Quote Originally Posted by shaunaneto View Post
It’s not the number you get paid that counts. It’s the comfort it affords that matters.
At the moment we have 100s of 1000s making 5-6 trips to work a week for 20-30 hours of work. Many of them rely on in-work benefits to top them up.

Is it any wonder productivity is going nowhere?

I've highlighted why employers would try and cap total weekly hours of the lower paid, to reduce the NI bill.

But there are also other reasons which stem from "workers rights".

If you work at Aldi (sorry not picking on them but I do know how they work and they are typical) they contractually allow you a paid 1/2 hour break in a 8 hour shift.

If you work a 4 hour shift it's 15 minutes unpaid. A 6 hour shift is 20 minutes unpaid.

So consider 2 scenarios.

Pay someone £8 ph for an 5 x 8 hour shifts the average cost of labour per hour is £9.11 based on Gross pay, employers NI and 37.5 hours actual work.

Pay 2 people £8 ph for 4 x 5 hour shifts the average cost of labour per hour is £8.00 per hour.

So it's 14% more for the employer to hire a full time worker and give them 8 hour shifts.

Now look at it from the employees point of view.

Instead of 5 trips to and from work, there are 8 trips with the additional costs that those trips incur.

If we then consider from the "comfort it affords" the employee, they spend almost as much time getting ready for work, travelling there and then back as they do actually working.

So if you consider the travelling time, they really do get clobbered.

When I look back, when I joined the workplace in 1983 I was in a shoe factory, a non union factory.

We worked 8:00-15:15, 8:00-13.00 on Friday. 30 minute lunch was unpaid, but 40 minutes of interim breaks a day were paid (25 on Friday) with a 5 or 10 minute break every hour.
4 weeks paid holiday + banks.
Pension Scheme.
T + 1/4 for overtime Monday-Friday.
T + 1/2 for overtime Saturday.
T x 2 for overtime Sunday and Bank Holidays.

That was 1983, no social charter, no minimum wage and no forced weekend or anti-social hours working.


So when I hear claims that being in the EU has helped workers rights, I'm sorry, but the equivalent worker now gets nothing like what they got back 35 years ago in practically all aspects.