Getting closer to minimum wage

UK PROFESSIONAL DRIVERS FORUMS THE UK PROFESSIONAL DRIVERS FORUM (INTERACTIVE)
81

xichrisxi:

The-Snowman:

Winseer:
It don’t matter that the 35 hour week x NMW is so low, that you’ll probably get a working tax credit top-up, if you’ve got kids, or even are the only earner in the household.

This here sums up the problem.
The wage is low because if youve got kids then the working tax credit tops it up. What about those of us who choose not to (Or cant) have kids? We’ve to ■■■■ up a ■■■■ poor wage because the system makes it easy for employers to pay rock bottom prices and the tax payer picks up the shortfall.
Those without kids are getting hammered on both ends

Incorrect,you can’t claim tax credits if the total income of those working (husband & wife) is over 25K a year even at NMW if you and your wife work full time t would be over 25k a year between you.

I was talking about one-income households. Surely not every parent has their kids as “Latchkey” variety, just because Mum and Dad insist on both working full time jobs?

A 35 hour week @ £7.50ph is what? £13,650pa. Below the £18k needed to get the “working tax credit” top-up, that doesn’t even require a couple to have kids. Just that single income.
“Child Tax Credits” run in parallel for those couples who do have the kids, of course.

I claimed them in my first two years on agency, because the work was so bitty that first year, and dragged me below £10kpa at the lowest point 2011-12. I was getting as much in WTC as for CTC during this period, around £65pw for both, and the freebies like presriptions & council tax to go with it. I got tapered off as my income on agency gradually rose (more full weeks of work, rather than just friday nights/sunday days like I was getting to start with on agency…) Once I got back up to working full time hours again, - I started looking for a full time contract, having worked on agency at several places to compare T&Cs by that point in late 2014, which was my first year off the tax credits altogether. I went for jobs at places like Nobbies, Morrisons, Fedex, and finally ended up at Brakes, which I’m more than happy with, as it stands. The only downside to Brakes is “No Overtime”. The salary ain’t bad though, for the hours I do, albeit with a below-inflation pay award this year. :neutral_face:

82

albion:

Beetlejuice:

albion:
Bit different, but in Commercial Motor last week was a small haulier saying he had been asked to cut his rate, said he couldn’t. Bean counter from blue chip asked him what he paid his drivers and he said £10.00.an hour, plus overtime. Bean counter said, you do know minimum wage is 7.60…

And that is what hauliers are up against. Bean counter firm will find some Muppets to do the job. If it gets to that situation for me, I’m walking away.

This needs addressing .The minimum wage was introduced to protect fruit pickers and unskilled people .i wonder what that [zb] bean counter earns …

I’ll look at that clip tomorrow beetle.

It’s something I’ve thought for a long time, there’s a feeling that as long as you pay min wage then why pay more. And of course, speaking about all jobs, where one you had 60 odd million to pick from, now you have 500 million to choose from. That hasn’t helped countries that pay workers more as it naturally means that workers from poorer countries come here to work and suppress wages. To be clear, I’m not blaming them, I’d hope I’d have the same get up and go in their shoes.

And thats not just EU, you see how manufacturing has been outsourced abroad. This is great for those people, 137,000 people are lifted out of poverty every day. But inevitably it means standards drop elsewhere and that feels bad even though our standard of living is hugely better than those in benighted third world countries.

It’s interesting to see that some of the more managerial and professional jobs are just beginning to see an erosion in terms of remuneration an expectations. IT has been an early indicator of jobs moving out of Western economies, but more managerial jobs are flowing away. It was once thought places like China and India would be decades away from being able to be the ‘head’ in business, now they are right on our heels and overtaking in some areas. And it also conflicts with us putting more people through uni and devaluing degrees, along with second and third world countries increasing their university output. Brainpower is now subject to the the start of a cut throat slashing of rates for managerial professions. I doubt a lot of us in the lower end jobs are going to have much sympathy.

Sorry for the carryfast/rjan style waffle! Hopefully they’ll stay bickering over Syria and not start a forensic dissection of every word :wink:

Wrong! :laughing:

I agree though that erosion of wages for the privileged working class, like managers, lawyers, doctors, and so on, is a good sign, because it’s giving them a taste of free market competition.

83

albion:

Winseer:
The EU continues to force smaller firms to take on huge costs to comply with their excessive regulations and other red tape. Smaller firms can only suffer further into the future whilst we continue within the EU, as we are, - with more “Bullying from Accountants” as described by Albion being the norm rather than the exception to drive wages down first, to NMW - and then at a later stage - if the Anti-Tory factions are to be believed - Get rid of even the NMW outright, to facilitate truly 20-years-old wage levels. :angry:

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I suspect that in or out of the EU, we will manage to have an inordinate number of rules and regulations. Just looking at what I hold in a personnel file now that I never used to. Night time 10 hour opt out, mobile phone policy, 3 monthly updates of driver licenses, today I will putting together some rubbish for them all to sign so that this GDRP garbage is covered and I can hold their details.

I don’t want to go back to a time with no H&S, disregard for hours ( my Dad had two log books same as everyone else), and my job as a kid was to navigate and keep him awake. :unamused: , but there’s so much paperwork now that doesn’t help employer or employee.

In fairness, you don’t need to keep such extensive paperwork. Keeping a simple dated register (perhaps initialed by the worker if it involved him being physically given something), would be enough in most cases, for things like opt-outs, policy notifications, and licence checks, if you wanted to cut down.

84

Rjan:

albion:

Winseer:
The EU continues to force smaller firms to take on huge costs to comply with their excessive regulations and other red tape. Smaller firms can only suffer further into the future whilst we continue within the EU, as we are, - with more “Bullying from Accountants” as described by Albion being the norm rather than the exception to drive wages down first, to NMW - and then at a later stage - if the Anti-Tory factions are to be believed - Get rid of even the NMW outright, to facilitate truly 20-years-old wage levels. :angry:

|

I suspect that in or out of the EU, we will manage to have an inordinate number of rules and regulations. Just looking at what I hold in a personnel file now that I never used to. Night time 10 hour opt out, mobile phone policy, 3 monthly updates of driver licenses, today I will putting together some rubbish for them all to sign so that this GDRP garbage is covered and I can hold their details.

I don’t want to go back to a time with no H&S, disregard for hours ( my Dad had two log books same as everyone else), and my job as a kid was to navigate and keep him awake. :unamused: , but there’s so much paperwork now that doesn’t help employer or employee.

In fairness, you don’t need to keep such extensive paperwork. Keeping a simple dated register (perhaps initialed by the worker if it involved him being physically given something), would be enough in most cases, for things like opt-outs, policy notifications, and licence checks, if you wanted to cut down.

I am amazed at you taking that attitude Rjan! :smiley:

In your idea, for example the mobile phone policy Albion has a signed register that they have been given it, but no proof of what was given. The employee could make their “own” policy and say that was what they were given. No proof otherwise.
Personally for things like opt outs and licence checks (data protection issues) I would want copies of what they were issued/signed. Even if it does take half a rain forest to do it!

85

xichrisxi:

The-Snowman:

Winseer:
It don’t matter that the 35 hour week x NMW is so low, that you’ll probably get a working tax credit top-up, if you’ve got kids, or even are the only earner in the household.

This here sums up the problem.
The wage is low because if youve got kids then the working tax credit tops it up. What about those of us who choose not to (Or cant) have kids? We’ve to ■■■■ up a ■■■■ poor wage because the system makes it easy for employers to pay rock bottom prices and the tax payer picks up the shortfall.
Those without kids are getting hammered on both ends

Incorrect,you can’t claim tax credits if the total income of those working (husband & wife) is over 25K a year even at NMW if you and your wife work full time t would be over 25k a year between you.

That’s for one child. For those with two children, the threshold at which tax credits are totally withdrawn is over £30k. If your combined household income is within the tax credit range (rather than above it), there is only very modest incentive to increase wages, because the loss of tax credits means you in effect keep only 60p in the pound of earnings, on top of which you’ll pay 30% tax on the earnings, leaving you with maybe 30p in the pound (rather than 70p in the pound you’d have kept if the money you were getting via the tax credits had come from your employer in wages, rather than as a means-tested subsidy from the state).

86

kcrussell25:
I am amazed at you taking that attitude Rjan! :smiley:

In your idea, for example the mobile phone policy Albion has a signed register that they have been given it, but no proof of what was given. The employee could make their “own” policy and say that was what they were given. No proof otherwise.
Personally for things like opt outs and licence checks (data protection issues) I would want copies of what they were issued/signed. Even if it does take half a rain forest to do it!

Except for the proof, of course, of what everyone else in the workforce of a small firm was given, and of the master copy retained by the employer with the register, and of the clerk in the office (and quite possibly many of your other workers) who can swear for what your normal procedures are.

As you say, the real reason for mountains of paperwork is the paranoia of bosses, and the comforting feeling that only comes from being surrounded in paper and signatures.

The popular perception about companies being on the hook at disciplinaries or tribunals because they didn’t have enough paperwork is not really justified I wouldn’t think. Usually what happens in larger companies is that there are very clear procedures that involve documents being signed and retained - and there have to be procedures and paperwork in large firms, because it’s how the firm is held together (although it can still go overboard with too much).

When those documents are not signed and retained, it creates the very plausible impression that the procedure was not in fact followed and that the documentation was never issued to the worker in the first place.

But bosses never admit that they just couldn’t be bothered with the paperwork because they didn’t think it was operationally important, forgot about it in the chaos of daily life, or threw it in the bin afterwards by mistake - instead, it goes down in lore that the company lost the case “because they didn’t have a signature” or “because I gave the worker the paperwork and he denied it”.

If, as a small firm, you’ve got good relations with the workforce and a settled set of faces, and you aren’t reacting draconianly to a small infringement of something like a mobile phone policy, then there are very few workers indeed who would come upstairs and have the chutzpah to accuse you of forging their signature in a register when you’re the person who had them sign it a few months ago, and even less likelihood of them creating elaborate forgeries of documents and presenting them to you as genuine.

In fact, if you adopt a very bureaucratic and long-winded approach, you’re not just creating more work for yourself, but you’re more likely to create opportunities to fall foul of what the large companies do, which is that if some irregularity emerges that shows you don’t follow your own procedure, then you’ll be on shaky ground indeed when you accuse the worker of not following his.

Even for licence checks, other than retaining the initial copy, I don’t see why you’d retain a second copy every 3 months, if you’re just checking that things are still in order. It’s enough, as administrative good practice, to simply have a register, where you record the last date you checked (and obviously, the register makes it clear who needs to be checked). If any funny business ever arose, for example if you were accused of letting a banned driver continue to drive, then it would be easy enough for the authorities to establish whether the ban was more than 3 months ago, and whether you’d not made the proper checks.

87

It isn’t the actual paperwork, wether I get them to sign in a register that they have seen the mobile phone policy, or each sign a piece of paper, it’d the having to create a policy, get them to read it. It’s having to get their permission every two years to check the license, it’s just the amount of ‘stuff’ there is to do that isn’t actually getting stuff from A to B.

88

I wouldn’t have been able to make the transition over a two year period from full time to agency without the period of tax credits.

I just couldn’t get a lot of work to start with at agency, despite joining several at once.
It wasn’t until well into my second year that the phone would ring at the end of one week - offering work all week for the next.

Of course, a lot of people in my position (offered voluntary redundancy) actually chickened out, because they feared going through this period of “paltry income” for what amounted to well over a year after they’d burned through any redundancy money they’d have got. (Remember: Redundancy cheque=NO UNEMPLOYMENT BENEFITS because you’re suddenly over the £16k savings threshold for starters!)

Tax credits made “bitty work” pay. They are quick to take them off you, once you get back to work proper though, and I totally disagreed with this notion that “Go back to work any other time than the first week of April” - and you’ll have to pay back any tax credits receieved between April to the time you started work full time that year… That, effectively turned that last part-financial year’s worth into a bloody loan comparable to student debt! :imp:

89

albion:
It isn’t the actual paperwork, wether I get them to sign in a register that they have seen the mobile phone policy, or each sign a piece of paper, it’d the having to create a policy, get them to read it. It’s having to get their permission every two years to check the license, it’s just the amount of ‘stuff’ there is to do that isn’t actually getting stuff from A to B.

But how hard is creating a simple “policy” on an issue like this?

“Never use your mobile phone whilst driving, and do not accept calls whilst driving. Use your mobile phone only when safely parked and with the engine switched off. The company will never call and expect you to answer your phone whilst driving, and if we do call, then do not answer immediately and instead call us back once you have parked.”

I stand to be corrected but I’d be surprised if a “mobile phone policy” has to say much more than that. And once you have the policy, you reinforce it in how people relate to each other, for example if you call someone and they are driving, you tell them to call you back when they can and hang up. And if you have planners, then you monitor them and make sure they know the score.

A lot of the reason why the authorities expect businesses to have these policies is not mainly for the benefit of drivers, but to make sure that bosses sit down and think, understand the rules, and structure their behaviour so that drivers aren’t being called at the wheel every 20 minutes.

And how hard is it once a year to nab every driver first thing in the morning, and go through your register renewing your permissions? If any information needs to be given to the driver, then you can bulk print the slips at your leisure a few days before, and then date-stamp and staple the master copy to the back of the register as a permanent record of what was handed out during that year’s permission-gathering exercise. And buy a cheap set of plastic form trays, and leave the register there until next year when you do it all over again.

I know a lot of little things add up, but a lot of bosses make things harder for themselves by being poorly organised with little or no system, and if they do set out to be organised then they think that everything has to be a 10-page contract with 3 signatures and a photograph taken next to that day’s newspaper.

And if you are clearly organised, if you have a reputation for being organised, you hire staff that are organised and mould them in your image, and if you have a reputation for consistently fair dealing and you practice what you preach, your office staff and your workforce will back you up against anything like utterly dishonest accusations or outlandish forgeries.

90

Rjan:

kcrussell25:
I am amazed at you taking that attitude Rjan! :smiley:

In your idea, for example the mobile phone policy Albion has a signed register that they have been given it, but no proof of what was given. The employee could make their “own” policy and say that was what they were given. No proof otherwise.
Personally for things like opt outs and licence checks (data protection issues) I would want copies of what they were issued/signed. Even if it does take half a rain forest to do it!

Except for the proof, of course, of what everyone else in the workforce of a small firm was given, and of the master copy retained by the employer with the register, and of the clerk in the office (and quite possibly many of your other workers) who can swear for what your normal procedures are.

As you say, the real reason for mountains of paperwork is the paranoia of bosses, and the comforting feeling that only comes from being surrounded in paper and signatures.

The popular perception about companies being on the hook at disciplinaries or tribunals because they didn’t have enough paperwork is not really justified I wouldn’t think. Usually what happens in larger companies is that there are very clear procedures that involve documents being signed and retained - and there have to be procedures and paperwork in large firms, because it’s how the firm is held together (although it can still go overboard with too much).

When those documents are not signed and retained, it creates the very plausible impression that the procedure was not in fact followed and that the documentation was never issued to the worker in the first place.

But bosses never admit that they just couldn’t be bothered with the paperwork because they didn’t think it was operationally important, forgot about it in the chaos of daily life, or threw it in the bin afterwards by mistake - instead, it goes down in lore that the company lost the case “because they didn’t have a signature” or “because I gave the worker the paperwork and he denied it”.

If, as a small firm, you’ve got good relations with the workforce and a settled set of faces, and you aren’t reacting draconianly to a small infringement of something like a mobile phone policy, then there are very few workers indeed who would come upstairs and have the chutzpah to accuse you of forging their signature in a register when you’re the person who had them sign it a few months ago, and even less likelihood of them creating elaborate forgeries of documents and presenting them to you as genuine.

In fact, if you adopt a very bureaucratic and long-winded approach, you’re not just creating more work for yourself, but you’re more likely to create opportunities to fall foul of what the large companies do, which is that if some irregularity emerges that shows you don’t follow your own procedure, then you’ll be on shaky ground indeed when you accuse the worker of not following his.

Even for licence checks, other than retaining the initial copy, I don’t see why you’d retain a second copy every 3 months, if you’re just checking that things are still in order. It’s enough, as administrative good practice, to simply have a register, where you record the last date you checked (and obviously, the register makes it clear who needs to be checked). If any funny business ever arose, for example if you were accused of letting a banned driver continue to drive, then it would be easy enough for the authorities to establish whether the ban was more than 3 months ago, and whether you’d not made the proper checks.

A small firm who you have good relationship with their drivers? Probably like that firm who is/was being sued by a tipper driver who didn’t look up. A good relationship soon fails over money.

I haven’t looked at that case since so don’t know what if anything has happened but what I read at the time the employees case was there was no WRITTEN safe system of work. Hence common sense/probably been told look up doesn’t apply.

I am no fan of paperwork. I used to hate it in my previous job and am pleased that compared to that have to do now. However I know why firms do it when you look at the risks of not

91

People can give there responses or talk the talk about why but the thing is 85% of drivers are earning minimum wage some even less than minimum wage if you add up hours
I don’t believe that there is a shortage its just that there is too many people willing to work for a very low wage and long hours

92

Jamesduff:
People can give there responses or talk the talk about why but the thing is 85% of drivers are earning minimum wage some even less than minimum wage if you add up hours
I don’t believe that there is a shortage its just that there is too many people willing to work for a very low wage and long hours

And a link to the 85% of drivers earn minimum wage comment?

93

^^^ 85% of all statistics are made up on the spot.

94

the maoster:
^^^ 85% of all statistics are made up on the spot.

Do you have a link for that :laughing:

95

We dont need a link we just have to look at the ads and some posts here

96

Jamesduff:
We dont need a link we just have to look at the ads and some posts here

Ah, some = 85%. Obviously my bad. :unamused:

97

albion:

Jamesduff:
We dont need a link we just have to look at the ads and some posts here

Ah, some = 85%. Obviously my bad. :unamused:

Are people really so behind to what’s out there i know it’s hard to admit just in case you put your own position in jeopardy but really
A driving job has always paid minimum wage when you put every thing together and it always will because drivers don’t stick up for themselves or are willing to be treated bad

98

Jamesduff:
A driving job has always paid minimum wage

Yet elsewhere you proudly state that your driving job pays you north of £700 p/w for 40 odd hours.How do you reconcile the two statements?

99

the maoster:

Jamesduff:
A driving job has always paid minimum wage

Yet elsewhere you proudly state that your driving job pays you north of £700 p/w for 40 odd hours.How do you reconcile the two statements?

Thats because i was in the right place at the right time when i got it and they dont come like that anymore lucky you might say and no better man to agree with you
I hope that reconciled that for you without even giving a thought for the pure soles earning a small wage for long hours

100

Jamesduff:

albion:

Jamesduff:
We dont need a link we just have to look at the ads and some posts here

Ah, some = 85%. Obviously my bad. :unamused:

Are people really so behind to what’s out there i know it’s hard to admit just in case you put your own position in jeopardy but really
A driving job has always paid minimum wage when you put every thing together and it always will because drivers don’t stick up for themselves or are willing to be treated bad

My own position in jeopardy? Bizarre. £12.25, paid through breaks, paid through POA, overtime after 8 hours, double time Sundays, double time and day in lieu for bank holidays, paid 12 hours per day if you are week ended, lowest earning Class 1 2017-18, shade over 40k, highest, shade over 48k. Yes that’s minimum wage and so brow beaten they stay for decades.