Brexit is about to give us a problem with this, though. Karl Marx was right: wages won’t rise when there’s spare labour available, his “reserve army” of the unemployed. The capitalist doesn’t have to increase pay to gain more workers if there’s a squad of the starving eager to labour for a crust. But if there are no unemployed, labour must be tempted away from other employers, and one’s own workers have to be pampered so they do not leave. When capitalists compete for the labour they profit from, wages rise.
Britain’s reserve army of workers now resides in Wroclaw, Vilnius, Brno, the cities of eastern Europe. The Polish plumbers of lore did flood in and when the work dried up they ebbed away again. The net effect of Brexit will be that British wages rise as the labour force shrinks and employers have to compete for the sweat of hand and brow.
On the subject of stagnant wages, the rate for these sorts of things hasn’t changed in 15 years. No wonder we hear so much about earnings – it’s journalists who are affected.
From the Times’ comments it appears Tim is viewed as an ‘Ivory Tower’ type. Is that good or bad? Like as not, if the economy continues to grow, albeit more slowly, competition for labour will grow…it’s hardly rocket science, I recall being summoned to the boss’s office three times one particular month (during the 1980s), and told I must accept yet another pay increase. Of course they were just as quick to fire me when business took a bad turn.
“On the subject of stagnant wages, the rate for these sorts of things hasn’t changed in 15 years. No wonder we hear so much about earnings – it’s journalists who are affected.”
Ah, that reserve army of workers again. Anyone can be an unemployed journalist.
Then how do you account for record levels of employment and the precise same wage stagnation occurring in sectors with no sump of swarthy work thieves ?
Are you really suggesting that pay for hacks is low because they can be replaced with cheapy Polish subbies … I have not noticed this , I think you made that up ?
In any case this is a poisonously one eyed analysis . If you are suggesting that by being available and willing to work your unwanted slav immediately makes us all poorer then this is equally true of anyone else who is available and willing to work
Does everyone who wants to work make everyone else poorer, of course not , the economy grows demand expands and so there are more jobs and higher wages.
Wages have stagnated because we have no union protection and it is surprising that what you may think is an old phenomena has actually progressed in the last ten years
The other factor is technology , I dread to think of the efect on rewards of IT in services . Of course there are higher rewards for IT idiots but these jobs are fewer and on insecure tenures
The whole problem with this sort of suggestion and the similar claim made by irresponsible stirrers that the wogs took all your houses is that they are a little bit true in patches .
That is why we often see the word/”contribute ” to
How much ?
How much as set against the many gains to the treasury and ( for example ) growth against which we are able to sustain borrowing , not to say membership of the deepest and most complete free trade area the word has ever seen ( or ever will by the look of it )
At heart its the same old lie , “If I make you poor I will be rich” and it will never never be true
“At heart its the same old lie , “If I make you poor I will be rich” and it will never never be true”
Your Globo “Elite” shitehouse EU masters LIVE by that creed you Facepainting traitor. So don’t come here as if you are against such a belief. Your protectionist buddies are about protecting themselves because they support zero-sum games as part of their instinctive evil. It is not even that they don’t understand the world would be far better off without their shite organisation –they understand that alright. Their creed is–from the Superman 3 bad movie where the bad guy says “It is not enough that I win–others must lose”.
Now THAT is the heart credo of the EU. And all the used Elsn like you who are their acolytes.
The drying up of the flood of work that brought us all the Polish plumbers is a tribute to the quality of their work.
Journalists are screaming because they’re typical of the class of person who will have to pay higher wages for the help.
How long till we can automate journalism though?
Instead of paying Brenda Slagg, just get an algorithm to shit out content such as 10 Reasons Why Barrow-Wights Will Feast On Your Flesh After Brexit (Number 6 Will SURPRISE You!)
Automated journalism is already here. No joke, that’s not about churnalism. And I’m working on more of it too….
Newmania,
Gish Galloping rants don’t make you right. They’re just boring.
@ Newmania
You don’t need union protection if there is a shortage of labour and bosses are bidding up wages to attract job applicants.
Where you do need union protection is where any sensible employer would sack the redundant staff and demand that the remainder actually worked throughout their shifts.
Wage stagnation means that nowhere in your industry do bosses have to bid competitively for workers.
Journalism is a shrinking industry – local papers being closed by Trinity Mirror creates a pool of unemployed journalists – union so-called “protection” (as in “protection money”) would force employers to pay more than the going rate forcing more newspapers to close and adding yet more people to the pool of unemployed journalists. That is what you want? Mass unemployment to create a lumpenproletariat for the revolutionaries to exploit as cannonfodder – are you a friend of Arthur Scanlon?
@Newmania – have you ever been to an auction? when more than one person wants the thing for sale the price goes up… the highest bidder wins. When only one person wants that thing they just wait for the price to fall…
Let’s apply this to jobs. The “item” for sale is actually the worker – the bidders are the employers – you seem to have this backwards. If i’m the only employer in the area that wants the skill on offer then i can pretty much offer whatever i want – in the same way i can by that auctioned item cheaper. If there are two employers wanting that skill we have to bid until we get to the one that is will to pay more.
Lets now add 50 items (employees) with the same skills – am i going to bid on the first one and compete, pushing prices up or will i just wait for item number 2?
I’m sure even you are capable of seeing how this works?
When my daughter was playing baseball there was a service that you recorded team stats in and it also produced a nice game report to go on the team site or local papers etc. All automatically generated using the stats data
For some reason the cleaners at my gym have all gone from being Brits to West Africans, and none of them speak English. I expect more of the same after Brexit.