Key Workers & Non-key Workers - A Proposal

Discussion in 'Taylor's Tittle-Tattle - General Banter' started by Clive_ofthe_Kremlin, Mar 26, 2020.

  1. Clive_ofthe_Kremlin

    Clive_ofthe_Kremlin Squad Player

    This crisis for humanity has revealed exactly who are the workers on which the country relies in order to function - The key workers.

    It can't have escaped anyone's notice that these key workers who are keeping the nation's cogs moving are also the minimum/low wage kiddies: The postmen, the binmen, the carers, the delivery drivers, the supermarket shelf stackers, the cops, the firemen, the paramedics. Hardly seems fair does it?

    I would therefore like to propose that once this emergency is over, a new fair minimum wage is introduced for all those identified as key workers by the government. The £2500 per month identified as a reasonable level of living for those laid off and sat at home seems reasonable as a base floor for the new key worker minimum.

    The extra wage costs would be covered by the introduction of the new maximum wage for non-key workers. Whilst it is lovely to have their efforts in normal times, they are self-evidently not really necessary. What they produce is mere decoration on top of the national cake of production. Nice to have, but not really essential. After all, we've managed to struggle on without our gallant management consultants, financial advisers, marketing managers, paper shufflers and other administration non-jobs, so it seems fair to set this new maximum wage in line with the value of their contribution. The same £2500 per month seems a very fair rate on which they ought to live comfortably.
     
    Moose likes this.
  2. Electricity. None of those key workers could function without it. Try keeping a hospital going without it.
    Water. Ditto.
    Fuel. Ditto.
    Insurance. Without which no vehicle could move.
    Tyres. Ditto.
    Air compressors.
    How far do you want to go?
     
  3. The undeniable truth

    The undeniable truth First Team Captain

    Brilliant Clive. Very very funny indeed. Good to hear with the lower non-key workers salaries you won't be needing any of my taxes to pay for your bin men, NHS, carers etc. Our capitalist employers will delighted at the extra profits they will make and wealth they can build through paying us a lower salary ;)
     
  4. Moose

    Moose First Team Captain

  5. Bwood_Horn

    Bwood_Horn Squad Player

    Which, I'm assuming, will be more than any of those 1000's of volunteers to the National Help Service will get when the Great C-Word War (AKA WWC) is over.

    Incidently, it warmed the heart of my cockles that the great patriot James Dyson is going to be suitably rewarded - although I do worry how is he going to staff his factories in the Far East?
     
  6. Moose

    Moose First Team Captain

    Criticism on Newsnight last night from UK based manufacturer bypassed in the rush to bung cash at these business titans. His company, local, with successful product lines that don’t need designing from afresh.
     
  7. Bwood_Horn

    Bwood_Horn Squad Player

    I don't want to derail @Clive_ofthe_Kremlin's thread. Taking it to politics.
     
    Last edited: Mar 26, 2020
    Moose likes this.
  8. Jumbolina

    Jumbolina First Team

    When you hit a billion you have certainly “won” the game and don’t need any more. The practicalities would be hard though in the case of paper billionaires - if your wealth is valued by a potentially artificial share value then they’ll pay 100% tax when they draw some petty cash to buy a hamburger. Selling shares won’t help because they’ll pay 100% when trying to get themselves below the threshold. You’ll be stepping over billionaire bodies all over the shop as they have expired from starvation!
     
  9. Moose

    Moose First Team Captain

    Bernie making the point well here.

     
    folkestone orn likes this.
  10. Universal Basic Income is the solution, with an upper ceiling at a few million quid
     
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  11. lowerrous

    lowerrous First Team

    I've seen a fair few people trot out arguments such as this lately. There are some interesting points, but the main thrust is in general fundamentally flawed.

    There's a reason why most of these "key workers" are also typically low wage - it's a simple combination of supply and demand, level of competition, and them being (generally, though not in every case) relatively low-skilled jobs which are also not at all scaleable.

    Take delivery drivers as an example - in any economy, the vast majority of able-bodied people of working age will be capable of doing that job, not only that, but they'll be capable of doing that job fairly well. In the UK, there'll be tens of millions of people in the labour market potentially able to be alright delivery drivers.
    Plus the job isn't very scaleable - there are only so many deliveries a human is able to handle within a given timeframe, or a limited amount of items which need delivering, or addresses which need delivering to. There'll be little margin between a "good" delivery driver and an "average" or "poor" one. Even the most effective delivery driver may only be, say, 2x quicker, or more efficient as the average, or they might be able to reach only 2x as many people/customers as the average in a given timeframe, and such increased level of efficiency might not even be especially needed or useful anyway.

    Now, by way of a comparison, postal workers in the UK actually earn about the same amount of money as professional footballers in the UK. However, there are huge differences between the jobs and industries. There are about 90,000 postmen working for Royal Mail in the UK, and their average salary is £23,000. £90k*£23k = £2billion. Average PL player salary is £3mil, but there are only about 500 of them - 500*£3mil = £1.5bn. Average salary for the Championship is £570k, *600 = £342mil. Add in League One and League Two an it's an additional c.£110million (average League 2 salary is only double that of a postman). So £1.5bn + £342mi + £110mil = just shy of £2billion.

    A far smaller percentage of the working population will be have the ability and the chance of becoming one of the incredibly small number of top-level professional footballers. Furthermore, one PL footballer which contribute to serving an audience inside a stadium of 40,000 people, plus an additional tens of millions of people worldwide watching on TV. No individual postman is likely to reach such a number of people. And that's all before you get on to considering how much people will pay to watch a football match in comparison to how much they're willing to pay for other services.

    It is theoretically possible for a postman to earn more in the Royal Mail, but then it would require them being promoted to something like an Operations Manger, or Senior Operations Manager, which earn more like £32k - £52k. This is where it seems you'll probably start claiming they've fallen in to the category you've grouped together as "administration non-jobs", but the thing is that postman, if promoted, is then in part responsible for the tasks of multiple postmen, and thus a larger pool of potential customers, not just the ones they manually delivered to before (it's similar when, say, a teacher moves up to being a head of department, or head-teacher). It may well also be that there is a smaller pool of the UK workforce capable of being an Operations Manager, in comparison to a postman. It is for similar reasons why in turn, say, management consultants typically command their salaries - they are dealing in tasks and problems which are at a far larger scale, and they as individuals have the scope to directly influence far more people and resources than a single postman. Using another of your examples, financial advisors, they could be individually overseeing how £tens of millions, if not much more, should be invested - sums equivalent to much more than many multiples of individual people would even earn across their lifetimes.

    Having said all that, I'm well aware that there are many administrative or office roles out there which are likely pretty unnecessary, or where the person may only really need to work for 1/4 of their typical working week. But by the same token there will also be loads of shop assistants, or even emergency service workers which spend most of their typical working day not really doing much.

    I would also agree that it is important for workers in particular sectors to have salaries which ensure they are comfortable enough. I also recognise that some workers are indeed vital, such as paramedics and doctors. Although in the case of doctors the fact that there jobs usually are more highly skilled than other public sector workers is in general already reflected in their salaries. There probably is a case that a number of public sector works, such as say, teachers, police and most NHS workers, are due to a decent pay rise, largely as their salaries have not kept up with inflation over the last decade or two, especially when factoring in house prices (though most salaries public and private are in the same situation). Any scale of wage increase is unlikely to be at the level encouraged by yourself or others I've seen put forward a similar view though.

    Lastly, for jobs and salaries in the public sector you also have to consider that they usually already have a public sector equivalent. It is unrealistic for public sector worker salaries to match or even exceed those for the same jobs in the private sector. Teachers and doctors in the public sector often already have the option of earning more in the private sector should they wish (though even then the increase in wages will be good, but not astronomical).
     
    Last edited: Mar 26, 2020
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  12. lowerrous

    lowerrous First Team

    Such ceilings imposed in a country will also mean that as soon as most people get close to it, where possible they'll just move all their assets somewhere else.
     
  13. Jumbolina

    Jumbolina First Team

    Would need a global decree from a global politburo Comrade.
     
  14. Ybotcoombes

    Ybotcoombes Justworkedouthowtochange

    on the same page as this , was the following

    44F39506-D2C5-4001-876F-FBD73D62560E.jpeg

    Now I understand that some people need to earn more than others , but the world has gone very wrong when ***** like this (assuming it’s true) aren’t told to stop ******* around on the computer and go and get a job
     
  15. What would possess anyone to do that?
     
  16. The undeniable truth

    The undeniable truth First Team Captain

    Fame.
     
  17. Arakel

    Arakel First Team

    I think autocorrect messed up "stupidity" for you there.
     
  18. The undeniable truth

    The undeniable truth First Team Captain

    No I think they knew that their actions would get them their 5 mins of fame, in return for a flu-like virus that they’d probably catch anyway. Some people just crave attention at any price.
     
  19. lowerrous

    lowerrous First Team

    Maybe they did also have a job in addition to posting dumb crap on TikTok?

    Though I just saw that the guy is 21 and from Beverly Hills, so he's probably from rich enough background that he doesn't really need one anyway, and/or is a student.
     
  20. Ybotcoombes

    Ybotcoombes Justworkedouthowtochange

    **in case this sounds defensive it’s not meant to be I know where you are coming from but feel the need to defend my fellow administrators**

    I am an administrator (of sorts) and work for an FE college , my role does not involve teaching in anyway , the reason my job exists is that the Government have chosen to regulate the sector so closely and over complicate how we are funded that we need a team of staff to comply with government regulations

    As an example (and this is not an exaggeration) to fully understand how much funding a learner generates you need to read a lot of documents with a combined word count in excess of 300,000 words (the first Harry Potter book only had 77,000 words). If it hadn’t been for covid-19 we had 5 days this exam session where due to regulations we needed in excess of 190 invigilators (no not a typo,, due to government regulations we have 1000 learners studying GCSE maths / English 50% of which are entitled to special considerations). We return over 1 millions elements of data to the ESFA (government body) every month and they expect a 0% error rate (which is insane)

    My department of 40 ish people costs well in excess of a lot of money and the reality is 1/2 of the work we do could be considered pointless but the government mandate it. My staff are also fairly low paid and we are under staffed . If you don’t believe me watch the documentary “the trap” by Adam Curtis who explains how we ended up here , it is genuinely fascinating and has lots about the NHS.

    none of this is a complaint , let’s face it I’m now working from home while others are working round the clock and risking their lives.

    The thing is, it’s really easy to think the problem with the NHS is that money goes to the administrators rather than front line staff (and yes some of the big bosses are paid too much) but reality is most administrators are paid sod all, do a job which is mandated by government and are integral to the running of the NHS.

    The reason the NHS doesn’t have enough cash is complicate but isn’t because of the secretary or the IT staff or the data entry staff it’s because the Government mandate how they spend their money and what they need to do
     
  21. lowerrous

    lowerrous First Team

    I think your comment should be more directed at Clive than me.
     
  22. Ybotcoombes

    Ybotcoombes Justworkedouthowtochange

    wasn’t directing at anybody, was just throwing it out there :)
     
  23. cyaninternetdog

    cyaninternetdog Forum Hippie

    When the body was first created, all the parts wanted to be Boss. The brain said, "I should be Boss because I control all of the body's responses and functions."

    The feet said, "We should be Boss since we carry the brain about and get him to where he wants to go."

    The hands said, "We should be the Boss because we do all the work and earn all the money."

    Finally, the asshole spoke up. All the parts laughed at the idea of the asshole being the Boss. So, the asshole went on strike, blocked itself up and refused to work.

    Within a short time, the eyes became crossed, the hands clenched, the feet twitched, the heart and lungs began to panic, and the brain fevered. Eventually, they all decided that the asshole should be the Boss, so the motion was passed.
     
  24. Clive_ofthe_Kremlin

    Clive_ofthe_Kremlin Squad Player

    It occurred to me this morning in the shower, the hardest hit financially in this are going to be the cash in hand dodgers and twisters. The ones who don't pay any tax or NI and work off the books.

    Bitten em on the arse now, hasn't it?

    Can't claim a penny now.
     

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