Does the welfare system encourage companies to pay low wages? Does the tax credit system encourage people to only work part time? Do people work the tax credit system to work the minimum hours for the maximum overall income? To what extent do welfare and low pay interplay? All uncomfortable questions.
All questions the taxpayer rather deserves answers to.
We’ve looked at this several times in the past – see our articles here and here. Look at the numbers and you would think that most people on low wages would be crazy to work what most of us would consider a full week – working tax credit payments kick in at 16 hours a week and 30 hours a week so unless you are earning a reasonable hourly wage, working more than that makes little sense.
This, we have suggested several times, probably explains why so many people in the UK work part time, why our unemployment rate is so low, how companies get away with paying such low wages and, of course, why productivity is so low.
We were interested, then, to see last week that McDonalds had introduced new fixed hours contracts for employees who want to take them up. Anyone who does can choose the number of hours they commit to every week. And those hours? Four hours a week, 16 hours a week or 30 hours a week.
Anyone want to argue now that both employers and workers aren’t gaming the welfare system?