Minimum Wage Increase 2024

I don't have much sympathy for Larry, Pat or Keeling's - they can afford to pay alot higher than minimum wage. This rise though will have a bad affect on small shops, coffee shops and small restaurants. It's another increase on top of all the other increases and if they put up prices they lose customers. Alot will have to close up in 2024 resulting in job losses.

It's gets me that that the bold Pat is mentioned regularly on business shows in particular about all the jobs he gives .The conditions are rubbish and is just hiring young people on minimum wages ,he is no hero .

A small coffee shop or newsagents etc cannot be compared to a meat factory. Margins would be very different. The volume of product being turned over per hour is very different. A shop may have no customers in a certain time ( but still has to pay staff) where as a meat factory is continually producing product that will be sold.

With small shops, coffee shops and small restaurants I'd seriously question the viability in the first place if their business if they closed up over a 1.40 per hour per staff member increase.

More often than not, it's a classic poor mouth headline put out by business owners who want to protect their own bank balances imo. And it wouldn't even impact them

For example, if a terribly small coffee shop sold a mere 6 coffees an hour (business viability seriously in question already here) it's an extra 25c a coffee. If a coffee was 4quid, it's now 4.25.

A 6% price increase for an 11% wage increase. Trickle up economics it should be called. Not the Reagan theory of trickle down.

If the coffee shop sells a more reasonable 12 coffees an hour an average, it's a 3% price increase for an 11% wage increase. And doesn't affect the owners bottom line.

The lower paid gain more % wise than they themselves will have to pay on goods and services as a result of wage increases if the cost was applied fairly.

Some owners will have the headline out and use it as an excuse to throw 50c on instead of the 25c

It should be as simple as that but customer behaviour is not simple - if a customer pays 4euro for their coffee every day and it now costs 4.25 every day - that may be the tipping point that stops that customer having that coffee every day. They now go sod it - it's too expensive I'm stopping that habit. The coffee shop loses that customer and possibly many others by putting the price up.

It may be fine for the likes of Costa to put up their prices but may be not viable for a small coffee shop. People don't argue price increases with chain stores but argue over every cent in a small business!!

Indeed. And if someone has a disability which means they cannot get a better job then there is substantial state support in terms of HAP/ social housing and medical card.

It's important that there are starter-jobs available in the economy for people to learn in and get experience for better paid jobs.

Small shop in central Galway.

Direct costs of selling a cup of tea = 26 cent, as stated by the owner.

Tea bag, sugar, wooden stirrer, cup, lid, an allowance for heating the hot water = 26 cent.

Sell that tea for 2.00 euro, which is below average.

1.76 ex VAT, so 1.50 gross margin, or a 75% gross profit margin.

Many firms in Ireland enjoy large profit margins, so there is loads of scope to absorb higher wages.

The costs above exclude indirect costs, like insurance, rent, etc.

Irrelevant because its excluding labour and rent, which are the biggest costs in a food business. Direct costs are usually trivial.

If a business can't pay their staff a living wage then the businesses aren't viable. You can't have your capitalism and eat it.

And those companies are effectively being subsidised by the state when they allow it to cover what employees need for a basic living.

Or maybe there are roles that slot between being making sense to pay an unskilled rate for yet border being unviable if that rate needs to be higher.

The higher the minimum wage goes the more it pushes businesses to weed out these jobs.

Quite honestly I'd sooner automate a task where possible for low level roles than hire more staff, they're the greatest pain in the hole you'll ever have to deal with. It leaves more money to pay for experience which is universally valued by every business owner in the country. Very few experienced staff in a skilled or even partially skilled roles certainly are not worried about their minimum wage going up!!

Some businesses, particularly in the services & hospitality industry struggle big time here which is why you see more closures there than implemented efficiencies. I'd feel for anyone trying to run a high staff business in hospitality!

Politicians in New York had the brainwave of pushing the minimum wage to $15 for car washers, all it resulted in was closures and automation. https://fee.org/articles/how-the-15-minimum-wage-upended-nycs-car-wash-industry/.

Small towns like the one I live in, you'd be hard pressed to find employers paying much over the minimum. When options for jobs are so limited (pubs, supermarkets, hotels, shops, that's about it) i guess they don't have to.

There are many, many people around here that are nowhere near their teens or being in their first job and having to try and survive on the minimum. I hate hearing people say, 'It's only teenagers in their first job be on minimum wage.' It's absolutely not true. And I only hear those who are comfortable, middle class people who say that type of thing. They're convinced these other people just didn't want to work as hard as them or something to achieve the wage they have.

It's a pretty shite state of affairs when your best chance at a wage that isn't minimum is to work in a German discount supermarket having every task timed to the second and 1000 items per hour scanning target and the hours they expect are nuts too. And it's only a couple euro above min. But that's the reality in many small towns.

And now if you want to move somewhere else to find more opportunities, well, good luck finding accommodation. And you'll have to figure out some way of squirreling away a significant sum - a difficult thing to do when you're not on a living wage.

The worst thing is all the minimum wage jobs also have the worst management who treat you like dirt. I worked in Supermac's once for a few months they treated everyone like crap, like bold teenagers even tho many of us were in our 20s or 30s. Most of the managers were non Irish and have preferential treatment to those who were also from there. The one Irish manager I knew, I met her after we both had left and she told me she used to cry every day before she had to go in because she hated it so much. I also remember working like a dog on Christmas Eve, for some reason they put on less staff than normal but it ended up being the busiest night ever, queue out the door.

Our wages were supposed to come in a few days later, two days after Christmas. And it wasn't paid. Tried to say it was a bank error. People complained and were told we should have money saved to not be living paycheck to paycheck.

And that's what you sound like when you say stuff like that, totally out of touch.

There are enough people working off the books as it is at least make the minimum wage worthwhile to work we need the lower end jobs filled .No matter how low the minimum wage is you will have buiness owners complaining that they can't afford to pay any more .

I HATE Pat McDonagh. I hate everything about him, and when he started doing his family holiday videos during Covid, oh I wished some mighty nasty things on him. He's a pure scum employer, and I avoid Supermacs completely now (considering it's going downhill anyway). Just for others, if there's a Supermacs attached to a Circle K, McDonagh has stakes in that Circle K so don't use those ones either.

Ah but shure sometimes he calls into the Galway city branches on busy nights and helps out apparently haha. Man of the people he is.

I actually saw him walking out of the O'Connell St branch a few months ago, probably noting down to see the staff were only giving X ml of red syrup the punters pay 30 cent extra for on their ice cream. 27 million profit and he's still inspecting the kitchens instead of having a trusted underling do it, some hungry man.

One thing you gotta hand to McDonagh, he makes his chips so inedibly bland you are forced to buy a curry or gravy just to swallow them.

This could cause problems for people on low wage and taking medication who have medical cards its a very tight margin to be over the threshold, hope the government as thought this through.

I refuse to pay 13.50 for a meal in Supermacs.

That's near enough to a sit-down meal in a restaurant, with plates, cutlery etc.

It's not my problem if VAT has changed, minimum wage is gone up.

He needs to reduce his costs... Hit the landlords, reduce staff numbers, squeeze his suppliers.

People's incomes have not gone up to match his prices. No way I would pay more than 7 or 8 euro.

Does it account for all those who get a whopping 20 to 50 cent extra an hour more than minimum wage in most of these areas tho ;)

Everyone is a libertarian, or at least thinks about it, when they're asked to pay more in the full knowledge that others won't. We expect the government to regulate employers because, in reality, we'd never control their worst excesses with our wallets.

Set up your own fast food business, pay your staff what you deem acceptable and report back in a year.

If mcdonagh is a pure scum employer how on earth does he have staff working for him at a time of full employment with every second shop and restaurant with staff shortages? Does he lock them in the cold room at night?

Costs of employing min. wage employees are going up 30% over next 2 years with various schemes, rises etc. government keep lobbing it on as they have raised welfare so much now working is unattractive.

It's gonna be a bloodbath in restaurants/ hospitality but I bet mcdonagh will still be standing