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good wages=good products
last updated 11 September 2003


Getting the balance right between providing decent wages to people and being competitive in the market place

We want everyone to earn a decent wage. There are people who are more productive because they devote more of their time and effort to work.
They deserve to earn more money.

This isn't about attacking those who work hard and bring new ideas and as a result are very rich, it is about providing a minimum to employees and good business practice.

Workers are likely to feel disengaged if the MD of the company they work for earns a six figure salary and they are earning £9k p.a. The MD is expected to devote everything to his job and has more responsibility. A new employee would feel insignificant and would be more likely to take sick leave when this is not needed and not put 100% into the job.

If the MD earned a maximum of three times what the lowest paid employee earned then everyone would feel more engaged.

In Japanese firms it is more this way and the quality of Japanese products speaks volumes.

If low earners are given slightly more money then slightly more money is going to be poured into the local economy and slightly more resources will be needed in the local economy and in turn slightly more jobs.

Currently the minimum wage stands at £3.80 per hour, if someone was to work say a 35 hour a week job this would be an annual salary of £6,916.

No one wants to force employers to do something, it would be far better if they saw that higher wages were a good thing for business and implemented them.

Maybe tax breaks for paying a higher minimum wage. A government suggested wage for employees?

The legal age of marriage is 16 and so at that age you can raise children, so it does not seem fair that 16 year olds should be denied the same minimum wage.

The arguments against a high minimum wage are that it would cost jobs. When slavery was abolished in the US in the 1800's, some people were saying that the economy 'could not afford it'. In actual fact the economy got better when slavery was abolished as people were paid for what they did and this boosted the local economy. There was a lot of poverty after slavery because racist scum denied proper wages to parts of the population. As wages have improved for the lowest earners so the economy has grown.