This hardly makes sense

From the BBC:

Thousands of current and former Tesco workers have won a legal argument in their fight for equal pay. The European Court of Justice has ruled that an EU law could be relied on in making equal pay claims against their employer.

Tesco workers, mostly women, have argued that they failed to receive equal pay for work of equal value with colleagues in its distribution centres who are mostly men. They said this breached EU and UK laws.

1. Why is EU law relevant? It could only be relevant for pay periods up to 31 January 2020, and I'm not sure whether courts would ever retrospectively give people pay rises.

2. A sane and rational person would assume that distribution centre workers get paid a bit more (it appears to be average £13/hour rather than average £10/hour for shop workers) because the work is physically or mentally harder; requires more specialised skill and experience; involves less flexible shifts, more early/late shifts and night shifts; involves a longer commute etc.

3. Clearly, if Tesco paid male shop workers more than female shop workers (or male distribution centre workers more than female distribution centre workers), this would be wrong, that does not appear to be the case. Similarly, if Tesco had a blanket policy of not employing women in their distribution centres, that would also be wrong, but again, that does not appear to be the case.

4. What if Tesco employed a similar mix of men and women in both shops and in distribution centres? Would anybody be able to allege indirect discrimination then? Methinks not.

Tesco, the UK's biggest retailer, and law firm Leigh Day, acting on behalf of the workers, sought clarification from the Court of Justice of the European Union. They asked the court to rule on a specific aspect of European law... Under EU law, a worker can be compared with somebody working in a different establishment if a "single source" has the power to correct the difference in pay...

Kiran Dauka, a partner in the employment team at Leigh Day, said: "This judgement reinforces the Supreme Court's ruling that the roles of shop floor workers can be compared to those of their colleagues in distribution centres for the purposes of equal pay."

5. That sounds like a stupid interpretation of a stupid rule to me.

Pam Jenkins, who works at Tesco, said: "To get a judgement confirming shop floor workers can use an easier legal test to compare their jobs to male colleagues in distribution is uplifting. I've always been proud to work at Tesco, but knowing that male colleagues working in distribution centres are being paid more is demoralising. I'm hopeful that Tesco will recognise the contribution shop floor workers make to the business and reflect that in our pay."

6. Be careful what you wish for - the most likely outcome here is that Tesco will employ even fewer people to work on the tills and have more of the self-checkouts. I personally much prefer being served by a human being, but at my local Tesco, they only staff about three out of about ten tills, so the queues are awful and I grudgingly use the self-checkouts (knowing that however indirectly, I am putting some poor sod out of work).

The legal test for comparability is only the first of three stages within Asda's overall pay claim, which is expected to take several years to conclude. Leigh Day is also handing similar equal pay claims against Sainsbury's, Tesco, Morrisons and Co-op, which are not as far advanced.

7. This bit makes sense, the whole thing is a wild goose chase and a gravy train for the lawyers. Judges are always happy to drag things out on their behalf, in case they ever want to go back into practrice.

Economic Myths: innovation, employment and wages

Nobody will every be able to prove anything either way, but here are a couple of things which may well be complete misconceptions:

From the BBC:

Wage growth slows despite jobless fall

UK wages rose more slowly in the three months to May, despite a further fall in unemployment, official figures show.

Wage growth slipped to 2.7% from 2.8% in the three months to May, while unemployment fell by 12,000 to 1.41 million, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said.

We've done this before, it's a mathematical thing - the 'new'jobs tend to be lower paying than existing ones, thus dragging down the overall average increase.

Also from the BBC:

AI will create as many jobs as it displaces - report

Opinion is split over AI's potential impact, with some warning it could leave many out of work in future.

The pessimists argue AI is different to previous forms of technological change, because robots and algorithms will be able to do intellectual as well as routine physical tasks.

AKA 'it's different this time'. No it's not. Nearly all human labour is and always has been to some extent 'intellectual', so machines have always, to some extent, taken over 'intellectual' jobs.

Like using weather forecasts and the calendar to decide when to sow and harvest instead of relying on oral traditions and rules of thumb; like doctors using thermometers and X-ray machines; or like drivers using a sat nav instead of a paper map and road signs.

... John Hawksworth, chief economist at PwC, said:

"Major new technologies, from steam engines to computers, displace some existing jobs but also generate large productivity gains. This reduces prices and increases real income and spending levels, which in turn creates demand for additional workers.

"Our analysis suggests the same will be true of AI, robots and related technologies, but the distribution of jobs across sectors will shift considerably in the process."

PwC said about seven million existing jobs could be displaced by AI from 2017-2037, but about 7.2 million could be created, giving the UK a small net jobs boost of around 200,000.

Their figures are meaningless, but his point stands. In the short term, all this 'progress' is a pretty bad thing from the point of view of those who lose their jobs or whose businesses grind to a halt; in the long term, it's all good and seems to cancel out.

Adam Ruins Everything: Why you should tell co-workers your salary

He makes a good point here about information assymetry:

"Don't worry about insecure tenancies...

... because there's no job security either."

From City AM:

All this has led to a quantum shift in the attitude of young occupiers; faced with the prospect of funding large deposits and huge mortgages at interest rates likely to rise from their current historically low levels, they are resigned to renting for much longer than their predecessors. But are these shallower property roots part of a wider transition?

As an employer, I see a trend among our brightest young talent that, while they are willing and able to put their all into their profession from week to week, it is still their career for the time being and not necessarily what they want to do for the rest of their lives.

Similarly, to “make partner” or become a director of the company can no longer be the assumed ambition, and employers have to be ready to give short-term reward rather than rely on the long-term prospect of promotion for loyalty.

Renting for a year or less fits with the shorter-term and wider view taken by my children’s generation of their working lives, and the political and economic uncertainty in the years ahead means there’s no reason why we should see a reversal of this trend any time soon.

Uber - employment lawyers don't understand maths or logic

From the BBC:

Uber drivers have won the right to be classed as workers rather than self-employed.

The ruling by a London employment tribunal means drivers for the ride-hailing app will be entitled to holiday pay, paid rest breaks and the national minimum wage. The GMB union described the decision as a "monumental victory" for some 40,000 drivers in England and Wales…

Fair enoughski, but this is just people fighting over the same source of income. Taxi drivers, collectively have a monopoly - each licence is a little monopoly. the tell tale sign is that an increase in demand for taxi rides does not increase the supply of taxi licences (which are at the whim of a local council or similar), it merely pushes up the value of the licences.

From the point of view of the consumer, Uber busted the taxi drivers' monopoly, bringing down prices and increasing supply, but from the point of view of drivers, it created a new one of its own. The trick with these platforms is to persuade passengers/buyers that they are the biggest and have most drivers on call, while simultaneously persuading drivers/suppliers that they are the biggest and have most potential customers.

Things being what they are, it is far easier and more efficient if everybody uses the same platform.*

Which brings me to this…

The ruling accused Uber of "resorting in its documentation to fictions, twisted language and even brand new terminology", adding: "The notion that Uber in London is a mosaic of 30,000 small businesses linked by a common 'platform' is to our mind faintly ridiculous."

No, that is exactly how it is. Presumably, if you register as a driver with Uber that does not stop you from registering as a driver with other platforms at the same time. Question is then - whose employee are they now? Do they have two employers? How is the holiday pay, rest pay and national minimum wage while on call but not driving supposed to be split between the two?

Here comes the maths fail:

Alex Bearman, partner at Russell-Cooke solicitors, said Uber could look to meet any additional costs by increasing the percentage of each fare that it kept as commission: "It seems likely that this decision will be appealed and we may not see a final determination for some time to come."

Again, no. It appears that Uber takes about 25% of the total fare paid by the customer. If Uber takes a higher percentage, then that leaves less for the driver, not more. So either:
- Uber takes a lower percentage (which won't kill it, their income is pure profit/rent once its minimal overheads are paid) or
- prices overall go up by a third to get driver's average hourly earnings up from £5.03 to the National Minimum Wage. And you can't just put prices up, the result will be less demand and fewer Uber drivers. So those at the margin will be unemployed again and those who keep their jobs will earn more for less work. Which is classic rent seeking, it is just when trade unions do it, they dress it up as A Good Thing.
-----------------------------------
Then there are taxes on output and employment to consider. Let's assume our driver is genuinely self-employed and is below VAT registration threshold. He makes £10/hour gross, Uber takes 25% leaving our driver £7.50/hour, on which he pays 29% income tax/NIC = £5.33 after tax. The self-employed will also get a full tax deduction for motor vehicle costs.

If the drivers are all now employees of Uber, the full fare will be liable to VAT, so out of £10, £1.67 goes in VAT. This leaves £8.33. Even if Uber generously slashes its fee to 5% (42p after VAT) to cover its minimal overheads, this leaves £7.91 to pay gross wages. 96p goes in Employer's NIC, leaving £6.95 employment income taxable at 32%, leaving our driver with £4.73 per hour. The tax deduction which employees can claim for business use of private car is also much more restrictive than for the self-employed and is more difficult to claim.

So an epic fail all round**!

* Which is why the answer is for the government to simply set up its own low-cost ride sharing app, it can provide it for free to all and sundry and will make its money back ten times over from all the extra income tax/NIC it can collect (even at self-employed 29% rate) now that it knows who is doing what. That still looks like a monopoly in the old-fashioned sense of there being a single provider, but in practice it isn't a monopoly at all.

** Unless you are totally cynical and think that the Employment Tribunal is an arm of government and decided the case this way because it vastly increases the tax take from Uber drivers...

The Mothers' Pay Gap

At last!

From the BBC:

Women in the UK returning to work after having a baby fall even further behind men in earning power, a report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies has said. The gap between hourly earnings of the two sexes becomes steadily wider after women become mothers, the IFS says. Over the subsequent 12 years, women's hourly pay rate falls 33% behind men's.

The IFS says this is partly because women who return to work often do so in a part-time capacity and miss out on opportunities for promotion.

Robert Joyce, one of the IFS report's authors, said women who chose to cut their hours on returning to work were not penalised with an immediate cut in their hourly wages. However, he said: "Rather, women who work half-time lose out on subsequent wage progression, meaning that the hourly wages of men (and of women in full-time work) pull further and further ahead."

Which is what I have been saying for years - there is no real gender pay gap, it is a mothers vs everybody else pay gap. You do not need to be an economist, social scientist or statistician to suss this out, most people will have noticed this themselves first hand (my wife and I certainly have).

Ben Southwood of the ASI takes the more cheerfully libertarian view in City AM explaining why this is no biggie and the real reasons for the apparent residual ten per cent pay gap which cannot be explained by motherhood alone, worth a read in full.

Nonetheless, to the extent that we "should" do something about the gender pay gap*, this is the place to start. IMHO, a Citizen's Income and more generous Child Benefit** instead of the Child Tax Credit crap would more or less eliminate the pay gap in net terms.

* My view is 'big deal'; the total wage pot is what it is, if mothers were paid more, then everybody else would be paid less, so for most couples it evens out. Her Indoors earns barely a third as much as I do (she is underpaid and I am overpaid, by definition) but - like most women - she somehow gets to spend considerably more of our total net/discretionary income than I do.

** The IFS say that the pay gap increases steadily after a woman has had her first child. Other sources correlate this with the number of children - the more children, the bigger the gap (probably a bit of both). So a more generous Child Benefit per child, paid to the mother would fix this nicely, and scrapping means-tested Child Tax Credits increases the incentive to work, so that looks like a win-win to me.

Employment vs Self-employment

My post about the insane bribes for taxi drivers in Queensland turned into a jumbled slugfest about employment vs self-employment status.

In economic terms, there are people who are clearly employees at one end (where the employer needs the same people to come in and do a set job at pre-arranged times everyday - school teachers, bus drivers, shop assistants etc) via those who are self-employed at the other (plumbers, electricians etc who are called in when needed), all the way to (small) business owners. But there are massive grey areas where that can be reasonable room for debate whether somebody is actually an employee or self-employed in economic terms.

The distinction is important for at least three quite separate topics.

1. Vicarious and employer liability

An employer is more likely to be found vicariously liable for the acts of an employee and is also more likely to be liable for injuries etc suffered by an employee.

So if an employee in a restaurante deliberately ignores food safety measures and diners fall ill, the restaurateur is liable. And if the wiring in the kitchen is faulty and an employee is electrocuted, the employer is liable.

Conversely, if the restaurant orders ingredients which turn out to the poisonous and the same evening, diners fall ill, the restaurateur might (or might not) be able to escape liability and the self-employed supplier of the ingredients would be liable to the diners instead (he would be liable to the restaurateur anyway. And if the wiring in the kitchen is faulty and a self-employed electrician who is called to fix it manages to electrocute himself while doing so, then that is his tough luck.

2. Pay

An employee must turn up and be available for work whether there is anything to do or not; similarly, an employee expects to be paid whether he actually did anything or just sat around. If a role is redundant, then special rules apply, weighted in favour of the employee (fair enough up to a point - it is the employer's job to drum up business and he can be expected to plan ahead).

A self-employed person is only called and paid when needed and is usually paid by results (although a lot of rent-seeking businesses charge hourly rates whether they succeed or not). There are other rules to ensure that workers on zero-hours contracts are treated as employees, even though they would be self-employed under this test alone.

The government then messes things up by having the National Minimum Wage and Employer Pension contributions (a hidden tax and a massive subsidy to the pensions companies). The NMW simply does not apply to the self-employed, if you want to mow lawns or deliver parcels or drive a mini cab for £3 an hour as a self-employed person you are free to do so, and there is clearly no bar to the self-employed or small business owners making a loss, i.e. a negative effective hourly wage.

3. Taxation

Instead of taxing the least mobile and most highly visible source/flow of wealth (i.e. land and monopoly rights), most governments in their infinite wisdom tax the second least mobile factor of production - labour - at the highest rates. The effective rate on a basic rate employee, even ignoring VAT is about 40%, they just dress this up and split it into half income tax and the other half is split up into Employee's and Employer's National Insurance Contributions.

So there is every incentive for people to tweak things and present what is actually employment under the teal tests 1. and 2. as self-employment. HMRC has exactly the opposite incentive. Shiney gave the example of HMRC reclassifying partners in an LLP as employees. I could give the example of the extra 7.5% income tax on dividends to reduce the incentive for small business/limited company owners to pay themselves dividends instead of salary.

This is insane of course, to the extent that we have to tax incomes at all, it would be far better to tax all sources of income at the same rate to save arguments, rather than punishing employment status and then dreaming up endless anti-avoidance measures.

There, that is my non-partisan crash course in the topic. The problem is that most people start with the answer they want and then work backwards to the justification, for example saying that XYZ delivery company pays less than the NMW, thus automatically assuming that their delivery drivers are actually employed not self-employed.

What I find very annoying is the lying...

Here.

"Government blames unemployment rise on BREXIT fears."

So, nothing to do with the introduction of the Living Wage and employers compulsory pension auto enrolment contributions then? Both of which are the government's fault and both of which increase payroll costs for employers leading to less employment.

Death really is too good for them.

"Lord Carter's plans for saving the NHS £5bn a year"

From the BBC:

Lord Patrick Carter, a Labour peer as it happens, is advising Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt on how hospital budgets can be better spent.

In June he said up to £5bn a year could be saved annually by 2020. In his first report then he argued that some of it could be delivered by smarter procurement of hospital supplies and some by better management of staff rosters.

Now he has attempted to put more flesh on the bone, outlining other areas which could contribute to that £5bn figure.

All sounds lovely, but that reminds me of another topic, the notion that organisations have to pay their more senior employees "competitive salaries".

Clearly, at lower and middle levels, you have to pay people roughly the same as the competition would pay them or as much as they could earn in similar level jobs in a different kind of business.

But I'm not sure that applies to the higher echelons.

When deciding the salary of all these NHS senior managers on six and seven figure salaries, the only real comparative is how much they - with their particular skills - could earn by doing something else, which in most cases would be four or five figures.

As to doctors, there is no particular need to pay as well as in other countries. Let's assume 3 million qualify worldwide as doctors each year; America wants to take on 1 million new doctors for $200,000 each. Is there any particular need for all other countries to offer $200,000?

Of course not; once those 1 million jobs are taken, the other 2 million will have to take whatever is left. As long as the lowest paying country is still paying enough to make seven years of medical school (or however many years it is) worthwhile, then that is enough. Many European countries recruit doctors and nurses from low-income countries - all they have to offer such people is enough to make sure that they end up slightly better off than they would have been working as a doctor in their own country.

Compare and contrast with footballers' salaries; the top teams have to attract the top players to remain top teams, so wages get bid up in the Premier League, the top football players can thus soak up all the super-profits which top clubs make (i.e. they collect rent). Does that affect wages in the Championship where the super-profits are much lower? No, not really. Why would it? Salaries in the Championship are based on those lower super-profits.

Furthermore, football teams in the same league are directly competing with each other - so Chelsea has to try and outbid Arsenal etc. But one hospital is not really competing against other hospitals in any meaningful sense, and they are certainly not competing across borders.

Just sayin', is all.

Nigel Farage on Discrimination Laws

From the BBC

Mr Farage told the BBC his remarks, recorded last autumn, had been "wilfully misinterpreted", saying he was talking about nationality not race.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4's Today Programme he said he was making the point that employers should be able to discriminate in favour of British workers.

Is there actually any demand out there for this? I challenge anyone to find a case of a company that hired a Pole but wished they could have hired an English person. How would you even get to that situation?

We already have an advantage - if I sit down 2 programmers, one from Poland and one from the UK with equal skills and experience that both seem to test OK, I'd hire the one from the UK because communication would be better with the person in the UK. You're not going to have language difficulties.

What's Farage's imaginary situation here? That an employer sits a Pole and a Brit down, and the Pole is a whiz programmer, and the Brit is a bit average, but the employer would want to hire the Brit over the Pole because of Queen and Country?

"Employees who enjoy a drink are more productive"

From yesterday's Evening Standard:

Employees who are consume above-average amounts of alcohol are capable of working an extra ten hours per week, according to a study.

Women who knock back at least two glasses of wine in the economy clocked in nine-and-a-half hour plus days during the working week. Men who regularly drink three pints an evening were capable  of the same long hours.

Researchers studied 333,693 people from 14 countries and concluded that an 11 per cent increase in alcohol use enabled people to endure much longer working hours.

Staff poaching and anti-competitive practices: The bizarre inconsistencies of the US legal system

From CNN, April 2014:

The lawsuit, filed in 2011, accused tech companies of agreeing not to recruit employees from one another as a way to keep wages down, a scheme allegedly hatched by deceased former Apple CEO Steve Jobs...

The lawsuit was originally filed against seven companies. Lucasfilm and Pixar, both owned now by Disney, agreed last year to pay $9 million to settle their portion of the case, while Intuit agreed to pay $11 million.

Separately, Adobe, Apple, Google, Intel, Intuit and Pixar agreed in 2010 to settle a similar Justice Department lawsuit over what regulators said were anti-competitive hiring practices.

The companies had been accused of violating antitrust law by agreeing not to poach each other's employees but did not admit wrongdoing in the settlement.

Fair enough, you might think. This boosts wages at the expense of corporate profits.

But how does that tie in with this apparently equal and opposite decision:

From City AM, January 2015:

One of business’s longest running disputes over staff poaching finally ended yesterday after British inter-dealer broker Tullett Prebon came out on top in its bitter five-year legal battle with US rival BGC Partners.

Shares in the UK broker jumped eight per cent following news that the New York-based broker will pay Tullett $100m (£66m) to settle a litigation suit in the New Jersey Superior Court.

The case concerned BGC’s alleged pinching of more than 80 brokers from Tullett’s US affiliates in 2009, which the UK firm claimed cost it $387m in market value...

The deal also includes a clause that prevents either party from hiring the other’s desk heads and senior management for a year.

This clearly boosts corporate profits at the expense of wages.

"Women under-represented in"

It's a man's celluloid world: study finds women under-represented in film

Women 'under-represented in world newsrooms'

Women under-represented in academic medicine

Women under-represented in freelancing

Women under-represented in Lords despite new additions

Protestant women under-represented in PSNI

Report finds women under-represented at senior levels in radio

Women under-represented in NHS leadership

Women under represented in fund management

WOMEN UNDER REPRESENTED IN SENIOR POSITIONS IN UK

Why are women under represented in the cannabis community?

Women under-represented in UK boardrooms, says survey

Women under-represented in construction, reveals guide

Women under-represented in senior advertising jobs

Flexible Working Laws

Reading the Guardian's report of this, it all seems rather pointless

The new rules do not alter the previous basis on which an employer is entitled to reject a flexible working request. There are eight business reasons an employer can use, which include the burden of additional costs, an inability to either meet customer demand, to reorganise work, or recruit new staff.

and

There is no obligation to provide you with an appeal, unless this is part of company policy, although it is good practice (as advised by Acas) for firms to have an appeals process.

Economic Myths: "Workers should own the means of production"

... is one of those things which the Lefties like to say.

Whether or not this is a desirable aim in itself, they have sorely missed the point. I have often struggled to explain it to them, to little avail.

The productive economy has a certain level of output, i.e. total sales, the consumer surplus arising from all this goes by definition to consumers, most of whom are "workers". It's difficult to measure but it is a huge figure.

The total amount which businesses receive as turnover/sales can ultimately only go three ways (ignoring taxes and rents for the time being, as these reduce the amount which ends up being split between workers and owners of capital).

a) It can be paid out as wages.
b) It can be paid out as dividends.
c) It can be re-invested in the business, which benefits future workers and shareholders in the same ratio, so we can ignore this.

(Of course, most businesses will spend a lot of money buying stuff from other businesses, but those supplier businesses in turn can only split the money three ways ad infinitum).

So how much is paid out, in the UK, under (a) and (b)?

Total taxable income in 2011-12 according to from HMRC was as follows:

Employment income - £635 bn
Self-employment income - £73 bn
Pensions - £111 bn
Property, interest and dividends - £60 bn

According to Capita Registrars, total dividends paid out by UK companies in second half 2011 and first half 2012 were £77 bn, and total taxable profits of UK companies is around £150 bn (so half it paid out as dividends).

This is more than that declared to HMRC as taxable income, because about half of all dividends are paid to pension funds, so they ultimately show up as "pensions" (which is deferred employment income) rather than as dividends. And dividends are paid abroad, not declared etc.

It gets really tricky once you try to factor in rents and taxes; most rental income in this country (the rental value of owner-occupied homes) is completely off the books, that £200 bn does not show up in these statistics, and the rental value of owner-occupied business premises (about one-third of all business premises) is recorded as business profits, not as rental income.

So although most individual workers have little "control" of the means of production in the legal or day-to-day sense, who's to say that businesses would be run much differently, or that their terms and conditions of employment would be much different if they did? And as it is clear that "workers" receive around eighty or ninety per cent of everything that is paid out, i.e. for every £1 you earn, "shareholders" (around half of whom are former workers receiving pensions), they already sort-of own the means of production.

So why, and this was the second point of the post, are the Lefties so keen to tax workers? Aren't they depriving them of a large chunk of that part of the means of production which they do own (i.e. themselves and their own labour)? Or should we assume that this cancels out, because about half of what you pay in taxes is then paid out as wages or pensions to current or former workers?

Readers' Letters Of The Day

From City AM Forum:

[Re: The recovery is being driven by a revolution in the jobs market, yesterday]

Have you considered that the reason for the rise in self-employed consultants is the tax system? With a good accountant, moving from PAYE to self-employment, for effectively the same job, can reduce your liability. I find it increasingly difficult to hire employees who want to be permanent.

Iain Herd

From The Metro:

I was interested but not surprised to read your article about the investigation in Poland into claims drugs firm GlaxoSmithKline bribed doctors to use its medicines (Metro, Mon).

As a nurse of 30 years, I have seen groups of specialist consultants being flown to warm European destinations for seminars and lectures at the expense of the drug companies, billeting the doctors in the finest hotels. I have seen nursing colleagues wined and dined at plush restaurants.

I used to attend lunchtime lectures at work where the drug reps would bring anything from sandwiches to gourmet take-aways while they peddled their chosen drugs. Any awkward questions asked about some of these drugs were either sidestepped or met with a fudged response.

It makes me think that morals and statutes do nothing to counter such practices and never will: drug companies have powerful lobbyists who will keep a stranglehold on the drugs market and the price we taxpayers have to pay.

Anton Clark. Essex

"MPs will not need to confess criminal past to employers"

From The Evening Standard:

Thousands of former offenders in the capital, including MPs, council leaders, senior quango members and civil servants, will no longer have to declare their past activities in a move intended to boost their job prospects in the private sector, ministers said today.

Under reforms that come into force next month, MPs who lose their seat will have to include their criminal history on application forms for only two years, instead of seven as at present.

More serious offenders - junior minister or Private Secretary level and higher - will also see a dramatic cut in the length of time they are required to declare their criminal past.

It means hundreds of former MPs who would previously have had to reveal their background when seeking work will be able to apply with a clean record instead.

Critics are likely to argue it could prevent employers from gaining an accurate picture of prospective staff. But justice minister Simon Hughes said the change would be a vital support for people who want to turn their back on politics and rebuild their lives.

Employment Markets

From the BBC:

The boss of Domino's Pizza should "probably pay his staff a little more" if he wants to recruit extra workers, the UK's immigration minister has said.

Chief executive Lance Batchelor has complained that he has been unable to fill 1,000 vacancies since migration rules were tightened up.

But minister Mark Harper said Domino's should "reflect" on salaries, adding: "It's a market."

He said the law would not change "just so he can keep his wages low".

Mr Batchelor, who is leaving Domino's to work at Saga, told the London Evening Standard the pizza takeaway and delivery chain was "struggling to get enough employees", especially in London and the south east of England.

He added: "People who would have worked here a few years ago now don't want these jobs. We could fill 1,000 jobs across the UK tomorrow if we could get candidates to apply for them."

The minister is talking nonsense here.

If this is simply about free market competition, why are there 1000 jobs going when there's 2.487 million people who are unemployed, i.e. earning nothing? In a market, wouldn't some of those people take those jobs?

Of course, what we're really dealing with here is the state interfering in the labour market via the benefits system. If you take a job, you lose some or all of your benefits, which means that at the worst level, you can see massive effective tax rates for those moving from unemployment to employment.

And while Domino's isn't a great job, it is still working, it is still earning money. And probably more importantly, it's experience of work, it's a step, it shows at least a certain level of discipline - that you can get out of bed and turn up on time and do a day's work.

One of the things that makes me angry about the elite class in this country is how little they understand about real work experience. They bang on about qualifications and apprenticeships, but if you meet people in say, regional management in retail, a lot of them started out on a till. They took that job, showed they were good at it, and the next job, learnt a lot along the way, and eventually ended up watching over dozens of stores. And it's the same in factories. They actually don't care that much about qualifications because they're mostly hiring people to watch over a printer. They'll show you what to do for starters, the rest you'll pick up on the job. Doesn't need a degree or an apprenticeship. If you show you're good, you might get to do something better.

The trouble is, we often don't create jobs, or replace jobs with machines, or farm work out to India or China, because it's cheaper. And we don't get those people in at the ground floor. We consign them to the scrap heap. It's doing none of us good. And we should bring in a Citizen's Income that will stop it.

More perils of social media

As well as social media distracting you from sex, it's well known that Facebook is used by employers to check job applicants. This is usually reported as a threat. "Be careful what you post", the pundits say.

However, this could be a two-edged sword. It would not be too difficult for a cunning young person to subtly enhance their employability by implying skills, activities and travel that they don't have, don't do or haven't done. It's not their CV, after all, and they haven't asked their potential employer to look at their Facebook page, so there's no obligation to tell the truth.

Just an idea...

"Half of graduates are working in jobs which do not need a degree"

Says the Daily Mail's headline, and the first bullet point it this:

* 38% of over-21s are now graduates, up from 17% just two decades ago

Hardly surprising is it?

Assuming that there is a clear definition of "graduate job" and society hasn't changed that much since, twenty years ago 17% of people were graduates and there were enough graduate jobs for all of them.

We have doubled the number of graduates overall without increasing the number of graduate jobs, so clearly half of graduates will end up working in non-graduate jobs. It does not really matter whether they do "hard" degrees (medicine, engineering) required to be able to do the sort of jobs which will always require a degree or "Mickey Mouse" degrees, the number of jobs in (medicine, engineering) does not change much.

The figures aren't quite as stark as this - rather unsurprisingly, the longer ago you graduated, the less likely you are to still be in a non-graduate job - but that's the general trend.