Business is not a social service
I read yesterday’s leading article in The Times and wondered, not for the first time, why so many people persist in thinking of business as a social service or a cash-cow that can be milked as a supplement to the welfare state.
“What wrong is there if profitable companies opt, voluntarily, to treat their employees better and, instead of paying the lowest ranks of its workforce a minimum wage, decide to pay them a living wage?,” The Times asked.
In doing so, it missed the point that those companies are profitable in the first place because they keep costs down to the minimum by paying employees what they are worth to them. No profitable business will ever pay those who work for it more than they are worth.
That sort of throwing money around goes on only where money is not earned, as with the public sector or, as we saw earlier this week, the European Commission which pays its former commissioners a hefty transitional allowance to ease them back into the reality of ordinary life outside a European Commissioner’s pay-cheque.
A company will increase an employee’s salary or wages only if that employee’s contribution to the company’s bottom line justifies the raise, and then again only if the company fears that this valuable employee will leave to work elsewhere unless he or she is persuaded otherwise.
But, and it’s the but that ends them all, if the employee who agitates for more money is easily replaced, and if there are others who can do the job just as well, then he or she will be told to accept the status quo or pack up and go.
Businesses are there to make a profit and not to provide a social service. Unless employees are involved in a profit-sharing scheme, they have no right to expect higher pay just because their employer is in profit. That is precisely what their employer is there for: to be in profit.
People are paid more than the minimum wage only when employers can’t find people to work for the minimum wage. If there are queues of people willing to do a certain job for the minimum wage, then the company will employ those people and not the ones who want more money.
It’s as simple as that – yet not to The Times, which seems to think that a business is something of a cross between a charity, the social services department and a moral crusader. “In fact, (by paying their employees a living wage) they would only be doing the right thing,” its leading article went on. “And in doing so, they help raise living standards and at the same time set an example to other employers.”
The inherent lack of commercial understanding in that statement is quite astounding. Businesses do not exist to do ‘the right thing’, to help raise living standards or to set an example to other employers. Besides, paying a living wage is certainly not the right thing for employers. They are there to make a profit within the law, to give a good return to their shareholders, and to compete with other employers for the best employees and for business.
If they keep their employees happy, it is not because this is “the right thing to do” or because they are kind and charitable and it gives them a warm feeling inside when they hand money out, but because happy employees work better and are more loyal to the business.
Contrary to what The Times’ leader-writer seems to believe, the standard of living does not rise through ad hoc wage increases doled out by kind-hearted companies with more interest in their employees’ ability to buy a house than in their own ability to make a profit.
The standard of living rises when the economy grows. Increases in wages and salaries which bear no relation to the employee’s worth to the company or contribution to its profitability are not a good thing at all. They are certainly not the right thing. They are one of the short cuts to the high road to disaster.
The Times continued: “When employers usually mount stiff opposition to the award of the annual allowance decreed by the government to make up for the rise in the cost of living, one would naturally expect them to look at the proposal with some trepidation. Yet, there is surely no harm in promoting the concept.”
Indeed, there is a great deal of harm in promoting the concept because it causes unnecessary tensions. There is no way on earth that any serious business is going to pay employees more than they are worth to it for the job that they do. That’s a given.
In fact, the organisations in Britain which have committed themselves to paying a living wage to those who work for them are not businesses at all, but charities, unions and some Christian denominations which, interestingly, do not include the Roman Catholic Church.
If there is no way that businesses will pay people more than they are worth to them – and they shouldn’t do so, either – then the net effect of promoting the idea is to raise unrealistic expectations among the recipients of wages.
Tensions then arise from the conflict between the expectations of employees and the responsibilities of employers who, in a toss-up between deciding what’s best for the business and what’s best for some of its employees, must decide for the former.
The mistake The Times makes is to believe that the concept of the living wage is being promoted among employers. It is not. Employers know about the living wage already because the idea that employees might wish to be paid enough to do with as they please is as old as time itself.
No, the idea is being targeted directly at wage-earners who, hearing the buzzword and understanding little else, confuse it with the minimum wage.
They are being given to understand that, if Joseph Muscat becomes prime minister, the minimum wage will increase several times over and allow them to keep several children and a non-working wife, run a car or two, buy a house and go on holiday.
If The Times cannot see this, then The Times is blind.
Joseph Muscat is simply testing the water for a rerun on Alfred Sant’s pledge to get rid of VAT: raising workers’ expectations on a living wage which they think is the minimum wage and which they fail to realise would be optional and not mandatory. Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, they think, will force their employers to pay them much more.
At a practical level, it is inopportune to promote the concept of the living wage in the wake of the greatest international crisis that the world has seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Ed Miliband, busy promoting it in Britain, has been told this already. Perhaps Joseph Muscat should listen.
Never have businesses been in less of a position to pay their employees more than they are worth than they are now. Millions are out of work, thousands queue for menial jobs they would never have considered before, companies are going bust while others issue profit warnings, and along comes Ed Miliband with his union-backed living wage.
And back home in Malta, Joseph Muscat, who appears to have no ideas of his own, reads about Miliband’s campaign tune and echoes him. Even as Maltese businesses slash spending and trim costs right across the board, lightening the ballast to keep the ship from sinking at the tail-end of a bitter recession, he trots along and tells them that perhaps they should pay their people more.
He seems not to care, at this point, just how many employers he will alienate with this stance. His strategy has shifted dramatically from courting middle-class libertarians to going after those who struggle to make ends meet.
“We have this idea of a living wage,” he tells them. “We will make your mghallem pay you more.”
And the people, as is their wont, will believe him – just as they believed his predecessor and his vain promises about value added tax.
This article is published in The Malta Independent on Sunday today.
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SPOT ON. If this were to happen and be made mandatory if Joseph Muscat becomes prime minister, it would be the ruin of most businesses. Iam employed by a private company which is barely making ends meet. It would be a disaster for Malta.
The same arguments were brought up when the minimum wage and a flat rate cost of living allowance were introduced during the Mintoff era. Before that, wages were miserable and increases were given as a percentage, resulting in the higher grades getting pounds while the lowest got half pennies.
[Daphne – The arguments for a minimum wage are completely different.]
Zebbugi – I do not agree that increases should be the same for all grades. That just does not make mathematical sense. Let’s say, A (labourer) and B (manager) start at E 100 and E 200 a week respectively. Each year add a E 5 cost of living increase and you will see that after a few years the ratio becomes all skewed so it would no longer make any sense to work harder and educate yourself for a better salary.
Zebbugi the flat rate increase played havoc with the salary scale and had to be adjusted later, not without a great deal of hassle.
The reason the company you work for is barely making ends meet is because it has an unwanted partner riding leech-like on its back, putting up no capital, continually moving the goalposts with stupid nonsensical rules and taking half of its hard earned profits and more.
That partner, to you and me, is the government.
Ed Miliband was elected as leader of the Labour Party because he had the unions’ vote. Let us hope Joseph Muscat does not push the living wage issue to the top of his electoral manifesto.
Yesterday’s editorial in The Times was one of the worst ever written.
The problem is that unless you’re in the engine room, it is difficult to appreciate the fact that to earn money you have to produce something.
If you don’t produce, you don’t get the cash – simple as that.
Many people think that it is a god-given right for people to earn money on the job and sometimes with no effort whatsoever.
There’s no flowery way to go about this. If you need the cash you either work more, or you work more. So go get a second job or improve your skill-set.
[Daphne – It’s known as CDMMM: if you can’t make ends meet, Cut Down or Make More Money.]
Perhaps you can log on to this. It will never work here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_wage
The short-sightedness of it all is amazing, especially when you consider that this is the leading article or editorial of The Times.
What would happen when a profitable situation turns to loss or to a break-even situation?
Would the employees be requested to refund part of the wages given to them?
Or would the business just fold and the employees with their ‘living wage’ end up unemployed?
I think that The Times’ editorial was written by an amateur who has no idea of business nor of economics.
Trying hard to go along with the PL leader – 2013 is so near!
In my 2010 dictionary the definition of a living wage is ” a load of codswallop” .
It was very different 120 years ago with Leo XIII and Rerum Novarum.
Are the progressives really taking us back to the 19th century or is this yet another gimmick?
There’s ‘gimmick’ written all over it. But that’s what we’ve come to expect from MLP/PL. In the real world, it would be as beneficial as the removal of VAT was in Labour’s unfortunate stint at actually governing the country.
It IS a gimmick, but unlike VAT/CET, where small businesses were led to believe they would have their cash register removed, and that there would be a return to income tax laissez faire, the idea of a living wage is an unbearable cost to small businesses.
So the PL will never appeal to the vote of small businesses and retailers with this move.
I thought Joseph Muscat has a PhD in Economics.
[Daphne – He doesn’t. He has a B.Comm. from the University of Malta (1995), BA Hons in Public Policy from the University of Malta (1996), MA in European Studies from the University of Malta (1997) and a doctorate in management research from the University of Bristol (2007). No economics anywhere, though in those fields he should have been exposed to a great deal.]
If so, he should know that the creation of imperfections through intervention in any market lead to either shortages or excesses, not to a balance.
Therefore, the introduction of a floor on pay would result in buyers (employers) retracting their demand – resulting in unemployment – or resorting to undesirable alternatives such as employing part-timers or contract work. It already happens with the minimum wage, let alone a living wage.
I suspect also that with Muscat trying to bring back the Old Labour vanguard into the party, the party’s agenda is back in the hands of the socialists and the communists. In this case, expect a lot of ideological theory and philosophy but little appreciation of the rational behaviour of market operators.
“Joseph Muscat is simply testing the water for a rerun on Alfred Sant’s pledge to get rid of VAT: raising workers’ expectations on a living wage which they think is the minimum wage and which they fail to realise would be optional and not mandatory. Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, they think, will force their employers to pay them much more”
That is what it is all about. But Kurt is happy that the idea, which he claims was put forward by his leader, has led to a “nice discussion”.
I read that editorial on line and even posted a comment beneath it.
This living wage will pass the wrong message to the illiterate and unskilled workers whose only ambition is to live the lifestyle of Onslow and Daisy in the TV series “Keeping Up Appearances” .
This sort of ignorant piece of garbage from The Times makes me despair. This nonsense only encourageas the ignorant hordes who expect something for nothing.
The Times should be arguing that if one is to succeed in life, one must make an effort and be prepared to make sacrifices, i.e. invest time and effort (and cash) for one’s advancement.
What a Soviet way of thinking. Shame on you, The TImes.
The living wage will be handed down to all the civil servants and parastatal employees, who would amount to 50% of Malta’s working population (read Lino Spiteri’s opinion piece today).
In practice this would mean that a skilled worker would have the deserved wage of say 20,000 euro a year while his assistant would gain 15,000 euro when his work would be worth 12,000 euro.
The catch behind all this would be that the tax ceiling will remain as it is, and one-tenth of the wage in NI contributions would be collected.
So some 750 euro in tax and 300+ another 300 euro in NI contributions will be generated by this ‘extra’ 3,000 euro the ‘poor’ worker gets annually.
The great divide (upstairs downstairs) between workers in the private sector and those working with the government will grow bigger and the difference between the qualified and the unskilled workers will narrow, spurring the former to demand higher wages (ghal 5,000 ewro noqghod operator u nitlaq fit-tlieta u nofs flok fil-hamsa jew wara u jkolli inqas responsabbilta`).
After the living wage is introduced by Joseph Muscat in the government-owned entities, and the dust settles, it will dawn on him that this move is costing him a lot and he will burden the tax-paying public (the middle class) with some spooky tax like Alfred Sant’s
CET under the name of the Carbon Tax which would charge on the amount of cars instead of the miles travelled.
I think another “galantom bi hwejjeg haddiehor” is being unmasked.
Handing a living wage to civil service and parastatal employees would amount to nothing short of mass economic suicide. It is precisely in the civil service and parastatal bodies where production is at its lowest.
Any increase in wages must be the result of substantially increased production or else the competitive edge is lost in no time at all. Should Joseph Muscat persist with this half-baked idea he would have to make a hasty return to the famous labour corps of his predecessors.
Let me think…..Korp ta’ Stagun Politiku Gdid.
The problem with the upcoming generation of politicians such as Joseph Muscat and Ed Miliband is that they do not have much (if any) real-life work experience.
If either had any experience outside of party politics the damage a “living wage” could inflict on business and the economy would be patently obvious.
To even consider discussing the concept at a time when developed economies are teetering on the brink of a second leg downwards in this Great Recession is just simply bonkers.
Ed Miliband had to pander to the unions in order to win the leadership contest, explain why he raised the issue in his campaign. While this strategy may have won him the leadership it may very well cost him the premiership.
Daphne, after reading your article I sincerely hope to see you in politics. I konw it is a problem but it would really and truly be an asset to the country to see you there – you make sense – a lot of sense.
Red nose, it is my considered opinion that Daphne is a true Liberal.
Her position on social and economic issues is nothing but liberal. She is not progressive, but – I repeat – liberal.
Whereas progressives and liberals share common roots, progressives have to grapple with an inherent contradiction: namely, State intervention does not allow business to grow freely.
The progressives cannot understand society without the State. In this, they are Socialist.
Liberals, on the other hand, believe in as little State intervention or control as possible.
To my understanding, the Venn diagram is like this:
1st circle: Conservatives: conservative on social issue, liberal on economic issues;
2nd circle: Liberals: liberal on all issues
3rd circle: Progressive: liberal on social issues, socialist on economic issues.
Needless to say, this is a generalized scheme of things.
Up to Sant, the Labour Party was right-wing Socialist: Conservative on social issues, Socialist on economic issues. Muscat is trying to take the party to the left: Liberal on social issues, still Socialist on economic issues.
Where is the PN? Utterly confused, to my mind.
What would Daphne make of the above?
She would contribute IMMENSELY towards the dissecting of policies and suggest remedies.
Nice analysis, but really cannot agree on your classification of the PN and PL. To my mind the PN is really, as you point out for conservatives, conservative on social issues and liberal on economic issue. The PL has been confused since Alfred Sant essentially trying to be everything to everyone, more so with Muscat!
To me in this utter confusion in determining where they stand on the ideological spectrum explains the mess the PL has been in for the past couple decades!
Not directly related, but according to The Times Joseph Muscat “hoped that the changes the government was promising to anti-corruption laws would allow one to look at matters which would have taken place in the past, as well as future.”
How does one look at matters that would have taken place in the future?
[Daphne – More to the point is the question of retroactive legislation: not a good thing.]
“How does one look at matters that would have taken place in the future?”
Through the Looking Glass.
“More to the point is the question of retroactive legislation” – when Joseph wears the RedBlue princely crown:
http://bygosh.com/lookingglass/lgtoc.jpg
In fact criminal law can’t be retroactive to the prejudice of the accused person.
Retroactive criminal legislation is downright unconstitutional.
Joseph Muscat would be more credible if the PL, and the GWU for that matter, set an example and started giving their own employees a living wage (except Marisa Micallef: she already enjoys it).
Marisa Micallef a living wage?! Marisa Micallef is getting a super-hyper-jumbo-gargantuan salary as usually given to mega direttori galattici -at least for Malta.
She must even have a poltrona in pelle-umana and an aquarium with PL employees in her uppermost-storey office.
“Era il Mega Direttore Galattico in persona, colui che nessun impiegato al mondo era mai riuscito soltanto a vedere. Correva anzi voce che non esistesse neppure che non fosse un uomo, ma solo un’entità astratta.”
http://static.blogo.it/cineblog/Paolo_Paoloni.jpg
Do the editor of The Times and Joseph Muscat think that this proposal makes sense when in the real Malta:
1. there are workers who are working on three month contracts;
2. part-time workers in the private sector are forced to go to work for one hour to earn a few euros;
3. workers in the private health sector accept flat rates for overtime on holidays;
4. there are workers who work half an hour extra everyday without getting paid for it;
5. there are workers who have to accept lower wages, because foreign workers accept less?
I think people who sit behind desks would better get out from their cocoons and get real, instead of proposing such surreal ideas, which do not even work on paper.
The title of the article cannot be disputed. As the Latin maxim says, finis mercatorum est lucrum, in other words the aim of the market is profit.
On the other hand the rest of your article is debatable. The concept of the living wage is a principle of Catholic social teaching found first in the historical encyclical Rerum Novarum by Pope Leo XIII. This should be the real ideal of the minimum wage and is also related to the concept of a family wage.
[Daphne – Perhaps then the Roman Catholic Church should lead by example and pay its employees a living wage.]
A wage is not based on charity but on justice, similar to payment for a service given.
[Daphne – That is EXACTLY it, David. Wages are based on justice: you get paid for what you do, and not for what you need to buy. It’s a crucial distinction that I tend to take for granted and then am perplexed to find that others do not understand. Wages are payment for services rendered, nothing more, nothing less. If you go to your local shop and buy break and milk, and are told by the shopkeeper ‘Look, today I’m going to ask you for more money, because my children want new shoes’, you’ll be right in telling him where to stuff it. Doing a job of work is no different – you’re paid what your services are worth on the open market. End of story. Anything else is communism, and we’ve seen already that it doesn’t work.]
Business has ethical and social responsibilities as UK Businesss Secretary Vince Cable has stated last week. The concept of a living wage is no loony left concept. Prime Minister David Cameron has been reported to have stated that this is “an idea whose time has come”.
[Daphne – David Cameron comes from the right. Ed Miliband comes from the left. Those most opposed to the living wage lunacy are, like me, liberals.]
Naturally this concept needs to be seen in the light of the economic situation of the country and that of the business concerned and therefore should not be a burden on business.
[Daphne – How can it not be a burden on business? It is BY DEFINITION a burden on business. You are telling businesses to pay their people MORE THAN THEY ARE WORTH. That has an immediate and detrimental affect on the profitability of the business and certainly on its efficiency. I am amazed that you find this so hard to understand. Have you ever run a business yourself? Pray tell.]
This concept should also not imply that everyone should have the same wage or that a wage should not be proportional to the type of work performed.
Every person has a right to have an adequate salary to live decently and to meet his or her basic needs and those of his or her family.
[Daphne – Ah, but the people doing the same work don’t all have the same requirements. You might have a single woman who still lives with her parents and with no intention of moving out doing the same work as another woman with four children and no husband and a home to run. What then? The living wage of one is yahoo mad money for the other, while their employer is ripped off royally.]
As Pope John Paul II has stated, the right of private property is subject to a “social mortgage”.
[Daphne – I don’t follow. How does the right to private property connect to a debate about the living wage?]
Since when do we listen to Pope John Paul II in economic matters?
Don’t you just love concepts, especially papal ones with Latin names?
I really cannot be asked to rely on economic advice issued by the Vatican when their own bank is, once again, being investigated for money laundering. Not to mention the horror stories from recent history.
The living wage has been shelved for decades because, guess what, it does not work. The chances of it working in Malta, a small country where everyone knows what their neighbours had for breakfast as well as their pay-packet, are minute to say the least.
It’s a recipe for in-house bickering and industrial unrest.
The concepts of Catholic social teaching, are still valid today, although they need to be adapted to present circumstances. This teaching has been called the Church’s hidden treasure and its main principles have often been repeated in Church documents – http://www.americamagazine.org/content/article.cfm?article_id=4928&s=1.
Once there is common ground that wages are based on justice, one must ask whether wages must also reflect social justice. Is social justice a part of social corporate responsibility? In the UK there is lobby for the living wage and companies such as Barclays and KPMG are in fact supporting and implementing this concept – http://www.citizensuk.org/campaigns/living-wage-campaign/.
One also argue that the a living wage benefits business itself – http://www.fairpaynetwork.org/?page=case_for_business.
Implementation of this living wage idea (that is, if not all business goes bust), would simply fuel inflation. In terms of purchasing power, the new living wage would go back to being a pittance. And then we would have to raise the living wage again, and on it goes.
David, your defence of the living wage is based on one of the greatest fallacies about capitalism: “business has ethical and social responsibilities”.
Business has only one responsibility: that of making a profit. It is as a result of making such profits that business can be ethical and socially responsible.
Very clever capitalists have along the years factored in the corporate social responsibility into the balance sheet as a way of escaping taxes – in other words, the expression of ethical and socially responsibility becomes in itself a way of making a profit.
What Joseph Muscat said sounds ridiculous to me. Employers aren’t charitable institutions.
Those employees who take work seriously will receive more in the long run. Those are the ones who are promoted to senior positions and those are the ones who are most needed and may be asked to continue working, even after they reach their retirement age, should they wish to continue.
No need for Joseph Muscat to be so silly.
Unbelievable – do people still believe that money grows on trees? I run my own business and still dream of having a sort of a ‘living wage’ for myself.
Now, how can we pay a ‘living wage’ without considering competitiveness, market demand, labour supply, etc? We already have a great challenge to persuade our employees to deliver further and be more cost-effective in order to at least recover their wages.
I can tell you that as things stand, we have to think more in terms of reducing costs and being more efficient, rather than giving out more money in wages.
Also, imagine considering an employee’s responsibilities at home before considering his skills…
In fact Leo XIII did make the connection between a social wage and private property. That is beside the point.
Forty years after Rerum Novarum is 80 years ago.
Already then, Achille Ratti, with whom I share a great passion for mountains, felt the need to update that document radically. Hence Quadragesimo Anno.
We are now well into the 21st century.
What our country requires is a vision for the future not revisiting the Catholic Church’s social teaching of two centuries ago.
[Daphne – Made when there was no welfare state….or social services handouts, or free healthcare, or free schooling, or….]
In the prevailing world economic climate talking about living wages is balderdash, in my opinion.
When in opposition the Labour Party always promises lot of things. The living wage will be a minimum wage.
How could he get a B. Comm one year, a B.A (Hons) the next and an MA the following year ?
You need 4 years for an honours degree. And a year to do a Master’s? Even full time sounds a little bit cagey.
[Daphne – Yes, a year is enough for a master’s when you’re reading for it full time. But you’re right, I did wonder about the Bachelors.]
You put all his degrees together and you’re lucky to get one decent one. (In Maltese – jekk taghsarhom ghandek xorti tlaqqat wahda sura).
To get an honours degree after a general one you just need one year. Ditto for a Masters degree after an honours degree.
[Daphne – Yes, but surely that would be in the same subject – e.g. a BA general in history followed by another year of study and you get an honours degree which REPLACES your BA general. Or have I got it wrong? It’s not actually two separate BAs, but one – and it has to be in the same subject. I’m missing something here, surely. And an honours degree is no longer four years, but three.]
Daphne – you are right – I was thinking on the same lines. There is a good possibility that he does not have a BA in public policy but more likely a diploma, which is basically a 1 year undergraduate course.
The University offers an MA in European Studies over 3 semesters, so technically he could have graduated MA in 1997 but the actual graduation would have been 1998.
But as we are now being led to believe, Joe Muscat can do miracles!
In the period around 1995, in the Faculty of Economics, Management and Accountancy of the UoM, students first graduated as Bachelors of Commerce after a 3-year course. Then, they could choose a BA (Hons) in Public Policy or Management, each with a one year duration, or BA(Hons) in Economics or Accountancy, which I believe were of 2 years in each case.
In the period around 2010, almost the same rules are still in place at FEMA. The only differences from what you said are:
1. an honours degree in economics is now a B.Com (Hons) 1 year course, no longer a B.A., and is read for after a 3 year B.Com general course;
2. in order to specialise in one area after a 3-year B.Com general course, and thus obtain B.Com (Hons) (five areas of specialisation are offered) or a B.A. (Hons) Accountancy, you would have to have chosen that area for your general degree, at which stage two areas must be chosen after the 1st year of the course.
The only B.A. (Hons) course offered by FEMA is in Accountancy.
The B.A (Hons) offered by the Faculty of Arts are based on very different rules.
Thus our beloved Dr. Muscat must have spent three years reading for a B.Com general degree, and one further year for his honours degree in public policy.
Only around five students graduate with honours in public policy every year, and this is not because a high level of IQ is needed for this course, but because public policy is not popular.
The underlying problem about the living wage is that people tend to adjust their standard of living according to their salary.
This will be a vicious cycle, a never ending story. Give me more today and in a year’s time I’ll need even more to live a decent life as my standard of living has increased.
It’s also obvious that if businesses pay a living wage they will start charging more for their products and services. This will translate into a higher cost of living and the benchmark to live a decent life continues to grow exponentially, until of course, the economy goes bust.
Why query his degrees? He is not applying for a teaching post at uni is he?
He expects to be running the country in two years’ time. This is the real tragedy.
All he can come up with is this living wage twaddle.
Joseph Muscat appeals to Joe Public to lend their skills to PL:
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20100926/local/people-invited-to-offer-their-time-and-skills-to-the-pl
What? He wants our time for free, but then he wants businessmen and government to pay a living wage?
As long as it is somebody else’s money…
The Times’ editorials and selective reporting have become increasingly suspect over the past two years. As for timesofmalta.com, give up all hope: the moderator needs a job description.
While it is generally true that one may study or work harder to go up the income ladder, one must remember that a specific job’s salary also depends on the labour market forces.
Try to get services for a blocked drainage and you’ll get the answer. I don’t think a professional would want to ‘upgrade’ to that kind of work.
Is The Times paying a living wage to its employees?