Living Wage

[sandall]

I know the subject of how much do we think we are worth has come up before, but I was a bit gobsmacked at the job ad that briefly appeared in Sound (now in Sits Vac) for an experienced technician on a short-term contract at £8.21 p/h !! That's 54p less than the Living Wage Foundation's "living wage" & only 38p more than the Government's National Living Wage. I wonder what they offer for non-skilled staff.

[richard_cooper]

I know the subject of how much do we think we are worth has come up before, but I was a bit gobsmacked at the job ad that briefly appeared in Sound (now in Sits Vac) for an experienced technician on a short-term contract at £8.21 p/h !! That's 54p less than the Living Wage Foundation's "living wage" & only 38p more than the Government's National Living Wage. I wonder what they offer for non-skilled staff.

 

Well seasonal serving staff get £6.86-£7.83/hr depending on age.

 

Linky

[paulears]

This is extremely common, and the living wage is aspirational in many parts of the country, where it's just not on the board. NMW is a fixed price set by the government for so many jobs and skills and experience is unimportant. I live in an area where seasonal working is the standard for virtually everything where being a supervisor or team leader adds maybe 50p and hour. Employers only have people for short periods, and there is no need to pay higher. Of course they should be paid more, but in the jobs where you headcount staff and if the right number are present you open the door, or turn on the machinery, that's how it works. It's only when you cannot get staff who can do specific roles that you have to pay more. At the moment, people will work for this money, so from a business perspective, it's not an issue.

[richard_cooper]

This is extremely common, and the living wage is aspirational in many parts of the country, where it's just not on the board. NMW is a fixed price set by the government for so many jobs and skills and experience is unimportant. I live in an area where seasonal working is the standard for virtually everything where being a supervisor or team leader adds maybe 50p and hour. Employers only have people for short periods, and there is no need to pay higher. Of course they should be paid more, but in the jobs where you headcount staff and if the right number are present you open the door, or turn on the machinery, that's how it works. It's only when you cannot get staff who can do specific roles that you have to pay more. At the moment, people will work for this money, so from a business perspective, it's not an issue.

 

Absolutely Paul, I work not far from the employer in question, they're inline with local employers for serving staff, if not very slightly ahead (most would be rigidly NMW).

 

I've never worked for them, but from what I've been aware of it tends to attract the school leaver type desperate for any work in this field, minimum experience actually required. As you say people will work for this money, and they do, so what's in it for the employer to pay more?

 

Interestingly the advert on their own Jobs site only guarantees 20 hours per week "over a rolling 17 week period".

[Glyn Edwards]

Like Richard I'm fairly local and actually got the heads up on this job before it was advertised. I'm unavailable so wasn't interested, but I did hear differing things about what it actually entailed.

 

As the saying goes, "Pay peanuts, expect monkeys"

[paulears]

Clearly - the economy is a bit strange nowadays - when a round of drinks in a bar for two people can be more than the bar staff individually earn in an hour, something is wrong - but making money from a business perspective nowadays is not easy, and overheads high. Why would an employer pay more? 1. They cannot fill the position? 2. The staff they have are sufficient for their purpose. We all see it at venues in our own industry. Some people are clearly pretty useless, or perhaps just not that bright. They do, however, turn up and are reliable, so they stay. They have low expectations as does the employer. When you want somebody to do a specific role, with specific talents, NMW doesn't work, so you put up with the higher costs. When you don't have to, that would be business wise, a bit stupid. The higher paid ones also leave, in their career path this is perfectly normal. The ones that stay, usually don't want to progress. One venue I know quite well said this to their staff - some of you want to progress and we understand this, while others are happy and content to take the money and stay doing what you do. That too is fine. It's up to you to choose which you are.

 

Is it not called show business?

[richard_cooper]

Clearly - the economy is a bit strange nowadays - when a round of drinks in a bar for two people can be more than the bar staff individually earn in an hour, something is wrong - but making money from a business perspective nowadays is not easy, and overheads high. Why would an employer pay more? 1. They cannot fill the position? 2. The staff they have are sufficient for their purpose.

 

Reminds me of an experience I had at a previous employer some years ago. We payed casual staff slightly more than double the NMW of the time. We had to as the casuals we needed often had to have specific skills, and be expected to be responsible for their work. It worked and everyone was happy. My boss, the venue manager, left. His replacement tried to insist I replaced all my normal casual staff with her partner, I gave him a trial out of maybe misplaced good will, but found that he had no skills we needed so was of no use to me.

 

Her response was to go to the senior management of the organisation (who were not in our business they just happened to own a theatre) siting a previous version of the advert we're discussing (amongst others) as evidence that I was over paying.

 

Senior management imposed a hard limit on the rate I could pay which lead to my normal casuals walking away on principle (no they were not talking a 50% pay cut and had other work). I was left in the crap with a major event coming up. The manager's partner was miraculously available to work and willing to do so at that pay. Predictably the saving we made on staffing for that event were small compared to the bill for the damage to equipment that was done, mainly HF drivers....

[sandall]

Ok, I accept that seasonal casual work is always going to be badly paid, if only because many (most?) of those taking it are either desperate for ANY job or have come from a country where wages are even lower, but as an industry should we be accepting the same rules for skilled technicians? In the (now almost entirely freelance) broadcast world there are constant battles to stop the race to the bottom with rates. How many here would feel happy to offer even their grunts anything like the NMW?

 

On another thread the frequently appalling sound at many seminars & conferences, despite the stack of high-end gear at the back of the room, has been discussed. As Glyn says "Pay peanuts,......."

[paulears]

You forget that people even get lower than that. In my area of the country from Ipswich through to Cromer, the place is full of coastal holiday centres - open all year round, miles from anywhere and no transport of any quality so the entertainments teams, musicians and technical crews, with a few notable exceptions tend to either be local, living at home, or more commonly from away, living in provided accommodation with food. Low pay, and then deductions can leave many of these on far lower rates than even NMW, but of course, the accommodation and food are legitimate deductions. Butlins and Pontins ents team activities also mean incredibly long hours - so being up before the guests and going to bed after them are normal - so split shifts and other things spread the days into work/off/work/off/work/off/work blocks. Musicians get very average pay, below the MU rates by a long way - they probably work 6 days a week, often suddenly get extra shows to do at no extra pay, and worse, suddenly given days off with no pay because of special weekend events where they are not needed and not paid. I totally ignore the Broadcast people. Their bubble is totally different. They have all sorts of negotiated deals with the employers and unions, and broadcast, theatre and the holiday industry are totally and utterly different. Dancers probably get the worst deals - a sensible pay for the shows in a contract, but then £35 for a 6 hour rehearsal day? This is what one of my friends just got paid. Rehearsal pay is always poorer, but 6 hours for £35 is an insult, but of course, they have no option.

 

You don't even always get monkeys. The standard is incredibly variable, but in general it's age rather than expertise that is paid for. I spend time making sure fairness is there too - two people both paid the same NMW amount. One is keen and going to do well, the other lazy and uninterested. Give one a job to do and you can bet he'll ask the other to help, meaning that the other does the work and the lazy one watches. So I spend time getting the keen and willing one back doing something else, leaving the feeble one to do a trivial, dull job on his initiative - which usually fails. "Why is that follow spot still not in position?" - "It's too heavy for me to do on my own (18 yr old)". "You see the other? I did that on MY own, and I have a bad back and am nearing 60!"

 

As an industry - we should pay appropriately, but when you look at empty seats, do the maths, you know that any increase is going to be a long time coming, because the margins are simply not there. I have sometimes written out an invoice for two people and piles of kit and realised that the 70/30 split means the venue are losing money on the deal and that is before they may the NMW to the backstage and FOH people. If the living wage became the NMW then the venue owners would give up totally.

 

I have one client who increases my fees each contract a little, and they don't have to - but they do because presumably they don't want me to go elsewhere, and they know I get offers to do this - two this year which was nice. On the other hand, my show fees for my summer work have not increased for ten years now, and I don't even ask - there's just no point. At some date, they will simply give up, and I don't want that to happen.

[kerry davies]

Is capitalism broken? I don't know but in the ten years between 2007 and 2017 an extra one million self-employed businesses registered for self assessment, around a 20% increase. The tax take from all self-assessment has hardly risen at all in that decade. So either tax avoidance is 20% greater or people are on average 20% poorer. That means, either way, what goes around doesn't come around because it wasn't there to start with and the system collapses. Capitalism demands cash flow with employers paying wages so that employees can buy product.

 

However we currently have £1.8Tn in public sector debt and £1.6Tn in private sector debt. The only way I see that can possibly be addressed is through big wage increases which lead to higher tax incomes and more profits which can be invested in greater productivity. Austerity cuts that "virtuous circle" and stops the flow stone dead. The Welfare State theorised by Beveridge was based on high waged, reasonably taxed, full employment. It can't work with 13M part-timers and rock bottom wages where the wealthiest in society pay less percentage tax than the very poorest.

 

BTW pay peanuts get monkeys was from a CEO of General Motors and what he meant was that if you pay peanuts you "beget" or create monkeys out of decent workers.