UK General Election 2015

[TightEnd]

The Tory "they pretend to pay us and we pretend to work" recovery


http://uk.reuters.com/article/2015/04/01/uk-britain-employment-productivity-idUKKBN0MS3SP20150401

zero hours contracts and the number of jobs that has "created" makes it possible to argue it both ways

certainly job security is far lower, and starting in the previous generation "jobs for life" began to disappear so that precedes the last two governments

these charts were produced on the spectator. i don't give them total credence for the factors that we are aware of, as well as the source of course not being 100% independent...but here they are







 

[david3103]

There were a lot more people employed to organise the referendum than we imagined.
What are they all doing now?

[bobAlike]

Is the top of the green line (% Sco) blue?

[TightEnd]

Is the top of the green line (% Sco) blue?

does look blue yes

[DungBeetle]

I know all that but still undecided. I think I'm veering towards having more people working earning a bit less is maybe better than less people employed full time and more on the dole. Maybe a better middle ground would be a min 20 hours contract or something like that? 

Sounds reasonable. 

I'd suggest a ceiling wage for executives/senior management and I'd make sure they werent earning more than say 25 x those at the bottom.  There is no need for it. 

Will never work.  Companies will just subcontract lower paid jobs.  Can't see Man Utd paying the groundsman £12k a week.

[Kmac84]

There were a lot more people employed to organise the referendum than we imagined.
What are they all doing now?

A number of these people were either taken on by each organisation on a Fixed Term role or as a secondment with the individual councils.  The same is true of the Empire games. 

No doubt many of these individuals will have gone back into previous roles.

For a number on both sides they have taken up full-time gainful employment I know a few people from the Yes Scotland campaign have gone into teaching, some are moonlighting a jounalists.  On the No side quite a few have gained themselves jobs for life in the party machines. 

[AdamM]

Our friend Russell's thoughts on zero hours contracts :-)

[simonnatur]

I was quite interested in subject, but just can't bear to listen to him for more than 10 seconds.

[mulhuzz]

Click to see full-size image.

Click to see full-size image.

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Don't believe any statistics you haven't faked yourself, as the Germans say.

[kukushkin88]

Click to see full-size image.

Click to see full-size image.

I think we learn incredibly little from what is a Tory organised and essentially paid for (through low taxation and loopholes) advert on the front of The Daily Telegraph.

[aaron1867]

I think you would be surprised at how many people actually LOVE zero hours contracts.

My wife is a Sister in Radcliffe in Oxford and she says new staff almost demand zero hours, as it gives them the flexibility to almost pick and choose when they work.

The resultant problem then becomes that no one wants to cover certain shifts and they end up paying a fortune to Temps/Locums etc and that is pretty much why the NHS is struggling.

I don't think I have ever come across anyone who likes these zero hours contracts Adz. I have 3-4 people who I have on zero hour contracts and they hate, but they only get on with it either to get experience or because luckily they have a imilar role with another business. I offer each person pretty much 10 hours a month & I choose to pay them a little bit more because I know it's only a few hours a month. They hate it, but they still work for it. There is no winner is this debate for the zero hours contracts though. If Labour try and go ahead with a 12 week period, then maybe businesses may not be forced to find that vacancy. Then again, there is no positive to it either. If I was labour instead of doing this, then I would offer a lower tax rate for these people. Think there are much more important things than the zero hours contract to be getting on with debating about.

But what I do believe is a complete red herring that the Tories keep giving us is the apparent decrease in unemployment. How many people are the government paying to work? These back to work schemes & so on, which show they are employed. I volunteer in a charity shop in the town centre when I can, there are THREE people in that shop alone that are on these schemes, all 18 hours a week, mostly subsidised by the government. So how many around the UK??

[Jon MW]

I think you would be surprised at how many people actually LOVE zero hours contracts.

My wife is a Sister in Radcliffe in Oxford and she says new staff almost demand zero hours, as it gives them the flexibility to almost pick and choose when they work.

The resultant problem then becomes that no one wants to cover certain shifts and they end up paying a fortune to Temps/Locums etc and that is pretty much why the NHS is struggling.

I don't think I have ever come across anyone who likes these zero hours contracts Adz. I have 3-4 people who I have on zero hour contracts and they hate, but they only get on with it either to get experience or because luckily they have a imilar role with another business. I offer each person pretty much 10 hours a month & I choose to pay them a little bit more because I know it's only a few hours a month. They hate it, but they still work for it. There is no winner is this debate for the zero hours contracts though. If Labour try and go ahead with a 12 week period, then maybe businesses may not be forced to find that vacancy. Then again, there is no positive to it either. If I was labour instead of doing this, then I would offer a lower tax rate for these people. Think there are much more important things than the zero hours contract to be getting on with debating about.

But what I do believe is a complete red herring that the Tories keep giving us is the apparent decrease in unemployment. How many people are the government paying to work? These back to work schemes & so on, which show they are employed. I volunteer in a charity shop in the town centre when I can, there are THREE people in that shop alone that are on these schemes, all 18 hours a week, mostly subsidised by the government. So how many around the UK??

That's not necessarily representative though - a sizeable proportion, if not the majority, of zero hour contracts are seasonal jobs; often filled with students. There are 2.3 million HE students in the country and only 700,000 zero hour contracts so it wouldn't take many of them to make a large proportion who are happy on these types of contracts.

[david3103]

The Agency Workers Directive created a situation whereby a hirer of agency staff was forced to pay them the same wages as their own staff once they had done 12 weeks for them. The 12 weeks didn't need to be consecutive, nor did they need to be full weeks. Effectively, an agency worker could do 12 single days spread over a year to qualify.
Zero-hours contracts circumvent this issue.

Agencies, especially those in industries like construction and transport, slap folk onto these contracts, tie them up with an Umbrella Company or some other form of tax avoidance pay scheme and treat them like machinery. The directive, designed to improve the lot of the agency worker, creates a situation where they are worse off.

The AWD was brought to you by the European Union.

[doubleup]

LOL

Trying to blame the EU because some organisations use dubious practices to circumvent their obligations.

I imagine you think that tax evasion is a government created problem because they collect taxes.

[david3103]

LOL

Trying to blame the EU because some organisations use dubious practices to circumvent their obligations.

I imagine you think that tax evasion is a government created problem because they collect taxes.

yeah, obviously

No doubt you believe that the EU is a force for good