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.

mariaalice

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?