DS and DD Wage Difference Surprise

[Thatstuffedbear]

DD, 29, is a nurse, went to uni, did placements of 12 hour shifts in various hospitals as a student, all for zero pay. Fast forward and she is now a band 6 nurse on a busy nhs ward doing 13 hour day and 12 hour night shifts, often gets verbally abused by patients but loves her job.
She gets free uniform but has to pay to park. Her salary is now 28k after 7 years.

DS, 21 decided uni wasn't for him and was lucky enough to be offered an apprenticeship straight from school. Got paid from day one and will be a qualified gas engineer in the summer. He has a permanent job lined up, he has free uniform including shoes, a phone, all paid for, a van, and an allowance to buy tools. His starting salary at age 21 will be 36k.
He works 8 hour days and admits a lot of time is spent in the van drinking tea waiting for the next job.
I love both my DC equally and am so glad they are in jobs they love but AIBU to think a nurse should surely earn more than a gas engineer?

Unclear. I meant in the 1930s female teachers were openly paid less (different salary scales).

The £28000 you say she is earning will be her basic rate, however she surely receives unsocial hours enhancements? I was a band 5 nurse until 3 years ago, when I was in a car accident. With enhancements I was earning around £36000 annually at that time, and I was only contracted for 31.5 hours a week, though I did occasionally work extra hours! I did and still do, think that I received a fair wage!! Sickness and Maternity pay and conditions are also very good and far better than many of those in the private sector. Unfortunately Sick/Maternity Leave can be abused by some staff, and I feel this is, at least partly, responsible for much of the understaffing and overworking (I know I am going to be slated for this, but this is honestly how I have experienced it) with other staff having to cover the shortfall!
I loved my job and really miss most of it, except the abuse and violence, that is sometimes part of the job.

Sadly society does not value nurses or teachers. My dd did Business degree, International Personnel certificate and Masters degree. My ds did not want to go to uni and is a lorry driver and they earn rough the same. My dd is still repaying student loans.

It’s quite depressing reading all the responses along the lines of ‘if girls want to earn more they should choose higher paid job areas’.

Research has shown that women don’t choose low paid jobs as such, but rather that jobs done predominately by women are low paid. Even to the extent that a job that becomes more female-dominated over time suffers a decrease in pay. I think I’ve heard medicine and vets mentioned as examples.

Capitalism and the patriarchy have been so successful at convincing people that issues/problems are personal & individual (and so can be solved by individual personal choices). When the reality is these issues are structural and require massive changes at a societal level if things are going to ever improve.

www.payscale.com/career-news/2016/03/when-an-occupation-becomes-female-dominated-pay-declines

Here’s an article on the phenomenon

I paid £199 for just over an hours work on my (mums) boiler recently. I stayed in an NHS hospital for 10 nights the week before and didn’t even pay for my own food. It’s mothing to do with men/woman’s jobs. Its the profession and the money available within it.

It’s all well and good saying nurses should be paid for (I 100% agree) but no one wants privatisation/pay as you go NHS or tax hikes

Nurses deserve much better pay, as do Drs. The NHS devalues it’s clinical staff. Just as HCAs are in many positions.

As the poster above has said £28k may be your daughters basic without any shift allowance but it certainly won’t be what her or most other nurses are earning. They get unsocial shift allowances which bump this a lot ( bear in mind they virtually all work shifts) my friend is a band 6 working 30 hrs a week a Sunday (because it pays more ) & a couple of eve shifts she told me if she was full time she’d be a higher rate tax payer. She also turned down a band 7 job because it was Mon- Fri & she’d actually be worse off due to losing her valuable Sunday

I retired from the NHS after 20 years. Nursing and teaching are seen as vocations that you know when joining they will remain low paid I never stopped 24k a year even after 20 years and yes I'm Male. I now work for the police also for less than 20k a year. All public sector jobs are crap pay that's just how it is. Unless the masses are happy to pay VASTLY increased taxes it will never change. And we all know how that will go if asked for. People are happy to pay £5 for a crap cup of coffee but refuse to properly fund the NHS. Military etc.

No, gender has nothing to do with it, that’s why 90% of nurses, social workers, care assistants, cleaners are female and earn less than there male counterparts for equivalent jobs, no such thing as sexism, austerity hasn’t hit women way worse than men cause the majority of public sector workers, unpaid carers and part time workers are women, grrrrrr!!!!

Nurses are underpaid, yes, however, if DD has worked hard for his career he should be paid what the job demands, it's hard physical labour, with a lot of intellectual stress too, as well as paperwork. So is nursing, but 'gas engineer' isn't a state job. It sucks. DWI.

i actually think this is public sector all round and not just women.

ive been a police officer now for almost 10 years. im almost in the top pay bracket which is 39k.

for this i work long hours, antisocial hours, and its dangerous work at times. (last summer i got shot at by a bloke wielding a 12 inch machete, with a long range rifle, carrying an axe and hunting knife after he rang 111 saying he felt unwell mentally and decided to shoot any uniform that darkened his door)

its worse for new recruits now who start on a paltry 19k.

compare that to an MPs salary of around 70k plus expenses. i think the public sector (doctors, teachers, nurses, police, paramedics) are treated appallingly.

Well said Kitobi. I worked for the nhs for nearly 20 years and knew going into nursing that the pay was crap. It will only get better when people are happy to pay more taxes, and the government channel those taxes to staff pay...

That said, I now work with dh running our own trade company and dh doesn’t get the salary that ops son is starting on, even after many years experience, as we do not charge customers a fortune for our work. Trades are able to charge more and more these days as they are in short supply so people will pay to get the work done. Dh though will not over charge as he strongly feels it isn’t the right thing to do.

You can't underpay someone who's in scarce supply.

Apparently you can - you know there's a chronic shortage of nurses right now? Despite this their pay remains low, and the shortage seems likely to get worse.

You can't underpay someone who's in scarce supply.

If it's just 'supply and demand', why are teachers' salaries so uncompetitive when there is such a shortage?

Apparently you can - you know there's a chronic shortage of nurses right now? Despite this their pay remains low, and the shortage seems likely to get worse.

You can't underpay someone who's in scarce supply in the private sector. For reasons that remain mysterious to me, young people (mostly women) continue to indulge the public sector distortion of wages.

There is a shortage of nurses but they can’t easily take their skills elsewhere. Alternative options are private nursing, bank staff or temp nursing. See also teaching, police, prison officers etc. The private sector equivalent (eg security guards) doesn’t have the public service element and isn’t well paid either. Nurses at least are mostly in a union whereas care workers generally aren’t and are very poorly paid.

Nurses get paid lower than some supermarkets unfortunately. Yanbu, nurse should be paid more

It’s the difference between public and private sector.

Despite the need for most public sector jobs, my DD will be encouraged to be educated to degree level (I still think girls benefit from this more) then enter the private sector. Aptitude for sciences, so hopefully dentistry. As a dentist, not a nurse.

To add to that, why do nurses need degrees when they never used to? Why not do medicine instead of nursing?

The difference is though (and please don’t flame me!), nurses are on stable contracts, good pensions, sick pay, stable hours, unions etc... I fully believe they do not get paid enough, but I think the security of the public sector is desirable and a lot of people (particularly woman imo) rate stability quite highly when considering careers.

You could probably work nights in Aldi and earn the same as a newly qualified nurse working days but you wouldn’t have the progression and benefits of the career either.

My friends an agency nurse and she clears £1k a week over 3 days, so there are other options also.

Blame Project 2000. Nurses trained before that all say that's when standards took a nose dive.

It’s everyday sexism and the reason why pay equity measures should be in place.

But men can be nurses. Some do.

Men go for the more senior doctor roles.

So not an equity issue.

Why do women chose these jobs when they don’t need to?

It’s everyday sexism and the reason why pay equity measures should be in place.

I can only assume that people who like the idea of government mandated 'pay equity measures' have never run a business before.

Doctors aren't more senior, they're completely different. And there are more female than male junior doctors now. Presumably women go into nursing because they care about people and see it as a way of doing that. And thank God they do, we'd be fucked if they didn't.