Non-wage benefits.
I’ll clip a section from ‘Why Britain is ruined beyond repair’ to explain.
‘Much of this insecurity has been achieved by the salami slicing away of median and lower-income earners’ ‘social entitlements.’ Heaps of what we (because whether you have a middle class, salariat job or are at the bottom, we’ve all lost out) have had taken from us can be grouped into the term ‘non-wage benefits’. Here’s a list;
Paid sick leave, paid holidays, paid breaks, paid time off for doctor’s appointments, job interviews, union meetings and duties.
Pensions, medical insurance or expenses schemes, and car sharing schemes.
Cycle to work schemes, free or subsidised parking not just for the board members and management. Collective bargaining, a legitimate, and credible grievance procedure, extra pay for weekends and unsociable hours.
Everything under the heading of safe & healthy working conditions.
Educational benefits (discounts on tuition, tuition for children, etc) leading to opportunities for promotion, extra responsibility.
Employment security, the requirement to offer full time work (instead of only offering part-time work to avoid providing benefits), maternity and paternity leave and child care assistance.
The Living Wage Action Group sum up thus,
‘Non-wage benefits are inseparable from the living wage. Together with the wage they secure a just working environment and, the vital resources that both workers and their families need to sustain a basic and decent standard of living. Non-wage benefits range from safe and fair working conditions to health care coverage and paid vacation time and the right to organise.’
Here are a few examples.
In today’s NHS you can study for a higher qualification, say a Masters. You can attend the teaching sessions in work hours (usually one work-day a week, fortnight or month) and the bin pays for it. That’s a valuable non-wage benefit that doesn’t seem to have been creamed off. It benefits both parties, the staff gains a qualification, goes for a promotion, gets better at her job and the NHS gains a higher qualified staff without having to recruit a new one. If you are unfortunate to be in a rubbish job with an idiot manager, its one day less you have to suffer it. Bonus. I can testify to that.
At one of my early jobs, there was a day centre with a big hall. There was also an old building with an even bigger hall where parties and dances and what-have-you were organised for patients on the weekends and evenings. One of our staff wanted to start his own dojo. He needed first to learn to teach and have students and become accredited, so he set up martial arts training for staff (and friends and families) in the daycentre’s big hall one evening a week when it wasn’t being used by the bin. Nobody minded. Nobody made him pay anything. Nobody demanded he have a certificate or insurance or so on. It was a perk of the job. Everybody got something out of it. That is inconceivable now.
Continues in ‘How to get there from here Pt 2. Leadership & training’
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