30K everyone in company gets it.

[Haggisman]

Your point being what, exactly? You've started your post with "but that's not the point" and then gone on to reiterate a position that precisely nobody disagrees with.

You stated that they aren't the entire workforce, as if that somehow means it doesn't matter if they're crap at their job or staff retention is poor.

The problem is that if a warehouse picker screws up, a customer might get some extra items or be missing something from an order, if the accountant screws up then maybe the company can't afford to pay everyone their £30k salary, or they get fined for discrepancies in their taxes.

Staff retention is an issue because every time someone new starts, a) they take a while to get to full efficiency and b) someone else has to stop working to train them

 

[dowie]

Yes, they may get lucky and find a fantastic accountant who doesn't mind a 50% paycut to work for a vegan food company, but the chances of that are slim

they've probably already got one and a couple of accounts staff to help him/her

for some people they'd maybe gravitate towards such a firm - cheap area where 38k or whatever will be fine to live on, probably quite a relaxed work environment filled with fellow vegan types

there are plenty of people out there with ACA, ACCA or that CIMA thing and this small vegan workers collective is sort of unique

Maybe they've got some woman who's had kids and wants a 9-4:30 ish job with a bit of flexibility for when she needs to pick Jeremy and Felicity up from the local Montessori nursery

 

[h4rm0ny]

Got to say, for all the theory going back and forth, I'm a big believer in empiricism and these people have been going for just over 40 years.

I'm sure somebody will say that they'd be bigger if they took a different approach but firstly, I'm not entirely convinced of that - they have a sector they're happy in and moving out of that sector means competing with bigger suppliers whilst simultaneously giving up the very things that differentiate them from those bigger suppliers to the customer. Secondly, they have goals other than simply making the most money they can. And I respect that.

We can talk what "will" happen all day long in this thread, but evidence suggests it's working for them.

 

[blitzwing85]

Interesting concept that highlights some issues in workplace equality and hierarchy but it makes very little business sense to do this and wouldn't even apply to most businesses where any level of technical skill and training is necessary.

The company i'm in now has so many hugely differing roles all of which are very technical so almost no employees here could be cross trained as most jobs takes years of education and on the job experience to perform the duties to the industry and GMP standard.

But I like the ideology of the concept.

 

[Angilion]

How big is Suma or whatever they are called? How many employees does it have?

About 150. Although "employees" might not be the right word due to their unusual setup.

There's some evidence that humans are instinctively aware of the personhood of only a limited number of people, with the personhood of other people being an intellectual understanding rather than an instinctive one. The usual size for that limit is in the region of 150 people. I wonder if that's just a coincidence.

 

[Angilion]

[..]
And people from other companies don't get bonuses?
Even team leaders are on more than them, let alone anyone else, and that's national wage, even up north.

I think you have a skewed image of the job market.

I'll illustrate with an employer I know well. No names, obviously. It's not an unusual employer.

Team leaders no longer exist, but when they did they were paid ~50p/hour above minimum wage. Which would be less than half what everyone at Suma is paid.

Assistant managers might get as much as 20K, maybe.

General managers, who manage a single site (which will be a multi-million pound business), might get slightly higher annual pay than people at Suma, but their hourly rate will be lower and their working hours will be far, far worse.

It "works" for a very niche sector, it wouldn't even remotely work on a larger scale,

Since nobody has tried it on a larger scale, that's not certain. I think it wouldn't work on a much larger scale, but I wouldn't state that as absolute fact. I wouldn't have thought it would work on the scale Suma has it working at, but it does.

EDIT: I just notice your quotes. It's not a matter of "works". It does work. Unless you're arguing that for the last 40 years the business has been nothing more than a loss-making front for some other source of money, your statement makes no sense. A business that doesn't work can't exist for 40 years and expand a lot in that time and constantly make a profit (unless it's a front for another source of money).

 

[Angilion]

Isn't this a communist based philosophy?

Absolutely, in the most literal possible way: the means of production is owned by the workers.

Which might make it the only working example of actual communism.

 

[OpenToSuggestions]

It is a cool idea, but it won't work.

There is no way a manager will work for 30k because:
- They will have significantly more pressure and responsibilities than the shop floor staff
- Will probably have a work mobile so get calls out of hours
- They can get significantly more money elsewhere.
- The second someone gets nasty with them, they'll say **** this let me pack boxes instead.

Based upon my work field, you won't get a good design/mechanical/manufacturing/electrical/stress/quality engineer (fully qualified) for <£30000.
I wouldn't entertain management work for that and nor would 99.9% of the workforce.

In the workplace everyone is NOT equal.

 

[Angilion]

It has worked for 40 years, so your statement is obviously wrong.

 

[Efour]

Exactly i mean lets not step on 40 years of facts to what some young hungry 20 something year old kid thinks is hard capitalist reality.

Sometimes, just sometimes, ethics and morality are more important than Salary but i really wouldn't expect you to know that just yet.

Pay the most attract the best is a total fallacy on so many levels anyway. Who you know is far more important than ability, we have all worked with people that you wonder how they put their socks on let alone run a department or project.