Have This Government Got A Death Wish? : Sat Sep 07, 2013 11:02 pm  

How far do these t***s in Government think they can push people? Having not had a pay rise for seven years and having a day's less work due to my employer still struggling to find enough work to keep us in jobs I scrape into this category. If they have the audacity to call me into a Job Centre to see if I'm 'working enough' I swear it's gonna get nasty. http://www.theguardian.com/politics/201 ... ing-enough

How far do these t***s in Government think they can push people? Having not had a pay rise for seven years and having a day's less work due to my employer still struggling to find enough work to keep us in jobs I scrape into this category. If they have the audacity to call me into a Job Centre to see if I'm 'working enough' I swear it's gonna get nasty. http://www.theguardian.com/politics/201 ... ing-enough

Re: Have This Government Got A Death Wish? : Sun Sep 08, 2013 7:07 am  

The DWP said that their overall plans for those in low-paid work were not yet definite and recognised that supporting working families to increase their income was a complex area into which the state hadn't previously intervened.

The DWP said: "There isn't any real clear, definite plan as to how this [part] would work."

There is clearly a strong wish within the current government for the in work benefits bill to be cut even further than it already has been, probably much further, they would probably like to dispense with the whole concept of paying out benefits to those who are in work.

The guideline in this story is that this stupid idea will affect those who earn anything less than the National Minimum Wage at 35 hours a week which is basically anyone who is on a limited hours or zero hours contract and like the OP my wife and most of her colleagues in the hotel she works at would fall into this category (although for reasons of our own we don't claim any in work benefits at all).

I can only speak of the hospitality industry having had insight into this via her, but the vast majority of employees within this sector are on limited guaranteed hours contracts, often zero hours - its mitigated by the fact that most of those employees are then expected to work any hours that the employer sees fit, at any time of the day and night, and to do split shifts which only serve to double up the travelling costs to the employee - at busy times the employees will find full employment (albeit at the beck and call of the employer) but in the quiet months of the year (and January-March is dead) they will be virtually unemployed.

Try calling in a hotel worker in for an interview at a job centre and ask them why they haven't worked 35 hours for the last three months, and stand back and watch the fireworks, in fact if they called my wife in I'd take a day off work to go with her and watch.

Re: Have This Government Got A Death Wish? : Sun Sep 08, 2013 10:51 am  

Anyone who thinks things are bad now, will be apoplecticif by some quirk of circumstance, we find the coalition, or even worse, the tories with an outright majority, come 2015.

The fookers haven't even got started yet on screwing the poor and the claims of saving money are simply a load of cobblers. Just look at how much they've managed to "save" so far

Re: Have This Government Got A Death Wish? : Sun Sep 08, 2013 8:30 pm  

Well said Jerry. A friend of mine is unemployed and sometimes I help her look for work online. She's after anything really, part or full time doesn't matter. But an awful lot of part time jobs I've looked at for her don't specify an exact "shift pattern" eg mon - wed 9-5 or mon-Friday 9-12 and say the candidate will be expected to work weekends or evenings when needed and must be "fully flexible". Well that's probably fine if you're just looking for 1 part time job. If you want 2 or 3 to make up a full time working week it's almost impossible.

Re: Have This Government Got A Death Wish? : Mon Sep 09, 2013 6:28 am  

LeighGionaire wrote: How far do these t***s in Government think they can push people? Having not had a pay rise for seven years and having a day's less work due to my employer still struggling to find enough work to keep us in jobs I scrape into this category. If they have the audacity to call me into a Job Centre to see if I'm 'working enough' I swear it's gonna get nasty. http://www.theguardian.com/politics/201 ... ing-enough You seem unhappy at your employer's inability to find you work - why don't you become the employer that way you will protect yourself?

LeighGionaire wrote: How far do these t***s in Government think they can push people? Having not had a pay rise for seven years and having a day's less work due to my employer still struggling to find enough work to keep us in jobs I scrape into this category. If they have the audacity to call me into a Job Centre to see if I'm 'working enough' I swear it's gonna get nasty. http://www.theguardian.com/politics/201 ... ing-enough You seem unhappy at your employer's inability to find you work - why don't you become the employer that way you will protect yourself?

Re: Have This Government Got A Death Wish? : Mon Sep 09, 2013 4:26 pm  

Sal Paradise wrote:

You seem unhappy at your employer's inability to find you work - ...

It didn't sound to me that he was unhappy with the employer.

Re: Have This Government Got A Death Wish? : Mon Sep 09, 2013 6:48 pm  

Him wrote:

Well said Jerry. A friend of mine is unemployed and sometimes I help her look for work online. She's after anything really, part or full time doesn't matter. But an awful lot of part time jobs I've looked at for her don't specify an exact "shift pattern" eg mon - wed 9-5 or mon-Friday 9-12 and say the candidate will be expected to work weekends or evenings when needed and must be "fully flexible". Well that's probably fine if you're just looking for 1 part time job. If you want 2 or 3 to make up a full time working week it's almost impossible.

There are always jobs available in the hotel industry in various departments, the hotel that my wife, and until recently my youngest daughter worked at is always recruiting, all of the three and four star hotels have horrendously high levels of staff turnover, always.

This might be a reason why ...

The hotel that my daughter worked at is not on a bus route or even within five miles of a bus route and so it was down to muggins here to get her to work and pick her up, that included breakfast shifts at 6am right through to pick-ups at 2am after wedding functions - she was on national minimum wage.

The alternative was that the hotel offered to pay half of the employees taxi fare, which she often took up especially after I drew the line at a 10pm curfew, but even paying half the taxi fare left her having to find £7 for each trip, thats £14 to get to work and back when you're earning less than £6 an hour (as a 20 year old), so you work an eight hour shift until 2am serving people who treat you like serfs and almost three of those hours are to pay for your taxi fare.

And here is the salt in the wound - you then get taxed on the half of the fare that the employer pays for as its perceived by the IR as a benefit in kind.

And I haven't mentioned the popular "breakfast and afternoon" shift where you do 6am to 10am, go home, then come back and do 2pm to 6pm, two lots of taxi fares, eight hours worked and almost six of them just to pay for your transport.


You can understand the high turnover of staff can't you ?




...and - all of this on zero hours with no guarantee of any shifts, rotas issued week by week and still subject to change at no notice dependant on bookings and demand.

Re: Have This Government Got A Death Wish? : Mon Sep 09, 2013 8:39 pm  

JerryChicken wrote:

There are always jobs available in the hotel industry in various departments, the hotel that my wife, and until recently my youngest daughter worked at is always recruiting, all of the three and four star hotels have horrendously high levels of staff turnover, always.

This might be a reason why ...

The hotel that my daughter worked at is not on a bus route or even within five miles of a bus route and so it was down to muggins here to get her to work and pick her up, that included breakfast shifts at 6am right through to pick-ups at 2am after wedding functions - she was on national minimum wage.

The alternative was that the hotel offered to pay half of the employees taxi fare, which she often took up especially after I drew the line at a 10pm curfew, but even paying half the taxi fare left her having to find £7 for each trip, thats £14 to get to work and back when you're earning less than £6 an hour (as a 20 year old), so you work an eight hour shift until 2am serving people who treat you like serfs and almost three of those hours are to pay for your taxi fare.

And here is the salt in the wound - you then get taxed on the half of the fare that the employer pays for as its perceived by the IR as a benefit in kind.

And I haven't mentioned the popular "breakfast and afternoon" shift where you do 6am to 10am, go home, then come back and do 2pm to 6pm, two lots of taxi fares, eight hours worked and almost six of them just to pay for your transport.


You can understand the high turnover of staff can't you ?




...and - all of this on zero hours with no guarantee of any shifts, rotas issued week by week and still subject to change at no notice dependant on bookings and demand.

Yep. But of course if she weren't able to live with you she'd, I imagine, have to claim benefits and be labelled a scrounger. But don't worry, that nice Mr Osborne has saved the British economy for us all.

Re: Have This Government Got A Death Wish? : Mon Sep 09, 2013 9:20 pm  

Him wrote:

Yep. But of course if she weren't able to live with you she'd, I imagine, have to claim benefits and be labelled a scrounger. But don't worry, that nice Mr Osborne has saved the British economy for us all.

Fortunately she's out of that line of business and into a salaried job in a law firm with her sister, I've bred two lawyers, what on earth would my father say ...

Re: Have This Government Got A Death Wish? : Tue Sep 10, 2013 7:01 pm  

LeighGionaire wrote: How far do these t***s in Government think they can push people? Having not had a pay rise for seven years and having a day's less work due to my employer still struggling to find enough work to keep us in jobs I scrape into this category. If they have the audacity to call me into a Job Centre to see if I'm 'working enough' I swear it's gonna get nasty. http://www.theguardian.com/politics/201 ... ing-enough You've had 7 years and done nothing to change things for yourself, and that is someone else's fault?? figures

LeighGionaire wrote: How far do these t***s in Government think they can push people? Having not had a pay rise for seven years and having a day's less work due to my employer still struggling to find enough work to keep us in jobs I scrape into this category. If they have the audacity to call me into a Job Centre to see if I'm 'working enough' I swear it's gonna get nasty. http://www.theguardian.com/politics/201 ... ing-enough You've had 7 years and done nothing to change things for yourself, and that is someone else's fault?? figures