The ragged trousered philanthropists.

I havnt argued that buisness is bad at all or that it’s a bad word or they are the enemy .
You targetted the Labour Party in your post and pigeonholed into your interpretation of what they all believe which is nonsense .
What you have done is sought to put the lower paid and unskilled firmly in their place and that they should be grateful .
What I believe is that there is room for all in the corporate and labour market and the lower end should not be singled out as worthless .

 

I cited a direct example of Jon Ashworths ineptitude, and the constant messages pandering to union members of hitting business. The lack of messages of business assistance in a time of extreme uncertainty, even a simple outline of their plan of Brexit, would be unbelievably helpful.

And of course... you're right, saying people should be rewarded for their efforts and businesses should pay their fair share of tax... absolutely, that's really telling unskilled people they should be grateful.

The lower end of a market absolutely shouldn't be exploited or badged as worthless. Their ideas should be captured and their views sought to innovate and help an organisation. At the same time, an individual or group who put their own livelihoods at risk, risk their own capital and work 80hr weeks, with the massive pressures of having the livelihoods of 10s, hundreds, maybe even thousands in time in your hands... do you think they should be allowed to take rewards as they see fit, when they present themselves? Or do you think they should be shared all and sundry to everyone else?

The other issue, if a company has a bad year, the workforce is unlikely to give their pay rise back. An MD, CEO, SME owner, is likely to flex their compensation based on what it can afford. Minimum wage doesn't apply to an SME business owner if circumstances dictate.

 

I work for a large (French) multinational, with offices in over 40 countries. The majority of the staff are in India (over 100,000 out of 180,000 global). I know that the conditions we work under in the UK are lower than those offered to European colleagues - definitely French and German - but better than those available to Asian and probably Americas based colleagues.

As an example, I travel to a client site each week which means I leave the house at 5:40 on Tuesday (5.57 from Wombwell to Sheffield to get the 6:30 to Exeter), and get to the office at 10-11ish depending on the vagaries of the trains. On the way home I leave the office at 3 and get home around 8-9. So on both these days I spend 2-3 hours travelling on my time. The expectation is that we have to get to site at early as possible, even if that means unsociable hours. Leaving much later can make it difficult to get home - especially (as has happened a couple of times) there is a problem with the rail network.

My German colleagues travel solely on company time, so they could happily catch the 8am train to the client site and get there at midday. I believe that French colleagues are no longer allowed to get emails outside of working hours by law. Both of these countries have higher employee productivity than the UK.

OTOH My Indian colleagues are expected to drop everything to work if there is a problem, and have been known to have to sleep in the office as it is too late for them to get home - working UK hours mean they don't finish until 23:30 local time (6PM GMT) anyway.

It is also easier to make people redundant in the UK than it is in other European countries, and ZHCs are illegal in most of Europe.

So, it seems that countries where the employees are treated better are more productive, and the UK isn't able to compete with its continental rivals despite having less favourable working practices and laws than they have.

 

Bloody Hell !