dr_feelgood wrote:I have boycotted Domino's since their then CEO objected to the intoduction of the minimum wage. There current CEO now wants to bring in cheap East European labour to fill the positions that UK nationals won't apply for due to the poor pay. Fortunately the immigration minister has told him where to go and suggested that he might consider offering to pay higher wages to attract more applicants. Yet another reason to boycott them and use a local take away instead. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-25321113 Local takeaways are more likely to have illegal immigrants working for below the minimum wage - a major chain like Dominos would not be able to get away with that easily due to their size, it would be much easier for the government to get the arrears and levy the fine on them. The fact that the Dominos CEO is saying that he wants to bring in cheap (legal EU) labour from overseas that will accept lower wages implies that Dominos are paying above the minimum wage, presumably he wants to drive wages down towards the minimum wage. So this means the UK nationals that don't want to work there don't want to work for above minimum wage pay jobs. What are they doing then....claiming benefits?

dr_feelgood wrote:I have boycotted Domino's since their then CEO objected to the intoduction of the minimum wage. There current CEO now wants to bring in cheap East European labour to fill the positions that UK nationals won't apply for due to the poor pay. Fortunately the immigration minister has told him where to go and suggested that he might consider offering to pay higher wages to attract more applicants. Yet another reason to boycott them and use a local take away instead. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-25321113 Local takeaways are more likely to have illegal immigrants working for below the minimum wage - a major chain like Dominos would not be able to get away with that easily due to their size, it would be much easier for the government to get the arrears and levy the fine on them. The fact that the Dominos CEO is saying that he wants to bring in cheap (legal EU) labour from overseas that will accept lower wages implies that Dominos are paying above the minimum wage, presumably he wants to drive wages down towards the minimum wage. So this means the UK nationals that don't want to work there don't want to work for above minimum wage pay jobs. What are they doing then....claiming benefits?

It would be simple for Domino's to employ illegal immigrants on a cash in hand basis. Most of their stores (if not all) are privately owned franchises. In fact, I'm a little suspicious that my local Domino's may be doing so.

As always with these cases and like other non-standard hours jobs, hotel workers, hospitality, care workers, etc etc etc, the issue isn't so much the National Minimum Wage (although it is an issue), but the number of hours available for work, either from the employee but more often from the employer.

An employer in this type of business is more than likely looking for someone to be very flexible in their hours and days of availability to suit the demands of the particular location/business and while for a pizza outlet you might be able to predict with some confidence that Friday and Saturday nights are going to be busy, in hotel work where 90% of staff are NMW and low (or no) guaranteed hours you'll find that there are constant fluctuations in occupancy with no apparent pattern to plan to - an employee working in that sort of business will find it hard to take on a second job to make up the hours as they haven't a clue what they are rostered for next week until next week and often until the day before, but yet could finish a week with barely two shifts worked.

THAT is the major issue facing employees today and whilst its fine in principle speaking of "a modern and flexible workforce" in practice this is what is often behind people in work and having to use food banks.

JerryChicken wrote:As always with these cases and like other non-standard hours jobs ... Yu've hit a huge nail on the head with this. Underemployent is only just being recognised as a major issue, but since those who cannot get enough hours work to make ends meet are still off the unemployment figures, it seems not to be considered a major issue. According to this, from July, underemployment is still rising. A shame that all the stories about 'slackers' etc are not balanced by the figures showing that 10% of the working-age population wants to work more but cannot get enough hours. Last week, Sir Stuart Rose, the former boss of M&S, was welcoming the idea of large numbers of migrants arriving from Eastern Europe who would work longer for less. Unfortunately, prats like him ignore, for convenience, this underemployment, as what they really want is further downward pressure on wages, irrespective of the costs to the taxpayer, and all the social costs and the impacts on individuals and families. And they never have an answer to how they expect underpaid staff, struggling to eat or keep a roof over their heads, should do so. Swathes of big business have become utterly divorced from the reality of the lives of many of their employees. And they appear not to give one.

JerryChicken wrote:As always with these cases and like other non-standard hours jobs ... Yu've hit a huge nail on the head with this. Underemployent is only just being recognised as a major issue, but since those who cannot get enough hours work to make ends meet are still off the unemployment figures, it seems not to be considered a major issue. According to this, from July, underemployment is still rising. A shame that all the stories about 'slackers' etc are not balanced by the figures showing that 10% of the working-age population wants to work more but cannot get enough hours. Last week, Sir Stuart Rose, the former boss of M&S, was welcoming the idea of large numbers of migrants arriving from Eastern Europe who would work longer for less. Unfortunately, prats like him ignore, for convenience, this underemployment, as what they really want is further downward pressure on wages, irrespective of the costs to the taxpayer, and all the social costs and the impacts on individuals and families. And they never have an answer to how they expect underpaid staff, struggling to eat or keep a roof over their heads, should do so. Swathes of big business have become utterly divorced from the reality of the lives of many of their employees. And they appear not to give one.

You don't, you eat the chicken to save all the fooking around making a spit.

Mintball wrote:Yu've hit a huge nail on the head with this. Underemployent is only just being recognised as a major issue, but since those who cannot get enough hours work to make ends meet are still off the unemployment figures, it seems not to be considered a major issue. According to this, from July, underemployment is still rising. A shame that all the stories about 'slackers' etc are not balanced by the figures showing that 10% of the working-age population wants to work more but cannot get enough hours. Last week, Sir Stuart Rose, the former boss of M&S, was welcoming the idea of large numbers of migrants arriving from Eastern Europe who would work longer for less. Unfortunately, prats like him ignore, for convenience, this underemployment, as what they really want is further downward pressure on wages, irrespective of the costs to the taxpayer, and all the social costs and the impacts on individuals and families. And they never have an answer to how they expect underpaid staff, struggling to eat or keep a roof over their heads, should do so. Swathes of big business have become utterly divorced from the reality of the lives of many of their employees. And they appear not to give one. As I said previously, with so much being digitised, it shouldn't be difficult to work out how much housing benefit and working tax credits have been paid to employees. It should then be a simple matter to present the delinquent employers with an annual bill to repay the exchequer. If they can hound individual claimants for the return of overpaid benefits, it's surely not beyond the wit of man to do the same to employers.

Mintball wrote:Yu've hit a huge nail on the head with this. Underemployent is only just being recognised as a major issue, but since those who cannot get enough hours work to make ends meet are still off the unemployment figures, it seems not to be considered a major issue. According to this, from July, underemployment is still rising. A shame that all the stories about 'slackers' etc are not balanced by the figures showing that 10% of the working-age population wants to work more but cannot get enough hours. Last week, Sir Stuart Rose, the former boss of M&S, was welcoming the idea of large numbers of migrants arriving from Eastern Europe who would work longer for less. Unfortunately, prats like him ignore, for convenience, this underemployment, as what they really want is further downward pressure on wages, irrespective of the costs to the taxpayer, and all the social costs and the impacts on individuals and families. And they never have an answer to how they expect underpaid staff, struggling to eat or keep a roof over their heads, should do so. Swathes of big business have become utterly divorced from the reality of the lives of many of their employees. And they appear not to give one. As I said previously, with so much being digitised, it shouldn't be difficult to work out how much housing benefit and working tax credits have been paid to employees. It should then be a simple matter to present the delinquent employers with an annual bill to repay the exchequer. If they can hound individual claimants for the return of overpaid benefits, it's surely not beyond the wit of man to do the same to employers.

Mintball wrote:According to this, from July, underemployment is still rising. A shame that all the stories about 'slackers' etc are not balanced by the figures showing that 10% of the working-age population wants to work more but cannot get enough hours. By the way, if any of our Harry Enfield Tory-boy stylee users and their yapping pups want to debate this issue with me then please feel free to do so, I have a wife who works in the hotel industry and have more than enough experience of how this type of business works with the vast majority of its staff (I am not exaggerating when I quoted 90%), and of how the business model of a 50 bedroom spa hotel with wedding facilities works with particular emphasis of shift scheduling - or in practice the lack of such an ability in such an industry - I can tell you of Poles and Hungarians who are housed at the hotel (with the necessary deductions from their NMW pay packets) who are trapped in the job with very little disposable income left, one example being of a cleaner who had to save ALL YEAR to purchase a budget airline ticket of around £50 to return to live back at her mothers house, when you struggle to save £1 a week then you know you are living on subsistence wages and thank god they are allowed to eat in the hotel kitchen from what is left over from that evenings service. Again its not the NMW that is the problem but the variance and sometimes complete lack of hours.

Mintball wrote:According to this, from July, underemployment is still rising. A shame that all the stories about 'slackers' etc are not balanced by the figures showing that 10% of the working-age population wants to work more but cannot get enough hours. By the way, if any of our Harry Enfield Tory-boy stylee users and their yapping pups want to debate this issue with me then please feel free to do so, I have a wife who works in the hotel industry and have more than enough experience of how this type of business works with the vast majority of its staff (I am not exaggerating when I quoted 90%), and of how the business model of a 50 bedroom spa hotel with wedding facilities works with particular emphasis of shift scheduling - or in practice the lack of such an ability in such an industry - I can tell you of Poles and Hungarians who are housed at the hotel (with the necessary deductions from their NMW pay packets) who are trapped in the job with very little disposable income left, one example being of a cleaner who had to save ALL YEAR to purchase a budget airline ticket of around £50 to return to live back at her mothers house, when you struggle to save £1 a week then you know you are living on subsistence wages and thank god they are allowed to eat in the hotel kitchen from what is left over from that evenings service. Again its not the NMW that is the problem but the variance and sometimes complete lack of hours.

When did all this start?

I worked in a major hotel in Hull for two years in the early 70s and apart from being requested to cover the odd extra shift in an emergency, everyone (from the hotel manager to the lowliest KP) knew what their hours were and what shifts they'd be working.

Even in the 90s and 00s, when I would regularly stay in hotels, I usually saw the same staff on the same evenings, whether that was in the bar, restaurant or reception.

Its been going on for at least five years that I know of and most hotels operate this way to stay "competitive", my wife had her provisional shifts for next week based on the confirmed bookings, like a lot of staff she has a 20 hour/week contract but those 20 hours are not guaranteed, just a target for management to consider, she could easily be offered less, this week has been quiet so she's done 19 hours, in busy weeks she can do 45 or 50.

Its a hotel that offers wedding facilities so through the summer they often have four days a week when its all hands on deck, currently the weeks before christmas is when the business bookings fall and the "vacation" bookings don't pick up the slack until christmas week when its all hands on deck again - then they hit Jan-Mar where it dies a death so they sell Groupon deals which seem to attract the sort of people you wouldn't want to sit next to on a bus, the ones who b1tch and whine about everything even when they are getting it at half price but at least it can boost her hours again.

Next week is going to be quiet again but I've known her to plan things to do on days off and be called in the night before, I've also booked days off for myself to coincide with hers to then have her called in - most of the staff use their paid holiday days to pad out the quiet weeks which is what she is doing for next week but the end result of doing this is that this year and last we have managed to take one week off together each year.

Not that I'm complaining mind.