If they all worked for JL, they would all get the same amount, assuming JL do that. Anyone that keeps up to date with ‘equal pay’ issues, knows it is rarely equal, ie it is normally adjusted based on your gender, your age and your experience. What they need to do is look at how much a sales assistant gets in London compare to their other stores, and then they can talk about ‘equal pay’ having an impact.

There is nothing stopping JL giving their cleaners some of the benefits, their staff are just too greedy to back the idea and would rather their cleaners struggled to get by so they can get more money in their pockets

Yes some people will be badly paid compared to others. But I believe it is up to the workers to do something about this.

In your previous post you pointed out that ’employers can drive down wages in segments of the labour market where there is an excess supply of labour’. Surely this implies there are to many employees in this segment of the market and for the benfit of society they should move to jobs where they are required. Pay differences are the natural way to get the workforce into the roles they are required.

Shatterface,

If you don’t understand the arguments it is best not to comment as you just make yourself look silly.

I’ve never understood people who draw attention to their own stupidity like its a trump card.

Well there’s more than one way to define underpaid. The way you are using the word means by definition you cannot call whole segments of the labour market underpaid, or talk about the relative share of the pie retained by labour or capital. The way I am using it does lack objective measure, but we can compare relative pay over time and place and still use the word in a meaningful sense. Although I admit badly paid might be a better phrase than unpaid, if we have some idea of a minimum acceptable level of income we may say people are underpaid relative to that.

“You are aware of the idea that when there is a large pool of unemployed, employers can drive down wages in segments of the labour market where there is an excess supply of labour to the reservation wage, thereby “underpaying” the lot of them?”

Luis, how can this be ‘underpaying them’? Who decides if someone is underpaid? If they are underpaid then surely they could get higher paid work elsewhere and their employer would then be forced to mpay them more if they wanted to keep them?

That says everything about the situation. The cleaners do not work for John Lewis, so obviously they aren’t entitled to any share. They are not excluded, they simply don’t work for John Lewis.

If you followed the argument, I could say that I’ve got a right to strike because I’m excluded from John Lewis’ partnership scheme. Even though I don’t work in any retail environment or for any company supplying John Lewis with goods or services.

Fungus, the cleaners are not underpaid relative to other underpaid workers, they are underpaid in absolute terms and/or relative to better paid JL workers. You are aware of the idea that when there is a large pool of unemployed, employers can drive down wages in segments of the labour market where there is an excess supply of labour to the reservation wage, thereby “underpaying” the lot of them?