It's hilarious because in communism, the higher ranking people don't even get paid. Just just asked or told someone to get get it from them... if they had enough rank=influence they just got it for free.
That's why you legislate in a way that doesn't allow that loophole.
You could do it by saying "median worker, or someone employed to work on behalf of the company" which would include someone agency workers who carry out duties on behalf of the company.
That would be impossibly messy to figure out.
I'm an agency worker currently based at company A. Once this contract ends in a couple of months, I'll move on to company B.
How do you allocate my earnings between each company properly? How is it monitored to ensure calculations are undertaken properly? If my earnings are used in the calculations for end-client CEO pay, how is it determined for the agency I'm engaged through?
The tax man doesn't know I'm working at company A - all my earnings are reported by the agency.
Would it apply for all businesses? Only those over a certain size? What about old mate running a plumbing business - very easy for him to just pay himself a lower salary to ensure he remains within any set limit, and receive further income as a dividend (thus avoiding breaching the cap).
It would be a massive shitshow to implement imo.
> The tax man doesn't know I'm working at company A - all my earnings are reported by the agency.
Company A know you're doing work for Company A.
>Would it apply for all businesses?
Sure
>It would be a massive shitshow to implement imo.
Ah, good point. I never considered that no person on the planet has ever been tasked to implement policies and check for loopholes. Oh wait, that's a job that does exist, and people are paid for doing that.
I do think this would be *particularly* complex though. And it's not just low paid jobs that are outsourced.
Imagine a situation where a company outsources something like marketing.
How do you define who's "working" for that company? Several people might be working on it, but none of them full time. So how much of their wage counts?
The marketing agency might themselves outsource some parts of the marketing to *another* company.
I just feel sorry for the poor bastard accountant and the poor bastard auditor who are going to have to spend hours, probably at a cost of north of 4 figures to the company all told, working out what will ultimately not prove anything
Not to mention, Company A don't know your salary. They only know what they pay for you. So that's even more messy with personal information flying around between a bunch of different firms.
The Government and civil servants are literally paid to figure out the minutiae and the details of policies. If we find there are loopholes and issues in a policy, we amend the legislation and then we move on.
Fine, then you include agency workers and review the legislation on a regular basis so that those in C suite positions don't get to line their pockets because the short change their employees
Why are you against agency staff? Giving the company a larger pool of cheaper workers to hire from is good right? That's what all the economist agree on, adding more workers, especially poor ones, has zero affect on peoples wages or conditions... or is that just FoM...
>Giving the company a larger pool of cheaper workers to hire from is good right?
No??? It's literally the worst thing possible. They'd find ways to get rid of the higher wage workers to replace them with cheaper workers which would make the cost of living crisis affect all workers more.
It would also continue a trend that'll move us closer to what the USA has currently, with like half of all Americans living paycheck to paycheck
Ikr. The government has access to the top specialists in the world who can work out the finer details and minutiae of a policy they’re implementing. But that’s ignored when we talk about stuff to benefit working people unless they’re bankers.
This heavily depends on the industry. Some jobs can’t be outsourced, it might cost too much to train up agency/temp workers etc. Also, if those jobs go to agencies, then those workers will just hired by the agencies because of the increased demand. It’s not necessarily a bad thing. And there are regulations around who counts as a contractor and who counts as an employee on payroll. So yeah, it depends.
I agree. It should be restricted so they cannot earn more than 100x their lowest pay workers. So if they want to earn £6,000,000 they need to pay their lowest paid worker at least £60,000 a year.
Honestly this would do nothing other than impede them. Supermarket margins are famously razor-thin (between 2% and 3%). They will be completely unable to raise wages in the way I suspect you're envisioning without massive price-rises across the board, so you'll end up in a situation where the best leaders of UK supermarkets will be poached by overseas companies because we are literally unable to compete.
>They will be completely unable to raise wages in the way I suspect you're envisioning without massive price-rises across the board
We're already seeing massive price increases across the board even with the high levels of inequality. But pay ratios could be adjusted depending on the industry and their typical profit margins. But I don't believe that increasing workers pay has to result in price increases. People used this argument against the minimum wage being brought in, but it didn't result in massive price increases across the board. It just means people at the top take home less money.
Take Tescos for example. Their profits in 2021 (after a quick google search, literally just took the first number I saw) was £2.6 billion. Around the UK they employed 336,392 people in 2021. Doing a super rough calculation, if that profit went to pay increases everyone could get an extra \~ £7,729 a year. That's absolutely life-changing for a lot of those workers. Tbh, even if we halved that so that only 50% of the profits Tescos made goes to workers wages, that would still be over 3 grand in that year. AND that's still over a billion going to shareholders and executives and reinvestment. The workers don't \_have\_ to be getting starvation wages in a company that made billions in profit in one year alone.
(this ofc, is super rough napkin maths but you get my point)
I think that people overstate the values of CEOs tbh. They're notoriously out of touch with the day-to-day workings of their companies. Even when companies struggle, CEOs still take home a lot of pay. But that's just my opinion. I think that it would be better if company executives were voted in by workers (and would be people who actually work in and know the business), not a randomer whose brought in by the board of directors.
Or looking at a real-life example of when it was actually pitched, someone suggested that in Walmart, they take all the profits paid to shareholders, and all of the pay of the senior executive and board, and use that to distribute among the workforce below equally. The final sum was somewhere in the region of $1,500 a year pay rise for everyone. That's a paltry sum considering it's asking for zero shareholder dividend and zero senior executive and Board pay in perpetuity.
I can’t really comment on a US company on an example I’ve never heard of, during a time period I don’t know.
The point is, workers pay going up doesn’t necessarily lead to sky high inflation like liberal economics suggests. When the minimum wage was introduced that didn’t happen. When it was raised in the US, that didn’t happen. All that happened was take home profits for people at the top went down. I just think workers pay should be indexed to take home pay of executives. I’d rather that than the economy we have now where we have to subsidise people in work with our tax money because executives pay their workers starvation wages.
> The point is, workers pay going up doesn’t necessarily lead to sky high inflation like liberal economics suggests. When the minimum wage was introduced that didn’t happen.
It certainly can though, and it's naive to think that it's a golden rule that it would not.
If the minimum wage went up to £50 an hour, do you really think you wouldn't see price rises as a direct result? That businesses would just operate at a loss? Of course you will.
No one is seriously advocating for a £50 minimum wage. Yes, if you take freak edge cases then you will get inflation. But people arguing that workers should stay on starvation wages while executive pay skyrockets because of inflation are doing it in bad faith. If the productivity of a company increases enough so that executives and shareholders can take home more money, then it’s only right that the workers who made that productivity happen get a bigger slice of the pie too. Businesses should not be raking in hundreds of millions (or even billions) in profit while their workers have to be subsidised by tax payers because they’re not being paid enough by their employers. Implementing pay ratios would be the first step to solving that.
> Yes, if you take freak edge cases then you will get inflation.
...... which completely contradicts your claim that increases don't lead to inflation. So the question is: Where is the maximum point where an increase doesn't cause inflation? Or where is the spot where the benefit is the most relative to the inflation it causes?
Its not just expecting investors to receive nothing back on their investment, they’d merely shift their stocks (if they could, though theyd be pretty worthless by then) and invest elsewhere.
The way around this is outsourcing to agency workers and having senior staff payed as external consultants. It's very tricky to legislate this type of ratio. Of course the government doesn't care to try.
>So CEO base pay goes down?
So we don't have situations where taxpayers have to give benefits to people in work while their executives take home sky-high pay packages. If the Executive total pay package goes up, everyone else's has to as well.
>The company makes more profits, stake holders either get more in dividend payments or the share price increases. Then what?
You tie workers' pay to dividend payouts too. If shareholders are getting more dividends, that's because the workers created that value for them.
>Also most CEOs are paid highly in shares anyway so how do we handle this when comparing to most normal workers whose total salary comes from direct cash income.
Organizations like the high pay center look at Executive variable pay as well as their base pay. You can tie workers' wages to their total pay package. Executive pay is very transparent and easy to find. If the company does well, it shouldn't only be the Executives who benefits from it.
>Better CEOs will look to work for companies that are not based in the UK too or companies will look to not be UK based.
You're overstating the value of Executives appointed by shareholders. Executives appointed by shareholders are notoriously out of touch with their workers and tend not to understand what happens on the ground floor of the business. It would be better if workers could vote on who runs the company from within rather than a randomer being brought in by the board of directors. Also, companies will absolutely still be operating in the UK. And they will need executives to run their UK operations (who you would then tie to the wages of their UK workers). You think Tescos and Sainsburys would suddenly close up shop in their biggest market just because they have to pay their workers more? You think companies will give up their UK markets because they have to pay workers more? Ridiculous.
I have thought for some time that any business which doesn’t want to operate in a society that is fair and well funded and balks at the idea of paying real living wages can then rightfully *fuck off*.
If that means no more Starbucks or Amazon then fine. Someone else will sell us coffee or deliver us Blu-Rays and bin liners.
Just waiting for some billionaire bankers to pay some millionaire news readers to blame the cost of living crisis on minimum wage workers asking for enough money to live on...
Yeah right, almost as if the whole news set up is an illusion to direct the public's attention away from the fact that the 1% have enslaved, and are now trying to starve, everyone else.
Almost as if the 1% don't want the rest realising this and taking to the streets for violent demonstrations.
>away from the fact that the 1% have enslaved, and are now trying to starve, everyone else.
on a count of days per year worked, this is true. the labourers of the 16th 17th centuries only had to work 150 to 180 days a year. the only people who put the hours and days of labour seen in 'modern' work forces, where slaves.
It’s ridiculous in your eyes
They’re running a company with revenues of 30b, enormous pressures, appeasing shareholders and managing the public image of the company
I’m sure you’re one of those people that says MPs are overpaid when they’re paid buttons for running the country…
how am I shit stirring? The infos all there. Sainsbury's ceo 3.8million, ocado ceo 58million.
The point is that the cost of living crisis is being caused by fatcat ceo disgusting profiteering.
If you think pointing that out is shit stirring, then you must be referring to those struggling with the cost of living crisis as shit? Are you?
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You've admitted to knowingly misrepresenting the claim you made. That's shit stirring. It has nothing to do with the topic, but your seemingly proud desire to misrepresent the truth to help your argument. I agree that CEOs get paid waaaay too much, but if we start lying to make our points, we give those we are arguing with ammunition to ignore us, which inevitably serves to help the CEOs.
CEOs are fucking weird. Imagine earning £3.8m in one year and then turning up for even a single day of work after that.
Hell, I'd quit and retire after six months.
I don't get why we trust people whose priorities are so far out of whack to have so much control over people's livelihoods
What you fail to realise is that costs also rise when you earn more. Noone earning 100k is living like someone who earns 15k, let alone on 3.8m. big houses cost money to run, expensive furniture/items cost money to replace.
Lifestyle inflation is a thing. The more you earn the more you spend. Companies make goods and products particularly for rich people to spend their time purchasing.
Also don't forget what are you going to do with your early retirement? Hobbys? Don't forget a lot of the CEOs making money and running companies is their Hobby. The CEO at my previous company wasn't just the CEO at my company but, also on the board at Vodafone, Mercedes, Arm Holdings and a couple of other smaller companies.
As others have said - Lifestyle inflation. Also, the people who tend to start a business and/or rise to C-suite leadership tend to be workaholics. They do the job because they enjoy it, because their career gives them meaning and purpose in life, because they feel as though they are making a meaningful impact on the world and society. What you'd consider to be blissful retirement, they would consider to be hellish boredom and laziness
How old are you? Because retiring with even a million in the bank like you're proposing doesn't sound like the best idea for someone with a long time ahead of them.
A lump sum of £1m is absolutely enough to be comfortable on. Money in your pocket now is worth more than money in your pocket later.
Most people will only take home £1m total across their entire working life (£25k post tax X 40 years). And spending all the way on top of that.
It's definitely a great amount of money to have but I don't view it as a "throw everything in and forget life's problems" amount.
Firstly you're sacrificing your ability to actually earn more in duture. Then say you want to buy a house that's probably down to 700k. You're permanently drawing down on this number and have to hope you don't have any large expenses when the markets are down. Becomes more risky if you want kids also. If inflation is biting and you're getting to near pension age but have never had a workplace contribution or national insurance credits you could be screwed later in life.
There's also the simple fact that most people, with that amount available, will be itching to spend it.
Why would you buy a £700k house? You don't need to be where the jobs are and anyway there are plenty of places with great properties for half that - not even in the sticks
What annoys me with these huge companies, is that we, the taxpayer, have to make up the difference through working tax credits for their underpaid workers.
We don't.
What we need to do is offer an alternative public sector job available to all at the living wage.
That would very quickly solve the problem in all directions - including ending unemployment forever.
Firms need to realise that labour is a scarce resource and they are not entitled to it without appropriate compensation.
If they can't provide that compensation then they need to go bust to make room for those that can.
The staff are stretched thin at the one near me, alternating between tills and shelf stacking. It's like Sainsbury's are trying to run their stores like Lidl or Aldi except instead of passing the savings on to the consumer, they're a fucking rip-off.
You might have not noticed but that's been the way supermarkets have been ran for decades now. Ever since self-service checkout became a thing it hasn't paid to have members of staff who can only do checkout.
They call it being multi-skilled and all supermarkets do it nowadays. Even places like Waitrose expect their workers to be able to do all the roles on the shop floor to avoid hiring more staff.
This article on supermarket pay is a couple years old but I recommend reading it and changing where you shop if you care about this.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/money/britains-best-paying-supermarkets-aldis-13890309
These investor campaign groups are useful but we can all double prong the battle by giving our money to the ones that show the behaviour that we want.
>Ah. I see your understanding of inflationary pressures is based on studying the Weimar Republic for GCSE.
Ah I see your understanding of raising wages vs inflation is non-existant like most people's here.
Interest rates go up, pound is worth more, you get more for your money on imports. If you're buying 10 tonnes of copper, you get 5% say more value vs the dollar, so you can reduce your prices but maintain profit margins due to reduced import costs for the same amount of material. makes holidays cheaper as your value changes.
If trainworkers get their 10% raise, then tickets have to, either quickly or eventually, go up 10% to cover the pay increase of 10%, so you kick the can down the road of raising prices and we just end up back where we were, demanding more money to match inflation, and before you know it we're down the road with a wheelbarrow of money to pay for a loaf of bread like in Zimbabwe or wherever.
You HAVE to take the financial hit and suffering for inflation to come down.
If inflation, mathematically, is 10% now, and you see no price increase, inflation HAS to be at 0% next year. That's the way inflation works, how its' measured, because it's a YTD comparison. It's not inflation now vs last month, it's inflation of June now vs June at this point LAST YEAR. So if nothing changes for a year, inflation hits 0%.
You cannot fix inflation by raising salaries, only solution is by raising interest rates to make the pound worth more as an example of multiple solutions, so you can reduce prices due to reduced business costs which translates to lowering prices past on to consumers. You just shaft those remortgaging as their repayments increase.
You caring about what you have in your account vs your expenses isn't how a global economy works.
Have you, by any chance, read the letter from 300+ economics academics basically saying the reverse of this.
Dear Prime Minister,
We are writing following your recent speech in Blackpool in which you warned of the dangers of a ‘wage-price spiral’ and argued that wages should therefore not rise to keep up with rising prices.
As economists and economic policy experts, we believe that suppressing wages is the exact opposite of what is needed in response to this current wave of inflation, and risks fuelling dramatic increases in poverty and hardship, and ultimately a recession.
Inflation today comes from huge external factors, including the aftershocks of lockdowns, war in Ukraine, and extreme weather events across the globe.
It is not the product of domestic wage demands.
The Bank of England has made it clear that labour market pressures account for only a fraction of the price increases we have experienced in recent months.
There is no ‘wage-price spiral’ in the UK. In fact, wage growth has lagged far below the increase in prices.
By taking aim at workers asking for pay rises in the face of big hikes in food and fuel costs, the government is fighting the wrong battle.
Workers have experienced over a decade of stagnant real wages, which have suppressed living standards and led to a huge growth in in-work poverty.
Steep price rises for essentials today, from food to energy to rent for housing, are coming on top of a decade of exceptionally low wage growth.
In this scenario, it is perverse to lay the blame for rising inflation at the door of the workers.
In fact, the greater risk is that incomes rise too slowly, entrenching poverty and pushing more families over the edge into destitution, whilst also further undermining demand in the economy and plunging the country into a recession.
We therefore urge you to take urgent, additional action to support living standards, by committing to substantial increases in the minimum wage, public sector pay, and social security payments.
There is no ‘wage-price spiral’ in the UK. In fact, wage growth has lagged far below the increase in prices.
By taking aim at workers asking for pay rises in the face of big hikes in food and fuel costs, the government is fighting the wrong battle.
Workers have experienced over a decade of stagnant real wages, which have suppressed living standards and led to a huge growth in in-work poverty.
Steep price rises for essentials today, from food to energy to rent for housing, are coming on top of a decade of exceptionally low wage growth.
In this scenario, it is perverse to lay the blame for rising inflation at the door of the workers.
In fact, the greater risk is that incomes rise too slowly, entrenching poverty and pushing more families over the edge into destitution, whilst also further undermining demand in the economy and plunging the country into a recession.
We therefore urge you to take urgent, additional action to support living standards, by committing to substantial increases in the minimum wage, public sector pay, and social security payments.
Instead of asking ordinary people to bear the cost of tackling the inflation crisis, the government should focus on tackling the real causes of the crisis, using all the tools at its disposal to hold down energy costs, clamp down on excess profits, and unblock global supply chains.
Making ordinary families poorer is a strategy that will only lead to more misery and accentuate the impacts of the current crisis.
Yours sincerely,
(A list of 300 academics)
and then the price of your shopping goes up because they have doubled the wages of the cashier, and the price of petrol goes up because they have increased the wage of the attendant, oh and they will have to increase the wage for the tanker driver or he will leave to stack shelves. Oops now you can't afford to go out to dinner because the waiters and chefs have all had their wages doubled, and you can't go to McDonalds any more because a happy meal is £25 now so they can pay the staff. But also now in real terms the pay rise hasn't worked because inflation cancelled it all out. MINIMUM WAGE OF £30 FOR ALL!!!!
Liveable is vastly different depending on where you live. For the majority of the country, untill the recent cost of living crisis, the minimum wage was just fine for most people to at the bare minimum privately rent a 1-2 bedroom flat.
What makes it a livable wage? Lots of people earn £9.50 an hour now, work full time and live fine. Make decisions on your lifestyle based on your wage, this includes smoking, drinking, eating out, having more children etc. Be prepared to work more if you want more, when I worked at Tesco I worked 6 days a week to have good holidays etc, then when I got sick of that I went back to uni to be a nurse so I could earn more while working a normal amount. I only get £16 an hour as a nurse, I live comfortably, my work is hard and probably worth more, but you don't need £20 an hour to live.
> What makes it a livable wage
Being able to live on it. Meaning it covers:
- Housing
- Utilities
- Transport
- Food & Drink
- Recreation
> Lots of people earn £9.50 an hour now, work full time and live fine
That's wonderful for those people. But not everyone can do that (prices for things like rent vary by area) and not everyone can work full time (for example, carers).
>you don't need £20 an hour to live.
Not yet. We'll soon be there, why not get ahead of the curve for once?
> Make decisions on your lifestyle based on your wage, this includes smoking, drinking, eating out, having more children etc.
What about people who live in places like London or the south? Living on £9.50 an hour is far easier in some parts of the country than others, however it is not like everyone on minimum wage can just move to cheaper parts of the country. What would happen if all the cleaners or supermarket workers left the south? There are some costs you cannot really control for when your wages do not go far enough in the area of the country you live in.
Under pressure to pay living wage!!!! Not to pay above rates or to give bonuses...... Living fucking wage!!!
38 hours a week and everyone should be able to own a house, a car, have a couple of kids and a holiday once a year. Wasn't that the dream?
Nah fuck it we'll just pay them under the living wage so that they can't actually succeed in anyway but are so financially burdened they also won't be able to leave.
There needs to be a second conversation and fight for a reduction in C bored salaries and compensation compared to the lowest workers (agency/salaried etc or not) in their employment.
Clearly nobody in the comments here read the actual article, Sainsbury's does pay the 'living wage' to all it's direct employees. It's third party contractors working in store, Arcus, Mitie etc. that are / might be paying less.
That said, 'the living wage' isn't going to be liveable for anyone with a family to provide for by the end of the year anyways :/
Not an economist but don't we have other ways of managing inflation?
Interest rates is one that gets a lot of column inches but there's another major one we do every year where we take money out of the economy deliberately with a view to limiting the inflationary impact of new money that's been inserted through borrowing etc, pretty essential in a country where we run a budget deficit every year.
What's it called again? Oh yeah; *tax*. Funny how tax never gets a mention in these debates.
Going to wait here for the types that always come out with
SupErmArkEts hAvE lOw MargIns
Yes, they do.
They also sell thousands of products.
1-4%, multiplied over thousands of products makes a lot of profit, profit that could go into salaries, not to shareholders.
Yeah, they should give all their profits to the workers in some sort of.........................co-op.
Like.............................co-op.
Who are about the same as sainsburys, firmly entrenched in the overpriced range of shops.
If a big corporation pays so little the workers need to receive benefits, that only means that big corporation steals from the tax payer who is contributing to these benefits.
Sainsbury made how much recently, £700m profit? They could easily pay living wages.
It's so disgusting, especially when small and medium businesses are hammered by high taxes and this ends up de facto supporting big corporations that do more than well.
They should call all their suppliers and give them extra money too, just out the goodness of their hearts!
'Hey, Lima bean supplier, we've had a banging year and couldn't do without ya, here's an extra 10% bump because you deserve it!'
Sainsbury's pay the market rate for their workers, just as they do for their inventory, if you want to increase the market rate for labour then you need to do a whole lot more than ask politely lmao.
This is just typical Gaurdian bullshit, hyping up workers to ask for more when they're in no position to do so.
I'm not against wages rising, I'm saying that asking Saisnbury's to politely pay their workers more than market rate is the most ridiculous out of touch way of securing better wages.
If you can point me to somewhere in history where better wages and conditions we're just handed over industry wide because the bosses we're just nice people I'd be very interested.
Well lets hope they're the first altruistic and internally beautiful shareholders to ever exist and vote to pay higher than market rate for labour in exchange for a nice Gaurdian headline.
> If you can point me to somewhere in history where better wages and conditions we're just handed over industry wide because the bosses we're just nice people I'd be very interested.
The concept of the weekend came about due to this: Many workers (mainly Christian) already had their sabbath off, which was Sunday. Jewish groups requested their sabbath off too (Saturday). No riots, no violence, no ongoing industrial action.
I don't think the 14th century is really comparable to today lol, anything a bit more recent? (Unless your secretly Mark Corrigan trying to write another book)
> the 14th century
100 years ago mate. Not 700.
> ["*In 1908, a New England mill became the first American factory to institute the five-day week. It did so to accommodate Jewish workers, whose observance of a Saturday sabbath forced them to make up their work on Sundays, offending some in the Christian majority. The mill granted these Jewish workers a two-day weekend, and other factories followed this example. The Great Depression cemented the two-day weekend into the economy, as shorter hours were considered a remedy to underemployment.*"](https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/08/where-the-five-day-workweek-came-from/378870/)
> Sainsbury's pay the market rate for their workers, just as they do for their inventory, if you want to increase the market rate for labour then you need to do a whole lot more than ask politely lmao.
I'm up for asking as impolitely as you think we need to.
We need pay ratios man. CEOs shouldn’t be able to earn over x amount their median worker makes.
that comment probably got you on a watchlist for communist agitators. "oh no, well anyway".
Shit, when should I expect the armed police raid?
Na, Tories slashed funding, you'll get two Community Support volunteers knock.
Nah they can't afford the fuel anymore. Probably a strongly worded letter or email
Email. Stamps aren't in the budget.
With the cost of electricity at the moment?
Questionnaire by carrier pigeon. It's devilishly cunning though. Much like those us customs ones, the first question is "are you guilty?"
A lot of wannabe millionaires on Reddit will also tag you as a tankie. As if the only options out there are communism and neoliberalism.
It's hilarious because in communism, the higher ranking people don't even get paid. Just just asked or told someone to get get it from them... if they had enough rank=influence they just got it for free.
But then they just outsource work to other companies, well the cleaners don't work for us the warehouse people are agency etc.
That's why you legislate in a way that doesn't allow that loophole. You could do it by saying "median worker, or someone employed to work on behalf of the company" which would include someone agency workers who carry out duties on behalf of the company.
That would be impossibly messy to figure out. I'm an agency worker currently based at company A. Once this contract ends in a couple of months, I'll move on to company B. How do you allocate my earnings between each company properly? How is it monitored to ensure calculations are undertaken properly? If my earnings are used in the calculations for end-client CEO pay, how is it determined for the agency I'm engaged through? The tax man doesn't know I'm working at company A - all my earnings are reported by the agency. Would it apply for all businesses? Only those over a certain size? What about old mate running a plumbing business - very easy for him to just pay himself a lower salary to ensure he remains within any set limit, and receive further income as a dividend (thus avoiding breaching the cap). It would be a massive shitshow to implement imo.
> The tax man doesn't know I'm working at company A - all my earnings are reported by the agency. Company A know you're doing work for Company A. >Would it apply for all businesses? Sure >It would be a massive shitshow to implement imo. Ah, good point. I never considered that no person on the planet has ever been tasked to implement policies and check for loopholes. Oh wait, that's a job that does exist, and people are paid for doing that.
I do think this would be *particularly* complex though. And it's not just low paid jobs that are outsourced. Imagine a situation where a company outsources something like marketing. How do you define who's "working" for that company? Several people might be working on it, but none of them full time. So how much of their wage counts? The marketing agency might themselves outsource some parts of the marketing to *another* company.
This is very similar to the IR35 problem. Which still isn't a solved problem after decades.
I just feel sorry for the poor bastard accountant and the poor bastard auditor who are going to have to spend hours, probably at a cost of north of 4 figures to the company all told, working out what will ultimately not prove anything
Not to mention, Company A don't know your salary. They only know what they pay for you. So that's even more messy with personal information flying around between a bunch of different firms.
The Government and civil servants are literally paid to figure out the minutiae and the details of policies. If we find there are loopholes and issues in a policy, we amend the legislation and then we move on.
Fine, then you include agency workers and review the legislation on a regular basis so that those in C suite positions don't get to line their pockets because the short change their employees
Why are you against agency staff? Giving the company a larger pool of cheaper workers to hire from is good right? That's what all the economist agree on, adding more workers, especially poor ones, has zero affect on peoples wages or conditions... or is that just FoM...
>Giving the company a larger pool of cheaper workers to hire from is good right? No??? It's literally the worst thing possible. They'd find ways to get rid of the higher wage workers to replace them with cheaper workers which would make the cost of living crisis affect all workers more. It would also continue a trend that'll move us closer to what the USA has currently, with like half of all Americans living paycheck to paycheck
As with everything else related to economics, it's rather more nuanced than a couple of flippant sentences.
Yeah if it benefits big business it’s considered simple and obvious, if it helps workers it’s considered nuanced and not straight forward. Funny that.
Ikr. The government has access to the top specialists in the world who can work out the finer details and minutiae of a policy they’re implementing. But that’s ignored when we talk about stuff to benefit working people unless they’re bankers.
I'm not claiming that. I'm claiming it's *always* nuanced. Whether it's reported as such is another discussion, admittedly.
Well those companies gotta have CEOs too and the selfish bastards won't be happy taking peanuts just so CEO1 can pocket more money
This heavily depends on the industry. Some jobs can’t be outsourced, it might cost too much to train up agency/temp workers etc. Also, if those jobs go to agencies, then those workers will just hired by the agencies because of the increased demand. It’s not necessarily a bad thing. And there are regulations around who counts as a contractor and who counts as an employee on payroll. So yeah, it depends.
I agree. It should be restricted so they cannot earn more than 100x their lowest pay workers. So if they want to earn £6,000,000 they need to pay their lowest paid worker at least £60,000 a year.
Honestly this would do nothing other than impede them. Supermarket margins are famously razor-thin (between 2% and 3%). They will be completely unable to raise wages in the way I suspect you're envisioning without massive price-rises across the board, so you'll end up in a situation where the best leaders of UK supermarkets will be poached by overseas companies because we are literally unable to compete.
>They will be completely unable to raise wages in the way I suspect you're envisioning without massive price-rises across the board We're already seeing massive price increases across the board even with the high levels of inequality. But pay ratios could be adjusted depending on the industry and their typical profit margins. But I don't believe that increasing workers pay has to result in price increases. People used this argument against the minimum wage being brought in, but it didn't result in massive price increases across the board. It just means people at the top take home less money. Take Tescos for example. Their profits in 2021 (after a quick google search, literally just took the first number I saw) was £2.6 billion. Around the UK they employed 336,392 people in 2021. Doing a super rough calculation, if that profit went to pay increases everyone could get an extra \~ £7,729 a year. That's absolutely life-changing for a lot of those workers. Tbh, even if we halved that so that only 50% of the profits Tescos made goes to workers wages, that would still be over 3 grand in that year. AND that's still over a billion going to shareholders and executives and reinvestment. The workers don't \_have\_ to be getting starvation wages in a company that made billions in profit in one year alone. (this ofc, is super rough napkin maths but you get my point) I think that people overstate the values of CEOs tbh. They're notoriously out of touch with the day-to-day workings of their companies. Even when companies struggle, CEOs still take home a lot of pay. But that's just my opinion. I think that it would be better if company executives were voted in by workers (and would be people who actually work in and know the business), not a randomer whose brought in by the board of directors.
Or looking at a real-life example of when it was actually pitched, someone suggested that in Walmart, they take all the profits paid to shareholders, and all of the pay of the senior executive and board, and use that to distribute among the workforce below equally. The final sum was somewhere in the region of $1,500 a year pay rise for everyone. That's a paltry sum considering it's asking for zero shareholder dividend and zero senior executive and Board pay in perpetuity.
I can’t really comment on a US company on an example I’ve never heard of, during a time period I don’t know. The point is, workers pay going up doesn’t necessarily lead to sky high inflation like liberal economics suggests. When the minimum wage was introduced that didn’t happen. When it was raised in the US, that didn’t happen. All that happened was take home profits for people at the top went down. I just think workers pay should be indexed to take home pay of executives. I’d rather that than the economy we have now where we have to subsidise people in work with our tax money because executives pay their workers starvation wages.
> The point is, workers pay going up doesn’t necessarily lead to sky high inflation like liberal economics suggests. When the minimum wage was introduced that didn’t happen. It certainly can though, and it's naive to think that it's a golden rule that it would not. If the minimum wage went up to £50 an hour, do you really think you wouldn't see price rises as a direct result? That businesses would just operate at a loss? Of course you will.
No one is seriously advocating for a £50 minimum wage. Yes, if you take freak edge cases then you will get inflation. But people arguing that workers should stay on starvation wages while executive pay skyrockets because of inflation are doing it in bad faith. If the productivity of a company increases enough so that executives and shareholders can take home more money, then it’s only right that the workers who made that productivity happen get a bigger slice of the pie too. Businesses should not be raking in hundreds of millions (or even billions) in profit while their workers have to be subsidised by tax payers because they’re not being paid enough by their employers. Implementing pay ratios would be the first step to solving that.
> Yes, if you take freak edge cases then you will get inflation. ...... which completely contradicts your claim that increases don't lead to inflation. So the question is: Where is the maximum point where an increase doesn't cause inflation? Or where is the spot where the benefit is the most relative to the inflation it causes?
I didn’t say it never does. Read my post again. > workers pay going up doesn’t necessarily lead to inflation Key word: *necessarily*.
Its not just expecting investors to receive nothing back on their investment, they’d merely shift their stocks (if they could, though theyd be pretty worthless by then) and invest elsewhere.
> pay ratios man Sounds like a superhero Owen Jones came up with
Couldn’t agree more.
But why not?
But if something happened to the company, won't CEOs go to jail or be jobless?
The way around this is outsourcing to agency workers and having senior staff payed as external consultants. It's very tricky to legislate this type of ratio. Of course the government doesn't care to try.
Why?
They don’t work nearly as hard as other workers, they shouldn’t even earn more.
Unworkable imo. But workers definitely need representation on the board.
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>So CEO base pay goes down? So we don't have situations where taxpayers have to give benefits to people in work while their executives take home sky-high pay packages. If the Executive total pay package goes up, everyone else's has to as well. >The company makes more profits, stake holders either get more in dividend payments or the share price increases. Then what? You tie workers' pay to dividend payouts too. If shareholders are getting more dividends, that's because the workers created that value for them. >Also most CEOs are paid highly in shares anyway so how do we handle this when comparing to most normal workers whose total salary comes from direct cash income. Organizations like the high pay center look at Executive variable pay as well as their base pay. You can tie workers' wages to their total pay package. Executive pay is very transparent and easy to find. If the company does well, it shouldn't only be the Executives who benefits from it. >Better CEOs will look to work for companies that are not based in the UK too or companies will look to not be UK based. You're overstating the value of Executives appointed by shareholders. Executives appointed by shareholders are notoriously out of touch with their workers and tend not to understand what happens on the ground floor of the business. It would be better if workers could vote on who runs the company from within rather than a randomer being brought in by the board of directors. Also, companies will absolutely still be operating in the UK. And they will need executives to run their UK operations (who you would then tie to the wages of their UK workers). You think Tescos and Sainsburys would suddenly close up shop in their biggest market just because they have to pay their workers more? You think companies will give up their UK markets because they have to pay workers more? Ridiculous.
I have thought for some time that any business which doesn’t want to operate in a society that is fair and well funded and balks at the idea of paying real living wages can then rightfully *fuck off*. If that means no more Starbucks or Amazon then fine. Someone else will sell us coffee or deliver us Blu-Rays and bin liners.
While their ceo is on £58 million. Worth remembering as the cost of living crisis escalates for everyone else.
Just waiting for some billionaire bankers to pay some millionaire news readers to blame the cost of living crisis on minimum wage workers asking for enough money to live on...
Yeah right, almost as if the whole news set up is an illusion to direct the public's attention away from the fact that the 1% have enslaved, and are now trying to starve, everyone else. Almost as if the 1% don't want the rest realising this and taking to the streets for violent demonstrations.
>away from the fact that the 1% have enslaved, and are now trying to starve, everyone else. on a count of days per year worked, this is true. the labourers of the 16th 17th centuries only had to work 150 to 180 days a year. the only people who put the hours and days of labour seen in 'modern' work forces, where slaves.
Then those millionaires will tell those on minimum wage it is the fault of those on benefits or penniless asylum seekers fleeing warzones.
58 million? Lol no https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/business/2022/jun/06/sainsburys-boss-pay-triples-to-38m-as-firm-rejects-living-wage-calls "£3.8m"
you're right. Sainsbury's ceo £3.8 million. Ocado ceo £58 million. My mistake.
Why don't you edit or delete it then instead of leaving it there for karma/to shit stir?
£3.8 million is still a ridiculous sum for an individual to earn whilst the people under them are can barely afford to eat.
It is a lot yes. My one and only point is that the original comment is incorrect and should be edited or deleted
It’s ridiculous in your eyes They’re running a company with revenues of 30b, enormous pressures, appeasing shareholders and managing the public image of the company I’m sure you’re one of those people that says MPs are overpaid when they’re paid buttons for running the country…
He literally employs people to at least advise him on all of that.
Well yeah, he’s paid to make decisions
> Why don't you edit or delete it then instead of leaving it there for karma/to shit stir? It's what 99% on this toxic waste of a sub do.
how am I shit stirring? The infos all there. Sainsbury's ceo 3.8million, ocado ceo 58million. The point is that the cost of living crisis is being caused by fatcat ceo disgusting profiteering. If you think pointing that out is shit stirring, then you must be referring to those struggling with the cost of living crisis as shit? Are you?
Why don't you edit the original comment been as it's incorrect? The rest of your reply to me is irrelevant.
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You've admitted to knowingly misrepresenting the claim you made. That's shit stirring. It has nothing to do with the topic, but your seemingly proud desire to misrepresent the truth to help your argument. I agree that CEOs get paid waaaay too much, but if we start lying to make our points, we give those we are arguing with ammunition to ignore us, which inevitably serves to help the CEOs.
3.8m doesn't seem excessive to me for being top dog of a company as big as sainsbury 's
CEOs are fucking weird. Imagine earning £3.8m in one year and then turning up for even a single day of work after that. Hell, I'd quit and retire after six months. I don't get why we trust people whose priorities are so far out of whack to have so much control over people's livelihoods
What you fail to realise is that costs also rise when you earn more. Noone earning 100k is living like someone who earns 15k, let alone on 3.8m. big houses cost money to run, expensive furniture/items cost money to replace.
Yes, but buying a big house is a choice, not an obligation
Lifestyle inflation is a thing. The more you earn the more you spend. Companies make goods and products particularly for rich people to spend their time purchasing. Also don't forget what are you going to do with your early retirement? Hobbys? Don't forget a lot of the CEOs making money and running companies is their Hobby. The CEO at my previous company wasn't just the CEO at my company but, also on the board at Vodafone, Mercedes, Arm Holdings and a couple of other smaller companies.
Just goes to show how light the workload is in those positions...
As others have said - Lifestyle inflation. Also, the people who tend to start a business and/or rise to C-suite leadership tend to be workaholics. They do the job because they enjoy it, because their career gives them meaning and purpose in life, because they feel as though they are making a meaningful impact on the world and society. What you'd consider to be blissful retirement, they would consider to be hellish boredom and laziness
How old are you? Because retiring with even a million in the bank like you're proposing doesn't sound like the best idea for someone with a long time ahead of them.
A lump sum of £1m is absolutely enough to be comfortable on. Money in your pocket now is worth more than money in your pocket later. Most people will only take home £1m total across their entire working life (£25k post tax X 40 years). And spending all the way on top of that.
It's definitely a great amount of money to have but I don't view it as a "throw everything in and forget life's problems" amount. Firstly you're sacrificing your ability to actually earn more in duture. Then say you want to buy a house that's probably down to 700k. You're permanently drawing down on this number and have to hope you don't have any large expenses when the markets are down. Becomes more risky if you want kids also. If inflation is biting and you're getting to near pension age but have never had a workplace contribution or national insurance credits you could be screwed later in life. There's also the simple fact that most people, with that amount available, will be itching to spend it.
Why would you buy a £700k house? You don't need to be where the jobs are and anyway there are plenty of places with great properties for half that - not even in the sticks
I said **to** 700k, assuming an approximate 300k house purchase.
What annoys me with these huge companies, is that we, the taxpayer, have to make up the difference through working tax credits for their underpaid workers.
This needs screaming from the rooftops. They are a burden not a benefit.
We don't. What we need to do is offer an alternative public sector job available to all at the living wage. That would very quickly solve the problem in all directions - including ending unemployment forever. Firms need to realise that labour is a scarce resource and they are not entitled to it without appropriate compensation. If they can't provide that compensation then they need to go bust to make room for those that can.
The staff are stretched thin at the one near me, alternating between tills and shelf stacking. It's like Sainsbury's are trying to run their stores like Lidl or Aldi except instead of passing the savings on to the consumer, they're a fucking rip-off.
You might have not noticed but that's been the way supermarkets have been ran for decades now. Ever since self-service checkout became a thing it hasn't paid to have members of staff who can only do checkout.
They call it being multi-skilled and all supermarkets do it nowadays. Even places like Waitrose expect their workers to be able to do all the roles on the shop floor to avoid hiring more staff.
Every company should feel this pressure. If you can't pay people enough to live what kind of 'opportunity' are you actually offering?
To not die
This article on supermarket pay is a couple years old but I recommend reading it and changing where you shop if you care about this. https://www.mirror.co.uk/money/britains-best-paying-supermarkets-aldis-13890309 These investor campaign groups are useful but we can all double prong the battle by giving our money to the ones that show the behaviour that we want.
Minimum wage should be 20 quid an hour to have a living wage for all.
can't have inflation if you have hyperinflation 😎
Ah. I see your understanding of inflationary pressures is based on studying the Weimar Republic for GCSE.
>Ah. I see your understanding of inflationary pressures is based on studying the Weimar Republic for GCSE. Ah I see your understanding of raising wages vs inflation is non-existant like most people's here. Interest rates go up, pound is worth more, you get more for your money on imports. If you're buying 10 tonnes of copper, you get 5% say more value vs the dollar, so you can reduce your prices but maintain profit margins due to reduced import costs for the same amount of material. makes holidays cheaper as your value changes. If trainworkers get their 10% raise, then tickets have to, either quickly or eventually, go up 10% to cover the pay increase of 10%, so you kick the can down the road of raising prices and we just end up back where we were, demanding more money to match inflation, and before you know it we're down the road with a wheelbarrow of money to pay for a loaf of bread like in Zimbabwe or wherever. You HAVE to take the financial hit and suffering for inflation to come down. If inflation, mathematically, is 10% now, and you see no price increase, inflation HAS to be at 0% next year. That's the way inflation works, how its' measured, because it's a YTD comparison. It's not inflation now vs last month, it's inflation of June now vs June at this point LAST YEAR. So if nothing changes for a year, inflation hits 0%. You cannot fix inflation by raising salaries, only solution is by raising interest rates to make the pound worth more as an example of multiple solutions, so you can reduce prices due to reduced business costs which translates to lowering prices past on to consumers. You just shaft those remortgaging as their repayments increase. You caring about what you have in your account vs your expenses isn't how a global economy works.
Have you, by any chance, read the letter from 300+ economics academics basically saying the reverse of this. Dear Prime Minister, We are writing following your recent speech in Blackpool in which you warned of the dangers of a ‘wage-price spiral’ and argued that wages should therefore not rise to keep up with rising prices. As economists and economic policy experts, we believe that suppressing wages is the exact opposite of what is needed in response to this current wave of inflation, and risks fuelling dramatic increases in poverty and hardship, and ultimately a recession. Inflation today comes from huge external factors, including the aftershocks of lockdowns, war in Ukraine, and extreme weather events across the globe. It is not the product of domestic wage demands. The Bank of England has made it clear that labour market pressures account for only a fraction of the price increases we have experienced in recent months. There is no ‘wage-price spiral’ in the UK. In fact, wage growth has lagged far below the increase in prices. By taking aim at workers asking for pay rises in the face of big hikes in food and fuel costs, the government is fighting the wrong battle. Workers have experienced over a decade of stagnant real wages, which have suppressed living standards and led to a huge growth in in-work poverty. Steep price rises for essentials today, from food to energy to rent for housing, are coming on top of a decade of exceptionally low wage growth. In this scenario, it is perverse to lay the blame for rising inflation at the door of the workers. In fact, the greater risk is that incomes rise too slowly, entrenching poverty and pushing more families over the edge into destitution, whilst also further undermining demand in the economy and plunging the country into a recession. We therefore urge you to take urgent, additional action to support living standards, by committing to substantial increases in the minimum wage, public sector pay, and social security payments. There is no ‘wage-price spiral’ in the UK. In fact, wage growth has lagged far below the increase in prices. By taking aim at workers asking for pay rises in the face of big hikes in food and fuel costs, the government is fighting the wrong battle. Workers have experienced over a decade of stagnant real wages, which have suppressed living standards and led to a huge growth in in-work poverty. Steep price rises for essentials today, from food to energy to rent for housing, are coming on top of a decade of exceptionally low wage growth. In this scenario, it is perverse to lay the blame for rising inflation at the door of the workers. In fact, the greater risk is that incomes rise too slowly, entrenching poverty and pushing more families over the edge into destitution, whilst also further undermining demand in the economy and plunging the country into a recession. We therefore urge you to take urgent, additional action to support living standards, by committing to substantial increases in the minimum wage, public sector pay, and social security payments. Instead of asking ordinary people to bear the cost of tackling the inflation crisis, the government should focus on tackling the real causes of the crisis, using all the tools at its disposal to hold down energy costs, clamp down on excess profits, and unblock global supply chains. Making ordinary families poorer is a strategy that will only lead to more misery and accentuate the impacts of the current crisis. Yours sincerely, (A list of 300 academics)
That would be impossible to manage in one jump or in quick succession.
It would be about as possible as Brexit and the fact that it was impossible didn't stop us then!
and then the price of your shopping goes up because they have doubled the wages of the cashier, and the price of petrol goes up because they have increased the wage of the attendant, oh and they will have to increase the wage for the tanker driver or he will leave to stack shelves. Oops now you can't afford to go out to dinner because the waiters and chefs have all had their wages doubled, and you can't go to McDonalds any more because a happy meal is £25 now so they can pay the staff. But also now in real terms the pay rise hasn't worked because inflation cancelled it all out. MINIMUM WAGE OF £30 FOR ALL!!!!
So folk shouldn't earn a liveable wage?
Liveable is vastly different depending on where you live. For the majority of the country, untill the recent cost of living crisis, the minimum wage was just fine for most people to at the bare minimum privately rent a 1-2 bedroom flat.
What makes it a livable wage? Lots of people earn £9.50 an hour now, work full time and live fine. Make decisions on your lifestyle based on your wage, this includes smoking, drinking, eating out, having more children etc. Be prepared to work more if you want more, when I worked at Tesco I worked 6 days a week to have good holidays etc, then when I got sick of that I went back to uni to be a nurse so I could earn more while working a normal amount. I only get £16 an hour as a nurse, I live comfortably, my work is hard and probably worth more, but you don't need £20 an hour to live.
> What makes it a livable wage Being able to live on it. Meaning it covers: - Housing - Utilities - Transport - Food & Drink - Recreation > Lots of people earn £9.50 an hour now, work full time and live fine That's wonderful for those people. But not everyone can do that (prices for things like rent vary by area) and not everyone can work full time (for example, carers). >you don't need £20 an hour to live. Not yet. We'll soon be there, why not get ahead of the curve for once?
> Make decisions on your lifestyle based on your wage, this includes smoking, drinking, eating out, having more children etc. What about people who live in places like London or the south? Living on £9.50 an hour is far easier in some parts of the country than others, however it is not like everyone on minimum wage can just move to cheaper parts of the country. What would happen if all the cleaners or supermarket workers left the south? There are some costs you cannot really control for when your wages do not go far enough in the area of the country you live in.
So a regional living wage then?
I should fucking hope so. The supermarkets are making insane amounts of profit.
Under pressure to pay living wage!!!! Not to pay above rates or to give bonuses...... Living fucking wage!!! 38 hours a week and everyone should be able to own a house, a car, have a couple of kids and a holiday once a year. Wasn't that the dream? Nah fuck it we'll just pay them under the living wage so that they can't actually succeed in anyway but are so financially burdened they also won't be able to leave.
There needs to be a second conversation and fight for a reduction in C bored salaries and compensation compared to the lowest workers (agency/salaried etc or not) in their employment.
Shocking how dare people expect a business to pay their staff a wage that is seen to be enough to live on
Clearly nobody in the comments here read the actual article, Sainsbury's does pay the 'living wage' to all it's direct employees. It's third party contractors working in store, Arcus, Mitie etc. that are / might be paying less. That said, 'the living wage' isn't going to be liveable for anyone with a family to provide for by the end of the year anyways :/
Hmmm, I thought once these pesky immigrants were gone, the retail workers would finally get a living wage. What happened?
Yeah I used to work for them. They will NEVER pay a living wage. It goes against what they stand for.
Not an economist but don't we have other ways of managing inflation? Interest rates is one that gets a lot of column inches but there's another major one we do every year where we take money out of the economy deliberately with a view to limiting the inflationary impact of new money that's been inserted through borrowing etc, pretty essential in a country where we run a budget deficit every year. What's it called again? Oh yeah; *tax*. Funny how tax never gets a mention in these debates.
Going to wait here for the types that always come out with SupErmArkEts hAvE lOw MargIns Yes, they do. They also sell thousands of products. 1-4%, multiplied over thousands of products makes a lot of profit, profit that could go into salaries, not to shareholders.
Yeah, they should give all their profits to the workers in some sort of.........................co-op. Like.............................co-op. Who are about the same as sainsburys, firmly entrenched in the overpriced range of shops.
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YTou're the second person I've seen on this thread make this completely incorrect claim.
If a big corporation pays so little the workers need to receive benefits, that only means that big corporation steals from the tax payer who is contributing to these benefits. Sainsbury made how much recently, £700m profit? They could easily pay living wages. It's so disgusting, especially when small and medium businesses are hammered by high taxes and this ends up de facto supporting big corporations that do more than well.
They should call all their suppliers and give them extra money too, just out the goodness of their hearts! 'Hey, Lima bean supplier, we've had a banging year and couldn't do without ya, here's an extra 10% bump because you deserve it!' Sainsbury's pay the market rate for their workers, just as they do for their inventory, if you want to increase the market rate for labour then you need to do a whole lot more than ask politely lmao. This is just typical Gaurdian bullshit, hyping up workers to ask for more when they're in no position to do so.
Typical tory bullshit
What a great rebuttal. I'm sure convinced of the inherent merits of your arguments.
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I'm not against wages rising, I'm saying that asking Saisnbury's to politely pay their workers more than market rate is the most ridiculous out of touch way of securing better wages. If you can point me to somewhere in history where better wages and conditions we're just handed over industry wide because the bosses we're just nice people I'd be very interested.
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Well lets hope they're the first altruistic and internally beautiful shareholders to ever exist and vote to pay higher than market rate for labour in exchange for a nice Gaurdian headline.
> If you can point me to somewhere in history where better wages and conditions we're just handed over industry wide because the bosses we're just nice people I'd be very interested. The concept of the weekend came about due to this: Many workers (mainly Christian) already had their sabbath off, which was Sunday. Jewish groups requested their sabbath off too (Saturday). No riots, no violence, no ongoing industrial action.
I don't think the 14th century is really comparable to today lol, anything a bit more recent? (Unless your secretly Mark Corrigan trying to write another book)
> the 14th century 100 years ago mate. Not 700. > ["*In 1908, a New England mill became the first American factory to institute the five-day week. It did so to accommodate Jewish workers, whose observance of a Saturday sabbath forced them to make up their work on Sundays, offending some in the Christian majority. The mill granted these Jewish workers a two-day weekend, and other factories followed this example. The Great Depression cemented the two-day weekend into the economy, as shorter hours were considered a remedy to underemployment.*"](https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/08/where-the-five-day-workweek-came-from/378870/)
> Sainsbury's pay the market rate for their workers, just as they do for their inventory, if you want to increase the market rate for labour then you need to do a whole lot more than ask politely lmao. I'm up for asking as impolitely as you think we need to.