Boss of John Lewis blames early retirement of 50 plus aged people for staffing issues

[swordtrombonefish]

I'm in the position now that I could retire if I wanted to, I'm doing what some people now call "quiet quitting", I don't have to say yes to anything I don't fancy doing at work to try to ingratiate myself with the boss and if they try to pressure me I'll walk. It's quite a nice place to be.

Been there a couple of years and same, they only keep some of the people who've been around a while and know the ins and outs as an insurance policy. If they started to push I'd just take the high road.

 

[Otto42]

One reason for the staff shortage, but that's what 52% of people voted for. Am sure this has also exasperated cost of living crisis, with greater inflation due to new costs of importing goods to an independent global Britain. To be fair Cameron, Osborne and senior economists did warn that this would happen, but Gove and Farage told us we shouldn't listen to experts (while ensuring that they were ok like our erstwhile PMs dad)!

 

[The_Lizards_Jumpers]

Strange to be

the whole "staffing shortage" is a completely fabricated joke.

There is no staffing shortage. Period. What there is, is a shortage of people wiling to work crappy jobs on working poverty wages on zero hours contracts for employers that expect/demand total loyalty and servitude.

people are sick of and have realised they dont need to expose themselves to this slow torture. This is not living.

Although to be fair many of those criticisms can't really be levelled at JLP who are a pretty decent employer / workers cooperative.

 

[Richyboro]

Wish I could retire at 50...looks like I'll be working till 67 and then be too knacked to enjoy retirement.

 

[Nosmo-King]

Just back from the US. Guess what? They have similar issues. Petrol( or gas)prices, interest rates, inflation, shortage of staff. The hotel I was at had a pub/ restaurant and it was closed for 2 nights - staff shortage. Signs up at numerous retail and restaurant premises requiring staff. So in some respects we are mirroring a issue not only attached to the UK.

 

[Nano]

One reason for the staff shortage, but that's what 52% of people voted for. Am sure this has also exasperated cost of living crisis, with greater inflation due to new costs of importing goods to an independent global Britain. To be fair Cameron, Osborne and senior economists did warn that this would happen, but Gove and Farage told us we shouldn't listen to experts (while ensuring that they were ok like our erstwhile PMs dad)!

Staff shortages are a good thing. This is a benefit, not a negative. Staff shortages means employers have to compete for employees which means higher wages. Businesses love a surplus because it is the other way round, aka lower wages. These businesses will all kick up a fuss that their costs are going to increase but it is a good thing. It is too heavily weighted towards shareholder profits instead of employees so anything that flips that even slightly is positive.

It might mean slightly higher costs for goods and services but a fairer distribution of wealth is what we have all been calling for. I'm happy for inflation to be higher if it means people, at the lower end particularly, earning more. In reality, evidence shows that that sort of cost increase makes very little difference to prices. This sort of inflation is much more palatable than costs rising so businesses can make bigger profits every year as usually happens.

 

[grumpyoldgit]

Like a few posters on here, I'm quiet quitting. Working 16 hours a week in a general slowdown. At the age of 62, I don't think I could put up with the general stresses and strains of full time work any more. Surely that gives more opportunities to younger employees IF they get paid a decent wage?

 

[Redwurzel]

I stopped working full time when I started paying a marginal tax rate of 40.5% (NI, basic Income tax, Occupational Pension, which I was not getting nothing back for because of my circumstances) add in daily travel costs to work and back, union fees, work clothes, limited times when I could take my holiday i.e to more expensive times etc. It felt like I was not not benefitting a lot. Since then NI rates have gone up and basic Income tax threshold frozen. It is a bit selfish but I felt half of what I was paid was not for me.

Working flexibly and part time allows me to help elderly relatives and others, do voluntary work, do something say watch a film/sporting event during the day.

My work was getting more and more routine, prescribed, online permanently (less contact with students), pay had been frozen for years, redundancies most years hence less and less job security, poorer physical working conditions (crampt and hot). The hours required to complete the job were more and more (no such thing as overtime). Parts of job were still enjoyable helping others learn and improve their lives, but those bits were getting less of the job. Most of the people I worked with were good people and the students. However there appeared little opportunity to develop and rise. Slowly over a good number of years I could feel I was getting more and more drained and beaten down. When employers could into survival mode, improving employees job satisfaction becomes a very low priority.

My advice to employers is make the jobs more interesting by involving your work force, not just controlling them and in some cases micro managing them. Also freezing their pay for year and after year does not necessarily save money, it devalues the worker. For some workers make the working times more flexible where you can. Not everyones lives revolve around their work, in fact I would say nowadays its a minority that does. The Government needs to reduce tax slightly on paid employment say by raising basic income threshold - £12,670? is significantly below the Living Wage and also reduce NI for the lower paid. NI is a tax on working people. A bit more tax can be recovered from areas of the economy that don't affect paid work, such as property, inheritance. Many people's house is going up in value more than the income they earn working full time which is crazy. The relationship between labour and capital is currently wrong.

Ref John Lewis Partnership - my local Waitrose has lots of staff, if anything there seems too many. LIDL has 4 and Waitrose about 20 front of house staff - the W store is a bit bigger. My guess is that its the stores and facilities in the South East that are struggling for staff. John Lewis is based in the South East.

John Lewis closed their newish store in Birmingham recently. I would told by poster on here there is a lot of unemployment in Birmingham and he quoted the figures. So I imagine staff shortages were not a major issue at that store. I agree about the JLP staff bonus vanishing will mean the rewards at JLP are the same as everyone elese now and Amazon is taking a lot of JL's business. I have said before the business taxation issue is wrong in this country where by Amazon pay very little, but the high street stores pay much more relatively. As a country we are asking for trouble as some business taxes dry up.

I know there are the usual posters that will blame Brexit, but importing young people from Romania and Bulgaria is not a sustainable model as Sports Direct did at their warehouse and cramming 5 of them into a 3 bed terraced house in Ashbrook. Eventually they will get sick of that. To begin with the wages are relatively good for them, but not in 2022 when there are more opportunities in their own country that is not Brexit related.

 

[Nano]

The Government needs to reduce tax slightly on paid employment say by raising basic income threshold - £12,670? is significantly below the Living Wage and also reduce NI for the lower paid. NI is a tax on working people. A bit more tax can be recovered from areas of the economy that don't affect paid work, such as property, inheritance. Many people's house is going up in value more than the income they earn working full time.

This is a con that they pull. All threshold's for tax rates should rise every year with average earnings. If you have a job that is worth a specific amount then it should be worht the same every year as a minimum. Every year we get screwed and if you are near a threshold whether that is £12,750 or £50k and you get a pay rise to cover inflation which takes you into the next tax bracket then your costs are going to massively outstrip your take home pay rise. Freezing them just makes everyone poorer every year.

 

[Anton_Berg]

A lot of people here seem to have missed that JLP is famously a partnership. As mentioned above, they look forward to an annual profit share, but if it is zero , and little prospect of a decent figure in the near future, you might as well retire. This was followed by a reduction in staff, meaning more workload for the stayers.
They have been hit by disruptive competition, and the partners understand the business as well as any. They've seen all the people walking around the store, looking at stuff then checking the price on Amazon on their mobile.

 

[Otto42]

Staff shortages are a good thing. This is a benefit, not a negative. Staff shortages means employers have to compete for employees which means higher wages. Businesses love a surplus because it is the other way round, aka lower wages. These businesses will all kick up a fuss that their costs are going to increase but it is a good thing. It is too heavily weighted towards shareholder profits instead of employees so anything that flips that even slightly is positive.

It might mean slightly higher costs for goods and services but a fairer distribution of wealth is what we have all been calling for. I'm happy for inflation to be higher if it means people, at the lower end particularly, earning more. In reality, evidence shows that that sort of cost increase makes very little difference to prices. This sort of inflation is much more palatable than costs rising so businesses can make bigger profits every year as usually happens.

Am all for rising living standards, usually through people at the bottom getting better opportunities and regulation of excessive profits, but what's the point of people earning more if everything they need to buy costs more?

 

[Nano]

Am all for rising living standards, usually through people at the bottom getting better opportunities and regulation of excessive profits, but what's the point of people earning more if everything they need to buy costs more?

Costs go up marginally for everyone, salaries go up significantly for the lower paid. Share the wealth.

Super simplified micro-example. A bar selling 50 pints an hour. Putting the wages of the 2 staff serving up by £2 per hour would add 8p to the price of those pints. The staff would notice a big difference to their life, the customers are barely affected.

 

[Muttley]

There is a very strong economic argument for increasing the wages of the lowest paid. Very simply it runs like this. If you give everyone an extra £10 per week, the rich people will probably just leave it sitting in their bank account, the low paid will take the money and spend it. More importantly as they are unlikely to be very mobile they will probably spend it in a local shop. This keeps the local shops open who pay their staff who spend money in local shops. If you imagine that effect on somewhere with a large number of poor people you can see the boost it can give.

The worst part about the way Tories tend to distribute their largesse is they do it by percentages. Rather than give everyone a tenner they might reduce Income Tax by 0.5%. So if we have someone earning £20k that gives them an uplift of (roughly £2 per week) to someone earning £100k that is £10 per week (which as I said above will probably sit in their bank account). And the more you earn the more they are giving you. Of course this is the whole root of the lie about so called "Wealth Creators" that rich people "create" wealth. They do no such thing, they hoard wealth.

(A horribly simplified example but it shows the principle)

 

[JackG]

A lot of people here seem to have missed that JLP is famously a partnership. As mentioned above, they look forward to an annual profit share, but if it is zero , and little prospect of a decent figure in the near future, you might as well retire. This was followed by a reduction in staff, meaning more workload for the stayers.
They have been hit by disruptive competition, and the partners understand the business as well as any. They've seen all the people walking around the store, looking at stuff then checking the price on Amazon on their mobile.

John Lewis closed 16 of its 50 JL stores last year. Waitrose is doing OK but the JL stores are doomed.

 

[Boro in Devon]

I have managed to semi retire early. Turned 55 during the pandemic and had to review my pension to be able to support myself.
I luckily cashed in my two final salary pension schemes, the payouts were amazing, particularly from a bank where I had only worked for for a few years. These have been paid into a new pension scheme giving me the flexibility to draw a tax free sum and a small pension to top. It helps me as I dont have a partner, but do have two kids, who will be able to inherit any amounts that are left following my death. They wouldnt be able to benefit in the company scheme.
I know can enjoy my early retirement while I am still fit enough, my objective is not to live a long life but an enjoyable life. My parents died of cancer/dementia and I have no intention of going into care. Instead I enjoy riding my bike to the local pubs and enjoy eating lots of enjoyable food that my doctor wouldnt like.
If I require some extra money I am sure I can find a part time job to give me a few quid.

Life is what you make of it, live it now and not wait for the future when you are to old.

 

[Redwurzel]

Costs go up marginally for everyone, salaries go up significantly for the lower paid. Share the wealth.

Super simplified micro-example. A bar selling 50 pints an hour. Putting the wages of the 2 staff serving up by £2 per hour would add 8p to the price of those pints. The staff would notice a big difference to their life, the customers are barely affected.

This is interesting example and it shows how labour costs are squeezed. If a pub sells 300 pints in a shift @ £4.50 per pint thats £1400 per shift - if they pay £600 for the beer and pay the staff £77 each they are left with £723 for say manager's daily wage (£125) and glass collector/cleaner (£50) and daily overheads. I would expect energy to be £120 per day, rent £100 per day, rates £10 per day

Of course this is a busy pub.

 

[Nano]

This is interesting example and it shows how labour costs are squeezed. If a pub sells 300 pints in a shift @ £4.50 per pint thats £1400 per shift - if they pay £600 for the beer and pay the staff £77 each they are left with £723 for say manager's daily wage (£125) and glass collector/cleaner (£50) and daily overheads. I would expect energy to be £120 per day, rent £100 per day, rates £10 per day

Of course this is a busy pub.

I was purely looking at marginal cost of a pint because that is the extra needed for a payrise.

My guess would be in your example the real money men already take their big profits out at the "£600 for the beer" part. There will be loads of profit that can be reduced there to increase wages but they won't do that so wage rises have to come from price increases.

 

[Corcaigh_the_Cat]

John Lewis closed 16 of its 50 JL stores last year. Waitrose is doing OK but the JL stores are doomed.

Primark is booming though.

We can no longer afford quality clothing.

 

[Boro in Devon]

I was purely looking at marginal cost of a pint because that is the extra needed for a payrise.

My guess would be in your example the real money men already take their big profits out at the "£600 for the beer" part. There will be loads of profit that can be reduced there to increase wages but they won't do that so wage rises have to come from price increases.

In the event of any payrise, by increasing the selling price, you have to factor extra VAT on the price.
Then the publican has to pay additional employers VAT and pension payments on the increased wages.
It becomes an expensive and slippery slope, but would be good if employers could do this.

 

[JackG]

Primark is booming though.

We can no longer afford quality clothing.

Primark sells much better clothing than JL. I posted my most recent purchase in the Skechers thread yesterday but didn't say where I bought them. . I'll post it again. They're from Primark and Greggs 'Fashion with Flavour' range. Buy now while stocks last!!