I worked for a couple of weeks in an unmentionable restaurant only to leave when I got my first pay cheque and discovered I was being paid £3 an hour, with the rest of my wage topped up with "tronc" payments to around £8 an hour.
The Labour MP Frank Field has proposed a wage top-up for those in their 50s forced into lower-income work, paid for out of national insurance contributions.
But paying in-work benefits also creates an incentive for firms to cut wages, as the state's wage top-up will ensure their workers are no worse off.Clearly, as Mr McCartney says, a minimum wage would limit the ability of employers to do this, and cut the bill for in-work benefits.
Unions have acquired considerably more rights since 1997 and Britain has become a somewhat less unequal country: Labour has introduced a high minimum wage, top-up pay for people on low incomes (tax credits), and spent vast sums on public services, sink estates and alleviating poverty.
Much envied by trade unions in the UK, the wage top-ups meant workers lost half their hours but received 80% of their pay.
Some cabinet ministers have joined Tory backbenchers in warning that the Government will face a backlash when 3.2 million people are told just before Christmas that their state-funded wage top-ups will be reduced next April.
They are expected to prove, as a condition of receiving low wage top-ups, that they are actively seeking to work more hours or take on extra jobs to earn more cash.
But this will require subsidies from the state; in the form of wage top-ups, perhaps, or a universal basic income.Why are subsidies necessary now when they weren't a century ago, when rising productivity was allowing workers to work less but still earn a good living via a market wage?
The original aim of universal credit (UC) – to encourage people to work more hours by letting them keep more of their low wage top-ups as their income rises – has been watered down so much that it risks failing to achieve its original purpose, according to the Resolution thinktank.
The idea behind so-called in-work progression – the most ambitious scheme of its kind in the world, but as yet untested – is that by providing coaching and support, low-paid workers can be helped to find more or better-paid work, so making them less reliant on wage top-ups.
