All well and good saying "good. it should be more". It absolutely baffles me, where do people think these kind of increases come from? Who does it ultimately hit? In my opinion, the small business owner, or the public when they pass it on. Which in turn affects the small business owner when the public reduce their shopping there.
From opening our shop in August 2019 to closing it in May 2022, we witnessed NMW go from £7.83 to £9.50. Over a 20% increase in less than 3 years. The final increase, another 7% in April 22 was one of the final straws for us. We were a small business with one full time and 2 part time members of staff. We worked on paying 100-110 hours total labour per week. In other words over £9000 per year difference for us to find. I don't think that's an insignificant sum to any small business.
I have to add that as much as it frustrates me, I am not saying i have an answer nor do I expect people to be working for a pittance. I just think these sweeping adjustments make great headlines, but can have a devastating impact on the small business owner, particularly in hospitality as mentioned above. The "self-fulfilling spiral of doom" is an appropriate description IMO!
It's a little like the "insurance companies can't charge less for women" scenario - did they really think insurers would just reduce every male premium? Likewise "you can't unfairly charge a processing fee for using a credit card over a debit card or cash". Did retailers remove the credit card surcharge? Of course they didn't! They just added the same admin fee for everybody regardless of what method they used.
As I say, it all just seems a bit ideologic with no thought to where the impact of these things will actually be seen.
Shrewd businesses can use this as a positive 'We pay our staff the NLW' etc.
As for the NMW, I am always confused about why living costs are thought to be lower for 18-20 year olds than older people! (...waiting for the 'but they live at home so their costs are less' response!).
To your first point - we owned a bakers and sandwich shop. I can guarantee nobody would give a shiny sh*te about us paying the NLW based on the complaints we got when we put a pie up 5p!
Agree on your second point - my first ever "proper" employer working in a pub at 18 paid everybody full NMW no matter how old they were and I'll never forget him saying "I'm asking you all and expecting you all to do exactly the same job regardless of your age. If that's what you do, that's what you get paid for". It's stuck with me a long time!
With Covid and everything else in the world, the economy is a bit of a s*** show at the moment so we should be pushing through things like this and take all the pain now, rather than drag it out.
Forget tax cuts, no one needs them and I doubt many votes will be bought by them.
There's too much "hospitality". I'm quite happy when I see another celebrity chain restaurant go to the wall. Leave it to local pubs, restaurants, etc.
Do these chain restaurants not employ local people then?
