This is an honest question, I’m not trying to detract from the cause. Where does this number come from? The Living Wage Foundation [puts the required minimum wage at £9.90 for the wider UK, and £11.05 for London](https://www.livingwage.org.uk/what-real-living-wage). How did someone get to £15?
Is it really worth the extra effort and much higher chance of failure to push for £15, when a lower amount would be appropriate?
That would finish Britain.
woo! possible pay rise
Wouldn’t that make many other more businesses struggle? It isn’t like everyone is McDonald’s or Amazon.
Give people more money and they spend more money on stuff other people make etc. It’s not like it disappears.
The only issue I see with this is that companies will struggle as they don’t do a blanket bump instead you have a lot of assistant managers and supervisors quitting or stepping down as the pay is like 10p more an hour for 50x the responsibility and demands.
By the time this happens the *actual* living wage will need to be £25…
It’s been moving at a fucking snails pace for decades.
Remember: if minimum wage didn’t exist companies would snap at the chance to pay you less, meaning that it’s only the fact they’ll get punished if they don’t pay fairly that’s stopping them.
Every time this issue comes up smart asses with “that’ll create spiralling inflation” come out the woodwork.
No it won’t. It is proven time and again that it won’t. Corporations need to make less profit, not loss mind you, just less profit, because what we have is UNSUSTAINABLE. Maximising profits at all costs has ruined our society. It needs to stop.
If a person is working a full time job and not able to provide themselves a shelter and reasonable, not luxurious, reasonable living standards then that means the system is not working.
The decline of our society have been blamed on social media because it’s the most obvious target but I think social media is just a medium. People have no money, increasingly getting frustrated and every passing day they have less and less to lose.
This is going to end up horribly, especially in the cities.
£15 an hour is about £30k, compared to £10 an hour which is about £20k
There is no way that businesses will be able to afford to give staff a £10k pay rise
I remember at the past General Election Labour promised they’d raise minimum wage to £15 within a year. The Tories to £15 by the end of their Government **in 2025**. Lower earners would’ve got a nearly 50% pay increase overnight from £8.90 (or something like that). At that point the Tories considered it a crime whilst those £15/hour were way low and truly insufficient considering the pace of inflation in the previous decades. So they looked at you, said “£15/h or a 50% increase is NOT enough considering how things are at the minute, so there, a 50p increase or 5% increase instead.”
This was well before this crisis. If they gave Britain a £15 they’d be short by 2 years of inflation AND ALSO the current crisis. Not to mention that we’d be forgiving years of pay decreases effectively. But ok, that’s utopia; let’s forget about those decades of neglect. What TUC should be calling for is minimum wage to be raised to *at least* £18-£20 if things were to stabilise, but wouldn’t you know it, now that would effectively wreck things up even more. This game is rigged. Take on the streets.
Forget business this would destroy public services.
Take local government. Council tax raises are already capped. Suddenly they need to pay the cleaners 30k a year (same as the social workers are on now). Where would the money come from?
People will, rightly, complain that putting up minimum wage just sets the ball rolling for inflation. But the unions have been put in this position by the government, who should be working to keep the cost of living down, and therefore negate the need for wage rises in the first place.
We wouldn’t have unions calling for a £15 an hour minimum wage if a 40-hour minimum wage week allowed people to not only get by, but save.
This is all the government’s fault, and it’s been going on far longer than the recent energy increases.
absolutely pointless campaign by the toothless t.u.c.
Whats not reported on in the article above is that the tuc want this £15ph in place by 2030, that’s 8 years away, god only knows what the cost of living will be by then!
With multiple unions involved in industrial action, balloting for industrial action or about to ballot, you would have expected a hell of a lot more from the trade union congress. This reeks of a ‘hey we’re here too’ attention grab while the real workers and real unions actually commit to action.
The real issue is inflation, not necessarily the minimum wage. Inflation should be much lower than it is, and the focus needs to be on reducing that.
bUt iNfLaTiOn!!!!1!
Genuine question. If you are on c£15ph as an experienced member of staff for a large company (eg senior customer service) and the minimum wage was raised… What happens to all the people on that wage already? I mean, they could just say it’s not worth it anymore when they could get a stress free entry level job anywhere else. Do the employers then have to up everyone’s wages in turn either to retain staff or acknowledge their skill set?
This might be a dumb question, I’m on £14 per hour atm which is decent wage for my area, if minimum wage went to £15, would my wage just be increased to the new minimum, so I’d be making as much as a maccies worker for my decent skill technical job?
In my (public sector) workplace there was a pay scale depending on your role and responsibilities. The increase in minimum wage has not been matched with increases higher up, so the scale has been squeezed.
Many intermediate levels have gone and jobs with more responsibility have gone from an extra £2000-6000 pa to less than £1000.
The rise in minimum wage has a knock-on effect. The “ladder” has gone and people are beginning to say why should I do X extra and be responsible for Y for just a few pounds (after tax and NI) more?
This would make So. Much. Difference. How are we, formally one of the most powerful world economies, unable to pay wages in line with most modern EU nations. It makes no sense unless you’re forced to conclude that prioritising private corporate profit over fair wages is actually wildly damaging to both individual security and economic stability. Fucking, pay me £15+ an hour and I’ll refloat the economy alone in my unhealthy indulgence of burying myself in piles of artisan plushies.
Let’s say this does happen.
That means we’re going from £9.50 (40h/week = £19,760 annually) to £15 (40h/week = £31,200 annually) as the minimum.
Say there’s someone currently earning £15, which is 57.89% more than the minimum wage. For them to maintain their earning status above the person on minimum wage getting such a vast bump, they’d need to go up to £23.68 (40h/week = £49,254.40 annually).
Now I’m not saying this shouldn’t be what we should be aspiring to as far as wages go, but there are a whole range of major problems for businesses and the economy which mean that this proportional raise would not happen.
Finding an answer to those issues, so that the increase can be proportionally realised for the majority of regular people on above minimum wage is essential.
However, even if it was solved and enacted in such a way, it would just raise the price of everything proportionally, or even more, so that the resulting effect isn’t much of a change.
Minimum wage being £15 would give us a better separation from benefits to working, which would encourage more people into work and make benefits less lucrative. This would only be temporary, as with all the costs for everything rising dramatically, benefits would also be forced to rise to keep pace with this and the gap would be closed once again.
In the end this is a very limited solution that does something which needs to happen, but by the very nature of our economy and the way our businesses work, would just result in making bigger numbers with the same end result.
The only major difference would be that some savvy and well-connected people with money to invest in the right places, would make a massive gain by investing in appropriate places as things inflate in costs.
Which is what always happens.
This policy needs more than just raising the wage to be a success.
This thread has taught me that so many people don’t live in the real world. They say businesses will just lower their profits. If they were willing to do that they would just lower prices now so the present minimum wages goes further
I feel like raising the minimum wage doesn’t help when the main issue we’re facing current is housing costs – if you didn’t have to pay 50%+ your take home to afford to rent a room then you wouldn’t feel so poor. Raising what people earn just raises what people can pay on rent, raises on how much you can get on a mortgage, raises house prices. And the only people that benefits is the landlord class and those who already own all the property. It’s one of the leading causes of the generational wealth gap.
No amount of wage is going to help if it just means we can all afford to pay more rent, and balloon house prices even further. The amount we pay for housing is completely unsustainable. I’m sure if most of us think of what we really can’t afford a lot of it is due to increasing housing costs, especially if you’re renting. It’s not stimulating the economy if you just hand all the money back to your landlord, we need urgent housing reform.
That won’t put and end to low paid Britain. What will happen there is the prices of everything will just go up again.
My company is crying about increasing our rate to £10 an hour. No way are they raising it to £15
Prices will just rise…
The TUC should be less focused on a specific amount for this settlement and more focused on a mechanism to ensure that unions don’t have to keep striking just to get a pay rise in line with inflation.
Otherwise this whole cycle will just go round and round. We’ve got our pay rise, see you on the picket lines in 5 years.
Someone has to be trying to be fixing this insanity and it ain’t going to be a tory government.
Can’t you just hear usual “but the nurses” stuff from the usual places?
*As to why Nurses don’t have a greater pay rate themselves is one these people don’t want to answer!*
Jeez, can you actually imagine having some money left over after paying all your bills and debts? That would be awesome! Altho still feels like a dreamland, I’ll just be happy with the roof over my head and my one meal a day for now…. Well until I can’t afford those anymore anyway.
28 comments
This is an honest question, I’m not trying to detract from the cause. Where does this number come from? The Living Wage Foundation [puts the required minimum wage at £9.90 for the wider UK, and £11.05 for London](https://www.livingwage.org.uk/what-real-living-wage). How did someone get to £15?
Is it really worth the extra effort and much higher chance of failure to push for £15, when a lower amount would be appropriate?
That would finish Britain.
woo! possible pay rise
Wouldn’t that make many other more businesses struggle? It isn’t like everyone is McDonald’s or Amazon.
Give people more money and they spend more money on stuff other people make etc. It’s not like it disappears.
The only issue I see with this is that companies will struggle as they don’t do a blanket bump instead you have a lot of assistant managers and supervisors quitting or stepping down as the pay is like 10p more an hour for 50x the responsibility and demands.
By the time this happens the *actual* living wage will need to be £25…
It’s been moving at a fucking snails pace for decades.
Remember: if minimum wage didn’t exist companies would snap at the chance to pay you less, meaning that it’s only the fact they’ll get punished if they don’t pay fairly that’s stopping them.
Every time this issue comes up smart asses with “that’ll create spiralling inflation” come out the woodwork.
No it won’t. It is proven time and again that it won’t. Corporations need to make less profit, not loss mind you, just less profit, because what we have is UNSUSTAINABLE. Maximising profits at all costs has ruined our society. It needs to stop.
If a person is working a full time job and not able to provide themselves a shelter and reasonable, not luxurious, reasonable living standards then that means the system is not working.
The decline of our society have been blamed on social media because it’s the most obvious target but I think social media is just a medium. People have no money, increasingly getting frustrated and every passing day they have less and less to lose.
This is going to end up horribly, especially in the cities.
£15 an hour is about £30k, compared to £10 an hour which is about £20k
There is no way that businesses will be able to afford to give staff a £10k pay rise
I remember at the past General Election Labour promised they’d raise minimum wage to £15 within a year. The Tories to £15 by the end of their Government **in 2025**. Lower earners would’ve got a nearly 50% pay increase overnight from £8.90 (or something like that). At that point the Tories considered it a crime whilst those £15/hour were way low and truly insufficient considering the pace of inflation in the previous decades. So they looked at you, said “£15/h or a 50% increase is NOT enough considering how things are at the minute, so there, a 50p increase or 5% increase instead.”
This was well before this crisis. If they gave Britain a £15 they’d be short by 2 years of inflation AND ALSO the current crisis. Not to mention that we’d be forgiving years of pay decreases effectively. But ok, that’s utopia; let’s forget about those decades of neglect. What TUC should be calling for is minimum wage to be raised to *at least* £18-£20 if things were to stabilise, but wouldn’t you know it, now that would effectively wreck things up even more. This game is rigged. Take on the streets.
Forget business this would destroy public services.
Take local government. Council tax raises are already capped. Suddenly they need to pay the cleaners 30k a year (same as the social workers are on now). Where would the money come from?
People will, rightly, complain that putting up minimum wage just sets the ball rolling for inflation. But the unions have been put in this position by the government, who should be working to keep the cost of living down, and therefore negate the need for wage rises in the first place.
We wouldn’t have unions calling for a £15 an hour minimum wage if a 40-hour minimum wage week allowed people to not only get by, but save.
This is all the government’s fault, and it’s been going on far longer than the recent energy increases.
absolutely pointless campaign by the toothless t.u.c.
Whats not reported on in the article above is that the tuc want this £15ph in place by 2030, that’s 8 years away, god only knows what the cost of living will be by then!
With multiple unions involved in industrial action, balloting for industrial action or about to ballot, you would have expected a hell of a lot more from the trade union congress. This reeks of a ‘hey we’re here too’ attention grab while the real workers and real unions actually commit to action.
The real issue is inflation, not necessarily the minimum wage. Inflation should be much lower than it is, and the focus needs to be on reducing that.
bUt iNfLaTiOn!!!!1!
Genuine question. If you are on c£15ph as an experienced member of staff for a large company (eg senior customer service) and the minimum wage was raised… What happens to all the people on that wage already? I mean, they could just say it’s not worth it anymore when they could get a stress free entry level job anywhere else. Do the employers then have to up everyone’s wages in turn either to retain staff or acknowledge their skill set?
This might be a dumb question, I’m on £14 per hour atm which is decent wage for my area, if minimum wage went to £15, would my wage just be increased to the new minimum, so I’d be making as much as a maccies worker for my decent skill technical job?
In my (public sector) workplace there was a pay scale depending on your role and responsibilities. The increase in minimum wage has not been matched with increases higher up, so the scale has been squeezed.
Many intermediate levels have gone and jobs with more responsibility have gone from an extra £2000-6000 pa to less than £1000.
The rise in minimum wage has a knock-on effect. The “ladder” has gone and people are beginning to say why should I do X extra and be responsible for Y for just a few pounds (after tax and NI) more?
This would make So. Much. Difference. How are we, formally one of the most powerful world economies, unable to pay wages in line with most modern EU nations. It makes no sense unless you’re forced to conclude that prioritising private corporate profit over fair wages is actually wildly damaging to both individual security and economic stability. Fucking, pay me £15+ an hour and I’ll refloat the economy alone in my unhealthy indulgence of burying myself in piles of artisan plushies.
Let’s say this does happen.
That means we’re going from £9.50 (40h/week = £19,760 annually) to £15 (40h/week = £31,200 annually) as the minimum.
Say there’s someone currently earning £15, which is 57.89% more than the minimum wage. For them to maintain their earning status above the person on minimum wage getting such a vast bump, they’d need to go up to £23.68 (40h/week = £49,254.40 annually).
Now I’m not saying this shouldn’t be what we should be aspiring to as far as wages go, but there are a whole range of major problems for businesses and the economy which mean that this proportional raise would not happen.
Finding an answer to those issues, so that the increase can be proportionally realised for the majority of regular people on above minimum wage is essential.
However, even if it was solved and enacted in such a way, it would just raise the price of everything proportionally, or even more, so that the resulting effect isn’t much of a change.
Minimum wage being £15 would give us a better separation from benefits to working, which would encourage more people into work and make benefits less lucrative. This would only be temporary, as with all the costs for everything rising dramatically, benefits would also be forced to rise to keep pace with this and the gap would be closed once again.
In the end this is a very limited solution that does something which needs to happen, but by the very nature of our economy and the way our businesses work, would just result in making bigger numbers with the same end result.
The only major difference would be that some savvy and well-connected people with money to invest in the right places, would make a massive gain by investing in appropriate places as things inflate in costs.
Which is what always happens.
This policy needs more than just raising the wage to be a success.
This thread has taught me that so many people don’t live in the real world. They say businesses will just lower their profits. If they were willing to do that they would just lower prices now so the present minimum wages goes further
I feel like raising the minimum wage doesn’t help when the main issue we’re facing current is housing costs – if you didn’t have to pay 50%+ your take home to afford to rent a room then you wouldn’t feel so poor. Raising what people earn just raises what people can pay on rent, raises on how much you can get on a mortgage, raises house prices. And the only people that benefits is the landlord class and those who already own all the property. It’s one of the leading causes of the generational wealth gap.
No amount of wage is going to help if it just means we can all afford to pay more rent, and balloon house prices even further. The amount we pay for housing is completely unsustainable. I’m sure if most of us think of what we really can’t afford a lot of it is due to increasing housing costs, especially if you’re renting. It’s not stimulating the economy if you just hand all the money back to your landlord, we need urgent housing reform.
That won’t put and end to low paid Britain. What will happen there is the prices of everything will just go up again.
My company is crying about increasing our rate to £10 an hour. No way are they raising it to £15
Prices will just rise…
The TUC should be less focused on a specific amount for this settlement and more focused on a mechanism to ensure that unions don’t have to keep striking just to get a pay rise in line with inflation.
Otherwise this whole cycle will just go round and round. We’ve got our pay rise, see you on the picket lines in 5 years.
Someone has to be trying to be fixing this insanity and it ain’t going to be a tory government.
Can’t you just hear usual “but the nurses” stuff from the usual places?
*As to why Nurses don’t have a greater pay rate themselves is one these people don’t want to answer!*
Jeez, can you actually imagine having some money left over after paying all your bills and debts? That would be awesome! Altho still feels like a dreamland, I’ll just be happy with the roof over my head and my one meal a day for now…. Well until I can’t afford those anymore anyway.