Workers suffer record pay slump in face of rocketing inflation

[srb7677]

Have you ever worked in automation and logistics? I'm guessing not. I upgraded a BHS at Heathrow Airport in 2012, we didn't rip the old one out and leave the terminal without for 6 months, we did it as an under-layer, and when it was in and tested we switched over at 3am in the morning. Not one passenger knew about it or suffered any delay, and that's how the supermarkets will do it. Take 30% of the manned stations away and fill the space with enough capacity for 3 times as many customers. Might even give an extra percentage discount if you use the new system, and before you know it the customers have been weaned onto something they didn't even know they wanted. Same as you didn't know you wanted a DVD player, VCR or LED TV, you were marketed. SO to answer Cromwell's question, no I don't think they are stupid but sheep yes.

Take it from someone who knows and has seen these things installed. It cannot be prepared in advance so that a click of a switch is all that is needed to make the change. Existing manned checkouts need to be ripped out and new self service machines installed. Even if only 6 are being installed this is an all night job for trained contractors. If you imagine that this could be done up and down the land simultaneously overnight you clearly have little understanding of the logistics involved in this particular case. There are not enough trained contractors to do that all at once.

And as a capitalist you understand supply and demand I take it? And that if a demand for something exists someone will see the opportunity and supply it? Well if a substantial number of customers prefer to use manned checkouts, someone will supply that demand, whether it be Lidl or Aldi or whomever. Supermarkets are only moving cautiously towards unmanned checkouts...they've had them throughout the ten or more years I have been in retail for example and some like my local Aldi still have no self service machines. All supermarkets have a proportion of their customers who refuse to use self service. It is the unwillingness to lose these and suffer loss of market share that is acting as the brake.

Supermarkets, at least some of them, no doubt would like to move fully to self service. But to avoid loss of market share they feel they have to carry the vast majority of shoppers with them. They are not in the business of throwing away customers. This is why the gradual switch over is such a slow process and has been underway for well over ten years already.

And there is no sign locally whatsoever of automatic roboticised shelf stacking. If I think of the huge investment cost and impracticallity of that for my store, I doubt it is going to happen anytime soon. Those who imagine it will happen often have no knowledge of customer behaviour or date rotation. Customers often pick up stuff, look at it, and put it back in the wrong place, and the best dates need to be put in behind the stuff already on the shelf, whose placement has likely already been disrupted by browsing customers. You would pretty much need robots as dexterous and autonomous as humans to cope with this, and the tech for this does not exist yet, and when it does it is likely to be more expensive in investment terms than human labour anyway.

[srb7677]

Well let's ask Steve @srb7677  are you compelled to take breaks which you don't get paid for and how long is an average shift?

Shift lengths vary. My contracted shifts are 5 and a quarter hours, 6 hours, and 6 and a half hours though I often add overtime onto them. Overtime shifts on offer can start at 3 hours upwards. I usually combine several. Yesterday for example I combined two 4 hour shifts to create one 8 hour shift. 

Break entitlement tends to be 15 mins if you work 4 hours or more, half an hour if you work 6 hours or more, two half hours if you work 8 hours or more, 3 half hours if you work 9 hours or more.

Nick's notion that our breaks are unpaid because we don't work long enough shifts is nonsense. I have been known to work 15 hour shifts in the past. The breaks were still unpaid.

We do not have to take all our breaks but since our break times are already built in to the system it deducts break times from our pay anyway and this has to be manually overridden by someone in charge. If they are busy they could forget, leading to you working for nothing during the break you are not taking. If I take less than my break entitlement.....for a 9 hour shift for example I am happy enough to take two half hours instead of three or one half hour and two 15 minutes....I insist on the team leader changing it in my presence to ensure i get the extra half hours pay for the break I am not taking. I do though need fairly regular breaks to eat in because this is medically important to me as a diabetic so I cannot go more than 3 and a half hours without a break without putting myself at risk of a hypo. So if I am working a 7 and a three quarter hour shift I might ask to break my half hour break into two 15 mins for more frequent breaks out of the same break entitlement.

[cromwell]

Steve is a good lad and I imagine that he not only believes in a fair day's pay, but also in a fair day's work. And I do know that a lot of stores use contract labour, which means immigrants on the minimum rate.

None of this changes the fact that he will soon be soon be replaced by automatic tills and shelf stackers. I wish that things were not like that, but they are. And before anyone says that shouldn't happen, well they are probably right, but there you are.

Which still doesn't answer the question what do all those people made surplus to requirement exist on?

[Borchester]

Well let's ask Steve @srb7677  are you compelled to take breaks which you don't get paid for and how long is an average shift?

Steve is a good lad and I imagine that he not only believes in a fair day's pay, but also in a fair day's work. And I do know that a lot of stores use contract labour, which means immigrants on the minimum rate.

None of this changes the fact that he will soon be soon be replaced by automatic tills and shelf stackers. I wish that things were not like that, but they are. And before anyone says that shouldn't happen, well they are probably right, but there you are.

[cromwell]

If he doesn't get a paid break it's because he doesn't do long enough shifts, so that's the long shift argument out the window. Yes or No?

Well let's ask Steve @srb7677  are you compelled to take breaks which you don't get paid for and how long is an average shift?

[Nick]

And I have already explained to you that the trained workforce capable of changing to these machines lacks the size or logistical capacity to refit every store in the country overnight.

Have you ever worked in automation and logistics? I'm guessing not. I upgraded a BHS at Heathrow Airport in 2012, we didn't rip the old one out and leave the terminal without for 6 months, we did it as an under-layer, and when it was in and tested we switched over at 3am in the morning. Not one passenger knew about it or suffered any delay, and that's how the supermarkets will do it. Take 30% of the manned stations away and fill the space with enough capacity for 3 times as many customers. Might even give an extra percentage discount if you use the new system, and before you know it the customers have been weaned onto something they didn't even know they wanted. Same as you didn't know you wanted a DVD player, VCR or LED TV, you were marketed. SO to answer Cromwell's question, no I don't think they are stupid but sheep yes.

[Nick]

Well making the rich even richer certainly doesn't seem to be doing so.

The only thing making the rich richer are the actions of the rich: either past or present.

[Nick]

you mean they grew from being puppies and turned to attack dogs,scargill was a knob but wasn't wrong about their ultimate aim.

No, they grew from men with a very well paid job into men with no life, because they followed Scargill into an illegal strike.

[Nick]

Is it fair people like Steve don't get a paid break......yes or no?

If he doesn't get a paid break it's because he doesn't do long enough shifts, so that's the long shift argument out the window. Yes or No?

[srb7677]

You're absolutely crackers off you think the public get what they want. They get what the tech giants say they get. VCR in the early 80's, who'd even heard of one until you were told you wanted one. The supermarkets will move as one as they always have and ween you onto what ever they choose, same as a puppy onto solids.

And if a demand exists for something the supermarkets fail to priovide then someone else will recognise the opportunkity and respond to that demand, and the supermarkets will lose some of their customers to them. This is inherent to the laws of supply and demand and why supermarkets cannot get too far ahead of customers.

And I have already explained to you that the trained workforce capable of changing to these machines lacks the size or logistical capacity to refit every store in the country overnight. It would take weeks if not months during which time unhappy customers would vote with their feet. There will always be someone intelligent enough to see this happening and respond to the demand for manned checkouts by supplying it. Supermarkets are reluctant to risk losing too many customers in this direction, which is why they are gradually working instead to reduce the demand for manned checkouts over time so that their numbers can gradually be reduced. Get too far ahead of some of their customers and these will walk. They know this better than you seem to.

[B0ycey]

I don't think we can ride this out as such. I also don't think Russia, is more than a part of the problem, a very big part but only that. This situation was brewing well before the Ukraine situation . We were experiencing quiet major shortages from at least the previous year , and the hit at the pumps was happening anyway.
You are right Putins Gas  will Govern this now so which ever way this is looked at the government has two options ,and it could help the near situation by allowing some leeway on wages, simply because if Putin squeezes Gas gets dearer, millions will not pay, or starve and try to pay ,or eat and freeze. Simply for lack of funds. That's as certain as ,Putin turning the supply off.
Just giving the odd hand out is sticking plaster nothing else .If it's to be that bad there  will have to be a national strategy , how about a form of rationing, with the poorest getting theirs at reduced rates, after all it will be something of a war effort.

There of course was inflation due to shaking the Covid tree and Brexit. But the double digit inflation today is down to the rising cost of energy and nothing else (perhaps the drought in terms of food). Energy effects every single sector and the overheads for business for their energy isn't even capped like your residents. Also next year your energy bills are expected to be four times as high than they are now. Inflation is expected to be 20%. It isn't even that hard to understand. BP, Shell, whoever simply cannot get the gas out of the ground quick enough. You are talking about the continent reducing its supply by 40% and then expecting supply to keep up with demand when you haven't reduced it or found alternatives. If the government had an ounce of sense they would be reducing demand yesterday to compensate that. That might be turning off streetlights, cold showers in public buildings, incentives for people to switch their energy consumption to off peak, ban Christmas lights, whatever. Because inflation is down to supply and demand and we need to reduce our consumption by 50%. And no it isn't Putins fault. We sanctioned Russian gas, not the other way round. We could begin to buy it again and the price would reduce hugely over night. And if we don't do that we need to cut our consumption. There is simply no other way to reduce the wholesale price of gas when nations are all buying from the same sources and they have no alternative.

[srb7677]

Do you believe making the rich poorer makes the poor richer?

Well making the rich even richer certainly doesn't seem to be doing so.

[srb7677]

as I have repeated the aim is the Government and playing on the current fears of the workers.

Repeating your Daily Mailesque conspiracy theory doesn't make it any more true than the other times you have said it. Because as I have pointed out - actually knowing some of them - the pressure to act is coming from the grassroots workers themselves.

[cromwell]

I don't think we can ride this out as such. I also don't think Russia, is more than a part of the problem, a very big part but only that. This situation was brewing well before the Ukraine situation . We were experiencing quiet major shortages from at least the previous year , and the hit at the pumps was happening anyway.
You are right Putins Gas  will Govern this now so which ever way this is looked at the government has two options ,and it could help the near situation by allowing some leeway on wages, simply because if Putin squeezes Gas gets dearer, millions will not pay, or starve and try to pay ,or eat and freeze. Simply for lack of funds. That's as certain as ,Putin turning the supply off.
Just giving the odd hand out is sticking plaster nothing else .If it's to be that bad there  will have to be a national strategy , how about a form of rationing, with the poorest getting theirs at reduced rates, after all it will be something of a war effort.

Rationing? Let's hope not but if so it should be better than WW2,if you could afford hotels and fancy restaurants there was no rationing whilst the plebsqueued.

[Good old]

Although I agree that inflation isn't exactly going to effect everyone equally and the poor are going to have to sacrifice the most, what is it you think that can be done? The truth is the UK doesn't have much gas reserves and sooner or later Europe will be buying from the same sources as us. Russia might only be sending them 20% capacity now but eventually that will be 0% and I don't see how even the EU storage capacity is going to be sustainable after the winter.

What I am fed up of reading is that we can ride this out by pay increases or handouts when the underlining issue is supply and demand. I am all for Unions demanding inflation matching pay rises and companies realigning pay and profits so workers get a fair deal, but one thing Nick is absolutely right about is increasing the money supply in the market will make inflation worse. Liz Truss is probably the most dangerous woman on the planet right now for the Brits. Her tax cuts not only will make inflation worse but it also reduces the amount the state picks up in revenue to offer targeted support. And that isn't even getting into the technicalities of national debt and borrowing that will lead with tax cuts for the rich and not much else.

The truth is we either cut our gas consumption by 50% or we buy Russian gas. There is simply no other way to stop inflation right now. And unless you are asking for a negotiation ending for this war when previous you weren't, there is nothing the government can do to stop inflation. There simply isn't a substitute for Russian gas and every Western nation is buying from the same sources. We even had to buy Australian gas because we had no where else to go and it isn't even the Winter yet.

I don't think we can ride this out as such. I also don't think Russia, is more than a part of the problem, a very big part but only that. This situation was brewing well before the Ukraine situation . We were experiencing quiet major shortages from at least the previous year , and the hit at the pumps was happening anyway.
You are right Putins Gas  will Govern this now so which ever way this is looked at the government has two options ,and it could help the near situation by allowing some leeway on wages, simply because if Putin squeezes Gas gets dearer, millions will not pay, or starve and try to pay ,or eat and freeze. Simply for lack of funds. That's as certain as ,Putin turning the supply off.
Just giving the odd hand out is sticking plaster nothing else .If it's to be that bad there  will have to be a national strategy , how about a form of rationing, with the poorest getting theirs at reduced rates, after all it will be something of a war effort.