 39 hour week job at minimum wage now a days. They barely exist. And the higher the minimum wage goes up, the more hours that will be reduced. The more hours that are reduced, the worse the working environment will be. For your 6-7 hours a day, you'll be doing more work because you're constantly understaffed.

Ever notice the way queues in places like Coffee shops, Fast Food outlets, retail shops are getting longer and slower?

This is also completely untrue. The amount of people who are underemployed, i.e. those who are working less hours than they'd like to, has dropped to an all time low of 4.4% of the labour fource:

https://www.cso.ie/indicators/default.aspx?id=2MUM01

cgcsb

topper75 wrote: »

Our kids' futures seem to be sacrificed on a Diversity altar, cheerlead not just by a highly concentrated media (you'd expect that) but also by all left-wing political parties on the island with no exception.

The real sad thing is that nobody from the establishment in Ireland has ever stopped to explain WHY we ever needed that diversity in the first place. We never ran colonies in other parts of the world but we are made to feel like we owe this outside world something.

This will all continue unabated up to the point where being seen to be 'nice' and 'right-on' is not as important as our own economic well-being. But by my reckoning that day is far off yet.

Our current government is not left wing, they are extreme rightist Goldman Sachs employees who have broken the middle and working classes through housing.

cgcsb

Tate Sticky Pear wrote: »

No one has mentioned the zero-hours contratcs, we're steadily entering an automated gig-economy,
whereby you won't know exactly how many hours you'll work in a week until that week is over.

The uk has it more complicated, Bojo is offering to abolish the upper (crust) tax rate upto 80k (90€),
another chap suggested raising min wage to the world's highest, all while also steering towards corporate tax-haven status.

The numbers tell the opposite story, underemployment is lower than ever.

James Brown

amcalester wrote: »

Maybe we should be teaching our kids to aim higher than minimum wage jobs?

I don't think anyone leaves school hoping to get the bare minimum legal wage for their adult life.

kneemos

What do people want for an unskilled job?

JohnnyFlash

cgcsb wrote: »

Our current government is not left wing, they are extreme rightist Goldman Sachs employees who have broken the middle and working classes through housing.

There’s a conspiracy theory forum somewhere. You live in a mature social democracy, not Somalia.

amadangomor

kneemos wrote: »

What do people want for an unskilled job?

A living wage where they can have all the basics of life.

cgcsb

JohnnyFlash wrote: »

There’s a conspiracy theory forum somewhere. You live in a mature social democracy, not Somalia.

Yet, people think this government is part of a left-wing cable up to nefarious things. When quite the opposite is observable :rolleyes:

James Brown

JohnnyFlash wrote: »

There’s a conspiracy theory forum somewhere. You live in a mature social democracy, not Somalia.

You think keeping up the same policies whlie we break records on child homelessness year on year is a good reason to keep on with the same policies? Some folk are doing grand.

My favourite is that PBP/Paul Murphy, Gino and the lads force FG to do anything their supporters don't like.

cgcsb

amadangomor wrote: »

A living wage where they can have all the basics of life.

bring in affordable housing so.

Cina

amadangomor wrote: »

A living wage where they can have all the basics of life.

You can arguably work on minimum wage in rural Ireland, and some of the small urban areas like Sligo or Athlone or whatever and live relatively well. Rent in those places is low and so is cost of living compared to many parts of the country. over there minimum wage, which is high in Ireland, would do you fine.

The problem is Dublin and to a lesser extent Cork and Galway, I've no idea how anyone survives on minimum wage here, seems nigh on impossible to me, but Dublin isn't the only city with these issues, most European and western capitals have the exact same problems, it's very hard to fix. When times are good people flock to where wages and highest (the capital, usually) which means a shortage of housing and the lower earner's being f*cked over.

So what's the solution? Keep building endlessly? That didn't exactly work out well during the last boom. It's a complex issue that no government almost anywhere has managed to solve and despite our Government being a bunch of incompetent f*ckwits I'm not exactly sure how they solve it either beyond measures like rent caps etc.

kneemos

amadangomor wrote: »

A living wage where they can have all the basics of life.

They can everywhere except the Dublin area. That's a temporary housing problem.

James Brown

Cina wrote: »

You can arguably work on minimum wage in rural Ireland, and some of the small urban areas like Sligo or Athlone or whatever and live relatively well. Rent in those places is low and so is cost of living compared to many parts of the country. over there minimum wage, which is high in Ireland, would do you fine.

The problem is Dublin and to a lesser extent Cork and Galway, I've no idea how anyone survives on minimum wage here, seems nigh on impossible to me, but Dublin isn't the only city with these issues, most European and western capitals have the exact same problems, it's very hard to fix. When times are good people flock to where wages and highest (the capital, usually) which means a shortage of housing and the lower earner's being f*cked over.

So what's the solution? Keep building endlessly? That didn't exactly work out well during the last boom. It's a complex issue that no government almost anywhere has managed to solve and despite our Government being a bunch of incompetent f*ckwits I'm not exactly sure how they solve it either beyond measures like rent caps etc.

Because nobody could afford them.
I don't think they are trying quite frankly.

kneemos wrote: »

They can everywhere except the Dublin area. That's a temporary housing problem.

We've a generation growing up in it (and an older one remembers the last). Temporary by who's count?

Cina

Matt Barrett wrote: »

Because nobody could afford them.
I don't think they are trying quite frankly.

So what's your solution to Dublin?

amcalester

Matt Barrett wrote: »

I don't think anyone leaves school hoping to get the bare minimum legal wage for their adult life.

Maybe not, but how many are willing to put the effort in to make sure they don't?

Hoping to earn more than minimum isn't going to be enough, people need to take actual steps to increase earnings.

James Brown

Cina wrote: »

So what's your solution to Dublin?

Build state owned Social housing and affordable housing.

Buying at market from companies to use as social housing and renting off companies to use as social housing, while using hotels to pick up the slack is a terrible waste of money for the tax payer.

Auguste Comte

Cina wrote: »

So what's your solution to Dublin?

Affordable social housing that so many of us grew up in.

James Brown

amcalester wrote: »

Maybe not, but how many are willing to put the effort in to make sure they don't?

Hoping to earn more than minimum isn't going to be enough, people need to take actual steps to increase earnings.

Yes, if you leave school at 16 to get a minimum wage job, (the only one available) to support the family where do you suggest they go from there? Take 3 years off to go to college full time? Who will contribute to food and rent?

4068ac1elhodqr

cgcsb wrote: »

Our current government is not left wing, they are extreme rightist Goldman Sachs employees who have broken the middle and working classes through housing.

Wasn't one of the three or so that went over for the annual Bilderberg thingy a GoldSachs chap, hopefully all these unelected lads in suits formulated a plan for world peace and an end to income inequality.

cgcsb

Cina wrote: »

most European and western capitals have the exact same problems, it's very hard to fix.

It's actually easy enough to fix, we had housing issues before, the early Irish state was bankrupt, paying reparations to the UK and the British left us with the worst slums in Europe, a program of delivering planned suburbs, Marino, Crumlin and Cabra ended that crisis. We had another crisis in the 60s again due to the need for slum clearance and an economic boom that brought in more workers from the countryside. Both these were solved in a short time through state intervention. The present crisis is a product of right wing ideology that has crept in with Americanisation. FF sold off the social housing stock in the 90s, Thatcher style, built nothing new since, DCC passed planning rules in the recession that banned affordable apartments being built, the only apartments allowed between 2010 and 2018 were luxury dual aspect units with underground parking and their own utility room. Also the cost of a new apartment is about 50-60% tax.

The present government's solution is, well nothing really, they'll allow foreign investors set up build-to-rent and 'communal living' units for obscene profits. They don't think that the state has an interest in a comfortably housed population, they believe 'the market' should decide. They'll find out how incorrect that is at the next election though.

blanch152

https://www.eurofound.europa.eu/publications/article/2019/minimum-wages-in-2019-first-findings


Here are the official European statistics on the matter - Ireland had the second-highest minimum wage in the EU. Why do you think that every second job on a building site is filled by someone from Eastern Europe? The minimum wage in places life Estonia and Latvia is around €3-4. You would be mad not to want to come to Ireland.

kneemos

blanch152 wrote: »

https://www.eurofound.europa.eu/publications/article/2019/minimum-wages-in-2019-first-findings


Here are the official European statistics on the matter - Ireland had the second-highest minimum wage in the EU. Why do you think that every second job on a building site is filled by someone from Eastern Europe? The minimum wage in places life Estonia and Latvia is around €3-4. You would be mad not to want to come to Ireland.

Severe shortage of building site workers. Eighty thousand or something immigrants needed to fill the gap.
Eastern Europeans actually aren't coming in the numbers they did during the last boom due to stuff happening in Poland and other parts of Europe.

El_Duderino 09

Minimum wage is only an arbitrarily amount which businesses have to pay workers. It has nothing to do with the money needed to live. So the state makes up the difference through benefits.

We either need to pay people enough to live or we need to be prepared to make up the difference through social welfare.

As far as I'm concerned, if someone works a normal working week, they should be paid enough to live a normal decent life (buy a house, raise a family).

There will always be a difference between high paid and low paid jobs. But I think we should be prepared to pay people enough to live. It's a matter of respect.

I don't really mind whether we pay at the point of service or pay through tax and social welfare. Tax wealth, not just earnings.

cgcsb

El_Duderino 09 wrote: »

As far as I'm concerned, if someone works a normal working week, they should be paid enough to live a normal decent life (buy a house, raise a family).

Unless you're talking about cheap small houses in the country, I don't see how a minimum wage worker can be given a mortgage in any country? maybe with 2 wages?

DEFTLEFTHAND

Matt Barrett wrote: »

Yes, if you leave school at 16 to get a minimum wage job, (the only one available) to support the family where do you suggest they go from there? Take 3 years off to go to college full time? Who will contribute to food and rent?

The government.

No council estate family are living soley off a single minimum wage income.