Both of the main parties are trying to bring the minimum wage up to £10-10.50 ph. How will this affect HGV wages? I’m sure as dammit not going to be working on the same rate as some kid who has just left school and is stacking shelves in his local shop.
We all will be on the same wage one day
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dean_whittlr:
We all will be on the same wage one daySent from my LYA-L09 using Tapatalk
Come the Revolution, Comrade!
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But I think you do have a valid point.
Basic income for all, plus a bit extra for those who wish to work, even more to encourage take up of unpopular jobs that still can’t be automated.
The system we have today has not been there forever, and won’t be there forever.
You’ll get “Toilet Deductions” and other such tosh, if the future skinflint firm is forced to pay way over a salary that includes things like “Night out money” and “shift allowance” etc…
Fizzifish:
Both of the main parties are trying to bring the minimum wage up to £10-10.50 ph. How will this affect HGV wages? I’m sure as dammit not going to be working on the same rate as some kid who has just left school and is stacking shelves in his local shop.
Is that really how high you set your sights? To be earning more than the school leaver, even though his living costs will be barely any different to your own?
In reality when wages at the bottom are forced up aggressively (and jobs paying even the minimum become a realistic alternative for any worker), that reduces competition for jobs that require even a modicum of additional skill, experience, or effort, all of which then attract premiums.
When warehouse wages first fell, the pay (or purchasing power) of forklift drivers did not shoot up, instead what happened was everyone crowded into forklifts try and maintain their pay as their old occupations were attacked, and in doing so dropped the pay for forklift drivers too because their skill was now more abundant and more people were willing to do it for less (because they had no viable alternatives).
That’s exactly what happens with HGVs - the lower the wages in adjacent occupations fall, the more people crowd into those occupations like HGV that begin with higher pay and consequently they erode that pay too.
I imagine a lot of people think of the wage market as being a little like a small boat, and the more people you throw out the higher the boat rises above the water line, with the last man in the boat riding high.
In reality, you are not in a boat where water passively supports and lifts the boat or where other men accept being thrown out like lead weights, you are in a workforce whose solidarity and willingness to fight together and take ground from the bosses is what allows you to advance on the field, just like a soldier on the battlefield.
If you attack the man next to you by surprise, you may be able to pick his pockets and take his boots, but in the end other men will be looking to put you to the sword for the same reasons, and whether you win or lose against your fellows, you’ll all be sent on the run completely by the bosses themselves as your front falls into disarray, and you lose all your ground to them.
It’s true that the bosses won’t kill you all outright even when they dominate you, for they essentially need you to do the work, but you will live and be kept under terms of pure slavery, with just enough bread to keep body and soul together, and facing starvation when you have outlived your usefulness in old age or sickness.
And being so cheap, no individual life will attract a great deal of value - like the farm animal, with the unruly and antisocial animal, even if he is large and meaty, the farmer will not tolerate him to attack the other animals for his own gain or monopolise the food given (which is only supposed to be a modicum sufficient to keep all alive and most productive in their task of growing meat). Such an animal will be sent to slaughter just as quickly as the animal who leads a mass charge against the farmer himself, for what the farmer wants is the passive, impotent herd, consisting neither of collective resistance nor infighting.
Winseer:
You’ll get “Toilet Deductions” and other such tosh, if the future skinflint firm is forced to pay way over a salary that includes things like “Night out money” and “shift allowance” etc…
You show me the workforce who stood on the gate together for higher wages, then simply allowed it to be all taken away again with a toilet deduction.
Corbyn is not just planning higher minimum wages. They are planning to improve unionisation and collective organisation that allows workers together to resist these petty assaults on their working conditions. That is the real choice between Labour and the Tories at the next election.
You’re not just voting for a higher wage, you’re voting for workers in routine occupations like ours have power at work again, and that’s why the forces of resistance in the elite (whether they be professionals like senior management, or whether they be the actual ruling class who live on profit) are howling so loudly about the prospect of a Labour government.
The Tories never promised a minimum wage increase before Corbyn, and they’re only making small concessions now to avoid Corbyn being elected to implement the rest of his manifesto.
It’s all very eloquent Rjan, and mostly true I’m sure.
But if you think that Corbyn has a cat in hell’s chance of ever getting elected then you are on another planet my friend.
Rjan:
Winseer:
You’ll get “Toilet Deductions” and other such tosh, if the future skinflint firm is forced to pay way over a salary that includes things like “Night out money” and “shift allowance” etc…You show me the workforce who stood on the gate together for higher wages, then simply allowed it to be all taken away again with a toilet deduction.
Corbyn is not just planning higher minimum wages. They are planning to improve unionisation and collective organisation that allows workers together to resist these petty assaults on their working conditions. That is the real choice between Labour and the Tories at the next election.
You’re not just voting for a higher wage, you’re voting for workers in routine occupations like ours have power at work again, and that’s why the forces of resistance in the elite (whether they be professionals like senior management, or whether they be the actual ruling class who live on profit) are howling so loudly about the prospect of a Labour government.
The Tories never promised a minimum wage increase before Corbyn, and they’re only making small concessions now to avoid Corbyn being elected to implement the rest of his manifesto.
The RM union allowed a 90 minute deduction for breaks when most firms only deduct 45m-1hr - agency and full timer alike…
The CWU also turned down a four-figure one-off payment to “move from weekly pay to monthly”… The firm then imposed it anyways, and of course we got bugger-all.
Then there’s the old “time and motion” style arguments, like “drinking tea leads to more visits to the toilet”, hence the scrapping of things like “grace breaks” or “■■■ breaks”, along with rules like “craps had to be taken during one’s lunch hour, as toilet breaks were 5 minutes max”.
Enforcement of such rules? More likely on a shopfloor paying the same wages for working way oop narth as paid darn sarth. Eg. A “National Payscale” in a “heavily unionized office”.
Strange that the NHS is even permitted to have a union, thinking about it…
Someone like Jeremy Hunt tries to enforce an “5 from 7” contract to get things like weekends covered better - and what do the unions do? - push back against the whole thing, rather than negotiating for some extra allowances for working those kinds of shifts… So, to this day - if you go into hospital with a survivable, but critical injury/medical condition around 9pm Friday night - you are more likely to be dead come monday morning than if you’d gone into hospital at 9pm on a MONDAY night…
You don’t need Unions to stop Management bullying, low wage imposition, or other stuff we’re constantly told “one can’t have, unless it’s gotten for you by a union”.
Move over to the Tories, and I fail to see at any time when the Tories did something akin to Tsipras of Greece when he laid off huge amounts of the public sector as a socialist Prime Minster who’d merely been “told to” by the EU… So much for “Socialism” then.
I didn’t vote for Thatcher, because of the exploitation permitted by the so-called “YTS”. Endless six-month to one year contracts that did NOT teach one a trade, and you got the push regardless of how well you performed - to make way for another slave to replace you in line. Where were the Unions enforcing PROPER training back then?
Where’s Labour talking about “Proper Apprentiships” NOW?
Tony Blair (whom I also didn’t vote for) - couldn’t be arsed to create a proper “trained workforce” - so just replaced infrastructure workers with imported ready-trained workers instead. Not so good, now that the pound has weakened though - is it?
NONE of the buggers - have got the right answer. Even Farage stays unlectable - because the weakminded get casually told to “oppose him on everything” without hearing him out… 
Labour - stay unlectable all the while they can only pay for their “free stuff” with tax hikes and forever more borrowing.
Tories - will become unelectable because they cannot pay for any more taxcuts, leaving them with no argument against Labour.
Libdems - are anti-democratic, so can’t ever be more than a party of opposition.
SNP - cannot win 326 seats, so can never be a majority government. “National Party Permitted”. Ditto for Plaid Cymru, and the Ulster parties.
BNP - could in theory win 326 - so must NEVER be permitted, according to our illustrious establishment. Double standard there? Are “British” being treated as “second class citizens” to “Scottish”■■
We need a party that, instead of reducing us to endless hung parliaments - instead causes a major turning over of seats. Perhaps all the blues flipping to Red, and vice-versa - might in due course bring in some “unexpecting” MPs that are prepared to play a cleaner, more honest game than their “safe seat” predcessors. 
Winseer:
Rjan:
…The RM union allowed a 90 minute deduction for breaks when most firms only deduct 45m-1hr - agency and full timer alike…
Indeed, and that could be either because the members wanted it that way (for various conceivable reasons), or because they weren’t willing to fight it.
The CWU also turned down a four-figure one-off payment to “move from weekly pay to monthly”… The firm then imposed it anyways, and of course we got bugger-all.
Firms will impose everything, except that which the workers are willing to fight over. The question every union member should ask themselves before lodging any demand, is how many days are they willing to spend on the gate together enforcing their will or (at least) applying a penalty to the employer? If the answer is zero, then you’re just playing a bluff game.
Then there’s the old “time and motion” style arguments, like “drinking tea leads to more visits to the toilet”, hence the scrapping of things like “grace breaks” or “■■■ breaks”, along with rules like “craps had to be taken during one’s lunch hour, as toilet breaks were 5 minutes max”.
Agreed. This is why really a union should never permit the intensification of work or “productivity agreements” (unless the productivity is generated by machines or better equipment that eases the workload), but at least some members would rather work harder and under more constraints, if it means higher pay, and then you have solidarity problems.
Someone like Jeremy Hunt tries to enforce an “5 from 7” contract to get things like weekends covered better - and what do the unions do? - push back against the whole thing, rather than negotiating for some extra allowances for working those kinds of shifts… So, to this day - if you go into hospital with a survivable, but critical injury/medical condition around 9pm Friday night - you are more likely to be dead come monday morning than if you’d gone into hospital at 9pm on a MONDAY night…
There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with having to accept that medicine is practiced by human workers, that they need rest and social time for themselves, and that the function of having doctors is to improve our chances, not to guarantee them.
You are probably more likely to die from a heart attack if you live 30 minutes from a hospital than if you live across the road, but nobody organises their lives to stay in touching distance of a hospital at all times - there are other things in life which are more important.
Personally, I wouldn’t be a doctor for a big clock these days, regardless of pay, because there are clearly too few being expected to do too much and put up with too much.
You don’t need Unions to stop Management bullying, low wage imposition, or other stuff we’re constantly told “one can’t have, unless it’s gotten for you by a union”.
It depends what you mean by a “union”. It’s the solidarity amongst ourselves that is valuable and powerful. The union bureaucracy provides some larger structure and knowledge-sharing between different workplaces, but without solidarity it isn’t worth a carrot - it would be a very expensive grin without a cat.
Move over to the Tories, and I fail to see at any time when the Tories did something akin to Tsipras of Greece when he laid off huge amounts of the public sector as a socialist Prime Minster who’d merely been “told to” by the EU… So much for “Socialism” then.
But Tsipras jettisoned Varoufakis, who was the real radical, and the broader populace rolled over, although in the long term that financial punishment-beating of the Greek people may turn out to be the EU’s equivalent to what Czechoslovakia in 1968 was for the USSR and it’s supporters in the West.
nobody has mentioned that this is a 5 year plan… as reorted on bbc news yesterday…