interesting letter from the Times today about remuneration;

An individual is worth as much as someone is willing to pay them, and those who decide their renumeration are us, the share-holders.

Whats it like, being you?

It’s not about individuals. Unless you feel the need to make it personal?

LHS – you asked for evidence. You got it, but ignored it because it didn’t fit in with your ill-informed prejudices. Ever thought of becoming a Tory MP?

Interesting article on this topic: here. Looks as if the DWP has actually done a decent amount of research on this scheme and trials.

Basically there appears to be an effect but it is very small, compared to the last scheme.

Basically it’s the government throwing massive amount of cash at trying to grab headlines and further demonise the poorest in society. Which I think is actually one definition of a tory.

How do you know that a boardroom member of staff has not been a superior performer and should be renumerated according to market conditions.

If someone sells £100m of sales but only gets paid £100k a year, why are they not entitled to a £200k bonus? That’s only 0.2% of there total sales?

This. It’s very easy to get all hung up on “evil bonus culture” without understanding it. I work in an industry where I expect my sales team to all be on 100% “bonus” or more, i.e. doubling their basic with commission. The commission is not a “bonus” – it is an on target earning, i.e. a performance related payscale.

No doubt there are some people in the banks (as in the public sector or any other large organisation) that underperform but hide and get away with it, but I’d also venture plenty do perform and so deserve their bonuses as part of an overall package.

How do you know that a boardroom member of staff has not been a superior performer and should be renumerated according to market conditions.
If someone sells £100m of sales but only gets paid £100k a year, why are they not entitled to a £200k bonus? That’s only 0.2% of there total sales?

Why is it that a boardroom member is entitled to this bonus scheme but the shop floor worker isn’t?
If both put in the same amount of “effort” to achieve the extra sales/output why isn’t the bonus the same?
You already know the answer.

LHS – Member

It’s not about individuals.

Of course it’s about individuals. I think it’s only by forgetting this that you can support schemes like this tbh.

It’s a joke.
The 600000 jobs if there the ones on the super duper universal jobmatch website than it’s a frigging joke, most of the jobs are self employed home shopping such as kleeneze, you enter your details at it gives you jobs in London when you live in Dorset and to make matters even better you apply via this super duper website and it allows you to see how your application is going, out of 37 jobs applied for only one application has been viewed by the employer it’s a joke, when you mention this to the staff you get reminded you have already had one warning (due to the trains not running and you called the office but they require 3 hours notice of not attending, you call when they open but as your appointment is at 09:30 it doesn’t give enough time) and one more and your JSA will be stopped.

I have a zero hours job sometimes I work a few hours each month and so the JSA goes down other months I may only work 4 hours.

I undertake plenty of voluntary work with the Scouts and the local Search and Rescue, as well as the PTFA.

Of course I chose to be made redundant just before Christmas, but what I have a real issue with is being told I don’t have the right qualifications to sit behind a till in Staples despite having plenty of retail experience in the past from shop floor to management, and not fitting the correct profile for Lidl’s not sure why as I was willing to work any hours on any day. But at least these two have been good enough to let me know that I’ve been unsuccessful out of lots of applications sent out.

What response would he get if he threatened to have a hissy fit, and demand an absolutely massive pay rise for his far-from-mediocre performance?

The banker in your example isn’t demanding a pay rise, he’s asking for what was promised him as part of his pay. Significant difference.

To be honest binners I agree with much of what you say in principle but the way you say it makes you sound like a knee jerk socialist butter…

The 600000 jobs if there the ones on the super duper universal jobmatch website than it’s a frigging joke, most of the jobs are self employed home shopping such as kleeneze, you enter your details at it gives you jobs in London when you live in Dorset and to make matters even better you apply via this super duper website and it allows you to see how your application is going, out of 37 jobs applied for only one application has been viewed by the employer it’s a joke, when you mention this to the staff you get reminded you have already had one warning (due to the trains not running and you called the office but they require 3 hours notice of not attending, you call when they open but as your appointment is at 09:30 it doesn’t give enough time) and one more and your JSA will be stopped.

I signed on last year and found the same as you, the website you must use is dire. It doesn’t (fully) record your actions, meaning you’ve to independently write everything down to ‘prove’ that you’ve been looking. Its use is mandatory.

In fact pretty much any of the IT Professional on here (and I know there are lots) would be gobsmacked how bad it is.

Signing on every day may sound easy, but in a rural area you could end up spending most of your JSA on travelling.

Somewhat to my surprise, my jobcentre adviser let me off using their terrible website as long as I was doing tons of searching on, her words, “proper ones” 😆

Way too much politics and name calling going on as usual both on here and amongst the politicians. The problem isn’t easy to solve which is why none of the politicians have done anything radical to resolve it. Any policy that actually makes a difference will massively upset some people on principle and be too nuanced for it to get the support of most of the population.

In my opinion we have a small proportion of people with an entitlement culture, some of whom are total work shy wastes of space, I suspect many though have ended up in that situation through desperation and can’t see how they can support themselves through work so can only see the state as providers.

Secondly we have an ever growing part of the population who don’t have the skills or capacity for work, the very manual simple jobs are gone, many of the low wage replacements in the retail or service sector require a reasonable level of personal interaction and basic IT skills. Some of this can be taught but there’s always going to be people out there better qualified even in times of full employment, with free movement within Europe people will travel in so we’ll still have the indigenous unemployable.

The whole job centre system needs to focus on helping people make the most of their skills and get back into work. At least we all agree the current service is destroying the people it’s supposed to help.

Maybe we should be spending less time and resources in the short term on the long term / unemployable and divert those resources into improving the service for the bulk who have a reasonable chance of getting back into work instead of destroying their confidence. The flip side to this is to accept we will need to support the feckless minority in the meantime or we will end up with a society we really don’t like.

The bonus issues is a seperate problem, it’s not as simple as a redistribution of wealth, we already have far more people as net recipients in our society, making the net contributors give more isn’t the answer, rebalancing society so normal people can support themsleves with a reasonable lifestyle without relying on the state for top ups. Minimum wage/ living wage, severely restricting minimum hours contracts and rssetting the housing market so the cost of owning / renting is in line with earnings.

Anyway it’s not going to change because the population and therefore the politicians won’t face up to hard decisions. It’ll continue to be everyman for himself and hoping your luck holds.

Solutions, no idea but we do need to face up to the facts and treat each group appropriately. Maybe a modern day equivilent of the workhouse for the entitled, it doesn’t in theory have to be dehumanising although it will atttract stigma.

There are some really heartless, uninformed and quite frankly scary contributors on this thread. The poor aren’t my enemy any more than the rich are – Divide et impera.

My experience of being unemployed is almost identical to Northwinds. Made redundant a year ago and lucky enough to find work quickly, so no real experience of how the system works for the long term unemployed.
I found having to turn up at the job centre to apparently find work, took valuable time away from actually looking for work. The website is terrible. The job centre I attended seemed to keep a lot of sneering paper stampers in employment though. Forcing what appears to be a fairly small number of claimants to attend daily, will surely take resources away from the majority unemployed who have not been out of work as long.