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WORKING CLASS RANTS.
The present minimum wage in UK is much too low set at £5.35 for workers 21+ this constitutes around £11,300 PER YEAR IF A FORTY HOUR WEEK IS WORKED.
How on earth is a person expected to live on that let alone be able to afford a mortgage?
A single person will almost certainly not get help with social housing, its hard enough for a couple with children.
Then because you are on a low wage you could go cap in hand to the local authority for help with the rent and council tax but of course if you are lucky enough to get anything it means that some nasty little council employee has scrutinised your personal circumstances and finances.
The minimum wage should be set at £10 per hour and start from the age of 16 when of course most working class youngsters have to start work. The reasons why the working class are expected to start work so young are varied but can usually put down to the fact that the standard of secondary school education is kept low so that we don’t compete with the middle classes in college or university for better jobs. (The word careers is not very apt for the working class)
In the past, the term FACTORY FODDER was used to describe us, now nothing so grand as the working class is destined for all those super jobs in the service industry serving our ‘CORPORATE MASTERS’.
Cleaners, Porters, Waiters, Litter Pickers, Kitchen Hands etc etc.
If one is lucky enough one might climb the corporate ladder and become a supervisor whereby you gain a few more shekels and get to push around and bully your former workmates all on the say so of the manager whose job you will never get because that is where the middle class begins. Then there is the matter of sick pay or the lack of it in most cases, employers do not have to pay sick pay and because most of them are greedy fat capitalists, the worker if he dares to get flu gets paid sod all.
You can of course claim statutory sick pay SSP but you get nothing for the first three days and only a fraction of your meagre weekly wage is met. Lets be honest most of us are able to get back to work after a couple of days and the government and the employers know it, so it saves/makes them a fortune.
The employers argue that the workers when off work are swinging the lead. Some possibly are, but not all workers, the recommendation here is that each employee should be entitled to a minimum of 5 paid sick days per year.
Holiday pay is a disgrace employers only have to allow 20 days off per year and this includes bank holidays. So the actual amount of annual leave is 12 days.
A minimum of 25 days annual leave and 8 days bank holidays should be the entitlement. The issues raised in this short article are just the tip of the iceberg and are just the start of working class rants, anyone who reads this and would like to comment please do.
All replies will be published.
If it becomes popular we will start a blog.
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