..to think that £6.15 an hour...

[BertrandRussell]

.....really is shit wages?

Exactly, and the fact that some children can "afford" to take these jobs, happily take them and their parents blithely think of it as experience/learning curve/pocket money job. These employers can therefore easily fill these positions and the circle continues with no reason/pressure to offer a fair wage.

Just like someone who hasn't received their TC payments due to a fuck up or has to wait six weeks for a UC payment but has children to feed, takes the £5 an hour cash in hand job they are offered (or worse).

Grapes of wrath.

That was the price for a room

My reply was to namechange

Why the fuck should someone's living situation have any bearing on the amount of wages they receive?!

Exactly this.

Your home situation should have nothing to do with your wages!

The trouble with a 'minimum wage' is that employers tend to pay the minimum and (many) staff only put in minimum effort

I fail to see how people just accept this and don't realise how disgraceful it is.

I have a DC is who is of the age to get £6.15 an hour as a carer. The thought that someone could spend 10 minutes cleaning up shit from someone's body and be paid just over one pound to do so, is abhorrent.

Do people genuinely feel comfortable with this? It's shameful if you do. Imagine offering someone £1 after those ten minutes of cleaning you up? Could you actually do that and feel no shame? This is the reality of the minimum wage for age groups.

And I'll clearly unsuccessfully try not to get started on Carers Allowance, £66.15 a week if you spend at least 35 hours a week caring for someone (and saving the government paying someone else £1 for ten minutes of care)

£1.89 an hour. How nice that disabled people and their carers are worthy of so much largesse! It makes the minimum wage look amazing.

Everyone has to start at minimum wage.

Why should your son be paid more until he has the experience behind him?

He needs to work hard to get payrises/promotion and work his way up.

How? Without living with parents

Why don't you ask the tens of thousands of students who manage to live away from their parents on an income which is less than NMW.

Why no outrage at them having live on £10k a year (which is NMW annualised) or less?

“Why should your son be paid more until he has the experience behind him?”
I’m ignoring this because you haven’t read the thread.

*Everyone has to start at minimum wage.

Why should your son be paid more until he has the experience behind him?*

Why should a 22 year old who has exactly the same experience as the OP's son get paid more. It's not about minimum wage, it's about people being paid less to do the same job because of their age.

Yes it is shit, whatever age you are. I remember working my arse off as a 16 year old while some of the older employees did fuck all and got paid twice as much. If its the same job, the same wage should apply to all. I would tell your son to do it for a few months to get some work experience as he's presumably fresh out of school (?) but definitely get something better soon after.

You will of course have people on here saying that it's an entitled attitude to expect an 18 year old to be paid more, but just ignore them. They are the sort of people who have them work for nothing if they could get away with it.

I imagine some of the people living independently of parents on such low wages must be at risk of getting into debt just to meet living costs.

@BertrandRussell i have read the thread actually. You say As it happens, this is a part time job alongside a college course so sounds like a 'first kind of job' job, which i would expect to be minimum wage.

18yo these days seem to expect high wages with no experience,they should ask themselves what do they bring to a company that someone else doesn't, and thats what they work for to progree and get promotiona/payrises. Companies have to make a profit, and minimum wage is there for a reason.

I earnt minimum wage from 16-21 part time during school/uni, i never expextex to be on more until i went full time after Uni and committed to the role/career

“@BertrandRussell i have read the thread actually”
Not very carefully, clearly. If you had you would have realised that I am talking about kids who are not in the fortunate position my son is.

But just to add- my son is actually bringing skills and experience to this job. So not all 18 year olds are inexperienced and without skills.

I am talking about kids who are not in the fortunate position my son is.

And if they're working full time NMW is enough to house, transport, feed and entertain them independent of parental help.

£240 odd per week, no tax to pay, is not that bad an income

Really? Where?

Its not just London that has sky high rents and expensive commuter transport. How are you breaking down the budget without assuming some subsidy from parents?

18yo these days seem to expect high wages with no experience

But 25 yr olds with no experience in the same job get paid more? Why? The wage is for the job. Put in some kind of performance related bonus/pay if you want but paying someone more purely because of their age is legalised discrimination.

It is a minimum, not a target. My employer- a small shop, pays everyone the same wage. Above minimum, not much, but above. They found that they didn't get the commitment from staff otherwise. Good employers pay decent wages.

Not the point of the thread I realise Bert but if he's bringing skills and experience could he instead work on a self-employed consultancy basis? He could charge more per hour, without it costing the employer more.

Might be worth considering in the future.

And if they're working full time NMW is enough to house, transport, feed and entertain them independent of parental help.

Again - where is this low cost part of the country which has plentiful jobs, low housing cost, low cost available transport etc?

How are you breaking down the budget without assuming some subsidy from parents?

I'm going to repeat this because it seems posters are deliberately ignoring this - STUDENTS MANAGE!

I do get your point about care worker pay CisCity, and agree that we have a big problem as a society with the mechanics of carer support but where does that argument stop? If it’s shameful to pay someone only a pound for cleaning up crap for ten minutes is it suddenly fine if you pay them one pound fifty? Or two pounds?

titchy dd1 is a student. She survived by living in a cheap house share, and working in her minimum wage job every hour she could as well as studying.
The difference being that dd2 has a job in our town, where there are no cheap house shares, the cheapest accommodation a search just found was £600pm. To live somewhere with cheap flat shares would mean massive travel costs, including taxis on her early starts as the buses don’t run in time.
She works on average 35 hrs a week, BUT with no sick pay or holiday pay and less hours in school holidays, so gets significantly less than 10k.

@c8h £240 a week if you are paying for a rented room in a house is enough to live on. There are people who will be poorer than this person in Britain.