Oxfam\’s rightly proud of Wastesaver. Innovative, even at its 1974 inception, the facility is still unmatched by any other major UK-based charity for size and ambition. The warehouse is a maze of conveyor belts that wind across and around several levels. It\’s \”festive Friday\” when I visit on the last Friday before Christmas and many of the 50 workers are wearing Santa hats. Most aren\’t volunteers – Oxfam feels their work is too specialised – and are paid about £12,800, the living wage locally. (Why aren\’t they paid more? \”It\’s a reflection of the other local manufacturing companies,\” says Matt George, Oxfam\’s head of logistics. \”We need to remain competitive.\”)
The wages on offer to workers are not determined by the productivity of those workers.
But by the alternatives that those workers have.
Oxfam might do well to remember that next time they complain about sweatshops abroad. The wages in them are not determined by how much those sweatshop worlers make for their pig capitalist exploiters. They\’re determined by the wages those sweatswhop workers could make if they weren\’t being exploited by pig capitalists.
You know, they should measure others by what they themselves do?
I wonder what their directors are on?
From the 2009 Accounts, 1894 employees in the UK were paid £53.4m or £28K on average.
Seems the office workers must be on a lot more than the logistics staff.
CEO and highest paid directors were £1o1K and £107K respectively.
It also costs them £80+m to raise over £350m – a lot of which are Government grants.
Highly inefficient, money grabbing, self-righteous, self-opinionated, and work-shy. But perhaps I might be a touch critical.
Volunteers aren’t capable of doing specialised work? I don’t think so.
More likely they won’t be subservient and probably object to waste in the form of high salaries for incompetents.
High street units can’t come cheap, unless they get a special deal or have tax breaks
What does that change, exactly? I mean, I see why the factory owner wants to keep expenditure down but why do the capitalist pig dogs feel the same desire?
(Or, at least, why need they…)
Rob: Charity shops are exempt from a range of taxes, and get greatly reduced business rates. What scale of advantage this represents I do not know, but the proliferation of charity shops may suggest a rough answer to your mind.