Rage against the wage

Oh TBE how do you shaft me? Let me count the ways.

Well, the Living Wage for one……….

Picture: Bluesnap, Pixabay

Remember, the UK Living Wage came in on 1^st May 2016? Designed to stop tight-ass employers financially wiping the floor with their poor little worker slaves? This was proper, legal stuff; something that even TBE (aka The Boss Erratic) couldn’t get away from.

Or so I thought.

I should have known she wasn’t going down without a fight.

She said nothing about it right up to, and including the merry month of May. Nothing. Not a word. Absolutely nothing until the May payslip appeared at the end of the month (at which point the Living Wage had been in place for 27 days).

My pay-packet contained a short note:

‘Yes, you will be paid the Living Wage according to the law……. ‘

Hooray! And also, I should bloody well think so; you’ve no alternative, love.

‘But……’

‘But?’ Why is there a ‘but’? What’s she up to now? Oh Christ, here we go...

‘The Living Wage started on 1^st May………’

Yes..it did. That was a month ago. At the beginning of the month.

‘But as you get paid on the last Friday of each month…….’

Yes….I do. Umm…..not liking the sound of this.

‘It means the pay period for May actually started on Saturday 30^th April……’.

Well, yes…..

‘And, because part of the pay period of May was actually in April…..’

Well, one whole day of it was.

‘The entire month of May is exempt from the new Living Wage’.

What?! Wait, what?!

‘The Living Wage will therefore begin after the May pay period’.

            You mean, at the end of June! How have you managed that one?! Is this even                                   legal?!

Turns out it was perfectly legal. I looked it up.

Original photo: PublicDomainPictures, Pixabay

You have to hand it to TBE, she played a blinder. She managed to swindle me out of a whole months Living Wage because of one day. And do you know the real kicker? I didn’t even work that day! I didn’t work on 30^th April, which means my entire monthly hours for May were in May! Every single day I worked was after the Living Wage had been implemented, and I still didn’t get paid the Living Wage!

Ah, TBE, you………….

Picture:WolfBlur, Pixabay

But then it got worse.

TBE decided she couldn’t afford the extra financial burden of the Living Wage, so she cut my daily hours. Actually, she cut the daily hours of all three of her employees.

Now, let’s talk numbers, and then we can decide: Pettiness? Sound financial reason? Bat-shit crazy?:

The ‘extra financial burden’ of lil’ ol’ me would have been an extra £1.50 a day, whereas the cut in my daily hours means a loss, to me, of £3.60 a day. Basically, TBE has done me out of £2.10 a day.

OK, OK, I know it’s not Mark Zuckerberg territory, but really, has this woman no shame? At a time when everyone was trumpeting the Living Wage as a strike back for poor, exploited workers everywhere, TBE managed to actually cut her employees’ wages.

And for what? For a saving of about £6.30 a week from each of us. That comes out at less than twenty quid a week saving (£18.90 to be exact).

So what do you reckon is the cost of employee goodwill lately? About £20 a week? Probably.

(What? I did have some goodwill left before this. I’m sure I did. I just lost it down the back of the sofa a long time ago and never bothered to retrieve it).