Common sense or ethically wrong

[blueparrot]

So the response to creating a bigger pool is to pay those migrating to do the job the lowest wages affordable?

No pay them the same rate that local workers would be offered.

 

[Metal Biker]

No pay them the same rate that local workers would be offered.

But they won't, which is why they offer the minimum wage, which isn't high enough due to cost of livign requirements.

So they get migrants in to do the job, who would also refuse, but economically have no choice but to accept. This creates a trend that other businesses follow and hey presto, exploititative cheap labour market that drives down wages elsewhere.

 

[urban genie]

Maddening, isn't it.

"End the exploitation of businesses using migrants for cheap labour"

"This is disgraceful! Who else will serve us our coffee and sandwiches in Pret*!? Am I now going to have to pay people a DECENT WAGE!? Despicable notion!"


*It's shocking how useful this quote has been on here.

Nice line but ultimately bollocks, businesses are still gonna employ cheap labour from here or if they need to now offer better wages thee will be more on zero hr contracts or part time positions to save on costs.

This will change one problem over reliance on imigrant workers to create new problems for the employer and employees.

It isn't as simple as replacing the workforce with a more depleted number available.

Plus under this 25K threshold to be considered a skilled job, skilled jobs like mine are now deemed unskilled as will many others.

 

[I'm With Stupid]

I don't think ethics comes into it when you're talking about letting or not letting new people in. Where it could be a problem is in kicking out people who have put in the effort to make a life in the UK. But immigration should be a decision based on economics and public services, and that's always going to be controversial. One thing that is possible with a points-based system is to allow immigration to be linked to a particular job, which in theory could allow immigration or jobs in areas of the country that need it, while restricting it in places where public services are already overcrowded.

One issue you do have, like in Australia, is the temptation to turn it into a cash cow for the government or private contractors. To take an IELTS test costs about £150 and in most English-speaking countries, the score you get on that is sufficient to show that your English is good enough to do particular jobs. But in Australia, they decided to insist on another test for nurses (not a bad decision in itself) that was something in the region of $600. And if you failed any one component, you had to take all four parts of the test again. There was a BBC article about a Filipino nurse who had easily passed all sections of the test except for writing, but he had to do the whole test again for another $600. But perhaps worse than that, under the guise of equality, but more accurately for profiteering, people from native-English speaking countries were also required to take the test. So you have nurses from Ireland going over to Australia and having to prove that they can speak English, when common sense should obviously prevail. I had a similar thing with my Indian friend. She'd gone through her entire education in English, become an English teacher at the British Council (teaching the test they're asking her to take), and yet when she applied some Dutch university still insisted that she did the IELTS test and this really expensive course before her masters in order to show that her English was good enough. She applied to Ireland and they just accepted her CV as proof that she could speak English. But all too often, there's little common sense applied in such situations. In reality, it should be up to employers, not government, to decide what level of English they need. Can you imagine us being told that Roberto Mancini couldn't become our manager because his English didn't meet the minimum standards?

 

[Metal Biker]

Nomice line but ultimately bollocks, businesses are still gonna employ cheap labour from here or if they need to now offer better wages thee will be more on zero hr contracts or part time positions to save on costs.

This will change one problem over reliance on imigrant workers to create new problems for the employer and employees.

It isn't as simple as replacing the workforce with a more depleted number available.

Plus under this 25K threshold to be considered a skilled job, skilled jobs like mine are now deemed unskilled as will many others.

Join the club, buddy.

 

[bluethrunthru]

Is it common sense to just allow people in we need or ethically wrong I am in the common sense camp.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/uk-politics-51550421

define need. People are not liquid. You can't just turn on a tap at the time of need. Does that also need a plug hole so when you have done with them you can just flush them away. What we are doing is isolationism.

 

[bluethrunthru]

If the government don't want cheap labour in the UK put the minimum wage up.

Not a chance. British people are going to be expected to do some shitty low paid jobs. Heard ministers on TV and radio defining people who have been lucky enough to be able to afford to retire or who and disabled or long term sick as "economically inactive" today. You can see the bottom we are now racing to. Last night there was a guy on from Conservative Home banging on about being on benefits and getting more for that than you do working.

They are peddling out of date lies - either that or their own record numbers in work and record low unemployment figures are just lies. If this kind of thing leads to people being denied benefits that they should be getting and sent out to do seasonal low paid jobs then that will be a disgrace.

 

[bluethrunthru]

"This is disgraceful! Who else will serve us our coffee and sandwiches in Pret*!

You will.

If you lose your job - whatever it is you do - and go to sign on then in future you will be sent to Pret, or Greggs or to push trollies round Morrisons car park if any of them are hiring for whatever wage they choose to offer. No benefits will be paid to you.

 

[Fame Monster]

There needs to be another part to this immigration policy too which involves training British citizens to fill any potential shortages in the employment market.

We've got 50% of kids going to university now but that means we've become reliant on cheap labour for manual work.

A whole generation of kids are now studying sociology, football studies, gender studies, media studies, women's studies etc., when they would otherwise be our next generation of fruit pickers, arsewipers, baristas, bouncers, and lots of other jobs that our economy needs.

I've got no problem with anyone studying those subjects btw or universities offering them but there's no way the state should be subsidising people to study them and handing out loans on better terms than the banks would offer because it has no benefit to the country and leaves it reliant on the exploitation of migrant workers.

 

[bluethrunthru]

Music to Johnsons ears

https://www.lbc.co.uk/radio/present...obrien-takes-on-caller-who-says-we-should-sk/

https://www.lbc.co.uk/radio/present...ation-furious-james-obrien-caller-doesnt-rec/

 

[Metal Biker]

You will.

If you lose your job - whatever it is you do - and go to sign on then in future you will be sent to Pret, or Greggs or to push trollies round Morrisons car park if any of them are hiring for whatever wage they choose to offer. No benefits will be paid to you.

 

[Chippy_boy]

Because believe it or not there are many job sectors of society which people dismiss as a worthy profession yet utilise these services everyday and lament when "machines" takes the jobs of people because they don't do it as well.

Robotization is all well and good, but what do you do with the workforce whose job positions are now redundant? "Get a better job!" Doing what? It's a ludicrous defence. Why do you dismiss businesses paying their employees slightly more so it is above the current cost of living?

I am not meaning to be rude, but I don't think you read - or at least did not digest - what I said already.

So I'll answer your questions and repeat what I said previously. Robotization will only provide an answer once there is global alignment of economies and global coordination to keep wages high. Until then, whilst things are still competitive, then all robotization will do is drive down production costs and prices. Since that's what competition does. It is no solution to your "problem" for my guess the next 100 year or more. It is not "a defence", ludicrous or otherwise. I am not defending anything, just saying the way I see it. We could still be selling 30" TV's for £2,000 since that's what they used to cost back in 1985, and paying workers at Ferguson £20/hour. But we are not. A 30" LCD is now £199 and there is no Ferguson any more. That's the way the world works. Mass production made things cheaper, not enabled us to pay workers more. Why? Because there is competition. Whilst things are competitive, employers will always want (and in fact NEED) to drive down prices, not pay people more.

And regards your 2nd question, I don't resent anyone or anything. I am merely saying it as I see it and using some basic common sense logic. if a company A pays people more than another company B for doing the same work, then company A will be uncompetitive with company B and ultimately all the A companies will dwindle and the B companies will win out. It's not rocket science.

 

[Metal Biker]

I am not meaning to be rude, but I don't think you read - or at least did not digest - what I said already.

So I'll answer your questions and repeat what I said previously. Robotization will only provide an answer once there is global alignment of economies and global coordination to keep wages high. Until then, whilst things are still competitive, then all robotization will do is drive down production costs and prices. Since that's what competition does. It is no solution to your "problem" for my guess the next 100 year or more. It is not "a defence", ludicrous or otherwise. I am not defending anything, just saying the way I see it. We could still be selling 30" TV's for £2,000 since that's what they used to cost back in 1985, and paying workers at Ferguson £20/hour. But we are not. A 30" LCD is now £199 and there is no Ferguson any more. That's the way the world works. Mass production made things cheaper, not enabled us to pay workers more. Why? Because there is competition. Whilst things are competitive, employers will always want (and in fact NEED) to drive down prices, not pay people more.

And regards your 2nd question, I don't resent anyone or anything. I am merely saying it as I see it and using some basic common sense logic. if a company pays people more than another company for doing the same work, then company A will be uncompetitive with company B and ultimately all the A companies will dwindle and the B companies will win out. It's not rocket science.

And i'm telling you it's not as easy as you make it out to be. I'm not advocating for a HUGE wage, i'm asking that wages are more than the cost of living, which they currently are not, and that the reliance on cheap labour, which exploits desperate workers to yield the same results, is immoral, needs to end and more emphasis placed on providing an attractive wage to low paid workers.

Most young people of today aren't looking for £199 LCD tv's, they're looking to pay their rent.

 

[Chippy_boy]

Shame about your last sentence...

And how do you go about getting better skills when such avenues cost money and time, which most younger people don't have?

How do you earn a decent living in the meantime whilst attaining these skills? The problem with attitudes like this is that people still think it's the 1960's, mistakenly thinking you could walk out of one well paying job and walk into another the same day.

I currently am learning a new skill and it's costing me money and more importantly time, time I could be using to earn at my current employer. Is it going to increase my wages? Not likely, because it'll still pay only the living wage, as most jobs these days do. This blase attitude about the current state of employment just demonstrates how out of touch a lot of people are with employment for younger people.

I mean come on! "It's simple?!" You cannot honestly accept that to be the case.

Again, I refer you to an answer I gave earlier. "Sometimes there simply are no easy solutions. I wish it were otherwise, but there are some unfortunate circumstances in life which sometimes it is simply impossible to avoid."

Your not liking a predicament does not automatically mean there is a workable solution to it. There isn't. On a sustainable, ongoing basis, people can only be paid what the market deems their efforts to be worth. And if you are in the unfortunate position that this is not very much then you're in a bad place. I am not suggesting there is some alternative easy solution. And I understand that getting more skills and securing a higher paid job is hard.

 

[Chippy_boy]

And i'm telling you it's not as easy as you make it out to be. I'm not advocating for a HUGE wage, i'm asking that wages are more than the cost of living, which they currently are not, and that the reliance on cheap labour, which exploits desperate workers to yield the same results, is immoral, needs to end and more emphasis placed on providing an attractive wage to low paid workers.

Most young people of today aren't looking for £199 LCD tv's, they're looking to pay their rent.

I am not making anything out to be easy.

Paradoxically, you are. You're proposing an easy solution, "Pay people more". I am explaining to you why I don't think it is as easy as that. Sure an extra £1 an hour or something is possible, but that doesn't fix the problem does it. The question is how do we get people on £20 an hour, not £10.43.

 

[Metal Biker]

I am not making anything out to be easy.

Paradoxically, you are. You're proposing an easy solution, "Pay people more". I am explaining to you why it isn't as easy as that. It doesn't work.

No, but "screw people over works" so much better.

Advocating for cheap labour to protect businesses isn't exactly a moral stance. Why not just advocate a return to unpaid labour; go the whole hog?

We're asking for a chance to put our feet on the property ladder/career paths and an end to exploiting desperate workers because businesses know we cannot, financially, refuse their lowest wage "offer". Is that so wrong?

 

[Chippy_boy]

No, but "screw people over works" so much better.

Advocating for cheap labour to protect businesses isn't exactly a moral stance. Why not just advocate a return to unpaid labour; go the whole hog?

We're asking for a chance to put our feet on the property ladder/career paths and an end to exploiting desperate workers because businesses know we cannot, financially, refuse their lowest wage "offer". Is that so wrong?

I think you are completely misreading what I am saying. I am not advocating anything.

I am giving you my opinion on the way it is.

 

[blueparrot]

Most young people of today aren't looking for £199 LCD tv's, they're looking to pay their rent.

Not most, some probably, but most of the young people I know through my own children and friends children are doing very well and spending their money the same way I did when I was young including most of them owning i-phones on contracts an expense I never had. Though to be fair rents in the citys will be be more than the rents around where I am, having said that I know a few people that work in Edinburgh and commute so can live relatively comfortably.My daughter works in an Edinburgh hospital but lives in East Lothian where rents are much cheaper and nicer properties.

 

[Metal Biker]

I think you are completely misreading what I am saying. I am not advocating anything.

I am giving you my opinion on the way it is.

My "opinion" is that cheap labour is morally unethical and needs to end.

That's all my argument has been.

 

[Metal Biker]

Not most, some probably, but most of the young people I know through my own children and friends children are doing very well and spending their money the same way I did when I was young including most of them owning i-phones on contracts an expense I never had. Though to be fair rents in the citys will be be more than the rents around where I am, having said that I know a few people that work in Edinburgh and commute so can live relatively comfortably.My daughter works in an Edinburgh hospital but lives in East Lothian where rents are much cheaper and nicer properties.

Bully for them, it's not the case everywhere, especially Northern England.