The Celtic Board Recommend...

The Celtic shops have struggled with the one in Derry closing last year - you have part-time kids and University students working in these shops trying to make a little cash on the side, if you push the costs up to pay these people above minimum wage you might make the shops unprofitable - thereby no jobs and no profit for the club.

 

You obviously know nothing about business, some of the world's biggest companies have been losing money for the last few years (Kodak, Sony, Panasonic, with several hundred thousand employees between them). The company I work for only broke into profit last year after 10 years of losing money and I've had to work on a shoestring trying to compete with other bigger companies - forcing me to up the wages by say 10% could have put this business under before we had a chance to turn it around.

 

Lawwell is getting just under a million quid in order to victimise the supporters and not replace a striker.

The shop in Derry closed because no **** shopped in it. It wasn't in a prominent place. The guy who took the decision to put the shop there in the first place is probably doing ok.

 

We're getting into something different, but I am against excessive executive wages, just like I am against excessive player wages - Lawwell would perform no worse on half the wage he is on now, neither would Samaras. Unfortunately there is a marketplace where allegedly Arsenal were trying to poach Lawwell and Barcelona are trying to poach Samaras () - so I don't know how we get around these particular market forces without implementing some sort of top-down socialist solution.

 

What is wrong with a top down socialist solution?

 

Here we go... there is trade off between Socialism and Liberalism - the more socialist we try to make a state the more freedoms we have to take away from its citizens. If I want to stop people earning money unfairly then I have to inspect their lives to see what they are up to, in order to inspect their lives I must pay government agents, thereby wasting some of the excess money I take off these people to redistribute elsewhere. Apart from the intrusive nature of forced equality, the more money we take off successful people the less incentive there is for those people to try harder jobs, or take risks - there was absolutely no chance of me moving my family to the Isle of Man and taking the risk of managing the company I work for if there was not a potential pay-off if I succeeded.

There is also the fairness aspect. Usain Bolt earns a lot more money than me because he has a talent which people will find money to watch, or associate their brands with. The egalitarian, socialist, thing to do would be take most of what Usain Bolt earns off him and distribute some of it to me, because he is just too damn fast and it's not fair that he was born with (or trained for) talents which I do not possess. The fairness meter in my head recognises that Usain Bolt is simply more talented than me at a certain (every) activity, and therefore it is fair that he earns a lot more money. As much as everyone loves to completely leave this aspect out of the egalitarian ideal there are a lot of who humans who either make bad choices, or are not very intelligent - and it is often this reason that they earn less money. I once worked in KFC in Anne Street Belfast for £2.15 an hour, along with a guy everyone called 'Marty Glue-Bag' - without knowing this fella for the last 10 years it's a fair guess that Marty Glue-Bag will now be doing less well in life than me, and it has very little to do with Rich-men conspiring against the poor.

 

Sorry, I thought you were speaking with specific regards to Celtic.

You referenced the performance to salary ratio of Lawwell and Samaras and I accept the point with regards to retaining their services.

I maybe misconstrued the idea of top down socialist solution which you are presenting as a wholesale socialist solution. I meant top down in terms of the structure of the club.

Strachan took time to bring out the tea ladies and all those folk when he won his first title at the club and presented them to the fans as not just witnesses to that success, but a very real and integral part of it. I'm sure Strachan meant it and I believe he was right. The time comes when a pat on the back ain't enough. You get told how important and how valued you are in words, then you should expect the club to mirror that in deed.

I note that you earlier referenced a legacy of discrimination. I don't know if you meant that or not, but I took that to mean that people were denied an opportunity. Now I know that this is a different situation, but in presenting what the living wage should be about, Alan Milburn spoke of a "fairness deficit" in terms of enabling social mobility. I don't think it is about Glue bag Marty getting the same rewards as Maltese Mick (then Belfast Mick) for vastly different results in professional output, rather about offering the same opportunity to you both.

To tackle it from another angle there are loads of studies that argue that a happy worker is a productive worker. Take care of them and you promote loyalty, collegiality, increased creativity and a host of other things. It makes sense to me to invest in your staff and they'll become invested in you. And if this is true, then the bottom line may not move that far, if at all, than where it is at present.

 

They do. This shareholder thinks it would be best to have a happy workforce.

 

Minimum wage is different to a living wage.