Job Offer...an insult

[jerry]

Just had a company i last work for 19 years ago near horsham sussex call me desperate for Skilled staff ...was i interested ..yes ......until they mentioned houly rate £10.50 PAYE or £13 LTD .......when i last worked for them 19 years ago it was £12 PAYE and 16.50 LTD now with petrol and other costs several times what they were 19 years ago that is an insult to me .

I would rather be broke than exploited .

[Paivi]

To be fair, their costs were probably a lot lower 19 years ago, too.

[Gamsa]

£12 in 1992 is worth approximately £19 today according to the inflation calculator at http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/historic-inflation-calculator. Couple that to the fact that you are now 19 years more experienced, and I would say that it's pretty insulting, yep.

[slipperyweeguy]

Been broke. Been exploited.
Exploited was better.

[Gilps]

Here's how it works. In boom years with low unemployment, when an employee has an employer by the danglies, he gives them a damn good squeeze for all it's worth. When there's a recession and the situation is reversed, then the squeezer becomes the squeezee.
6 years ago my staff were demanding 10% pay rises and bonuses, or they would walk. Now they haven't had a pay rise for 3 years and it looks set to continue. It's not fair, it's not nice, but it's reality.

[J.P]

You might also be a Scrooge Gilps ???

[Grumpy]

Here's how it works. In boom years with low unemployment, when an employee has an employer by the danglies, he gives them a damn good squeeze for all it's worth. When there's a recession and the situation is reversed, then the squeezer becomes the squeezee.
6 years ago my staff were demanding 10% pay rises and bonuses, or they would walk. Now they haven't had a pay rise for 3 years and it looks set to continue. It's not fair, it's not nice, but it's reality.

Totally agree with you, I work in the building industry and i'm self employed, my salary is approx half the monies I was earning 3yrs ago.To many people chasing to little work.
Once the market turns around, as you said Gilps, the situation is reversed, not enough people for the amount of work available.

[popelli]

Been broke. Been exploited.
Exploited was better.

and that unfortunately is the bottom line

better to be in work getting the best that the current market will offer than be out of work waiting for the perfect package to come along

have been doing contract work for the last 5 years, rates dropped like a stone 2 years ago and have been slowly crawling back up again

the real killer is the permanent job market where they will take somebody on 15 years younger than you with less experience and pay them 20% more, never quite could work that one out

[Gordon H]

Here's how it works. In boom years with low unemployment, when an employee has an employer by the danglies, he gives them a damn good squeeze for all it's worth. When there's a recession and the situation is reversed, then the squeezer becomes the squeezee.
6 years ago my staff were demanding 10% pay rises and bonuses, or they would walk. Now they haven't had a pay rise for 3 years and it looks set to continue. It's not fair, it's not nice, but it's reality.

Doncha just love capitalism in action.......

[Mr Cake]

Been broke. Been exploited.
Exploited was better.

Bloody well put, that!

C

[jerry]

The company needs at least 60 people, has masses of orders for High tech equipment but cant find skilled staff .......techs,engineers .I have a mate who is a project manager there, he also said that last year the company made record profits ....they are now behind on delivery and installation and commissioning of several Million quids worth of projects the order book is full for the next 4 years so i reckon they will up the offer ,

mind u my wifes business in thailand is not doing well at the moment turnover is down 70% from last 2 years .she is Lucky she owns the properties with no debt ,there is just no demand for industrial rentals at the moment and fixed costs and taxes stay the same or even rise so she is basicly just breaking even but not able to pay herself a decent salary .i think she would sell her properties if she had a reasonable offer so she could use the assets in some other project but its unlikely .

[Dookbob]

If he ups the offer , take it, then walk when it suits you.

[jerry]

Dookbob , that exactly my thinking i am back in YUK in a couple of weeks, but the offshore season will start soon and better offers Tax free will come with it so he may miss the chance of a skilled guy like me.

[He11cat]

I am earning as much as I was when I was 19 !! Is a joke.
I wasn't bad off then.
Now holidays what's that??? Not had one in years.
I've changed career totally.
I used to work in print & design was good money!!
Then the boom went bust and loads of printers folded.
We have been told no pay rises ..
No extra hours nothing :( that's what you get when you work in a "caring" job nowdays :(
I'm trying to retrain and upskill so in a couple of years I can specialise or maybe train to teach .

[popelli]

I am earning as much as I was when I was 19 !! Is a joke.
.

I earn roughly as much in a week now as I did for 6 months work at 18

I think thats called inflation

[He11cat]

Had a career had to step back :(
something called life got in the way!!
Sometimes you have to sacrifice .
Sometimes life doesn't pan out as planned.
My work is oddball but it helps people.
Only thing is bad pay .. But good rewards .
Working hard is a good trait.
But we come into the world with nothing as we go out of this world with nothing.
Just don't kill yourself or miss out on life for the £ .. You live once..
I'd like to just be comfyish. Have no need for highlife me :)

[SunEye]

For my day job I earn 60% of what I was earning 12 years ago.

For my sound engineering work (my hobby) I was earning anywhere from £100 to £300 a week every week about 4-5 years ago. Now I'm lucky if I earn £500 in a year from it. There's just no work for me because nobody has any money to pay me. If I wanted to work for £30 a night doing live sound I would have work, but seeing as that is for hiring me and £10k of equipment for 6-8 hours it's not worth my while doing. The wear and tear on the equipment costs me more than I'd be paid.

It's all very depressing, which is why I bought a Monster. To cheer myself up :)

[Gilps]

You might also be a Scrooge Gilps ???

I may well be, but I'm also still in business when so many now aren't. We are now beginning to pinch some work back from the Chinese, not much but it's a start. To do this we have to be competetive, not just on quality, lead times etc., but also price.

We now live in a global marketplace, very different to 10-20 years ago. Look at all the Asian call centres. We buy timber from the former Soviet states like Estonia. I used to buy the timber in rough cut boards and pay my guys £300 per week to machine it. The guys in Estonia now do some of that work so the wood comes in pre-machined. They charge a little bit extra for this service but it still costs me less than paying my guys to do it. The Estonian supplier tells me that they pay their men 100 Euros per week. Health and safety is not an issue over there Running expenses are lower. That's what UK employees are up against.

[popelli]

The Estonian supplier tells me that they pay their men 100 Euros per week. Health and safety is not an issue over there Running expenses are lower.

that unfortunatly is the real cost of the nanny state and the huge entourage of red tape that has over the last 30 years strangled the uk economy and made many industries uncompetitive

as a result we do not import cheap goods, in reality we export jobs and import unemployment adding to the social care bill and make the uk even more uncompetitive

[jimz750]

Still a good chunk in this working day and age.

[jimz750]

Had a career had to step back :(
something called life got in the way!!
Sometimes you have to sacrifice .
Sometimes life doesn't pan out as planned.
My work is oddball but it helps people.
Only thing is bad pay .. But good rewards .
Working hard is a good trait.
But we come into the world with nothing as we go out of this world with nothing.
Just don't kill yourself or miss out on life for the £ .. You live once..
I'd like to just be comfyish. Have no need for highlife me :)

He11cat sums it up beutifully xXx

[Pomp1]

that unfortunatly is the real cost of the nanny state and the huge entourage of red tape that has over the last 30 years strangled the uk economy and made many industries uncompetitive

as a result we do not import cheap goods, in reality we export jobs and import unemployment adding to the social care bill and make the uk even more uncompetitive

It isn't the "red tape" or the "nanny state" that made the industry uncompetitive, is the fact that is up against country where, as Gilps said, respect for labour condition and workers rights are not the same as in the Old Europe.
Easiness of trading made the rest. That makes their products/labour cheap. But in return they can't all afford expensive bikes and habits..:rolleyes:
Oh, and yes we do import their cheap goods..

[Nickj]

I've just finished a shift that has cost me money to do. The NHS isn't what it used to be LOL

[He11cat]

Sadly Nick that's just what I mean.. I have a friend who currently has had his fill of working for the NHS .. The hours got worse his pay no better , he was slogging his guts out working crazy shifts.. He is now downsizing his house and his bike sadly his family never see him.
He is now looking for work like I am involved in .. He wants to stay in a caring profession.
He was stunned when he found out what we get paid!!
But he has decided to wave the Nhs goodbye as it's killing the poor chap

[He11cat]

Like I say it's good to be hard working.
What I have seen to often is people who have become almost workaholic ..
When they have retired or quit have not adapted well or worse one thing I've seen happen is they have had a heart attack after stopping work ..
Alot of people work themselves to death for years then when they stop it's almost like a huge shock to the system.
Happened lots in my old industry ..
A healthy balance is important however sadly this country doesn't work that way especially in these grim times.
We do more and more for no more because we live in fear of redundancy half the time.

[jerry]

My Step daughter was a NHS Nurse ,,,very qualified very caring , she is now in Sydney Australia in a public hospital and she says the earns double what the NHS paid her for a Guaranteed 37 hour week , for 15% less taxes in a hospital which is clean ,up to date and has traditional values , matrons etc the medical staff have more control the managment team is only 10 % of the staff compared tp the NHS .

she is very happy and fulfilled .she also states that probably half the medical staff are British

[skank]

It's interesting how the value of skills change country to country. Moving to South Africa my skills are worth more here than in the UK. Due to so many skilled white people leaving the country the is now a massive shortage of talent. I am working for the same company as I was in UK but getting paid more in a country with a lower cost of living. If anyone out there fancies moving to Joburg for 6 months in the sun and has EMC or SAN skills give me shout! :)

[popelli]

It isn't the "red tape" or the "nanny state" that made the industry uncompetitive, is the fact that is up against country where, as Gilps said, respect for labour condition and workers rights are not the same as in the Old Europe.


isn't that one and the same?

The cost of compliance with red tape safety leglislation and various taxes to fund the welfare state and the like contributing to a huge overhead costs that have to be recovered in business overheads and also built into the labour costs that have made europe uncompetitive against the eastern bloc

[Pomp1]

isn't that one and the same?

The cost of compliance with red tape safety leglislation and various taxes to fund the welfare state and the like contributing to a huge overhead costs that have to be recovered in business overheads and also built into the labour costs that have made europe uncompetitive against the eastern bloc

OK two points there: no, red tape isn't the same as protection of the workers' conditions: one (can be viewed as) unnecessary bureaucracy while the in the second the clue is in the name. Second point :welfare state is a good thing, exploitation of it isn't completely the states' fault. I'd rather live in a state like the UK than being exploited in the back of some sweatshop since the age of 6..
Overheads, corporation tax and VAT are less here than in many EU states..oh, and employment is higher..

[Nickj]

Sadly Nick that's just what I mean.. I have a friend who currently has had his fill of working for the NHS .. The hours got worse his pay no better , he was slogging his guts out working crazy shifts.. He is now downsizing his house and his bike sadly his family never see him.

We had our hours 'harmonised' with some mystical Euro worker and now get the same pay for more hours which equated to a 7% pay cut, the annoying thing is that the average euro hours in my job are now lower than in the UK. PLUS the euro working hours was interpreted so that extra shifts get you time off so there isn't much extra paid work out of hours. This weekend I worked an 8hr shift on saturday which netted me an hours pay, the time off I'm supposed to have I can't take as I have to work overall it's cost me a gallon of fuel.
I usually have to put in a few extra hours a week anyway just for the what I have to do, usually I try and limit it to a max of 10 or so a week as of course I don't get paid for it or get it back.
Another great one, NHS docs contracts are measured in sessions so they have say 10 a week that they work for the NHS. One hospital trust thought that they weren't getting this out of their docs so they logged what they were doing. Now I wasn't surprised by the results which found the docs were actually doing more like 12 sessions, The docs then reasonably said do you want to pay us for this extra work we're doing just to keep the system going? As you guess the reply was no, so the hospital suddenly lost about 4 hours of time a week from these guys. Nice own goal that

[He11cat]

Jerry that's totally true.. I was myself looking at it the other day .
The pay is way higher and the working conditions way better.
You can earn over what you can in a week in 3 days over there in better conditions.
It's getting really crap living here .. I'm having a good think at the moment about what to do and where to go next. Every one I know who has gone to live in Oz has not regretted it! I've got to start reasessing stuff this year and make some hard choices.
I'd ship out tomorrow now if I could .. Nothing much here to make me stay anymore.. Just loose ends ..

[He11cat]

Nick it's a joke.. I work in Education it's bad there as well.
People put in lots more hours then they get paid for.
I get ribbed about all the time off I get a year!!
Yes I get a lot .. But I'm not paid for it!!!
I have 12 weeks a year unpaid at the moment ..
I'd rather work that and get some pay.
I'm currently going to retrain under the title I'm working under now.
I'm snapping it up as anything to get more on my CV !
But I know another collegue would say that's not my job I'm not doing it!
We can't recruit so exsisting staff are helping with other jobs ..
With cuts we can't cope.
People are going off sick as stressed out.
I've noticed people getting sick and stressed.
People working in key services like NHS and Education are stretched to limit..
They wonder why it just functions now days.
Also our hospital has brought over lots of staff from abroad as did BT why ??
Because we don't want to do the crappy jobs I suspect!
They will keep flogging the dead horse long after it's dead .. It's disgusting.

[popelli]

welfare state is a good thing

agreed - unfortunately it comes at a cost which puts countries that have it at a huge cost disadvantage to those countries that do not have it

the answer is to have import tarrifs on goods and services from countries that do not have a social welfare cost to level the playing field and then use this money to create proper real job opportunities

the cost of not having tarrifs to level the playing field is where we are currently.

the cheap imports we currently are effectively not so cheap as we are indirectly importing unemployment and exporting job opportunities, so the real cost of these cheap imports is far higher as we pick up the tab for the increased unemployment in this country

[Chris & Nean]

Its called 'rowing the economic cycle' you can see about it here.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-515319560256183936#