David Goldblatt: Footballâs grotesque injustice â huge fortunes, low-paid labour While Premier League players and directors take home vast pay packets regardless of results, the cleaners, interns and stewards in the background are receiving a pittance Is it like this for employees of City and the KC? http://www.theguardian.com/commenti...all-grotesque-injustice-huge-fortunes-low-pay
City pay very poorly unfortunately. I momentarily contemplated going for a PR role there but I wouldve had to take a more than 50% pay cut.
I More disgraceful are the cases, as happened at Leeds and I believe ,Portsmouth, where clubs go into administration and players get paid the thousands they are paid whilst the St John's Ambulance, whose members are volunteers so costs are low, don't. With a lot of our staff, stewards and concourse staff particularly, it is a good job the club don't have performance related pay.
The whole 'living wage' argument is a side-show. The fact is that a large percentage of the working population only have part-time work. Part-time at minimum wage. 20 hours a week earning an extra £2.00 hour will simply mean they receive less in top-ups from the benefits system. Net effect is those workers take home the same in cash terms - so no increase in standard of living.
By what folks have said on here, it might be that poor pay attracts poor performers (dissuades good workers).
Many do more than one job in a day. Travelling from job to job is wasted/unpaid time. Were the hourly rate to be increased, it might be possible to work less hours and achieve a better quality of life.
Stewards only work about four or five hours every other week, that's self evidently not going to earn them a living wage and I'm not sure why they're mentioning interns, these are usually unpaid temporary jobs.
The article doesn't actually say what anybody's paying anyone, so it doesn't really show anything one way or another. My daughter has worked in the catering departments at City, Man United and Man City and they all paid over the minimum wage.
Which doesn't explain why at some grounds stewards and concourse staff are better than at the KC. Especially as with Hull being a low wage area,and it being doubtful that other clubs pay more, the wages would be more attractive here than at those clubs. Maybe their good workers are keener on working than ours so don't have to employ so many who have English as a second language or people who have English as a first language but difficulty in understanding it.
And why is this the case ? Because of the laws on employers National Insurance. Employers pay no NI on the first £150 odd. So it's easier to split a full time job into two part time jobs of around 16-20 hours a week. Companies are saving millions £ a year doing this. Which is why you have working people travelling to 2 jobs a day. The economy is built on part-time jobs - the NI system needs to be reformed to encourage full time jobs.
From October, this year, the Minimum Wage is set @ £6.50/hour; the Living Wage which is being pushed for is £7.65/hour. In London both are higher, with the Living Wage figure at £8.80/hour (I can't find the MW)
OK, but the point about the campaign for a Living Wage is two-fold: 1/ It's obvious from the name - Living Wage; and 2/ That Cost-of-Living is higher in London and should be acknowledged.
It obviously is acknowledged, the average income in London is 50% higher than Yorkshire & The Humber. If you advertise a job at the minimum wage in London, nobody applies.
Might be like here where there is a national minimum wage but certain states and even cities have minimum wages that are higher than the national minimum wage. Seattle instituted a $15 minimum wage recently. You cant possibly live off the national minimum wage and its to political of an issue to pass congress so individual states and cities pass their own minimum wages.
Granted it's acknowledged by employers. But the government doesn't do so. And I'd bet there are workers being paid the Minimum. And every so often it breaks that there are some who are discovered being paid below the NMW.* The Living Wage does at least accept that there is an upward pressure on London wages, due to higher cost-of-living; and it also points up that the NMW is not sufficient to lift people out of working poverty. * Many service workers are now employed by agencies who, while they may pay the NMW find ways of subtracting from their workers' pay - they've done it making employees pay for their uniforms, charging for transport, etc. The gangmaster system is notorious for it.
Meh, the company i work for has hundreds of employees in London on minimum wage and we get inundated with applications whenever we advertise. They're nearly all non British, mind.
Living wage is a load of bollocks, even earning £7.65 per hour over a standard 35 hour week, you'd still end up getting near enough your wage again in state benefits. If you do a 35 hour week at national minimum wage, you'd end up with the same in your pocket, just the welfare system would give you more, as is already mentioned.
