The Anonymous Widower

Miliband Has Another Crazy Idea!

After his idea of freezing energy prices, which I think, anybody with any knowledge of how the energy markets work, will think is a non-starter, he’s now had another idea, which although on the face of it looks good, will have far reaching negative consequences if it is implemented. It’s all reported here on the BBC and it is well summed up by the first paragraphs.

Firms would not be able to undercut wages by paying agency staff less than permanent staff under a Labour government, Ed Miliband has said.

Writing in the Independent on Sunday, the Labour leader said the party would close a loophole in the law that allowed for differing rates of pay.

Mr Miliband said he wanted to tighten the rules to “stop a race to the bottom with workers coming here from abroad”.

If you take an industry like farming, which relies heavily on bringing in agency workers to harvest fruit and vegetables, the resulting increase in price of the food, would probably mean we’d import more food from places like Kenya. Farmers would probably only grow food that could be harvested totally by machine.

Other industries would probably be similarly affected and their costs would go up, meaning more higher prices for consumers.

One point that he seems to ignore, is what happens in a company if agency workers and permanent staff are paid the same. A company would adjust the workforce to have the best one to meet its needs. So permanent staff might come under other pressures to perform as well as agency staff, be they from the UK or abroad.

It’ll be interesting to see how this argument develops.  I’d love to see a breakdown of where these agency workers are employed by industry and region. I suspect that we’ll find some important public services wouldn’t run without them.

You can’t bring in these sort of policies immediately.  You have to phase them in gradually over a period of time.  It’s like trying to ride a bicycle slowly, by only turning hard left and hard right, instead of by small movements on the handlebars.

My only worry about these unworkable pronouncements from Ed Miliband, is that enough people might believe him and vote for him in 2010. His deputy may be called Balls, but Miliband talks it in spades!

January 5, 2014 - Posted by AnonW | News | Economy, Ed Miliband, Politics