I despise the Tories and I know that this has been set up to help their chums employ people when needed, but this is a step in the right direction. We just need Labour to get voted in to sort out the finishing touches. And renationalise loads of stuff too
My biggest problem with it is I just don't think it will work. Wages at the bottom are under pressure because there are more people than ever competing for unskilled work. I'm all for open borders in the EU, but without doubt the flood of eastern Europeans has put pressure on unskilled wages. With minimum wage controls the market can't push wages any lower than £6.50 an hour, so all the jobs that are available at £6.50 will be filled by better qualified people than the long-term unemployed. You can try force people off their arses into zero-hour contracts (which are possibly the only thing worse than a contracted minimum wage job) but pushing more people into the bottom of the market just creates more of the same problem that the eastern Europeans caused (too many unskilled people, not enough unskilled jobs, pushing working conditions down for everyone at that level). The only hope is that in pushing people into zero-hour contracts they might learn some skill they can sell on to another employer at some point (and fill one of the current 650,000 vacancies which presumably require education/experience) - but since these zero-hour jobs are the bottom of the bottom I doubt it.
Put the minimum wage up to £10 ph, and to **** with zero hours contracts. The government would save a fortune on in-work benefits, and if employers can't afford to pay a living wage, well then they simply don't have a viable business.
Zero hours are great for all the poor old multi national corporate ****s, pay next to **** all to some **** as it is and when they've cooked enough burgers for the day **** 'em off home. It's morally wrong. Some of the scams the Tories are pulling make me more sympathetic to Socialism as each day passes.
We both know that that is just a sweetener Toby. I don't believe for a second its going to be easy for these people to pick up money for weeks they never worked and neither do you.
To do it properly without causing a huge mess we'd need to stagger it over a few years to let the market adjust (and companies to budget). It's not a completely painless solution either - for one, it will cause higher levels of unemployment at the bottom. The likes of restaurant owners won't just close their struggling business, they'll try to get by with less staff doing more work (either way it's less jobs).
By the way, I hope most of you realise this opens the jobcentre up to losing money through people falsely claiming to have worked no hours. The jobcentres is the jobcentre, not MI5. It employs ******s that don't check up on these things because they're too stupid or too incompetent. And am gone, bye muthafuckas.
I know it's not easy MD, don't worry, the ****s hate giving you any cash. And yes, I agree that the place is staffed by people they couldn't find a job for, not even stacking shelves or pushing a bin around, which is pushing the bar pretty ****ing low... Still though, at least Kirung has to get a job now
This is not far from what I was doing as a youngster where I'd do temping work and signed on. I'd tell the DHSS what hours I'd worked and they'd deduct my Income Support accordingly. Worked out fine as some weeks I'd sit on my arse and get £60 off the state, others I might earn £200.
Its just a ****ing job sharing scam for the tory ****s to get the figures down and help their chums in their businesses