BT strikes to start this month, 40,000 workers to down tools Some 40,000 BT Group employees are scheduling two days of strike action in protest at what the Communication Workers Union described as a real-term pay cut for staff, given the steep rise in inflation. The union has served BT with notice, as threatened this week, that tens of thousands of employees will down tools on Friday, …
Wow conservative party central office got here quick
I'd also suggest checking out things like train leasing companies and how much they are paid and how much the train operators managers are paid .. especially when that level of manglement gets a golden parachute for a gross fuck up , where as the rest of us get a P45 and get thrown from the train with fuck all.
Good luck to the BT guys
Hint: dont raise the bosses pay by 30% then say we cant afford a big pay rise
Some of the conservative activists are quite pernicious and insidious.
They spread grievance, jealousy and hate against people going on strike such as the train drivers, claiming they are impacting the people, damaging the UK, impacting pensions, they earn too much, no pay rise is not actually a pay cut etc.
They really are cockroaches.
I think the conservative party central office are busy with other things. We don't talk about brexit and certainly don't let people twig that it and the shit state we're in now are in any way linked. Well, except for when it's blue on blue. So even though the UK is shit, at least we get some entertainment:
Her Thatcher tribute act is painfully out-of-touch with the times.
Why did Liz Truss change her mind on Brexit?
It goes both ways. I have seen Labour activists ridiculing engineers complaining that a typical salary of £80k is not enough these days if you count how much effort it takes to actually earn it.
It's basically nasty politics and both sides use manipulation techniques like gaslighting, deflection, victim blaming to get people with grievances to be sympathetic to their side.
The right wing (Tories) in the UK thrive on division amongst working people, such that they can set them against one another.
The left by their very ideology, want to unite working people such that every one gets a fair wage for a fair days work.
Your comment does not seem plausible that left wing people use the tactics of division to set workers against one another.
There will be more foodbanks than telephone exchanges at this rate.
IT'S GOOD TO WALK.
I only wish the UK Government had funded community fibre projects like B4RN far more, instead of tying us to/funding the pair of BT + Open reach drunks 'sitting on their hands, blocking the pub doorway' (waiting for handouts) from the population of the UK, from getting their full fibre pint FOR YEARS, using obfuscation and selling snake oil pointless G.fast as their copper based solution for the UK's Internet infrastructure.
Especially, when vast amounts of money earmarked for 'fibre' was spent on upgrading copper pairs to just meet BDUK thresholds, i.e. replacing 0.5mm copper with 0.9mm copper, instead of ripping out the copper and installing full fibre (in the spirit of the legislation) as they had been paid to do, through BDUK.
Hindsight shows we proved them right about both the lower maintenance costs of full fibre, it's reliability and lower power requirements, similar costs of deployment to the pole, compared to pointless G.fast, but they still delayed the rollout years after it was known pointless G.fast would never do the job.
Think how bad the state of UK's broadband we would have been at the start of lockdown, if it wasn't for the people that highlighted all this, fighting against the rolling juggernaut of BT
The left by their very ideology, want to unite working people such that every one gets a fair wage for a fair days work.
Your comment does not seem plausible that left wing people use the tactics of division to set workers against one another.
I am sorry, but that is the truth. There are nasty people on both sides. Labour is particularly hateful when it comes to self-employed and small business. When engineers complain about unfairness of IR35 for instance, suddenly there is plenty of Labour activists coming out of the woodwork spitting bile and claiming all sort of falsehoods. For Labour, if someone starts a company then they must be tax cheats. The legitimate business in their eyes is only when it is multinational and harbouring unions or if it is a caffe run by a single mother.
Not sure how you know that they are Labour activists complaining about IR35.
Not sure how you know it is Labour activists against small businesses etc. I have never seen anyone against small businesses on forums.
I have yet to receive a receipt for any small works on the house. if someone is law abiding, then complaining about such does not make them only Labour, as i am sure there are law abiding people on the left and right.
Not sure how you know that they are Labour activists complaining about IR35.
Didn't say that. I am saying that Labour activists ridicule and demean people complaining about unfairness of IR35 and how this affects small business.
It's easy to spot them on sites like Reddit as they also often post on Labour and socialist subreddits too. They also organise on Discord, post links where there is something they want to gaslight and then come in droves. Probably here too as I see.
There you go again, complaining that a comparatively high salary is not enough. 80k (top 5%) is a decent salary by any standards, it's over 4x minimum wage, and well over half the population dream of earning only half of that. Also, the 'if you count how much effort it takes to earn it' really exposes a quite deluded attitude, sitting on your arse for 8 hours a day, toiling at the keyboard (which is what I do too) is hardly 'hard' work. It's sometimes tiring, and can be stressful, but it's not roofing in the middle of summer, or mining coal is it? We get paid extremely well for what we do (in comparison to the vast majority), stop bloody whinging!
80k (top 5%) is a decent salary by any standards, it's over 4x minimum wage
It's not. Top 5% also means nothing, because vast majority of wealth is in the top 0.1%. Plus actual rich are not included in those stats because they are not paid wages.
Minimum wage today should be at least doubled given the inflation and cost of living crisis.
It takes awful lot of work to get to the 80k level and what you get today for it, makes simply no sense.
sitting on your arse for 8 hours a day, toiling at the keyboard (which is what I do too) is hardly 'hard' work.
Again this is the attitude I am taking about. Use of demeaning language and ridicule. That's why people don't feel sympathy for activists like yourself.
it's not roofing in the middle of summer
Go on ask a roofer to "toil at keyboard for 8 hours" for 80k. They'll laugh you off. They make a lot of more money cash in hand and then f off to med for a couple of months in winter while you continue to "toil at keyboard".
stop bloody whinging!
You are trying to protect big corporations from wage pressure. You have a ceiling in mind what everyone should be paid and no more, because otherwise you could upset your party donors ;-) also who would need Labour and unions if everyone was paid what they deserve...
Ok, maybe I can put it in simpler terms @elsergiovolador - nearly 20 years ago I was earning over £170k sitting on my arse for 8 hours a day behind a keyboard. Whilst I needed a whole lot of domain knowledge and a certain level (but not overly high in my opinion) of technical knowledge, to call it hard work would be taking the p*ss out of anyone who does work hard. Whilst anyone who gets paid a wage generally considers they've earned it - I stayed in education, I chose this path, I did X, Y, or Z etc - it's definitely not an income earned like others have to. I could, and did, go out and get wasted until 6am, have a shower and head into work and still do the job. At the time I was earning 5 times what a teacher was.
I wouldn't have picked a roofer, I'd have chosen an ER nurse, underpaid aged care worker, etc. Their income does put an 80k desk salary in perspective.
No, it's 30% pay rise to the hundreds of thousands the bosses get paid that puts the 80k in perspective.
We're all plebs compared to the management and your rhetoric is just shit stirring to try and stop us standing together.
I'm happy to say that I deserve the 60k I make and I think ER nurses should make more than me.
Hint: dont raise the bosses pay by 30% then say we cant afford a big pay rise
This is the real problem isn't it.
There's a part of me that's against the strikes, the current inflation isn't due to economic performance, so it's not like there's a lot of money to go round.
Plus after COVID, Brexit and that little arseholes escapade into Europe the reality is we're all in for some shit times ahead. Infationary pressures need reducing, not increasing.
(Also I'm in IT so, bar job changes, am used to below inflation pay rises as no union...)
But then you get to the eye watering and frankly insensitive renumeration increases for the top bosses and all that idealism and the notion that we might all be 'in it together' just goes out of the window.
The problem is also progressive taxation.
To increase boss's net pay by 15% you actually have to increase it by at least 30%.
People think that progressive tax only taxes the "rich", but in reality it shrinks the salary budget in the company and often there is not enough left for workers that can be easily replaced.
I'm not sure that makes sense?
Why not increase the boss's gross renumeration in line with the rest of the company? In theory you get paid a high salary because of the increased responsibility, but why should that increase year on year at a rate greater than inflation?
Why is being a CEO more valuable now in real terms than it was 10 years ago? My job isn't, and most people here's jobs aren't.
There's another thing people also forget with progressive taxation, it's only paid on the proportion of your income above that band. If you earn 100K a year, you're still paying the same tax on 30K of that as someone who earns 30K a year.
The trick with progressive taxation is getting the bands right, don't tax the poor too much, and weirdly, don't tax the higher earners too much either, and you''ll be right. (IIRC in the UK when the top rate of taxation was dropped from 60% to 55% the tax revenue increased, as people put less effort into avoiding it).
How you tax the rich though, that's a problem the world could do to solve. I did like the suggestion (admittedly comical) of SImon Evans, that once your wealth reaches some threshold (hundreds of millions) then inheritance tax is automatically set at 100%, and only then reduced based upon how much of your wealth you divest.
There's another thing people also forget with progressive taxation, it's only paid on the proportion of your income above that band. If you earn 100K a year, you're still paying the same tax on 30K of that as someone who earns 30K a year.
If someone is at the higher tax rate already, to pay them extra £10,000 net, you have to raise their wage by at least £20,000 and that comes from the corporation salary budget, which means there will be like £5,000 less in it to pay other workers.
The trick with progressive taxation is getting the bands right, don't tax the poor too much, and weirdly, don't tax the higher earners too much either, and you''ll be right. (IIRC in the UK when the top rate of taxation was dropped from 60% to 55% the tax revenue increased, as people put less effort into avoiding it).
This is false economy. Big corporations and socialists promote progressive taxation to ensure people could never climb the class ladder. Once working class always working class, because the more you try the more tax man takes.
What big corporation don't want to see is a worker (or group of workers) saving enough money to spin off their own business and forming competition. Progressive tax makes such situation much more less likely as it will take considerably more time for them to amass capital.
Socialists don't want that because if someone from working class jumps to middle class, they may eventually lose support of that person.
It also takes extra money to pay let's say an engineer (higher tax rate plus employer's NI) so that makes less in the pool for workers of lower qualifications. This then make it easy for activists to pit workers against each other.
Also the rich are paid in ways that are not affected by progressive tax, so this is mainly targeted at ambitious workers.
That's the thing. BT's CEO complained its a tough market revenue is down so we can only afford an average of 5% for team members but his own remuneration went up 32%. Surely if BT isn't hitting its targets and revenue is down then a 32% increase in remuneration cannot be justified?
Hint: dont raise the bosses pay by 30% then say we cant afford a big pay rise
Problem is the simple mathematics. If the boss gets a £1m pay rise then that costs the company around £1m (payroll taxes etc), however a £1,500 raise for 40,000 people costs an extra £60m, per year forever more. It's not hard to see why it happens - businesses will offer the minimum they feel they can get away with.
The boss is also considered less of a commodity than the general workforce who are likely easier to replace. Whether you agree with that or not is irrelevant but that is the perception in big business - CEO = unicorn, pleb = replaceable. Yes, there will be certain roles to which this doesn't apply (specialised engineers etc) but there'll also be a lot to which it most certainly does.
Maybe that is the perception, but it's really just perception that has been fuelled by the handful of 'rockstar' CEOs like Steve Jobs. I accept that CEO of a giant company is not a job with thousands of possible applicants, but it's also ridiculous to think that the applicant pool is just a handful of insiders, who are all potential Unicorn material. In any case what most companies need from a CEO isn't that 'unicorn' who will grow the business by 1000%, but a competent (and, dare I say, boring) administrator.
It is equally ridiculous to think that a CEO who earns £2.4 million really desperately needs a 35% raise and will jump ship without, nor that you can't find a competent CEO willing to do the job for £2 million. Given the average BT salary is probably in the £30-35k range, the CEO-to-worker pay ration jumped from 70-80X to 90-100X - ridiculous!!
@Boris the Cockroach.
I see you missed the real reason for the strike...
From the article "The dispute is centred on the £1,500 flat rate pay increase BT paid workers in April, a move the CWU did not agree to". "CWU did not agree to?". Back to the 70's?
And inflation is 9.1% not 11.7%.
I can't see how train drivers shouldn't be making any less than £120k.
What, for sitting in their 'office' and pushing a button that says "close doors", then pushing "Go"? The sooner the network is updated to run automated driverless trains the better.
You cons still live in the past thinking someone making that money is minted.
I have no problem with people making that sort of money if they actually work to earn it, but the UK average salary is < £30K and I see nothing that train drivers do that would justify paying them 5x that.
Taking this conversation forward a bit.
There are people performing a critical job for the UK people, nurses, bin collection, care workers, cleaners, bus drivers etc., and they are not earning vast amounts, are poorly paid, which i would state is wrong.
We have train drivers who through unionisation, have ensured that they get a wage that they do.
Those critical workers are earning a low wage because the UK people have been turned off from unions, in general, and the politics in the UK has suppressed their self preservation such that they will not take action to obtain more.
There is very little grievance against tax avoidance and non-Doms etc., yet a lot of grievance amongst people against each other. The train drivers are a point in question, where here and other forums, they are criticised for what they earn.
This is just worker attacking fellow workers, when we should be supporting one another, and if anything, attacking tax avoidance and non-Dom status etc.
As this is happening, the rich are laughing all the way to the bank. They have got poor people voting in a way which is an act of self harm, and also got workers attacking one another for having more than them, and the rich are watching this with glee as their income increases making them richer, and the poor get poorer.
We should be supporting one another and attacking the system that causes the vast disparity between rich and poor.
There is very little grievance against tax avoidance
There is actually a lot. Activists would happily lynch an electrician doing cash in hand job and not paying correct tax. But on the other hand pretend big corporations don't get away with billions of unpaid tax and then relying on tax payer to subsidise their poorly paid workers with universal credit. In fact they would rather lobby for government to increase universal credit payments, than hold big corporations to account!
There shouldn't be any grievance against tax avoidance? Most people whould choose to pay the minimum amount of tax.
Ever put money in an ISA? That's tax avoidance. Ever ticked 'gift aid', that's tax avoidance. (Personally I think one of those is immoral, the other is fine; however they're both legal*).
The problem is tax laws so complex they allow people to avoid paying tax, quite legally, to an immoral level.
"Activists would happily lynch an electrician doing cash in hand job and not paying correct tax."
But that's tax evasion, which is illegal. Unfortunatly we live in a world where people doing that low level evasion are criminalised, but it's possible for a team of expensive accountants to legally avoid much larger sums of money.
* It's just not right that you should be able to say you value the work of the donkey sanctuary more than the NHS when spending everyone else's money.
It's just not right that you should be able to say you value the work of the donkey sanctuary more than the NHS when spending everyone else's money.
Isn't that more a question of how organizations are defined as charities? Like you, I think it's outrageous that animal sanctuaries get tax benefits which organizations that help people do not. I also object to churches being able to claim charitable status (except perhaps for certain subgroups). I have no such objections for, say, the RNLI.
I'd spin it on it's head. I'd argue that the work of something like the RNLI is so important it should be publicaly funded.
The thing with charities is if they're not getting tax payers money then the definition of what counts is less important as they have to solicit donations, so have to prove their worth.
There are many charities that do good or interesting work but still shouldn't be in receipt of public funds. I went to the lakes a few years ago and thoroughly enjoyed the Ruskin museum, but I don't think public money should fund it, it should be funded by being interesting enough to survive on donations and entry fees.
but it's possible for a team of expensive accountants to legally avoid much larger sums of money.
That's questionable. These companies are rarely being investigated and tax man takes their reports at face value. Lowly paid tax inspector does not want to make enemies amongst the rich and they also don't want to create a storm in the media.
You know there is this talk from time to time from a politician "Oh we know this corporation pays unusually low tax, but look how many people they employ! Would you like those people to be left without jobs?" and then of course a donation follows.
This has pretty bad effect on the economy because these big corporations get unfair competitive advantage over SMEs. Not only because they pay much less tax, but also thanks to extra money they can afford to hoover talent off the market, so that SMEs can't find good workers.
If there is less competition consumers suffer.
There is very little grievance against tax avoidance
There is actually a lot. Activists would happily lynch an electrician doing cash in hand job and not paying correct tax.
That is not tax avoidance, it is tax evasion and it does, as you say, rightly generate grievance.
Tax avoidance is the perfectly legitimate use of tax law to reduce tax, such as paying pension contributions from income before tax (so that pensions aren't taxed twice), or saving in an ISA. That, quite rightly, does not upset people, it's perfectly legal and there would be a huge outcry if it were changed.
It's just that electrician can't afford to set up an offshore structure and get a creative accountant to avoid paying tax.
It's a perfect example how exactly the same thing is a crime if you are relatively poor vs for someone who is being rich is just a smart tax optimisation.
What, for sitting in their 'office' and pushing a button that says "close doors", then pushing "Go"? The sooner the network is updated to run automated driverless trains the better.
You can reduce pretty much any job to those demeaning statements. Why surgeons make so much money? They just cut meat here and there and then sew it shut etc.
When I sit in my office there's very little risk of someone jumping off a bridge onto my desk.
This driverless trains nonsense comes up again and again. There's a reason why they have only happened in (mostly) light rail, and that's because it's really hard to do safely in tunnels and/or at high speed. If it was easy, train companies would have done it years ago.
When I sit in my office there's very little risk of someone jumping off a bridge onto my desk.
And, just like in a train, there's nothing you could do if they did. At best a driverless train might react faster (and be less tramautised by the mess).
If it was easy, train companies would have done it years ago.
It's not that difficult, but the unions just wont allow it to even be trialled. Even metro systems like London Underground have automated operation on some lines, but still have drivers paid to sit in the cab and do nothing.
but still have drivers paid to sit in the cab and do nothing.
That reminds me of typical story where cocky managers let go of network admins, because they just sat browsing Reddit and kept exchanging memes with other admins while pocketing £100k+.
Then few weeks later they had outage and there was nobody to get the company back up and running. Business lost clients, reputation and many millions of £.
You really, really, don't have a clue, with these silly false comparisons.
The firemen at my local stations don't do much for a lot of the time either, but I'd never suggest closing it because in an emergency they have an essential job. A train driver in an automated train not only does nothing, there's nothing that they can do even in an emergency. It's pure union-driven job protection that's paid for by the ticket-buying travelling public.
Surgeons don't earn their money for cutting and sewing the meat, they earn it for knowing what and how to cut. Train drivers 70 years ago may have needed skills to manage steam locomotives, but today all the hard work has been done by the engineers who designed the systems. Operating them is just button-pushing.
Quote:
"What, for sitting in their 'office' and pushing a button that says "close doors", then pushing "Go"? The sooner the network is updated to run automated driverless trains the better.
I have no problem with people making that sort of money if they actually work to earn it, but the UK average salary is < £30K and I see nothing that train drivers do that would justify paying them 5x that."
I worked for a company that took that view with what us skilled types were doing (I'm someone who takes a CAD model, uses CAM software to turn it into machine code, then design/build a robotic cell setup to mass produce such parts... along with various IT/maintance type stuff thats a bit of a fun sideline..)
The manager said we were all to be classified as 'semi-skilled' and our wages reduced to match because as far as he could see it... all we did was load stuff into a machine and then hit the start button.
We did not see the funny side of this.
So we decided to do the semi skilled stuff
No programming, no building, no testing equals.... no production
And then one of the customers asked when they were getting their nuclear parts delivered ... we responded they're sitting on the floor awaiting a skilled guy to come in and program the models into the machines.
They called the senior directors
At which point the mangler concerned was politely told to fuck off by the board of directors and they re-instated our pay grades and backdated them to when we were demoted.
Just because someone 'sits in a chair and presses a button' does not mean they are 'unskilled' or 'untrained' thus not deserving of a decent payrate, using your definition we could pay airline pilots min wage because all they do is sit in a chair and press buttons and watch the world go by.
Knowledge costs...... and for train drivers its knowing things like signal SN109 out of paddington cannot be seen at 7.40am and that care should be taken passing it and request its resighted before theres a bloody big acciden
Knowledge costs...... and for train drivers its knowing things like signal SN109 out of paddington cannot be seen at 7.40am and that care should be taken passing it and request its resighted before theres a bloody big acciden
And yet in 2001 there was a bloody big accident because an inexperienced driver went through it, and had also previously ignored the yellow signal before it. An automated train system would have detected that signal, and one of the recommendations of the subsequent inquiry was to fit ATP.
Hard to see a better argument for automated driverless trains, really.
Which works really well
Except you've moved the safety role from the drivers to the automation system and assumed because its automated , its going to be right 100% of the time*
Except when the techs have worked 12hr days 7 days a week for 6 weeks to get the project done, and forgotten to tie and isolate an old circuit which is'nt checked, then shorts into another circuit turning a signal red.
Train stops and the train behind plows into it because its last signal is green.....
*not even airlines are this stupid
Except you've moved the safety role from the drivers to the automation system and assumed because its automated , its going to be right 100% of the time*
Not at all, it only needs to be right more often than a human driver. Given that most recent accidents have either been the fault of the driver, or due to external circumstances that neither human not automated systems could recover from, there's nothing to suggest that a warm body at the buttons is any safer. That's just the unions' variant on "think of the children", to justify their position.
Train stops and the train behind plows into it because its last signal is green.....
Whereas at Paddington the signals were yellow and red, yet the human driver sailed through both. Yeah, much safer.
not even airlines are this stupid
You mean they'd never buy aircraft that have only one sensor for a critical system? <cough>737MAX</cough>
If automated cars are considered potentially safe enough for public roads there no reason not to permit automated trains on much less crowded, and highly-constrained, rail networks.
Very briefly, you're talking out of your fundament.
Train drivers are put through 2 years of intensive training before even allowed to drive (assisted) a train on the network. There's a massive amount to learn about signals, health and safety (they're entirely responsible for every passenger, which can be hundreds), they have to learn individual routes so they know where they are in times of problems.
It is most definitely not pushing 'doors close' and 'go'.
And the most recent strike was not even the train drivers, it was the network staff.
Now get back to your class.
Train drivers are put through 2 years of intensive training before even allowed to drive (assisted) a train on the network. There's a massive amount to learn about signals, health and safety ... they have to learn individual routes so they know where they are in times of problems.
Yes, that's definitely a problem with human drivers. Even when all the information is available it takes several years to 'load' it into each driver. Programming it into an automated system, which will always know where it is, is much quicker.
they're entirely responsible for every passenger, which can be hundreds
Bit silly to put the person responsible right at the front, then, where they're likely to be seriously injured. It's a role that airlines assign to cabin crew, who are much closer to the people who may need help.
Are there many more of you to come of the car or have we run out of clowns yet?
I love the way the British press gets some people to think. It's truly amazing and frightening at the same time.
I see you have fallen for the "train drivers get 60k/year" mantra of the press. Now what I want you to do is just for a minute is engage that brain. You know those trains tell me who do you think cleans them or works in the offices doing admin etc? Are they on 60k per year? I can tell you now the are not and there are probably quite a few people who work on the railways earning close to or actually earning minimum wage. Should they suffer the cost of living crisis befalling this country just because some train drivers earn 60k or some managers get paid a disproportionate amount of money? Hang your head in shame for wanting people to struggle. Also tell me why anyone even if earning 60k should take a pay cut? Just because they can afford it? Do you think that's fair for doing the same job? If these companies were losing money then I might be inclined to accept it but they aren't. All these companies are recording massive profits so why not spread the wealth? Why should some shareholder who makes no contribution to a company take all the money for doing nothing? The world is the wrong way round but not enough people have realized it yet.
"The Big Issue wrote last month about staff at a BT call Centre for mobile division EE setting up a food bank in the north west of England, called Tynside CommunitEE pantry. It was set up for when “it's those last few days before pay day and you need something for tea”.
BT was reported as saying this was actually set up for convenience if staff “don’t have time to visit the supermarket” and it “shouldn’t be confused with a food bank”."
Has happened at our place as well. The pay is poor enough one manager said "What am I supposed to tell my staff? I know several of them are having to go to food banks". And the ballshit Tory cocks come out with "Just get a better paid job". The climate is fucked so risking leaving & trying to get a better paid job is too big a risk. You still have to survive the 6 month probation at which point they might downsize or if you become perm they decide you'll be first out when redundancy comes in.
if staff “don’t have time to visit the supermarket”
Isn't that a symptom of modern slavery?
“it's those last few days before pay day and you need something for tea”.
Here is a radical idea - rather than wasting time trying to recreate a Sainsbury in your utility room, why don't you raise wages so people don't have to use such facilities in the first place?
raise wages
Which of necessity will raise prices, since the companies paying those higher wages need to get the money from somewhere, so the net result is you're no better off.
Higher wages need to be paid for by higher productivity, and the end of restrictive practices. Some of the union-required rules in the railways are ludicrous. Need to change a socket in a station? They have to send a 3-person team, because that's how the rosters are organised. Is that in a kitchen, near water? That also needs a 3-man plumbing team as well.
Get rid of the overmanning and you could easily give 50% pay rises AND save money.
It won't raise wages. Corporations report record profits in tune of billions - there is plenty of idle money that can be spent on wages and also reduce organisations' Corporation Tax liability as a bonus.
Sure, rich shareholders will complain that their dividend will not be as high, but these parasites had a gravy train going on for too long.
there is plenty of idle money that can be spent on wages
I'm afraid that you have no clue how a modern economy runs. If you stop paying dividends, shareholders won't complain, they'll just go elsewhere with their money. Then the companies will have to raise money for growth by borrowing, and the interest on that will go straight into banker's bonus pots. You might like that, but I'd prefer to see it paying dividends into the funds that will pay my pension.
This system is broken. Shareholders shouldn't expect to pay money once and they get paid dividends ad infinitum.
Imagine is a bricklayer laid a brick once and then got paid for it annually until they decide to pull out the brick.
Then the companies will have to raise money for growth by borrowing
There are other ways to raise capital - for instance through one's work, but thanks to things like IR35 smaller companies no longer can easily do that.
Borrowing is actually better than having shareholders, because bank don't expect to get more than they loaned + interest and they don't put pressure on corporations to keep wages low so that they can increase profit for dividends.
I'd pick bankers any time over leeching shareholders.
Imagine is a bricklayer laid a brick once and then got paid for it annually until they decide to pull out the brick.
That's an invalid comparison, the bricklayer didn't own the brick. His role, as the labourer employed to lay it, is closer to that of the stockbroker who gets a 1-off commission to sell a share.
When you buy a share in the company, you become a part-owner, so it's quite natural that if the company does well, the owners should have an ongoing share in the profits.
I'd pick bankers any time over leeching shareholders.
That's a nonsensical generalization. All companies are owned by someone, perhaps the founders and their families, or in a mutual arrangement like a co-op or John Lewis, or by shareholders. There's no reason that shareholders should be any more or less of a leech than the others.
That's an invalid comparison, the bricklayer didn't own the brick.
Shareholder could put someone else's money too. That's irrelevant. But I agree it wasn't the best analogy to demonstrate ridiculousness of shareholding.
When you buy a share in the company, you become a part-owner, so it's quite natural that if the company does well, the owners should have an ongoing share in the profits.
That has strong feudal vibes and shows what's wrong with late stage capitalism. In a normal corporation owners generate value and draw a salary like everyone else in the organisation. Then shareholding destroys that, because shareholders expect to draw dividend, which is not only taxed more favourably, but also they are not expected to bring any value apart from their initial share, which after some time may be long gone anyway.
So shareholders not only don't work, but also pay less tax than workers, plus they put pressure on lowering wages to increase profit and their dividend. They are literally an enemy within.
If you are public listed and I own a share, if I "go elsewhere" with my money, I will sell my share to someone else.
Regardless the price I sell my share at, the company does not gain or lose anything.
Maybe you mean VC funded startups? As in VCs may not want to fund another round if the start up needs more cash again.
And there are many investors in various public listed companies who are still holding shares in them for years, even with no dividends. Tesla comes to mind. I think Amazon has not paid a dividend either. And last I checked, those are very highly valued companies with high stock prices.
Regardless the price I sell my share at, the company does not gain or lose anything.
Of course it does. If the price drops due to mismanagement, the company loses reputation and that leads to lost customers, and lost money.
Tesla comes to mind. I think Amazon has not paid a dividend either.
Tesla pays a dividend in the form of extra shares, but I'm not sure you'd want to use Elon Musk as an example of rational company ownership. Amazon hasn't paid a dividend, because it makes very little net profit, most profit is reinvested for growth. That makes it popular with investors looking for long-term returns, but not popular with investors who want regular income.
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The point wasn't Elon is rational / a genius / whatever.
The point was, there are companies which are successful, large, listed on the stock exchanges which do not provide a dividend.
If you, as a stockholder decides the managment is wrong or the CEO (who is management as well) is wrong, you are welcome to sell the shares to someone else who thinks it's worth buying shares in that company.
There are also less successful companies (Uber comes to mind) which are also listed and have no profits (I think they just made a profit for the first time last quarter? I may be wrong since am not following closely), that also works the same way - you as shareholder not happy with the company, you can sell, someone else can buy.
Nobody forces you to buy or sell a particular share. You decide. Or you give the power to decide to a hedge fund or something if you let them invest on your behalf.
Erm. Unless you're acquired your shares in an IPO (or in other rare circumstances), none of the money you used to buy your shares goes to the company, it simply a form of speculation on the company's future return. The best you can say about the speculation is that it provides the original, genuine, investors with a means of exit.
The worst you can say about it is that it provides a mechanism for those same bankers with privileged access to other people's money to asset-strip "underperforming" companies and profit personally whilst leaving a chain of unpaid creditors of a business that was previously capable of paying its way.
Limited company structures exist to encourage risky investment. In the "modern economy" many of them are simply providing guaranteed returns in low-risk activities (regulated utilities, ROSCOs, government outsourcing...) to the anointed few - pushing up the cost of living for pensioners of all incomes.
I'm all in favour of investment and innovation, but having a share trading account doesn't qualify.
"It won't raise wages. Corporations report record profits in tune of billions - there is plenty of idle money that can be spent on wages and also reduce organisations' Corporation Tax liability as a bonus"
That's certainly a part of it, at least with large companies trying to keep the dividend payouts and share prices up to "normal" levels. On the other hand, some of the biggest share holders are the people managing and paying out our pensions.
On the other hand, some of the biggest share holders are the people managing and paying out our pensions.
Pension funds are a cancer. They not only put pressure on having wages low, they also buy up residential housing stock and other properties driving prices and rents up.
They are working against workers' interest pretending they are not.
Pension funds are a cancer.
There are two ways that pensions can be paid.
One is repartition, the taxes paid by workers today go direct to today's pensioners. That's how most state pensions work, and it works well when there are many taxpaying employees, and relatively few living pensioners, i.e the situation 40 years ago when baby-boomers were working and pensioners usually died young. As many countries are now finding, it works much less well when there are very large numbers of pensioners living well into their 80s.
The other option is capitalization, where you save money for your own pension. That's how most company and private pension schemes work, and the amount of the pension depends largely on how well the money is invested. Shares are still the best long-term investment. You're free, of course, to invest your pension in any schemes you wish, but to describe the successful funds that supply pension payments to hundreds of millions of people as a "cancer" is just daft. They are essential to our modern society.
One is repartition, the taxes paid by workers today go direct to today's pensioners.
Which is a nice nickname for a Ponzi scheme.
You're free, of course, to invest your pension in any schemes you wish, but to describe the successful funds that supply pension payments to hundreds of millions of people as a "cancer" is just daft.
That's the thing - these funds usual get to invest your money pre-tax, so they have bigger spending power than yourself using your own money. So a rough example, let's say you have a small family business and you sacrifice £10,000 to a pension fund. They will claim BR tax and they have £12,000 to invest and could put that money into company competing with your family business, while if you wanted to invest in your family business you only get £10,000, so you have 20% less capital than a pension fund to play with and they often invest against you e.g. in things like REITs. You wanted to buy a flat? Oops your pension fund outbid you, but you can rent it from your pension fund yay!
Pension funds get unfair competitive advantage and they skew many markets in favour of the rich.
Then let's not talk how pension funds as shareholders keep pressure on keeping low wages.
They are essential to our modern society.
An instrument that will let people invest their money so they can secure their autumn, is of course essential, however how it is currently done is wrong as there are many unresolved conflicts of interests.
since the companies paying those higher wages need to get the money from somewhere, so the net result is you're no better off.
That's easy: Give less to the shareholders and more to the stakeholders. You can also gain money by avoiding to raise by +25% the pay of the C-suite. Workers are the ones who produce wealth: they deserve their fair share.
Get rid of the overmanning and you could easily give 50% pay rises AND save money.
And develop poverty through unemployment.
And develop poverty through unemployment.
Ah, not that old fallacy, the idea that the amount of work is fixed and must be shared among the labour pool. That's what triggered Martine Aubry's 35-hour week fiasco in France, until the economists pointed out that it was nonsense and she was forced to backpedal. Work and labour are flexible, not fixed. The number of people working in factories today is far less than it was in the 1950s, but there are millions working in new industries that didn't even exist then. Suggesting that overmanning protects jobs is nonsense, it just raises costs and that drives inflation.
> a food bank in the north west of England, called Tynside CommunitEE pantry
That would be the Tyneside CommunitEE pantry in the North East of England.
Otherwise we'd be seeing the bosses treating the workers fairly and that really would be looking glass logic, wouldn't it.
What's with all the American spellings all of a sudden? Isn't El Regipoo British? The US dictionary also seems to have brought its unruly mates along too, the insane MMDDYY date format and "punctuation goes inside quotes even if it's not" weirdness; okay, it's all low-key stuff but it eventually becomes a bit jarring and just makes it look like El Reg's staff can't figure out how to set up their spell checkers. I suppose at least this article didn't say "that'll be xx USD, readers!" every time £money was mentioned, but y'know.
There seems to have been a few fairly dubious editorial decisions over the past few months which IMHO have made El Reg less El Reg and more a wannabe Computer Weekly, that magazine everyone knew about but nobody read because... well, yeah.
I'm not looking to cause a transatlantic war of words and grammar, I mean I can do that on my own anyway; but with that in mind, even the American part of me says "arse".
Chapess, but yeah. I tried to find out what's the deal but they seem to be a bit tight-lipped about it. Either that or I'm looking in the wrong places, which is admittedly a special skill of mine.
Edit: plus they're giving out badges willy-nilly too, they let in any old riff-raff these days: I mean I got a bronze badge just for being all "grr!" occasionally.
I think that's the thing, shout, shout and shout some more.
My badge is no way befitting of my status or the value of my opinions. (Very low, and as much as any other randomer on the internet respectivly).
I do very much view it as virtually shouting at the kids on my lawn when commenting on here most of the time.
They never listen.
>The dispute is centered on the £1,500 flat rate pay increase BT paid workers in April, a move the CWU did not agree to. BT has originally offered £1,200. The union has repeatedly pointed out this is a pay cut in real term after RPI inflation in Britain hit 11.7 percent.
The CPI was 6.2% in March 2022
On April 7 BT announces it will pay workers a £1,500 instead of £1,200 py increase (according to the BT release: effectively an 8% for the lowest paid, declining to 3% for the highest paid).
In June 2022 the CPI rose to 11.7%.
Perhaps someone at the CWU can explain how BT in March (or prior) when the final details of the April payout would have been finalised, could have known that the CPI would be substantially different in June...
Perhaps someone at the CWU can explain how BT in March (or prior) when the final details of the April payout would have been finalised, could have known that the CPI would be substantially different in June...
Even Mystic Meg could predict the lying shagger and his clown cabinet of z list duffers would wreck the nation's economy.
The problem of course is that the Tories face both ways in public at least when it comes to wages. They give the spiel about the high wage, high skill economy to the faithful but killed decent training and introduced more restrictive laws on striking. The reality is that they do the employers (and donors) bidding. Pay rises have been at or below inflation since Osbourne a decade ago. This little economic downturn seems to be yet another good reason for the government to permit further squeezing of wages. Where do all those saved wages and pension contributions go? Shareholders of course with a bit to the senior management to ensure the plebs are kept to the wheel. Factor in runaway house prices also engineered by government policies and its obvious that the divide between them with and them without will soon be wider than the Amazon. And just as uncrossable. Back to the good old days you might say, if you are one of the owner classes.
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