Harry's Place

Cheap/inexpensive clothes are good. Where once the great many on very modest means would have had to take especial care of often literally shoddy garments as the Mrs. Jellybys of the world were well garbed, now three t-shirts can be bought for £10.
Relying on sweatshops in buildings which are both literally and figuratively are [...]

While Walmart “associates” are so poorly compensated that in many states they are the largest number of Medicaid and food stamp recipients (i.e., taxpayer-subsidized low wages), the compensation of the company’s CEO, Michael Duke, rose by 41 percent from around $20 million in 2011 to just under $28.5 million in 2012.
And lest I be accused [...]

Part of the rationale for capping the increase in basic benefits to less than inflation was to signal approval for those in work and who had not enjoyed a similar pay-rise.
A pay-rate which the authorities do have direct control over is the minimum wage, and this is to be increased by 12p per [...]

Guardian writer Sarah Ditum asks in a Comment is Free piece:
“Is workfare close to godliness? Some Christian charities seem to believe so. The Salvation Army and YMCA have stepped into a murky moral swamp by joining forces with the government’s mandatory work activity programme”
The piece suggests that charities are colluding with the government’s Workfare programme.
But why [...]

Some will rob you with a six gun,
Some with a fountain pen
–Woody Guthrie, Pretty Boy Floyd
Or these days, perhaps, with a few computer keystrokes.
The National Employment Law Project documents the the far-too-extensive phenomenon of wage theft– the practice of paying workers less than their agreed-upon wage, paying them less than the legal minimum wage, not [...]

The report that Amazon in Germany hired a security firm with possible neo-Nazi connections is less troubling than what the firm did.
After the story broke on German television, Amazon fired the security firm, Hensel European Security Services (HESS), which was hired to police the 5,000 temporary foreign workers at Amazon’s German warehouses. (Amazon calls its [...]

When I first read of Adrian Smith being demoted and having a 40% pay cut slapped on him for stating on Facebook an opposition to same-sex marriage, I hung fire. As dismal as it looked for Traford Housing Trust to rusticate an employee for a comment made outwith work and which had the most [...]

Kevin Meagher at Left Foot Forward cogitates on the successes – or not, as the case may be – of the Regional Growth Fund. Launched in 2010 with £1.4 billions of funding, it was intended to kick-start economic development in down-at-heel regions of England and Wales.
Margaret Hodge, chairing the Westminster public accounts committee points [...]

After discussion of one free-marketeer wide-boy enthusing over the principles of economic self-sufficiency in which his workforce is paid the least he can get away with legally or practically whilst relying on a work-base trained at someone else’s expense, I see Left Foot Forward is cogitating on the living wage; which, depending on the area [...]

I had mixed feelings when watching the first episode of The Town Taking On China last night on BBC2, featuring erstwhile Conservative mayoral candidate for Liverpool, Tony Caldeira in his efforts to return his upholstery factory to Kirkby in Merseyside from its current location in Hangzhou, China.
His stated aim is laudable enough. To collaborate [...]