But surely this just leads to high inflation and prices go up anyway and the man now earning 50k is still at the bottom as everything now costs twice as much and his great new salary is no longer quite so great. I'm all for decent wages trust me, but we are talking about paying lorry drivers 56k for a job requiring 3 weeks of training.
I think market forces will drive HGV driver wages up, its not just the training, its also about anti social hours, stressful job etc. I suspect the switch from PSV to HGV isnt that great, so people will gravitate to the best paying jobs. The problem is covid and brexit have conspired to suddendly remove a lot of overseas drivers and the home grown training and licencing hasnt caught up.
I do think that with the EU we got the worst of both worlds, as
@Bletchleyite said "race to the bottom" and freedom of work and movement, whilst not having the ability to ensure that there was a level playing field with local workers who have to support a home and family at UK cost of living. I also agree about immigration, as an example, the East African Asian community who were kicked out of Uganda, they came to this country with the thought that it had to work for them, they (from what I saw at the time) worked hard, and were successful and bear in mind a lot of them had little more than the clothes they stood up in when they arrived, and down the line made a contribution to our society. Compare that with workers who come and live in poor conditions to earn money to go back home rich because of the lower cost of living, they have no loyalty to the UK, and all they do is keep wages artifically low for UK workers. Hopefully we retain enough compassion to welcome the genuine immigrants, whilst not allowing the second situation to reassert itself.