In the news

^ Leave the poor lettuces out of it.

Letti*

Does anyone have a source for a good discussion about the changes to farming inheritance?

My initial reaction is that it's hard to have sympathy for someone inheriting a business worth 1m+, but obviously the "value" of farmland is harder to release than other assets, in the same way as a home you live in is materially different from a house as an investment, even if they may be valued similarly.

Basically would like to be more informed but don't know where to look

I dont know but here in the north but castle green/redrow are aggressively targeting farmers with low milk yields thanks to the supermarkets . Its sold in bulk by the likes if arla . The properties are falling down due to poor revenue so it gets to the point where they pack it in . Then the housing vultures move in .

^^ re. farmland inheritance

Someone more in the know than me pointed me towards Dan Neidel on tw@tter for a nice summary - not looked at it yet.

(would also prefer a non-tw@tter source)

Ah, ta

https://unrollnow.com/status/1851956384167776598?origin=serp_auto

The NI increase may even kickstart companies moving people from more secure salaries into the gig economy, so I hope Labour are still pushing the merger between employee and worker status to make sure this doesn't happen.

I'm not a pal of Neuvo New Labour (and my feeling is generally they were nowhere near brave enough with this budget) but this is conjecture. Despite vocal whining from the Director class, it's clear businesses can and should swallow this hike. The very rational being would simply point out that in recent years businesses have generally been able to grow profits or engage in pretty brazen profiteering (margins rose 30% avg post-pandemic) all whilst wages stagnated.

Pan-sector wage depression directly related to this rate change is unlikely, and though there will be sharks that use this as an excuse to try minimise wage and try and move employees to less formal engagements in the micro, wage dynamics are generally more complex and robust than that.

Thanks. Bookmarked to read later...

my feeling is generally they were nowhere near brave enough with this budget

it's clear businesses can and should swallow this hike

businesses have generally been able to grow profits or engage in pretty brazen profiteering

I agree with all of that, I'm just framing it as a risk, which you seem to agree with at least on the micro scale. Personally, I can't see a force stopping companies passing this through to wages or reductions in employment security to at least some extent, maybe over time as they deal with staff turnover or new hires. The risk of not sorting this out in the employment rights bill is pretty large.

I'm not sure a faith in labour market dynamics is going to save anyone here either. After all, the last time we had a tight labour market (i.e. good for wages), the macroeconomic response was to increase interest rates to trigger a reduction in wage growth.

I think you are underestimating what it would cost any business to restructure and manoeuvre to enable them to somehow beat the NI rise, which is peanuts per role in comparison to even the most rudimentary of hiring processes.

It's a huge and expensive risk to become uncompetitive as an employer to your current and prospective labour force. It's a huge and expensive risk to operate near or under the threshold of viable labour resource.

edit: ok, fact checking self: CIPD estimates the average cost of filling a vacancy, including labour costs, is £6,125. For a manager role, these figures rise to £19,000. Employers Contributions @ Class A at Median 34k wages is £3,436.74 PA for 2024/25.

Dan Nieldle reckons that couples with assets of under £2m won't be affected taking into account the housing, couples and farming allowances. The chap quoted in The Times article, if you read into what he says (owning 240 acres at @£10k an acre, 2 tractors and a combined harvester has at least £3.4m in assets (not including the house barns and any other equipment).

They don't need to restructure, they just need to put together a different contract for new hires — they won't be able to flip this into an immediate decrease in wages and change of contracts for current employees, the effect will be over time. I mean, you can find templates for zero-hours contracts online, thousands of small businesses do this, so it's not exactly complicated.

It's a huge and expensive risk to become uncompetitive as an employer to your current and prospective labour force

Don't make me laugh. The wage/profit share of GDP has been shrinking for longer than I've lived, and competition didn't seem to do much about that. If you're talking about middle class salaried desk jobs in major cities you might have a point — they'll not be the ones transitioning to zero-hours contracts. Those companies' wage bills will still go up though, and they'll be looking at how to cover it by tightening belts.

Edit: sorry, didn't see your edit —

Class A at Median 34k wages is £3,436.74 PA for 2024/25

The new minimum threshold is 5k, rather than 9.1k, so the calculation will be:
(34000-5000)*0.15 = £4,350 (per year, but remember this is also per employee)

Arla is owned by the farmers that supply it though right?

They've also raised the employers allowance to £10k.

So if they have fewer than 5 employees (on median salaries), it'll be a net benefit — also not great (is that right?)

I just don't see what they were thinking here beyond fixing the balance sheet.

Not the Onion: https://www.cnbc.com/2024/11/01/google-employees-pressure-execs-at-all-hands-for-clarity-on-cost-cuts.html

Google’s chief scientist, Jeff Dean, wore a starfish costume to the meeting

I think fixing the balance sheet is pretty important at this point.

Maybe it is, but it’s hardly a progressive pro-growth policy in the interests of working people, which is what I was trying to get at.

I’m really hoping the employment rights bill will sort this all out, but we’ll see I suppose.

They don't need to restructure, they just need to put together a different contract for new hires

I'm not convinced by this tbh. Wait until you hear how much it costs a business to get 3 directors around a table for 20 minutes. Point being organisational level things like employment modes are more difficult to change than just starting to offer different ones. They feed into structural, operational things like rotas, scheduling, resourcing, and all come with administrative overheads. To state otherwise seems naive.

Any point claiming that businesses will be using zero hours as some sort of stick to beat the labour market back with also seems a bit moot until we know more about planned reform. It's a key bit of policy for Starmer's Labour. They said they will regulate that option out of existence (if they dont back out or water it down. Who knows)

If they dont, I'm not sure that actually changes much. My reading of it is that most industries that would be most likely be able to move to exploitative zero hour modes already have or are already on that trajectory.

To state otherwise seems naive.

All I've said is that that some businesses may move to zero-hours contracts, and that's a risk. That's hardly a categorical statement, and given the direction of employment contracts in the last few decades it's fairly warranted. You've already mentioned sharks taking advantage of it, so in your own words there's clearly potential for some businesses to do this.

Any point claiming that businesses will be using zero hours as some sort of stick to beat the labour market back with

That's also not what I said?

It's a key bit of policy for Starmer's Labour. They said they will regulate that option out of existence (if they dont back out or water it down. Who knows)

Well that was my entire point, that I hope it will be resolved in the employment rights bill.

My reading of it is that most industries that would be most likely be able to move to exploitative zero hour modes already have or are already on that trajectory.

This is a good argument. It would be interesting to see how many remaining jobs there are on proper employment contracts that would be compatible with zero hours contracts. I'd be very surprised if there were none whatsoever.

Wait until you hear how much it costs a business to get 3 directors around a table for 20 minutes.

This costs lots, but wait until you hear how many businesses don't have 3 directors, or if they do they're already down the pub round a table together every Friday.
I think you both have decent points but from different experiences of employment and employers.

How would you sum up Badenoch's level of homophobia to someone who doesn't follow UK politics?

Also loved her being part of the ‘Conservatism in Crisis’ pamphlet. This mentioned that a neurodiversity diagnosed used to be about knowing yourself, but these days it is just an advantage to have in the workplace.

GURL.

https://www.autism.org.uk/what-we-do/news/the-national-autistic-society-has-responded-to-kem