The Minimum Wage good or bad ?

Who decides on the level of the national minimum wage?

Ultimately it's the government. They receive a recommendation from the Low Pay Commission about the level of the national minimum wage, and decide on whether the recommendations should be implemented or not.

It has raised the living standards of the lowest paid, and helped close the gap between men and women's pay.

http://www.minimumwage.org.uk/news.asp

this article claims to be Unisons championing the low paid they are patting themselves on the back for getting the NMW raised by a massive 7p.

In my opinion this figure is being used by Companies all over the country to gauge what the wage is that they can compete with. I.e they can pay illegals anything upto this amount before employing the millions of unemployed who expect to be paid this amount. I know that this is illegal, but as in the Baroness Scotland fiasco checks are very rarely made and employers are not prosecuted to the letter of the law.

To introduce a minimum wage means that all the unemployed people are open to be discriminated against by all illegals looking for work, and employers seeking to get the lowest paid workforce.In fact it is probably used as a gauge all over the world to which other countries can undercut our manufacturing base.

*An example of this could be:
A UK electrician could be commanding a £20 an hour job.
A Polish Electrician can take a wage above the minimum wage say £10 an hour.

The Polish worker would be entitled to claim child benefit for any children they have, and would most likely share accomodation with 10 others sleeping in shifts etc.

The companies Employing the foreign workers can undercut the UK workers and ship in their own employees to do the jobs. This is wrong and is discriminating against the UK worker whos cost of living is higher.

* I have to confess this was a bit of info given by Bertie bert on our Paltalk discussion.