What Happened to Wages?

[starfish2000]

My wife is a Civil Servant. On her job alerts today are about 100+ jobs for the prison service.

I’m amazed at the salary for Prison Officers. They actually earn as much as I do working part time, but they work a 39 hour week for the same money!!! Whereas I do 2 days a week. I’m semi skilled at best.

Is it any wonder that prisons are in crisis? I mean I would have thought that was a £22K a year job in 1990.

I’ve noticed this whenever I see jobs advertised nowadays. Wages seem lower than ever. I used to sell TV’s and stereos as a youth. I made £10K in 1992. That’s £21K in today’s money. Someone doing that job now makes £15K.

Is that why we’ve got creeping nationalism and a hatred of immigrants?

 

[Pickman's model]

My wife is a Civil Servant. On her job alerts today are about 100+ jobs for the prison service.

I’m amazed at the salary for Prison Officers. They actually earn as much as I do working part time, but they work a 39 hour week for the same money!!! Whereas I do 2 days a week. I’m semi skilled at best.

Is it any wonder that prisons are in crisis? I mean I would have thought that was a £22K a year job in 1990.

prisons are also in crisis because they are desperately overcrowded, which you can't really blame the screws for

 

[starfish2000]

Yes true. My shock at the appalling pay made me forget all the other problems.

They’ve run it into the ground.

 

[brogdale]

My wife is a Civil Servant. On her job alerts today are about 100+ jobs for the prison service.

I’m amazed at the salary for Prison Officers. They actually earn as much as I do working part time, but they work a 39 hour week for the same money!!! Whereas I do 2 days a week. I’m semi skilled at best.

Is it any wonder that prisons are in crisis? I mean I would have thought that was a £22K a year job in 1990.

I’ve noticed this whenever I see jobs advertised nowadays. Wages seem lower than ever. I used to sell TV’s and stereos as a youth. I made £10K in 1992. That’s £21K in today’s money. Someone doing that job now makes £15K.

Is that why we’ve got creeping nationalism and a hatred of immigrants?

The fundamental objective of neoliberal capital since 1968 has been been to brake and reverse the growing equality of income won during the post-war "Les Trente Glorieuses" coinciding with Soviet system competition. One means by which neoliberal states have effected regressive redistribution from labour's earned income to capitalist's unearned income is to consistently engineer wage depression below growth in productivity. Hence the lower real wages.


apols for US data, but the principle basically holds in European economies.

 

[Dogsauce]

If rents/mortgages were reasonable it’d be less of an issue, people are not only being squeezed in what they earn but also what they have to pay to live.

This is also unevenly spread across the country, when post-recession I dropped down to a three day week for a couple of years a decade ago and was on about fifteen grand I was still swimming in money, but mortgage less than £300 per month, no car or family to feed made that a piece of piss. Plenty of people in similar situations in the north get by just fine, in London you’d be eating out of bins on that.

 

[Artaxerxes]

Capitalism

 

[starfish2000]

Yep that’s me. We moved to Nottingham paid off the mortgage by moving to the same sized house and I went part time. I’m glad we did. But I fear for the generations behind.

 

[Smokeandsteam]

The fundamental objective of neoliberal capital since 1968 has been been to brake and reverse the growing equality of income won during the post-war "Les Trente Glorieuses" coinciding with Soviet system competition. One means by which neoliberal states have effected regressive redistribution from labour's earned income to capitalist's unearned income is to consistently engineer wage depression below growth in productivity. Hence the lower real wages.

View attachment 243449
apols for US data, but the principle basically holds in European economies.

Can anyone point me in the direction of a similar data set for the UK (and also the Eurozone)?

 

[Chilli.s]

And... re wages, the age that the minimum wage is calculated has crept up and up, according to a kid that I spoke to recently.

 

[Pickman's model]

Can anyone point me in the direction of a similar data set for the UK (and also the Eurozone)?

search 'uk real wages since 1970'

 

[BristolEcho]

And... re wages, the age that the minimum wage is calculated has crept up and up, according to a kid that I spoke to recently.

It's fucking disgusting:

Current rates
These rates are for the National Living Wage and the National Minimum Wage. The rates change every April.

	25 and over	21 to 24	18 to 20	Under 18	Apprentice
April 2020 (current rate)	£8.72	£8.20	£6.45	£4.55	£4.15
April 2019 to March 2020	£8.21	£7.70	£6.15	£4.35	£3.90

The idea of skilled and unskilled work needs to be deconstructed. This year we have seen just how important those "unskilled" jobs are to keep society going and yet most of them are massively underpaid. I've pretty much always worked just above minimum wage and when I managed to push that up slightly this last 12 years the difference has been massive. I can actually breath a bit and save which makes a massive psychological difference. My job despite its precieved social importance is still well below national averages and my landlord is still the one who gets most of it though.

Not going to argue for screws to get paid more though.

 

[miss direct]

I'm about to start a job at £19,000. That's the lowest I've been paid, including when I lived in Turkey, since I was in my first job after university. I'm a graduate with 15 years of experience... this is all I could get for now. I'm fortunate in a way because life is much cheaper in the North - people doing the same job get paid the same even in London, which seems to suggest it's only possible for people who live with their parents/higher earning partner. Seems so wrong.

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

Baby Bahn 1 is 16, almost 17, she went for an interview for part time work in Homebase, the bloke said the pay would be whatever the minimum wage is, around £8 an hour, he said. She came home and we looked it up, £4.55 an hour, fucking piss take. When I was 15 I worked at Thorpe Park and got £4.25 an hour, time and a half on Sunday and double-bubble on bank holidays. That was 33 years ago, ffs.

 

[Dogsauce]

Baby Bahn 1 is 16, almost 17, she went for an interview for part time work in Homebase, the bloke said the pay would be whatever the minimum wage is, around £8 an hour, he said. She came home and we looked it up, £4.55 an hour, fucking piss take. When I was 15 I worked at Thorpe Park and got £4.25 an hour, time and a half on Sunday and double-bubble on bank holidays. That was 33 years ago, ffs.

That sounds generous, 33 years ago I was getting £1.40 weighing the produce in Sainsbury’s aged 16. And living in hole in middle t’road etc. £4 plus shift bonuses working at the Asda warehouse a couple of years later was a fortune, most friends only getting around £2.50-£2.75 then. I bet the Warehouse job pays less in relative terms now, sort of work that’s got fucked by agencies and cheap EU labour.

 

[Artaxerxes]

Don't think weekend bonuses are a thing now either.

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

That sounds generous, 33 years ago I was getting £1.40 weighing the produce in Sainsbury’s aged 16. And living in hole in middle t’road etc. £4 plus shift bonuses working at the Asda warehouse a couple of years later was a fortune, most friends only getting around £2.50-£2.75 then. I bet the Warehouse job pays less in relative terms now, sort of work that’s got fucked by agencies and cheap EU labour.

Dunno what part of the country you were in, but Thorpe Park is on the edge of London and back then 15 year olds (15 and 9 months you had to be to start there) were paid the same rate as 50 year olds if doing the same job.

 

[discokermit]

in 2011 i was on thirty grand a year, by 2016 it was sixteen grand a year doing the same job.

 

[Sue]

I see adverts all the time for jobs in London that pay the same as I got 15+years ago for similar roles outside London. Fuckers.

 

[MickiQ]

Baby Bahn 1 is 16, almost 17, she went for an interview for part time work in Homebase, the bloke said the pay would be whatever the minimum wage is, around £8 an hour, he said. She came home and we looked it up, £4.55 an hour, fucking piss take. When I was 15 I worked at Thorpe Park and got £4.25 an hour, time and a half on Sunday and double-bubble on bank holidays. That was 33 years ago, ffs.

Youngest Q (slightly older than BB1) lost her miminum wage job on £4.35 an hour due to the lurgy, turned 18 during lockdown and has now started another minimum wage job at £6.45 an hour, she reckons she's rolling in it
Trouble is not every young person is like Youngest Q (and presumably BB1) and living free with Mum and Dad

 

[Jay Park]

Baby Bahn 1 is 16, almost 17, she went for an interview for part time work in Homebase, the bloke said the pay would be whatever the minimum wage is, around £8 an hour, he said. She came home and we looked it up, £4.55 an hour, fucking piss take. When I was 15 I worked at Thorpe Park and got £4.25 an hour, time and a half on Sunday and double-bubble on bank holidays. That was 33 years ago, ffs.

you could cash in on that nice Audi of yours, sell your 1st class air tickets and sit in the back with the rest of us

 

[Jay Park]

If rents/mortgages were reasonable it’d be less of an issue, people are not only being squeezed in what they earn but also what they have to pay to live.

This is also unevenly spread across the country, when post-recession I dropped down to a three day week for a couple of years a decade ago and was on about fifteen grand I was still swimming in money, but mortgage less than £300 per month, no car or family to feed made that a piece of piss. Plenty of people in similar situations in the north get by just fine, in London you’d be eating out of bins on that.

15,000 grand a year in Manchester , you might aswell be on the dole

 

[BristolEcho]

Also the recession gave carte blanche to companies to freeze pay while the owners still got rich. Particularly true in Health and Social Care.

 

[DotCommunist]

nearly 8 years ago now I worked at a CNC place that gave time and a half for bank holidays plus day in lieu money. This seemed wildly generous to me, but the older heads on the job were all 'it isn't your fault its a public holiday is it?'.

when I hit the labour market at 17 (2002) even the higher weekend rate was on its way out. Feels like wages have been squeezed downwards since long before the crash of '08

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

you could cash in on that nice Audi of yours, sell your 1st class air tickets and sit in the back with the rest of us

I do sell 1st class air tickets, unskilled work, pays enough that I don't have to sully myself by sitting in the back near you.

 

[chilango]

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

Trouble is not every young person is like Youngest Q (and presumably BB1) and living free with Mum and Dad

No they're not, it must be fucking awful to need to support yourself on such meagre wages.

 

[Jay Park]

I do sell 1st class air tickets, unskilled work, pays enough that I don't have to sully myself by sitting in the back near you.

im guessing that’ll get you at least 6 likes, yet you’re not addressing the question. You like to flaunt your high quality of life on here but seem perplexed that your child of the most recent generation is being offered paltry reimbursement for their labour.

something about that doesn’t click with you?

 

[BristolEcho]

nearly 8 years ago now I worked at a CNC place that gave time and a half for bank holidays plus day in lieu money. This seemed wildly generous to me, but the older heads on the job were all 'it isn't your fault its a public holiday is it?'.

when I hit the labour market at 17 (2002) even the higher weekend rate was on its way out. Feels like wages have been squeezed downwards since long before the crash of '08

I'm sure it started long before then, but it helped speed it up I think. I did only enter the job market in 2008 properly though.

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

im guessing that’ll get you at least 6 likes, yet you’re not addressing the question. You like to flaunt your high quality of life on here but seem perplexed that your child of the most recent generation is being offered paltry reimbursement for their labour.

something about that doesn’t click with you?

I'm not making the connection between flogging airline tickets and the minimum wage for 16 and 17 year olds being pitiful, no. Perhaps you could join those dots for me?

 

[Espresso]

When I first started my part time job as an usherette in a theatre; sixteen or so years ago, we got minimum wage with double time after midnight* and time and a half for Sundays and Bank Holidays. We also got a percentage of the sales of sweets and ice cream and programmes.

Now we get minimum wage.

* We all looked forward to Ken Dodd coming. No show of his was ever finished before midnight. Or 1am.