...to be a bit pissed off about being paid less than a cleaner?

[teenyweenytadpole]

My friend just got a job as a cleaner, she is cleaning upmarket holiday cottages and being paid 10 pounds an hour. In contrast, I work in a small preschool and get paid 8.50 an hour (leaders role). It just seems odd to me that society values what I do so poorly. I have to take on responsibility for these small children in loco parentis, take care of their physical and emotional needs, their safety and well being, manage toilet training, nappy changing, etc, I also have to provide stimulating and enriching activities for them, not only that but we have to have all the planning and paperwork in place, all the safeguarding procedures, all the provision for special needs, I have to deal with the parents, go on training courses to make sure I am legal and up to date, be subjected to day long grillings from Ofsted....8.50 seems a bit measly, no? I am in my 40's, well educated, a Mum, not an inpexperienced 17 year old. I realise it is my choice to do this job and I enjoy it, I love seeing these tiny people learn and grow and love seeing them go on to thrive at school afterwards, the job fits around my own kids, and it is fun! But it's very hard work and physically and mentally demanding. I guess IABU but I just wish I was paid more to do it!

I find it cheaper to pay for an extra hour or 2 of childcare and do my own cleaning in peace, then to hire a cleaner. I know it's all supply and demand but I agree with the op that it just feels wrong!

Look at nurses they have huge responsibility but are not paid accordingly

Cleaners are not the lowest of the low you know

Domestic servants used to be the 'done thing' in this country, so if you were in service you were lower class and grateful to have a position

That is no longer the case ....

I think your contempt for cleaners is dispictable. Cleaners are paid more than childcare workers because frankly the job is less pleasent and less popular. You can get a reasonable childcare worker for £9 per hour and prehaps you have to pay a bit more to get a cleaner. Its simple economics.

Some jobs have rewards that go beyond simple money.

Thehousecleaner- you are spot on! I'm a cleaner too (windows) There's a lot that goes on behind the scenes just to keep the business moving. No holiday or sick pay, tax NI and supplies to pay for, a vehicle to keep running. The weather is a hindrance. You have to earn what you can while you can. I can make £250 -300 in one day. Doesn't mean I make that every working day.
What does the OP suggest cleaners should earn?

My cleaner gets £12 ph. (London). She gets no holiday pay, no sick pay, might be out working for 12 hours a day but only gets paid for 8 because of the travel in-between. She gets no training, no security, many families don't leave the heating on for her, she can be dispensed with at a week's notice. We think she's fab and value her tremendously but many don't. If something goes wrong in her life she has no fall back. She is also Polish, she sends money home for her family and her dd (who is now 13) and whom she misses hugely. Sadly ime English women won't clean any more because they are either too good to or it affects their benefits.

A cleaner is worth the £10 (or whatever it is near that) per hour that they earn.

Ours are, for sure.

Oh and just for the record - we pay her when we go on holiday and find jobs for her to do and on the one occasion she has been sick in five years we did pay her and she cried

Married. If you feel so sorry for your cleaner and value her so highly then perhaps you should pay her a bit more.

Cleaners save us time, as well as performing a manual service. A fairer way of paying cleaners would reflect our own hourly rates, imo.

My apologies, married. Just saw your last post. I think that paying your cleaner for holidays and sick pay is absolutely the right thing to do. You are clearly a great employer.

Well I think we do pay above the going rate headsdown and the one time her life in England really went pear shaped we asked if she wanted to stay in our spare room and she lived here for six months rent free (for a little bit of extra cleaning - probably 2 hours a week) and we would have been happy for that to continue but she is a very proud lady. Sometimes when we are on holiday her dh and dd come from Poland and stay here. I really don't think we can reasonably offer a great deal more.

And FWIW I only pay temporary admin staff with degrees £9ph.

Married is treating her cleaner very well!

I am self employed and charge an hourly rate. I don't get sick or holidays, but on the other side of the coin I charge slightly more than info was an employee to take that into account.

It's not a clients responsibility to pay sick holidays etc to someone working on a self employed basis.

I'm a cleaner and I have a lot of responsibility.

I clean theatres and wards, without me doing so the hospital wouldn't function.

"It's not a clients responsibility to pay sick holidays etc to someone working on a self employed basis"

I think that sounds fair in principle, but in practise there aren't really any other low-paid self-employed people who households employ on a regular basis. I do think that if you employ someone to work for you very regularly, your relationship with them as an employer is quite different.

Married is evidently an outstanding employer (and nice person)

I am on £8.92, get 24 days holiday, work set days, full sick pay and a fantastic pension.

Not bad for 21 hours work a week.

Forgot to add double time for Bank holidays.

YANBU, childcare workers and cleaners deserve to be on a decent wage. £8.50 sounds very low for your position.

The thing is though headsdown - if someone were to factor holiday pay, sick pay and other benefits into a cleaners wage, the hourly rate would go down to reflect this. But hey, at least the OP would feel vindicated.

poor OP. I dont think she was attacking anyone .

HeadsDown - do you realise how patronising your posts sound?

How's it patronising to reckon that if you employ someone on a regular basis, you might want to make agreements about holidays and sickness?

I just value someone who has worked for me for 8 years - had two days off sick in that time, turns up on time every single week, is totally honest and trustworthy and who does a good job. She is like a part of our family now and we love her and worry about her. I hope one day she will be able to go home to Poland permanently and be the mummy she wants to be or will be able to get her self into a position where her family can come here but this won't happen until her dd has finished school. She is worth ten of many other women.

"there aren't really any other low-paid self-employed people who households employ on a regular basis"

Gardeners? Handymen? Window cleaners? Dog walkers?

I don't think many households do employ gardeners. People typically don't have handymen in every day, or even every week. Don't know about you, but I get my windows cleaned every month or two, and not at any fixed time, just when they look dirty.

Dogwalkers look like they fit the bill, but even then, many dog walkers walk several different dogs at the same time, meaning that they are not reliant on one person's appointment to make up the whole hourly wage.

Lots of people like to pay for their cleaner to come round daily, weekly, or multiple times a week, and employ the same person regularly. That edges it more towards an employee/employer relationship where I'd expect some formalisation regarding sickness/holidays because the work is so regular. I don't see what's so outrageous about that. Other countries have workable systems whereby cleaners are afforded pensionable pay and other benefits.

Right. So you're complaining that society undervalues your contribution whilst sneering at the contribution somebody else makes.

Anyway, you've answered your own question in the post. In the main your job is fun. Plenty of people want to do it and you don't require a high level of training to do it, so the market rate is pretty low.

Cleaning is not fun. It's monotonous, physically hard, often quite disgusting and you get treated like shit and have people look down on you. Therefore if low skilled people are choosing between your career and cleaning most of them would plump for yours.

This is why the cleaner gets paid more, less people who were good at it and trustworthy and reliable would do it unless they were paid more to turn down similar low paid jobs.

Also the number of cleaners on the market is probably smaller because some people (yourself included I suspect) think that it's beneath them.

The easy answer is go and become a cleaner if it's that much of a problem to you. But you won't, and probably for all the reasons why a cleaner has to be paid more to attract a decent one.

Anyway, apologies OP for the massive derail. In my defence this was almost bound to happen when you mentioned "cleaners" as a point of comparison.

I do think that early years teachers and carers are paid poorly. It would be great to see improvement here. In many parts of Europe daycare workers are valued highly, and because standards are so high its used comprehensively.