If you've got 80p in Gateshead, you've got the same spending power as someone in London who's got £1. Why, then, should we have a national minimum wage?
Brown's proposals to raise the NMW to £6 an hour across the country benefits those in Wales and the NE and NW, Labour's traditional strongholds, but does little to help businesses in those regions. If £6/hr were a fair rate in London, the government's own figures suggest that £4.80/hr is the right rate for the NW.
Indeed, the research was commissioned by Brown himself - when he argued that national pay grades in the NHS and public services were inappropriate, that a £40k salary goes a lot further in Gateshead than Guildford, and pledged to introduce regional differentials that recognised differences in the cost of living.
Except of course when Labour needs to buy votes.
3 comments:
Well said - linked
Here via Mrs R.
Of course minimum wages are a shit idea, whether national, local, job specific, whatever, as is national pay bargaining.
Far better to reduce income-based benefit withdrawal - if you're on NMW and claiming tax credits and Housing Benefit, you only keep about 30 pence an hour of that £6.
The only people in Gateshead with jobs are the people employed by the government to administrate the people without jobs.
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