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?

star, perhaps I'm old fashioned? My parents would never have discussed their earnings with us, they certainly would never ask us as adults what we earn now unless we went and asked for financial help, likewise i dont know exactly what our dd and her husband earn, I assume from their jobs and lifestyle its not a huge amount and treat them accordingly ie, treat them to meals out, treat dgs to shoes and toys etc, I would never put them on the spot to explain their private choices!

^ seriously??

Can your dd not aspire to a band 8 role heading to £50k?

Does your ds get paid holiday, sick pay and pension contributions?

Presumably your ds has no union and is personally responsible for decision making and personally responsible for errors without a great deal of on-site supervision.

How many hours pw does your ds work compared to your dd and what opportunities does your dd have to work o/time get paid shift supplements.

Presumably if your ds is rude to a client he will be dismissed. If your dd laughs at a patient or raises her voice it will be glossed over.

Yes nurses work hard but sometimes 3 12 hour shifts provides for flexibility re childcare, shift allowancea, union protection, public sector benefits, etc and this is so often forgotten. When the work dries up in a recession your ds's job is likely to be at risk.

That was meant for starzig

Good god £36k for newly qualified gas engineer? I earn about £5k more in a professional qualified IT role that i have been doing for 10 years and u'm 50, always been in professional roles since i left school......probably misses point of thread.
Oh and i am prob paid more than most of my colleague in the same job regardless of sex

Of course it's not fair - and it's gendered

Well it's not really because both sexes can be either a nurse or a gas engineer.

These are the BESA rates. Most of our newly qualified gas engineers come under the Installer category working up to senior craftsman

Building Services Engineering Supervisor 21.01

Foreman. 17.23

Senior Craftsman. 14.24

Craftsman. 13.11

Installer. 11.83

Adult Trainee. 9.98

Mate (18 and over). 9.98

Mate (aged 16 and 17). 4.63

Senior Apprentice. 11.83

Intermediate Apprentice. 9.18

Junior Apprentice. 6.47

That's why careers advice to teens now is so important. They need to think about all these different aspects, of which career to choose.

@Comefromaway's figures are far more representative of what most gas engineers earn.

OP is your son's salary partly commission based? The ones I've seen offering that high are OTE, you only get that if you upsell. Not many decent engineers are any good at selling products and services that aren't needed.

dishingoutdone Yes they did choose what careers they wanted. DD was well aware of the pay, She isn't complaining (obviously wouldn't say no to more money!)
It's me that was interested in the pay difference.
thebabesavedme DS still lives at home and openly discusses his pay. NHS pay is easily available to see but DD is also happy to discuss her pay. Her and DH were talking house purchases last night actually which is what got me thinking.

I think there will be even less nurses now they have to pay for their courses.

Some of ours will earn that much. But on commercial installations lodging away from home and working overtime.

tomtom 35k is a normal salary for gas engineers in this part of the world. DS is working for the local council so not a high flighing company.

No wonder councils never have any money.

Im a nurse and the basic salary is low, but working unsocial hours massively increases yearly salary,

I wont be pushing my kids in to uni or nhs field jobs. They'll be pushed into trades because that's where the money and comfortable life is at. I know what life I'd rather have for my kids

What about what your kids want? Or does that not matter?

I’d advise that it’s not your problem. You don’t have to feel guilty that your son earns more and you don’t need to feel that you have to ‘even thing out’ to make things better for your daughter. They’ve made adult decisions so please support them both. Be proud because your daughter does a worthy job and your son earns a good crust.

What are their pension schemes like? Sick pay? Job security? Maternity pay? Life insurance?

Your daughter may be on a lower headline salary but public sector terms and conditions are way more generous than a lot of private sector. I think there's probably less of a difference than you think when the whole package is considered.

Haven't RTFT so may have been mentioned, but what is their long term income potential? He may max out on that salary while hers could go much higher.

It depends where you live though I expect as to whether it's a reasonable salary. Just googled at random a place in the north. A four bedroom townhouse was £130,000. Then a similar house near me in an area much less affluent than surrounding areas is selling for £360,000. In my area it would probably be £800,000.

It's almost impossible to have a decent standard of living as a nurse in London and the south east. But in other parts of the country it would probably be a reasonable salary. I'm surprised nurses haven't lobbied for higher salaries in London as national wage bargaining doesn't work in their favour.

The disparity would be even higher for doctors. Earning £90k is some parts of the country would give you a very high standard of living but would barely buy you a flat where I live. It's only because we've been living here for decades that we can afford it.

What rubbish. I've met many tradespeople over the years and they are no more sexist than anyone else, some are even, shock horror, women!

But have you actually WORKED in trades as a woman? There’s minimal overt sexism. The issue is more that there’s a well meaning unconscious bias that is very hard to spot on an individual or case by case basis, it’s only now, in my mid forties that I look around me and see that I’m havent been promoted or advanced as far as many, many less well qualified, less talented and frankly mediocre males. It isn’t their fault, it isn’t any single individuals fault. It isn’t deliberate but it happen.

I first noticed it then there was a complex breakdown on a remote site, that i was uniquely qualified to fix. I offered to go, but the boss sent ‚‘Gary‘ Gary Wasnt as qualified or experienced as me, but the boss was worried that i might struggle with a physical aspect of the repair (i wouldn’t, been doing it for years) or that there was a personal safety issue (along the lines of ‚‘i can’t possibly send a young lass to do that, it’s night time, it might not be safe‘ — though he could never produce a risk assessment to define exactly why he thought Gary would be OK where I wasn’t)

Now multiply that by a year or so. Gary goes for the same promotion as me, and gets it, because now he has more experience.

It’s hard to fight, as it Is benign and well meaning. But it is fucking depressing.

And yep, of course I’ve tired circumventing this crap, arguing my case. Often I’m successful. But it never quite balances out all the additional opportunities that Gary (generic Gary) gets compared to me.

Interestingly, i job hopped quite a bit, and am now in a company with 2 female bosses. And suddenly it is ok for me to go, it is safe, i can do the job....

People are so.naive. of course it is gendered. Any occupation that starts to have more females in it becomes less valued and starts to be paid less. We can see it in law. Historically always thoughr of a well paid ' profession'. There are are a lot more women studying and going into law. This has ' mysteriously' coincided with the profession being less respected generally. Some limited areas of law still pay very well (but those tend to be in predominantly male dominated corporate law roles). Any job predominantly done by women is less respected than of it is predominantly done by men. If it is 50 50 it seems ok but once the proportion flips to more females ( for whatever reason), respect for the role and often the pay for it drop.

worm I am proud! I don't feel guilty! I'm pleased they are happy in jobs they enjoy. I would be happy whatever they chose to do, I didn't say it was a problem, just got me thinking that's all.....

ohtheroses DS is in a union, has a pension scheme, gets holiday and sick pay, tool allowance, uniform. He works 5 days a week 8-4 predominantly installing and servicing boilers. He gets told every morning via his work mobile what jobs he has for the day. They get overtime pay for emergency call outs.
DD isn't interested at the moment in climbing higher up the ladder, she enjoys patient interaction and clinical work and this tends to get less the higher up the band's you go. She's happy.

I worked in IT for many years. Very male dominated (still) and also well paid. I have advised young women for years to go into a male dominated profession as they will automatically earn more by virtue of that fact even if the job itself is not as hard as, say nursing.

This is why councils are now facing pay discrimination cases on job equivalence issues and quite rightly to. One wonders what the Equality and Diversity officers in councils have been doing all these years when the pay differential issues are so obvious.

MinisterforCheekyFuckery I agree with you and was just going to post the same thing about gender promotion bias in nursing.
Out of my student set in nursing, four males were all managers within a very short time. They were very definitely not better nurses either.

When you need a gas engineer you expect to pay. When you need a nurse you want it to be free.