Should the minimum wage be raised to £10 an hour for teenagers?
UNASHAMEDLY chasing cheap popularity, Jeremy Corbyn is again making ridiculous promises to the young. His pledge to increase the £4.35 youth rate of the minimum wage to £10 for all does not come with any advice to firms on how to manage this added cost to their overheads. He either has little understanding of how commerce runs or does not care whether this move leads to profit loss and job losses in firms unable to absorb the increase in overheads. Another folly of his plan is that having qualifications and experience would become meaningless. Giving everyone the same rate removes any incentive to strive for improvement.
JIM CROTTY, Ashby de la Zouch, Leics. JEREMY CORBYN’S plan would reduce jobs for young people. Employers forced to pay the same for a youngster
as someone with years of experience will choose the latter. Unsurprisingly, as he did with the student loans he pledged to abolish, Corbyn fails to explain how the money would be found. It’s easy to make sweeping gestures pre-election, but far harder to deliver on them.
KAREN CARTWRIGHT, Redditch, Worcs. IN THE Seventies, apprenticeships were virtually killed off by union demands for equal pay for equal work. The company I worked for had a wonderful scheme that collapsed because it became economically unsustainable. The only way Labour’s latest promise of £10 per hour to school-leavers would be viable would be by Government subsidy, meaning the public would pay.
ALAN STACKMAN, Calne, Wilts. THIS is a typical Labour con trick, like most of their crazy ideas. As a former shop steward in the TGWU, I predict that if the minimum wage were raised to £10 an hour, unemployment would rise at a dreadful rate because most small firms could not afford to pay it.
I. NEILL, Reigate, Surrey. YOUNG people must not be fooled by Corbyn. Small businesses will not be able to afford £10 an hour, while large ones will employ older staff. Corbyn’s ethos is to take, take, take from business. He is absorbed in his ideals and does not have practical answers.
CHRISTINE WARD, Leicester. WHY is Labour planning this? Could it possibly be because they also want to lower the voting age to 16 so school children, brainwashed by Left-wing teachers, will have a major influence on which party forms a future government?
TERENCE COCKERILL, Beccles, Suffolk. MR CORBYN, please can you give my 17-year-old a job in your office making tea (one lump or two) at £10 an hour? He will vote for you in the next General Election — unless I get to him first. Name and address supplied.