not bike related but a sobering thought

[Richard Simpson Mark II]

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My grab truck ....
Getting a new one next month, can't wait

[Richard Simpson Mark II]

Next Generation Scania?

[Tink]

Next Generation Scania?

Unfortunately not, it's last of the old shape but 450bhp, automatic, very tidy machine, I'll post a picture when I get her

[Richard Simpson Mark II]

Still a good truck

[garyboy]

Owe the irony of lifes injustice...minimum wage 8.21 per hour at my age ...i can get a job with no skills or responsibilities...

Im a fully qualified hgv driver who can operate most vehicles and carry anything worth millions requiring lots of money spent training yet?...........im only paid £10.50 per hour...so not a lot more than being in a brain dead job...

Just how the hell did we as a nation end up in this situation....?

globalisation! .. immigration! .. cheapening of the jobs market .. government dictat/ policy/ ideology .. big business sneak planning .. G7 meetings .. G20 meetings .. unwillingness of (southern English?) people to work hard on lower tasks .. freedom of EU movement of people and jobs .. availability of overseas cheap labour .. false documents? .. lowering of standards .. erosion of standards .. poor supervision by authorities due to cuts .. willingness by employers to recruit cheap trash or cheap skilled people .. Austerity causing anxiety and extremism.. lack of work and oportunity … .. ..

[Tonibe63]

Owe the irony of lifes injustice...minimum wage 8.21 per hour at my age ...i can get a job with no skills or responsibilities...

Im a fully qualified hgv driver who can operate most vehicles and carry anything worth millions requiring lots of money spent training yet?...........im only paid £10.50 per hour...so not a lot more than being in a brain dead job...

Just how the hell did we as a nation end up in this situation....?

Money is not the only thing in life and I priorities a job I enjoy doing. Having taken a 12 month break from driving to restructure a mates factory I couldn't stand being caged indoors despite the fact it paid more money.

[Richard Simpson Mark II]

In 1909. that well-known left-winger Winston Churchill told the House of Commons:

"It is a serious national evil that any class of His Majesty's subjects should
receive less than a living wage in return for their utmost exertions. It was
formerly supposed that the working of the laws of supply and demand would
naturally regulate or eliminate that evil................Where in the great staple
trades in the country you have a powerful organisation on both sides, where
you have responsible leaders able to bind their constituents to their decision,
where that organisation is conjoint with an automatic scale of wages or
arrangements for avoiding a deadlock by means of arbitration, there you have
a healthy bargaining which increases the competitive power of the industry,
enforces a progressive standard of life and the productive scale, and
continually weaves capital and labour more closely together. But where you
have what we call sweated trades, you have no organisation, no parity of
bargaining, the good employer is undercut by the bad, and the bad employer
is undercut by the worst; the worker, whose whole livelihood depends upon
the industry, is undersold by the worker who only takes the trade up as a
second string, his feebleness and ignorance generally renders the worker an
easy prey to the tyranny of the masters and middle-men, only a step higher up
the ladder than the worker, and held in the same relentless grip of forces -
where those conditions prevail you have not a condition of progress, but a
condition of progressive degeneration."

He was setting up the Trades Councils to ensure fair wages in the 'sweated trades'.

His legacy (Wages Councils) was abolished by the Conservatives in 1993.

And that's why we are in the state we are in.

It's so ironic that Churchill, the great reformer, is now a hero for the likes of Rees-Mogg. They obviously don't know a thing about him and what he actually did and stood for.

[sid.]

I'm also a truck driver (30yrs) and have realised i'm never going to get rich doing it, but still enjoy it ( most of the time ) i left a company after 12yrs as they were going down the route that Richard described. I now work for a small family firm who i've known for ages, on a decent salary ( so not chasing the hours) and more importantly i'm treated right which is more important to me. There are a few good jobs left out there.

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[daveuprite]

Tracie's brother is a time-served and experienced, qualified HGV1 driver. He is currently having to drive 7.5 tonne trucks and 3.5 tonne vans, without tachos, on the minimum wage. He does at least a 60 hour week nearly every week, and if he were to turn down work he would be fired instantly. He often ends up doing a 10 hour driving day and then gets a return job from Heathrow to Liverpool at 5pm - so he can be driving absolutely tired out well into the night. It's bloody dangerous and should be illegal. He gets home, sinks a beer and gets 6 hours sleep if he can before doing it all again.
No social life, no time to relax. His rent and bills eat into 50% of his wages and his zero hours 'contract' means that he doesn't know from one day to the next if he will have any work the next day, nor if he will end up back at home that night or not. None of that is an exaggeration at all. We talk to him sometimes via Facetime while he's loading up at some god-foresaken depot and he is knackered and depressed. A 45 year old hard-working guy with no standard of living and no prospects.

It's an absolute disgrace that a western G8 country should allow this to happen.