Former UKIP chair

Suzanne Evans on GMB today. When asked who would pay the extra costs incurred due to the end of free movement and the loss of EU workers in low paid jobs in the care and hospitality sectors, the inference being that it would be passed on to the consumer, she said we need to accept that some things are just too cheap. I didn’t hear her saying that during the leave campaign!

 

There's a surprise!

 

Just heard a really ignorant Liverpool cab driver saying that wages in the care industry are too low and should be raised by 50% to get English people to take the jobs vacated by Europeans going back home. If that happened, the care industry would instantly vanish. Besides which, with unemployment at historically low levels, where does he think these English people are suddenly going to appear from?

Anyway I got fed up with shouting at the radio and turned it off.

 

To be fair though, carers' wages are absolutely ridiculously low considering the difficulty of the job.

 

It's an incredibly complicated argument all this. Taxes will have to rise, or cuts made elsewhere to fund higher wages. Of course a small amount will come back in terms of higher tax / NI.

Another example is the hotel trade. You get very few people working in hotels that are UK nationals, it is largely migrant workers. If we had to attract UK workers we'd probably be paying £20 per night more for a Premier Inn / budget hotel. Whether this is a good or bad thing is debatable, but I'm sure there will be plenty of complaints from the Gammon, when they see prices going up. "This was not the Brexit we were promised", they will cry.

It is kind of the reverse of normal Tory policy, which is pro free market, instead the Government is intervening in the market. I'm a socialist & whilst being a remainer I can see some benefits to doing this for some workers in terms of higher pay for workers, but higher costs for business and government. Will be interesting to see how it pans out.

 

Why shouldn't wages for caring for vulnerable people be higher!?

 

Another way of looking at it... I could get £10+ an hour for factory work shift depending 10 years ago.

The same shift i would get NMW. Its all zero hours agency work.

Hotels.. well if i can find it. Despatches on C4? did an undercover report... that was interesting NMW didnt exist...

 

Our govt seems to believe that vastly reducing immigration will increase wages - just who are these bosses paying rubbish wages? The British!
The care sector (social care & nhs) is already in crisis - this will finish it off & leave the vulnerable infinitely more vulnerable - still, it’s what we voted for!

 

Starting salary for teachers/ nurses is below that wage cap .....

 

Ironically if the rules Priti Patel is introducing were around at the time her parents immigrated to the UK they wouldn't have been allowed in.

Standard Tory - pull the ladder up after yourself, fvck everyone else.

 

Now this woman Prity Patel is a nasty piece of work.

 

I'm confused, weren't labour going to increase the minimum wage to £10 an hour ? Applauded by the left as means of ending in-work poverty (blamed of course on the evil tories) and improving the lot of those on minimum wage by an average of 3.5K a year ??
So what's different ( other than it's the tories) ? To fund Corbyn's proposed increase prices to the consumer would have had to increase.
Same result for the low paid, win win for the public purse.

I think she's great.

 

its just another step towards privatisation.... the government can say "look, we tried to provide those services but we couldn't attract the staff, company XXXX will do it for us at a cheaper* cost".

* by cheaper they mean far more expensive in the long term.

 

im confused. weren't the labour policies going to bankrupt the country?

seem s now BJ has adopted a left wing policy of spend its ok and you all love it. strange, very strange.

 

They should be but that would instantly put most care homes out of business. The only way to get higher wages in care would be if the services were paid for by general taxation - something that will never happen with this government.

 

See my answer to Redhelen's post (above).

 

Are care workers classed as unskilled workers? Asking because I genuinely have no idea. Seems like something that would require qualifications (I would hope), but I could be wrong.

 

Care workers are generally classed as unskilled.

BTW Skilled occupations, such as nursing and teaching, do not meet the minimum wage requirements either for starting salaries.

 

I don't agree that care workers should be unskilled, it should be like nursing, a vocation which requires a degree of intelligence, commitment, qualifications and a predisposition to giving genuine care. As for waiters, cleaners etc pay folk a decent wage is no different from what labour were proposing.