{"id":268,"date":"2006-09-07T08:03:43","date_gmt":"2006-09-07T07:03:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sundaypapers.org.uk\/?p=268"},"modified":"2009-11-26T03:12:15","modified_gmt":"2009-11-26T03:12:15","slug":"church-worker-wage-levels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sundaypapers.org.uk\/?p=268","title":{"rendered":"Church Worker Wage Levels"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There is an interesting call from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.church-poverty.org.uk\/\" onClick=\"popWin=open('http:\/\/www.church-poverty.org.uk\/','myWin',''); popWin.focus(); return false\">Church Action on Poverty<\/a> to ensure that the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.church-poverty.org.uk\/news\/livingwage2006\" onClick=\"popWin=open('http:\/\/www.church-poverty.org.uk\/news\/livingwage2006','myWin',''); popWin.focus(); return false\">hourly wage of Church workers meets a minimum of \u00c2\u00a36.80<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>This is expanded on by Ekklesia <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ekklesia.co.uk\/content\/news_syndication\/article_06096cap.shtml\" onClick=\"popWin=open('http:\/\/www.ekklesia.co.uk\/content\/news_syndication\/article_06096cap.shtml','myWin',''); popWin.focus(); return false\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>This relates to my recent item <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sundaypapers.org.uk\/?p=258\" onClick=\"popWin=open('http:\/\/www.sundaypapers.org.uk\/?p=258','myWin',''); popWin.focus(); return false\">Exactly Who is Doing the Giving?<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>My two comments are:<br \/>\n1. The Poverty line in this country is a relative income which is a certain proportion of the average (or perhaps median, I can&#8217;t remember) income. This is a bit bizarre because as society gets wealthier the poverty line moves up &#8211; so getting further and further from the &#8216;real&#8217; poverty line. Some countries use a &#8216;real&#8217; poverty line where the calculation is based on people being able to afford certain basics including food and shelter.<br \/>\n2. Providing the legal minimum wage to a worker is often a way of getting a balance between the worker giving and the worker being provided for (and the providers of the wage doing the giving) &#8211; see my post mentioned above.<\/p>\n<p>For a Christian worker to get a high wage and then give money to other things is <strong>very<\/strong> tax uneffective. For example the incremental tax rate (including tax credits, NI contributions, etc.) for two parents (of two kids) on the minimum wage is around 62% &#8211; i.e. if they earn an extra \u00c2\u00a31,000 in one year (perhaps doing overtime, or perhaps through a pay rise) they only see a net increase in income of \u00c2\u00a3380. This is a massive tax rate which is interesting to compare with the rate of tax refund on &#8216;Gift Aid&#8217; giving of only 22%.<\/p>\n<p>Basically if you want to give it is better to be able to do this by accepting a lower wage (and effectively giving of your time to some degree) than having a higher wage and giving money. This is more tax efficient to the tune of \u00c2\u00a3400 per \u00c2\u00a31,000 extra pay (in certain circumstances).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There is an interesting call from Church Action on Poverty to ensure that the hourly wage of Church workers meets a minimum of \u00c2\u00a36.80. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sundaypapers.org.uk\/?p=268\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-funding"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sundaypapers.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sundaypapers.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sundaypapers.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sundaypapers.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sundaypapers.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=268"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.sundaypapers.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1557,"href":"https:\/\/www.sundaypapers.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268\/revisions\/1557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sundaypapers.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sundaypapers.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sundaypapers.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}