Minimum wage 12p increase

[avidcameron]

Well if I asked you "off the top of your head" how much a pint of milk cost at £1.78 for 2 litres. Off the top of your head you couldn't tell me. If however you have nothing better to do with your life you could spend a while with a calculator and pretend you knew all the time. But I for one wouldn't believe you.

2 litres is the equivalent of 3.3 pints,giving and approximate cost of £0.54,which is rather expensive.

 

PS All done by menkal rithmetic.

[Supertramp]

It's not that imperial measurements are stupid.

 

As a child of the pounds-shillings-and-pence generation, I can estimate a pint or half-pint... I can visualise a yard, or an inch. I can visualise an ounce of butter, but I can't visualise a metre or a centimetre. I don't work in mililitres or Silly-metres. I work in pints and inches.

 

If I want to buy a quarter of "spice", it now weighs 100 grammes. That's about 3.5 ounces.

 

I remember when my sister was born, in 1977. the district nurse came and weighed her and said "baby weighs six kilos and "whatever"-ty grammes."

 

My father, observing this ritual, said "And what's that in old money?"

 

Well I buy things in Kilometres, I know how much a mile is because of driving and I know how much a yard is from playing cricket. Howeverit is much easier to estimate things in metric measurements.

 

---------- Post added 03-10-2013 at 09:20 ----------

 

Measurements cannot be stupid but some people can be especially those who cannot do metric etc.Simple rule-5 litres is a gallon is 8 pints-hence one litre is 1.6 pints or a pint is 625ml approx.

 

4 and half litres in a gallon. I guess I do know more than most just not pints...

[Cyclone]

2 litres is the equivalent of 3.3 pints,giving and approximate cost of £0.54,which is rather expensive.

 

PS All done by menkal rithmetic.

 

It's 3.5 though, not 3.3... (That I had to check, for the purposes of rough calculation I just use 4).

[anarchist]

 

If you can't afford to pay minimum wage in the UK you shouldn't be in business.

 

Have you mentioned that to Hyundai & Kia?

[El Cid]

If David Cameron gets his wish to stop benefits for under 25 year olds, do we have a flexible job market for them all to find work?

We hear tales of immigrant workers being paid less than the minimum wage, will our youth put up with that? And will employers choose a Brit, over eager beaver foreigners?

[Cyclone]

 

If you can't afford to pay minimum wage in the UK you shouldn't be in business.

 

An incredibly unrealistic point of view.

[Nem88]

Problem with business and cost is people generally take a very black and white view on say, the production of a loaf of bread. Say Mindy makes 12 loafs of bread an hour, that retail at £1, the business can afford a 1P per loaf hit right?

 

Except the cost of that loaf hasn’t changed by 1P. You’ve only considered 1 factor against many which are impacted by the change.

 

 

For a start, Mindy probably has a team Leader, Higher management, Finance and HR, company has cleaners etc etc within the company. Now, these will not all be paid minimum wage, but with the dynamic shift inflation will take its place and we’ll consider this is a perfect company where everyone’s pay rise is at least inflation (hah) . Now, per loaf of bread made the impact is very very small amounts for each of these people, but there is a definite increase.

 

Now, Mindy gets ill like all human beings. Now when she gets ill and is unable to work, the company is now losing (assuming min wage 7hrs Per day) an extra 84 pence per day than before the min wage rise. This has to be considered.

 

Then we look at assets.

The bread kiln is an asset which is either bought or leased. If leased, with the min wage going up the company which leases it ((as they also have people and assets and bought services which have price increased) raise the price of the lease. If bought, the next machine needed will probably cost more than the previous.

The raw material which is used to make the bread has had its priced increased (as they also have people and assets and bought services which have price increased)

 

The maintenance contracts on the assets have increased (as they also have people and assets and bought services which have price increased)

People in the bread company work in offices, which cost leases. They are audited, which cost time and money, the offices have air conditioning, some workers have laptops or company mobiles…. Cost of all these things has increased a tiny amount because of the rise.

 

Eventually, through tiny tiny increments the actual cost of 1 loaf of bread is now 10pence.

To maintain profit margins, the bread company lets go of a member of staff, and increases the shelf price of the bread by only 2p.

 

*****

 

Mindy goes and buys her weekly shopping. Her breads increased by a pence or so, but so has all the other consumables she buys. The increase of wage has ultimately gone back into buying the produce.

 

 

Now, its not even as simple as that, but its defiantly not black and white.

[Uptowngirl]

I am not doubting you as I have no idea on the cost of a transit van, how much have they come down?

 

Ford dropped prices across its entire range of cars and van about 2 years ago. The price drop was over 10%. It was as much to counter falling sales as it was passing on production cost savings as the compnany was loosing more than £1 billion/year across Europe.

The production line in Turkey didn't take over on the day Southampton closed. The process took a decade as the Turkish plant expanded. But it was still strange that Ford workers in the UK repeatedly went on strike over wages and pensions making themselves less competitive with the Turkish plant.

 

In the end Ford unions wouldn't accept alterations to the pension scheme which would have kept lines open in the UK. The result is no Ford vehicles produced in the UK and only engine manufacture is left.

 

This is interesting..

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/hampshire/hi/people_and_places/newsid_8600000/8600927.stm

 

 

The differences became even more obvious when we met up with one of the Turkish workers.

 

Ford's Kocaeli plant in Turkey currently makes 700 Transits a day

 

Müzeyyen Can and her husband both work at the Ford factory in Turkey.

 

She said: "Me and my husband together earn 2,500 lira (£537-a-month each) . It is a very good income for working in Turkey, the minimum wage is 600 lira (£258-a-month).

[barleycorn]

What are metres based on?

 

They worked fine for hundreds of years. We had the biggest empire the world has ever seen and won two wars with imperial measurements. What have we achieved with metric measurements?

 

Doesn't matter what it's based on, what does matter is that it's easy to remember as it's all based on factors of 10. No need to remember how many rods are in a hogshead or how many scruples in a pint.

 

jb