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KeithB, we're getting there.
Hiring more when busy, employing fewer when not so, is entirely sensible and I am all for it.
BUT!
The way this has been done historically must change. Up until the present time a motor mechanic has given more regard to what happens to the spanner he has laid down than many employers give to their workforce. It is high time we took the same care of people that we do of our tools.
The cry for a drastic reduction in the Deficit is far too simplistic and one-sided.
All those laid off should be placed on the rack, clean and oiled, ready for the next job rather than thrown upon the midden of unemployment. There to languish until shovelled-up and cast again into the grinder of work, there to be ground down and chipped and nicked and made less useful for the next time.
The idea of starving people back into servitude is as productive as it's source. Those who play around with money and have zero regard for the fellow man (and woman, and children).
It has been the growing intensity of focus upon money that is responsible for bringing us to this present sorry pass. When all praise and esteem, and reward, goes to speculators and those whose effort is required for all businesses to prosper (that would be the workforce) are treated worse than beasts of the field, something is badly wrong.
PaulW, the owner/runner of a SME that borrows on the value of his home often seeks to transfer the risk to their employees and not until each one has lost his or her home does that risk transfer back, yet any and all reward for success stays with him.
The salient point in my #47:
The employed work for their living.
Why should anybody work to the betterment of an employer when there is nothing but risks of all sorts for them and benefits only for the businessman?
Which brings us neatly back to thread's title: Living wage!