To think that the minimum wage clearly isn't enough if there is a 'living wage'?

[pingu2209]

The minimum wage is about £6.08 an hour. The living wage is about £7.45 outside London and £8.55 inside London. Why on earth doesn't the Government set the minimum wage at the living wage then? If they accept you can't survive on the minimum wage, why on earth have it?

The Government are pushing all companies to pay the living wage at minimum but not making it law. So much so, that the Central Government are seriously thinking of only contracting out work to companies who pay their staff the minimum wage - so their cleaning contracts, catering contracts etc. These are jobs that are traditionally minimum wage roles.

How can the Government set a minimum wage that is so far below what they agree to be a living wage?

I say all this because I am a dinner lady/cook at a secondary school and am really struggling financially as I am on the minimum wage. Because I am married I don't get as much help financially with additionally benefits as others who work with me who are single mothers etc. The rise to the living wage would make such a difference.

unusualsuspect3 - I'm a dinner lady and of the 8 in our team at a large secondary school, 6 of us are on the minimum wage of £6.08 / hour. The deputy manager is on £7.54 / hour and the manager is on £9.30 / hour.

Shellyboobs - if you are paid £6.08 / hour and don't get ANY other benefits at all, no pension, no sick pay etc. Why on earth would you give even a minute longer.

I used to be a Strategic Marketing Manager at £55k / year (this was BC - Before Children) and do my job because I can be at home for my children before and after school and in the holidays. I have 8 GCSEs, 3 A-levels, a 2:1 degree and a masters in Strategic Marketing. I am far from stupid and worked very hard and very long hours in my 'career' job. I am not lazy, but I am not going to have someone take the piss out of me and expect me to give any more than the utter basic if they are only prepared to give me the utter basic.

I was reading (with shock) the water bill thread before i read this.
YANBU The gap between nmw and living cost is getting bigger and bigger. Not just the housing but gas, water, ct. I fear that heat and using the w/m will become a luxury for more and more people. And its bloody cold country aswell, its not like being poor in the Med.

I am not lazy, but I am not going to have someone take the piss out of me and expect me to give any more than the utter basic if they are only prepared to give me the utter basic.

I didn't think for a moment that you're lazy. Your comment about your actions annoying the boss came across as smug, though.

So, if the NMW was increased to £7.50 and therefore that's what you were paid, would you then stay after 3pm to deal with a delivery? Obviously taking into account that the dep mgr would then be on £9.22 and the manager on £11.40, following a similar pecentage increases to yours.

Shellyboobs, I can see your point - I guess my logic of only giving the basic hours as I'm only given the basic pay does only stand up to logic due to the discrepancy between the nmw and living wage.

Therefore, if they raise the nmw to a living wage, I would still only be getting the basic wage therefore my attitude would stay the same. I'm not sure I can answer whether my attitude would change or not. I would believe that my attitude would change because I know about nmw and living wage.

Pingu - it sounds like you are a bit (!) overqualified for the job.

MW or LW, neither is enough to pay the for a professional with your skills or make someone used to bringing home 55k feel like their time is valued.

Why carry on as a dinner lady?

I am a dinner lady because I made a choice.

In my profession before children (or at least until my children went to school) I had to work in the City with an hour commute each way and would be expected to be at work for 8-8.30 and to work till at least 6 each evening. Those were the basic hours. I would leave home at 6.25 to catch the 6.40am train and catch the 6.35 train to get home for 7.45.

I could do the job now and I would certainly enjoy it more than being a dinner lady, but I would need a nanny for 12 hours a day. Also, the high level job would not leave the mental space to manage my children's activities and school requirements (my ds1 has SEN).

I did look into local marketing jobs but they pay around £20-30k less than the City but still require the longer hours - just half the commute time. The lower salary means I couldn't afford a nanny but the before and after school club opens from 8am and finishes at 6pm, therefore, not long enough to allow me to work. I have 3 children, so I need to earn a minimum of £30k to warrent me working.

So I made the choice to be a dinner lady because it fits with childcare. Or to be more accurate, the choice was made for me.

Is your husband also the father of your children? Or if not does their father not contribute?

Sorry if these questions are too personal for what started as a general political discussion, but what you describe as you having no choice but to trash your career and take a MW job with no prospects seems to miss out an important piece.

My husband is father to all 3 children. He earns a lot. To a degree this is also part of the problem. What he earns means that we get no benefits (and from April 2013 won't get child benefit either).

For me to work, my salary has to cover the childcare and my commute and parking costs as well as give me money after all those costs. I/we don't get any working tax credits or anything else. This is why I need to earn £30k to make it financially worth my while working. My children are 4, 6 and 8 (ds1 has SEN so will not be able to be left alone to get to secondary school or after school).

His salary is not enough to shore up the additional costs of me working at a financial loss. What I mean by that is that I can't take a job at £20k and expect my husband's salary to cover the remaining £10k.

Aside from the financial issues, the childcare available where I live is only 8-6 and the commute to the nearest connerbation/town is half an hour. To the City it is well over an hour. Marketing jobs are not 9-5, they are 8.30 - 5.30 at a very minimum. On the whole you are expected to work 8 - 6. The hours don't fit with the childcare times available.

My husband's job requires him to leave home at 6.30 and get home for 7.45. We can't share the childcare. It would fall down to me.

This doesn't change my attitude to the MW and LW argument. I don't believe anyone should be paid a wage that is recognised as not enough to live on. I think that is abhorrent. Dinner ladies, cleaners, carers they are all paid a minimum wage. On the whole, although not all, most minimum wage roles are performed by women. Not because those women are unqualified or unable to carry out other roles, but because they have limited choices due to childcare needs.

I'll just get off my soap box.

I work for a supermarket where I can't afford to shop. I'd love to, but when I'm earning just over £6 an hour, I can't afford a loaf of bread that costs £3! LIDL all the way for me which wouldn't change even if I won the lottery.

Pingu why is it only your salary that would cover childcare. Surely half of that would come from your DH.

An inset day is not a bank holiday, why on earth would you expect time and a half?

I get what pingu is saying about her wage needing to over childcare. I think. What she's saying is when you look at the overall income and outgoings of the house, her dh's wage covers household bills. So for her to make working full time worthwhile, pingu's wage has to be meet the cost of childcare and a bit more. It's neither here nor there whether her husband contributes as you're looking at overall income.

My husband and I are both employed full time. I'm currently on maternity leave after having twins. For returning to work to be viable for me, we need childcare full time for the twins, someone to have Ds when he's not at preschool and pay for before and after school club for dd.

Based on previous family members helping out, my wage would be swallowed all bar £100 on childcare. For the full time childcare now needed, I would need to earn twice as much just to cover the cost of childcare. It's a no brainer. Dh's wage gives us enough to cover the bills so I am to be a sahm when maternity leave finishes. Whilst its something I've always wanted, it's also a choice many make through necessity rather than actually wanting to do it.

I don't feel increasing nmw to mlw would achieve anything other than driving prices up further as big companies think about their profits.

Pingu

I get what you are saying about your wage needing to cover childcare, and how your location doesn't help, but it is this thinking that is trapping you in routine, minimum wage job, with no prospects where you feel you are being taken the piss of.

After you did your GCSEs you could have gone and got a MW job but you didn't. Instead you put years of unpaid labour and your own money (or your parents') into investing to build your future prospects. You/they didn't say "we don't think you are worth it, just take any shitty job and start paying your way" (and I bet you won't say that to your children). But this is essentially what you and your DH's calculation that the only choice open to you is dinner lady is saying.

There are 50 different choices between being a strategic marketing manager on 55k and being a dinner lady: PT, freelance/consulting, public sector, voluntary sector, retraining, starting your own business etc... Each one has its own trade off between childcare need/flexability and your longer term earning power. You can imagine them as a scale from 1 to 50. You say only the most low prospects choice is open to you.

Equally for your DH there are 50 options between him carrying on in work as if he didn't have any responsibility for his children and him quitting and becoming a dinner lady. I dont know whether you/he seriously considered any but somehow you ended up with an outcome where he got choice 1 on the scale and you got choice 50.

If your husband earns a lot it makes sense that you don't get state help (since this would mean taking money from families living on less to give to you). But as a family if your career prospects and ability to do a job which is interesting and you feel valued are worth anything then your DH should find a way to contribute to childcare to make this possible.

Himalaya I wish it were as simple a calculation as that. The shear biological fact that woman have babies and require maternity leave can bugger up their career, especially in the masculine world of financial services.

I worked full time when ds1 was a baby, went to 3 days a week when ds2 was a baby. This meant my career totally stagnated and I went no further. With baby no.3 I gave up work as it was too much to do my job and have 3 young children. This was going to be only for a few years whilst the children were young. However, during those years, my dh salary and career took off and his salary doubled.

The whole family reaped the benefits of his larger salary, which he could do because I was at home looking after our 3 children. But before anybody beats the feminism drum, that is just biological decisions that someone needed to do it and I was the one who was taking the maternity leave, which was already affecting my career and the way I was perceived in the workplace.

There is no point me coming back into the work place years later and expecting my dh who pays for everything to suddenly take a back seat whilst I get my career up and running, which will take a few years again. Appart from the fact that we can't afford for him to take a drop in salary.

Whilst my salary was £55k plus all the benefits, I would now come into the work place at an utter max of £30k and more likely £25k because I haven't been working for 5 years. That is on the basis of full time working.

If there are any part time jobs, which are like hens teeth in marketing, whilst the full time equivalent may be £30k, so the part time should equate to £15k. Companies advertise the part time roles as £10k. They are normally always 2/3rds of the salary they would be if it were someone who was full time requesting part time working.

If I was only going to work for 1 year possibly 2 on a lower salary before my children were grown and not needing childcare I may take a view that it was worthwhile taking a hit. However, I have another 5 years at least, most likely 8 years before I no longer need significant amounts childcare.

There are thousands of women out there who want a balance of a job that stretches them mentally and uses all their qualifications and experience, but also being there for their children for some of the time (more than the weekend). However, because they don't exist they end up in shitty min wage jobs that they could have done if they left school at 16.

There really aren't any choices between 1 and 50 for women who's salary needs to cover the childcare costs as they get no Government help.

My dh salary covers all the other costs. It costs us as a family for me to work, therefore, it stands to reason that for me to work, my work must cover those additional costs, otherwise why work?

pingu, I do understand where you're coming from, but it isn't impossible to find a part time marketing job.

I work a couple of hours a week in an organisation really just for a bit of social interaction. I'm a qualified lawyer and run my own will writing business from home but enjoy doing a little day job too.

There are 7 people in the organisation. 3 are FT, 4 are PT. Of the PT ones, one is me (legal admin), 2 are marketing/events organisers (both previously high flyers in the City) and 1 is a web updating person.

We are in Berks and we all live within a 20 minute drive of home, and we all have kids.

I honestly wouldn't write off the possibility of working PT, the jobs are there but you have to look, and possibly do what I used to do, go for FT interviews, knock the socks off them then negotiate shorter hours.

Sorry should have said, I don't know what the marketers earn but would estimate £15 to £20k for school hours.

I have searched for part time markting jobs within a half hour drive from where I live for the past 2 years. I have found 6 but non of them have been within the financial services industry. I have applied to all of them and been to 2 interviews. I have followed up on all 6 roles and was told that there were over 50 applicants for each. The reason I didn't get an interview or the job was because they had either more relevant industry experience or had had continual work (no baby breaks).

Seriously, part time marketing roles are so rare it is not funny.

I'm going to keep looking but the longer it goes on the longer I don't have relevant working experience.

I really think you should start up something yourself and it doesn't have to be in your original field.

I believe upping the minimum wage to mlw would only serve to fuel inflation and therefore would be pointless.

Increasing ML to a living wage is stupid idea.

A 21 year old lad living at home with mum is very comfortable on MW.

If you increase MW to a higher amount you have to increase salaries across the board. This drives inflation. This makes the new MW as effectively low as it was to start with.

Pingu - no I agree it's not easy :, basic biology, employers that are in the dark ages, and the trap of the long commute all make it hard for mothers to get back on the career horse.

All that's largely outside of your control, but what is within the control of you and your DH is whether you think your career is worth anything or whether you should really just chuck it in for a MW dead-end job.

As you said - because you have taken on all the responsibility for childcare thus far your DH was able to devote himself to his career and double his earning power in recent years. Then you say "There is no point me coming back into the work place years later and expecting my dh who pays for everything to suddenly take a back seat whilst I get my career up and running, which will take a few years again." Why the hell not? You did it for him.

There is of course the financial side which isn't easy, but I would argue that the principle that if the early years of parenthood were hardest on your career prospects it is now time for him to take some of the burden.

On the financial side, could he take a pension payment holiday, or could you switch to interest only mortgage and use those funds (which are for your future) to enable you to retrain, or to work more flexibly in something with prospects? In the LT you will pay off your mortgage faster and build up a bigger pension pot if you are not stuck as a dinner lady.

Yes it would mean you both taking a risk that this might not pay off. But at the moment it is you taking all the risk .

It's pointless because then prices would go up, leaving people in the same situation.

Its possible to live on minimum wage though.