Furloughing staff

[wrd]

The problem I had with the original decision was that it hit the poorest payed staff, whille the club were still paying the highest earners, which in this case were the players.

I'm kind of assuming they've reached an agreement with the players but want to announce this first to try and curtail some of the negative PR.

 

[markiespurs]

I'm kind of assuming they've reached an agreement with the players but want to announce this first to try and curtail some of the negative PR.

Your probably right, hell, it could even be that uncle Joe has decided to put his hand down the back of the sofa and found some loose change to fund the wages of the fuloghed staff.

whatever the reason is, i'm just glad Levy has done the moral and decent thing and reveresed the original decision.

 

[SpunkyBackpack]

This was forced on to Levy by the players, and at least the right thing has now been done, even if through gritted teeth.
Now the players will be at least willing to sit down and have dialogue with the club about salary deferrals etc.

Is there a source on any of that?

Well done to the club, managing to get some bad PR once and then once it passed and no-one was talking about it (other than 14 threads on here) jump back in, remind everyone of the decision you made, go back on it, look weak and give the impression that you didnt need to do it in the first place to really give those who wanted to moan some more ammunition.

Once the choice was made, whether it was right or wrong they should have stood by it.

 

[Shadydan]

This was forced on to Levy by the players, and at least the right thing has now been done, even if through gritted teeth.
Now the players will be at least willing to sit down and have dialogue with the club about salary deferrals etc.

Source?

 

[wrd]

Your probably right, hell, it could even be that uncle Joe has decided to put his hand down the back of the sofa and found some loose change to fund the wages of the fuloghed staff.

whatever the reason is, i'm just glad Levy has done the moral and decent thing and reveresed the original decision.

Yep, we can sit here and talk about what could have/should have been done and this and that but we all make decisions we regret and I think we would all much prefer to be judged on our decision to make things right and that's been done so credit to him for not being stubborn. I doubt he'd have cared what anybody thought if he truly felt that money would put the establishment of Spurs at risk and so I'm of the opinion they've figured out the finances but either way the staff are being taken care of and that's fantastic.

 

[Rocksuperstar]

While i've voiced my disgust at the way players have handled this, I've kept pretty quiet about my opinion on the club's decision to furlough because while the vocal majority are disappointed with Levy/ENIC over that decision, in that initial couple of weeks I couldn't help but feel it was perhaps necessary with so much uncertainty in front of us, all of a sudden like it popped up.

Initially, all business would look at their incoming and their outgoings but - like I mentioned previously - this is a chain that's failing at every single link, not just one at a time, and as a football club we're only the second link in that chain. The anchor that holds it down is the consumer, but as the country has gotten to grips with the fact that the "hand that feeds" is staying indoors the whole chain is now coming to terms with it.

It's unreasonable to expect the next link to pick up your slack because they are in the same boat and once they have their coping mechanism in place, be that government grant, releasing equity or whatever, the stress they are under relaxes a fraction and takes weight off of the next link.

Now that all of the suppliers & companies that are expecting a cheque from THFC so that they can pay their staff, the furlough scheme has been employed there, meaning the demand on Spurs isn't quite as urgent as it was - I would suspect that a lot of companies are now looking at deferred payments and other means available because we now know it's just not going to be the same anymore.

Yes, I was disappointed that Levy/ENIC didn't step up to make sure the staff were catered for, as they could obviously afford it, but those people aren't technically employed by Levy or ENIC, they are employed by THFC and Levy was acting in the best interests of the club. Not his own, well not directly anyway, he was trying to ensure that whatever happened next, the club had cushioned the blow - we're nursing a huge debt already, so if we can take one silver lining, one positive from this debacle so far, it's that Levy took a very hard decision that he knew was going to be tres unpopulairre without hesitation, to safeguard the club. Not himself.

imo.

 

[Trotter]

Source?

Just from the player I know. It is what I have been saying for the last 3 days or so.
Club has approached the players over last few days to discuss wages cuts/deferalls.
Players collectively would not even start any talks with Levy until the club reversed the decision re non-playing staff.

Players will at least now listen to, and begin dialogue with the club.

Club may use fan pressure as the reason given for reversal, but the main reason is he wants the players to assist with the cashflow, and this was the only way that has a chance of happening.

 

[KaribYid]

Paying staff in full and re-evaluating things in May/June as this situation drags on is what we should have done from the beginning. But in this case, it's truly better late than never.

Transforming the stadium into an NHS facility is worthy of praise and recognition. If the reason for the delay in reversing the decision was so that they could sort out the details for the Stadium/NHS so that they could include it in the announcement then they're forgiven for letting it drag on as the substance of the contribution is greater than a week of bad press.

Finally, shame on all of you who blindly defended Levy's initial decision. I'm glad that in this case, pressure from the press and our own fans helped to produced the right decision in the end.

 

[tototoner]

Good

 

[Lighty64]

Not me. If the money is not there would have no issues if we don't spend at all in the transfer market, even if it is desperately needed.

Where I take umbrage is where the money was obviously there (just look at our recent profits) and was not invested in to the playing squad, and people defending the club just saying well we haven't got the money (listing loads of reasons why they think we haven't without having the first understanding of accounting), and then 10 months later when accounts are published, that just gets destroyed as a theory.

our recent profits not reinvested? so Ndombele, GLC, Sess, Clark, and Bergwijn are just figments are they? as well as the players we are still paying for

the season before most ITK has said Poch wanted certain players, those players either didn't want to join us (De Jong) or wasn't available, or at the time kept moving the goal post (de Ligt). The only player we all know Levy was guilty of messing up totally was Grealish.

you might be right about we should have chucked money at it, at a time we WASN'T making big profits and that we wouldn't of broken FFP, but if we had done that we would be a lot more in DEBT 635M than we are, and might of not got the deal with the banks we did get for refinancing the stadium debt.

Levy has set this club to go forward for generations, under what you want we would have never got out of debt. Football has been so different since the change of football with PL and UEFA cups changes. Man City and Chelsea have both spent 185+b to get where they are today, and neither have spent 1b on a stadium and both have totally flouted FFP especially when it wasn't a rule or in City's case even with it. which has made it even harder to win trophies.

THFC and Arsenal have paid more taxes than any PL club since 2007

 

[Trotter]

THFC and Arsenal have paid more taxes than any PL club since 2007

Which means by your own sentence, (and I haven't checked it for its factualness) Tottenham and Arsenal have made more profits than any other club in that period (you only pay corporation tax if you make profits), ergo in basic terms those clubs have re-invested less back in to the squad than they could/should have, and have even gone as far as prefer to pay a proportion of those profits to the government rather than invest it in players.

 

[Doctor Dinkey]

Well put.

The intention of the government scheme was to be used exactly like THFC were doing, to protect jobs while still securing income for those left with no work to do and thus being furloughed.

How are a football club different than other companies in this aspect? Do people not think other big companies have rich owners and highly-paid staff? Who exactly are meant to use the scheme then?

Don't agree. It is absolutely absurd that a premier League football club, who would pay millions and millions in wages, and spend fortunes on transfers, would come running to the public purse to pay the wages of their least well paid staff. Never mind the financial mechanics, it's the moral optics that was the issue. It's the right decision, unless you think that we were right to make a stand on this issue.

 

[Lighty64]

Which means by your own sentence, (and I haven't checked it for its factualness) Tottenham and Arsenal have made more profits than any other club in that period (you only pay tax if you make profits), ergo in basic terms those clubs have re-invested less back in to the squad than they could/should have, and have even gone as far as prefer to pay a proportion of those profits to the government rather than invest it in players.

a lot of those years they were using the profits to build the stadium, meaning we are only 635m in debt now instead of over a billion. we could of spent 20-50m more a season on players been a billion in debt today, and still no guarantee of winning a trophy.

 

[dontcallme]

The problem I had with the original decision was that it hit the poorest payed staff, whille the club were still paying the highest earners, which in this case were the players.

I believe legally the club couldn't reduce the players' salaries without agreement.

The situation sucks but the club still has rules to follow.

 

[Lighty64]

Paying staff in full and re-evaluating things in May/June as this situation drags on is what we should have done from the beginning. But in this case, it's truly better late than never.

Transforming the stadium into an NHS facility is worthy of praise and recognition. If the reason for the delay in reversing the decision was so that they could sort out the details for the Stadium/NHS so that they could include it in the announcement then they're forgiven for letting it drag on as the substance of the contribution is greater than a week of bad press.

Finally, shame on all of you who blindly defended Levy's initial decision. I'm glad that in this case, pressure from the press and our own fans helped to produced the right decision in the end.

let's hope you accept the shame if 4 months down the line redundancies are made because they didn't look after the club. if the players have forced this lets hope they accept cuts to protect the club. deferrals won't help if this goes on for another 6 months

 

[Rocksuperstar]

Why are people still looking at the club as if this virus is only affecting the club? We didn't know anything about how this was going to go and what the implications will be when we start to climb out of it - how we start to climb out of it even.

Levy throwing the switch the minute a safety net became available was the right thing to do - once the club had spoken to all of those it owed money to and those who owed money to it, those who had already paid us money for future bookings, etc. and maybe wanted it back, started the discussion internally over the situation regarding season ticket holders, and the thousand and one other financial matters that immediately became a concern all at the same time, took stock of our actual situation in the grand scheme of things and, it turns out, that we can afford to continue paying the staff - that's great news!

If you're on a ship that gets a massive hole knocked in it, do you start bailing water out immediately, or do you say, "Nah, hang on a minute, lets all think about this and do nothing until we figure it out?". Levy started bailing and once he had some of the water out of the way, it turned out that the ship wasn't going to sink, it could handle a bit of water and we can now look at dealing with it safe in the knowledge that the maths has been done.

Trust me, if there was a way to snipe at rich people for being wankers, I'd take it, but in this instance it seems like the common sense thing was done and it's turned out better than expected.

 

[Metalhead]

Is there a source on any of that?

Well done to the club, managing to get some bad PR once and then once it passed and no-one was talking about it (other than 14 threads on here) jump back in, remind everyone of the decision you made, go back on it, look weak and give the impression that you didnt need to do it in the first place to really give those who wanted to moan some more ammunition.

Once the choice was made, whether it was right or wrong they should have stood by it.

Not sure about that. I think that businesses should always show flexibility and be prepared to review decisions that they've made.

 

[Metalhead]

let's hope you accept the shame if 4 months down the line redundancies are made because they didn't look after the club. if the players have forced this lets hope they accept cuts to protect the club. deferrals won't help if this goes on for another 6 months

Lighty, why would a poster on here accept the shame for the decision of the club?

 

[John48]

Some good news it made us look mean.

The problem with this is it distracted from a lot of good the club is currently doing. For one thing they've more or less given the stadium over to the NHS & charities doing good work in Tottenham & there's little publicity on this & the only news was about us furloughing staff & selling Kane (which has been denied today as well).

 

[pelayo59]

Don't agree. It is absolutely absurd that a premier League football club, who would pay millions and millions in wages, and spend fortunes on transfers, would come running to the public purse to pay the wages of their least well paid staff. Never mind the financial mechanics, it's the moral optics that was the issue. It's the right decision, unless you think that we were right to make a stand on this issue.

Tottenham last year according to accounts paid 18m in tax and 21m in social security costs, players and staff also paid tax and don't forget about indirect tax coming from a lot of another source related to club. Is that really immoral? According to THST report, club are using government furlough for 220 people(~550k per month). Wouldn't be surprised if that's worth less for government than sharing our stadium for NHS