To think that the under 18s minimum wage is exploitative

[DaddyDavid]

My son who is 16 has been offered a job at a supermarket. The pay is £3.72 an hour. I can't und why the minimum wage is lower for under-18s it seems like age discrimination. This has annoyed me so much, as I fualt it would be good for ds1 to get a Saturday job but know I think it would be better if he worked about the house and I pay him more aibu

Tinks needs to get into the real world! Work is not disgusting, teaching your precious teenager that they are entitled to a good wage when they know f.all is a mistake that has resulted in the tribes of feral youth terrorising the suburbs!

I didn't make my children work for that money, they wanted to work. They have never been given anything on a plate, they know the world doesn't owe them a living and they are not stupid enough to think that at 16 they could walk into a company and expect to be paid as much as people who have years of experience and knowledge that they don't!

DS1 is 20. He has worked since he was 16. He did a job for 2 years that he loathed, but he loved his car, his clothes and his holiday too much to jack it in.

He has a friend now in the Army who is 27. He had a managerial job, but got made redundant. He tried for a couple of weeks to get a job, but couldn't. As he has 2 kids to feed he went to work for McDonalds in a NMW job. He didn't think he was too good for it, he didn't think it wasn't worth getting out of bed for, all he thought was his kids needed food and the bills needed paying. As it was a dead end job he has joined the Army to try to give his kids a better life.

The NMW is too low, for everyone, but stopping 16yos from taking jobs won't change that but it will hinder them when they come to get full time employment in the future.

Oh shut up Patsy.. My child is not precious and neither am I. I have a fantastic work ethic also being "working class" Did you not get what I was saying either? obviously not.

I recently started working at mcd's ( I'm in my late thirties) pt just for a bit of extra money! Yeah right but anyway at the welcome meeting there was me and 3 young girls all under 18.
I'm sure their hourly wage was £4 and mine minimum wage think it's £6.51, I felt awful as they are required to work just as hard and it doesn't matter what it gets spent on, we've all worked hard to earn it.

2 of them have left already. Off topic but many of the managers in our place are very very young, it would be interesting to know what they're on an hour:)

Im talking about what the "government" feeds us and what "they" set as a minimum wage. Not a damn work ethic.

Minimum wage is too damn low!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You carry on then and expect 30 year ago wages.

I hold my head in my hand where working class people are concerned now, undervalued and underpaid yet accepting of it.

So damn sad.

Who told you we are worth £3 an hour for 16+
Who told you we are worth £6.30 for an adult

Really?

Im ashamed of what everyone has bought into now, extremely ashamed that working class think that's all we are worth. Don't you understand that its NOT acceptable?

What do you suggest Tinks? Should no-one take a NMW job?

I've just worked out DS1's pay for the last 6 months (he got a payrise on 7/01), he has been earning £3.31 an hour! He is 20, he has colleagues who are in their late 20s, they all earn the same. They have spent weeks living in a hole, they have worked over 12 hour days getting up at 4:50am. They are exempt from the NMW!

Then we hear, I know but what can we do, its the way it is, it wont change. No it won't when the majority of the population accept shit and allow huge companies to do this.

Im hiding his now because Im so damn disgusted about accepting (if you actually calculate it against inflation etc. bills going up etc.) an almost sweatshop wage.

FFS your darling DS is clearly living at home so is not paying a mortgage or all the bills so as an under 18 year old his minimum wage is clearly less for good reason till he is 18 when he may or may not be capable of going it alone. Entitled.

And with your entitled attitude I'm guessing DS will be under your care for longer than you may wish for, or not as the case may be.

Its ok Tinks Im assuming Patsy is willing to open up her home for the young people coming out of the care system rent free so they can afford to work for a very low wage.

Not all young ppl have loving parents Patsy

Tinks i don't think that you are dramatic. I agree with yousome people are fed the bs like 'work ethic' and 'don't be entitled'.

As for the pp who keep say that young people dont have family to feed, well i didnt have a family to feed until i was 38yr old!
(But i was earning more than i earn now thay i have 7 people to feed)
Do you tell your childles collegues. that they should get paid less?

And anyway, if supermarkets and food chains have cheap labour then why should they give you 40 hours work? So those who 'have families to feed' lose out. Can't you see this?
Only the big companies gain.

It's easy to be idealogical, political and say 'the system is wrong' but for many of us the only alternative to taking the NMW or a little more is to just not work - I would not be entitled to benefits as my DH works so what should I do?

I do think there is a totally unrealistic view of most mumsnetters lifestyles and opportunities from some people.

The sad thing is there will always we a working class. There has to be a working class. And they sure as hell don't want people's pity either.

There are 2 obvious demarcations here:

1. What the economy can bear... includes NMW and other inequities
2. What we would like the economy to pay out - a minimum of £10 per hour

The problem arises when the second becomes the yardstick with which the first is beaten.

It would be nice, yes, of course the NMW is too low. BUT IT EXISTS and it protects all workers from further abuse. But to blithely demand £10 per hour as a minimum for all workers is ludicrous, utter lala land thinking. Of course it would be lovely, but what businesses could afford to pay it?

Oh yes, the bigger companies would restructure, lay people off, become more automated, and pay the higher amount to a much smaller workforce. But what about the biggest employment sector - the small businesses? They would slowly drown under increased wages bills, go bankrupt, owing more money to other companies and adding even more people to the unemployment lists.

Sadly, realistically, there is a need for low paid workers, and trumpeting "Ooh it is disgusting, my nearly adult child is worth far more than that" is to miss the wider point!

We need a more stable world economy before we can raise the NMW. That is not something the government has fed me, not something I have been brainwashed to believe. It is the cold hard economics of the small business, the business sector that employs so many of us.

Like ive said if the NMW was put up the cost of living would inevitably rise and we would be in the exact same position as we are now.

The more money people have, the more people will charge.

Back on topic
I worked for 3 pound odd doing 60 hour weeks to keep a roof over my head. I did voluntary work to get into university. I worked for nothing whilst I was in university. At these young ages their jobs are supposed to be stepping stones, confidence builders and/or experience givers. Very few people stay in the job they had when they were 16.

And in NMW is put up to £10 an hour you have the issue of people who have earned pay rises or worked their way up, being paid the same as everyone else. It's simplistic and naive to think employers can or will be able to put everyone's wages up. And like I said, if they did the playing field would be exactly the same because what I said before

Nomama I agree that we need lower paid jobs. Just as we need lower skills jobs.

However, saying that that's why it's ok to paid anyone, whatever the reason (they are under 18yo, they have a disability etc) less than the NMW isn't acceptable.
Someone should be paid according to the job they are doing. Not according what the employer/the society/whoever thinks they 'ought' (or need) to be paid.
That's why I quite like very strict scale for jobs in a company. You do job X, you are in band Y, you are paid ££.

Btw, if you say they you have a NMW and then say that actually 'Yes we do but in X and Y circumstances, then it doesn't apply' that means there is NO National Minimum Wage.

18-20 yo's are paid less than 21yos and over, too.

It has always been the case that teenagers or those with less experience are paid less than other people.

My ds has a Saturday job, he's been there 6 months now, he's 15 and is paid £4.70 ph.

He has approx £100 per month to do as he wishes. He usually buys a computer game and saves the rest. It's good experience for him and is teaching him the value of money. Don't see anything wrong with it.

I think people calling it "exploitative" are missing the point.

One of the reasons the wage is so low is to PREVENT children being exploited. The government wants children to have the opportunity to stay in full time education (which is free of charge until after A levels anyway). The qualifications give them a much better start in life from a professional perspective. However, they need the time to study in order for that to happen.

Even if you limit their hours, if they were earning as much as adults there are many, many unscrupulous people who would make their children work the maximum hours possible in order to have the wages. There would probably be many people who would be sorely tempted to get their child to work maximum hours to help carry the household - even if it wasn't intentionally malicious. To put that sort of responsibility onto a 16 year old is wrong. It just is.

Likewise, you have to give employers an incentive to actually hire kids. If you had a choice between someone with absolutely no experience whatsoever, and someone with ten years experience, it's a no brainer. You would need to invest much less in the latter with regards to training, etc.

Plenty of companies have incremental wages depending on time served. It's perfectly possible for two people doing the same job to be earning differing amounts if one person just joined and the other has been there 15 years.

A 16 year old working is working for the experience. How to work with colleagues. How to deal with customers. But that's an aside to their education. You don't get that experience doing chores at home for your mum.

The nmw isn't great but tbh it is money in your pocket 16yr olds work for a bit of pocket money (usually) and being sniffy about means he ccan't be needing the money experience etc etc children under 18 still at school can only work restricted hours. How much money does your son think he is worth because he won't get paid much more anywhere really

Or what kay just said was what I meant