To think people in decent jobs don't realise how hard it is to get a second crappy job..

[ssd]

I keep seeing comments on the tax credits threads about tc claimants needing to work more, like its that easy.

I can imagine if you have kept up your job since having kids due to either being able to afford childcare or having that and a mix of free family help, then you will be earning a decent enough wage and there might be overtime at your organisation, or at the very least you will be on set hours/days...so if you wanted overtime you'd know when you were available to work.

I can imagine thousands on tax credits arent in this position. I work part time and have been trying to get a full time job, or at least another part time job that would fit in with the job I have.

Its bloody impossible and trust me, I'm trying!!

Full time jobs are very rare, round here its all part time job requiring full time flexibility...so they offer you 20 hours a week and expect you to be free all week to fit around them, this makes it impossible to have 2 part time jobs

So for every poster saying "work more", please consider this isnt as easy as you'd imagine.

Do you have any idea how much effort people in the "decent" jobs have put into to get that job? Usually it means long years and lots of money invested in education, after which you have to start to pay back the studies loan and are deemed a high earner for £44k a year, which if you happen to live in London hardly allows you for basic needs - tiny flat, food, transport - and for all their effort are penalized with high tax rate. And no, there is no such thing as paid overtime in those jobs! And they cannot even dream about such thing as tax credits after all the "doing the right thing" stuff.

If you cannot work more, you can always work smarter? Learn new skills which will grant the decent job and then you can be one of THEM lot.

You know what amazes me in the UK?! There are thousands of locals moaning about not being able to find a job for months, but then arrives a guy from Eastern Europe with 5 words in English and ta-da in few days he has a full time job, one of those crappy jobs btw. Surely a person, who has always lived in the UK, is fluent in English, understand the local system and culture, should be having advantage over that guy?

I know I will get beaten up for my post

So, how do I afford to pay for extra training on my part time wage? My wage just about covers living and that is it. There is no extra.

I have a degree. I have a few, work related qualifications. I have been in my job for 13 years. There are very, very few full time positions in my line of work.

Strawberry, you are talking bollocks.

And I know you'll say, I should have chosen a different career path but this was the only job that would fit in with my severely disabled ds as there is no after school or holiday care for children like him.

Strawberryfield, come on. I have retrained, volunteered and had three interviews last week and was unsuccessful in all three. I have put my name down at Garden centres, supermarkets and have email alerts coming in all the time for part time work (usually I don't respond because they are just too far away). I will find something, but save the lecture, I really don't require it.

Strawberry ---

Oh re train.... yes yes.... go back to uni....collage.... yes because every one will be able to afford/ do that.

I have been looking for ANY job for the past 4 months..... I took oN a temporary cleaning Job cleaning the local town toilets. .. I will do ANYTHING.

My biggest hurdle is that is NO weekend childcare. No childminders in my town do weekends ethier. I am a lone parent.. my children don't see their dad.. which mean working past 6pm is not doable. And I can't do weekends.

I am begging for a job. But I guess I should just re train shouldn't I?

YANBU, OP, but YAB(a little!)U to assume that overtime is available. At my work it just isn't. Office job, you come in and do your set hours, that's it. I think in the three years I've been in my role I've done six hours of paid overtime.

I agree with Strawberryfield. I have a decent job now (teaching), but I went a long way round to get there, and had periods of my life when I was working more than one crappy job (minimum wage retail and bingo calling). I'm single, so to make extra money I now do things like 11+ tuition and exam marking.

Strawberryfield is right in what she says - immigrants come over and have full-time jobs within days. Some Brits (not all!) can be too fussy about what jobs they'll take. For example, how many Brits would consider cleaning and ironing jobs?? Domestic cleaning and ironing are so easy to fit round other jobs. When I was starting out, I cleaned for an old lady to make some extra money - many graduates (and even non graduates) would turn their noses up at that. Another graduate friend of mine did dog walking on weekend mornings. The dinner ladies at my school, cleaners, petrol station attendants, waiting staff, car wash workers where I live (near Slough) are all immigrants. Not many Brits would be prepared to do these jobs.

Though I guess as well it depends what you class as a "decent" wage. I'm significantly over minimum wage but about way, way under what it'd take to be a higher rate tax payer.

I took on a job delivering leaflets last summer. After walking for around 10 hours and earning £25 I decided to give it up. Especially as they gave me extra leaflets which I could earn extra money!! whoopee! 0.3p per extra leaflet. Well worth walking all that way. it was back breaking work

"a guy from Eastern Europe"

Interesting that you should choose "guy" in your example, on a thread almost entirely by women.

Have you thought about why that is?

I suspect there's a clue in the fact that almost every post here talks about children.

I can't see how people can get second jobs at all. I struggle to juggle my/ my daughters' schedules/life on one (longish hours) full time job. If my hours changed every week, I really don't think I could cope.

To have two part time jobs, you would need their hours to dovetail perfectly and fit around childcare. A near impossible ask I think. I really sympathise with those of you battling with this. It's clearly not a work ethic issue, merely pure logistics.

Dh is paid ok but his salary so no overtime pay and he can be expected in on weekends, called in at 10pm or as early as 4am. If he tried to get a second job it wouldn't work, last year they operated on a only if you need to be in over Christmas, this year all salaried staff are expected to be in everyday apart from Christmas Day/Boxing Day/New Years. His company also hire a lot though an agency to keep the staff bill down and so you can just never invite them back again.

Working isn't as easy as it used to be in terms of getting jobs/paid overtime etc

I'm a dinner lady!! Me!! Me!! Not proud, on a temporary contract, earn £7,85 per hour and guess what! Its impossible to fit anything else around it!!

Harsh, also if you live in Slough I would anticipate a higher concentration of immigrants living in your area and it would be easier to find work. Not so in the decimated Midlands and North. There are very few immigrants living near me (Midlands market town area)

'There are thousands of locals moaning about not being able to find a job for months, but then arrives a guy from Eastern Europe with 5 words in English and ta-da in few days he has a full time job, one of those crappy jobs btw.'

He comes alone, no childcare responsibilities or need for housing for a family.

And have you seen how so many of those people are exploited by agencies?

I would kill for a dinner lady job.

My last two jobs have been cleaning... One v public and messy place too.

Yes there may be some people who wouldn't do it but there's a he'll of lot off people who would do anything to bring in some money.

I'm going to leave this now as I'm getting upset but I will leave you with this.

We all need each other... If every one re trained there'd be no one to clean those public toilets. No one to pick up letter....

You need us "small" people just as much as we need "more important jobs"

Strawberryfield12 as somebody with degrees and post graduate qualifications, allow me to back up those telling you that you are talking bollocks.

I have taught so many students who with the best will and all the hard work and dedicated teaching in the world will never pass more than perhaps a couple of low grade GCSEs. Some of them work harder than I ever worked for my first class honours degree or Masters degree with distinction to get a vocational qualification allowing them to take a minimum wage job, at which they also often work very hard.

Get off your high horse - you are lucky (as am I) even if you did or do work hard, to have started out with natural advantages. Obviously academic ability is only one of a long list of advantages, at least some, though of course not all, of which everyone doing well has and which they can take no personal credit for.

Do you have any idea how much effort people in the "decent" jobs have put into to get that job? Usually it means long years and lots of money invested in education, after which you have to start to pay back the studies loan and are deemed a high earner for £44k a year, which if you happen to live in London hardly allows you for basic needs - tiny flat, food, transport - and for all their effort are penalized with high tax rate. And no, there is no such thing as paid overtime in those jobs! And they cannot even dream about such thing as tax credits after all the "doing the right thing" stuff.

If you cannot work more, you can always work smarter? Learn new skills which will grant the decent job and then you can be one of THEM lot.

You're overlooking the fact that many people needing PT work or to return to FT hours after a break are "one of them lot" (sic).

Most of the unpaid carers I know, for example, are postgrad qualified.

so they offer you 20 hours a week and expect you to be free all week to fit around them, this makes it impossible to have 2 part time jobs

Is this the same as a zero hours contract?

Absolutely disgusting. Why are employers allowed to behave like this?!

They're making people suffer as they can't plan their business's needs properly.

The other thing that's very strongly coming across is that, although number of hours is a problem, the employers' refusal to agree regular hours is a major problem in itself. Employers could increase the value of their pay to employees without upping wages, just by giving regular hours.

I wonder how much this "full flexibility" actually makes for employers?

If you run a care home, you know fine well you need X number of staff every day and night. You only need a handful of people willing to be on call to cover absenteeism, not the whole staff on that sort of contract.

Wondering soul I hope you get something soon. I am proud to be a dinner lady and it was the first job I had when I returned to work and was my platform for retraining as TA. I only have two days a week at my old school and am volunteering there also. My last job as a TA disappeared due to lack of funding.

strawberry I have a degree, two Btecs, a-levels, all the right GCSE's and a plethora of part time courses under my belt (some accredited others not) I have tailored my CV to reflect my education, I have tailored it to look like I don't have the education I have. I have applied for every single damn job going from cleaning caravans to professional jobs.

I have constantly trained, constantly learned new skills even some not relevant to my work at all esp when I was off caring FT time and finding a decent job with decent hours that pays enough to meet my own overheads here inc childcare is impossible.

suggesting education is the way to a better job is utter bollocks because I can give you a list of people who all studied a degree with me 8years ago who are still struggling with low paid jobs not the professional ones they deserve to be in and they are still paying off their student loans. They are struggling because these well paid jobs for every graduate, every one who wants to educate themselves to the top was a myth.

Securing a second job is impossible unless you work freelance and can fit it around your regular employment.

I know many mums who work PT and do extra jobs such as ironing, delivering leaflets (I've done this too with my DC to make extra cash) home selling (even though that is utter bollocks are rarely I meet women who make a decent second income from it) They do everything they can to earn extra cash but it still doesn't keep their heads above water. Not to mention for some the tax on second jobs is fecking ridiculous and half the time it really isn't worth it to do so.

A "guy from Eastern Europe" has different barriers to working to many of the respondants on here. Yes language may be an issue for some jobs, but manual / unskilled labour does not require language skills.

Child care costs appears to be the number one barrier - it prevents taking zero hour contracts as childcare needs to be prebooked and paid for even if it is not required. A job will also have to pay more than the childcare otherwise it makes no economic sense. A person without child care responsability has a lot more choice of job. They can work out of school hours and change those hours at short notice as well has being able to work for less than the cost of childcare.

Unfortuantely many of the 750,000 jobs IDS says are recruiting at the job centre are on a casual basis and pay minimum wage - there by excluding parents from applying. This is why tax credit cuts without a mandatory living wage being paid from day 1 of the tax credit cut or subsidised flexible childcare is such an unfair cut. Businesses are addicted to paying people a wage that requires subsidy from taxpayers to have a workforce who can afford to turn up to work. It is not the tax credit claimant that benefits from the subsidy, but the business they work for.

Strawberry don't name change. It would be a dull place if people couldn't disagree.