Do you feel appropriately paid for your work?

[shivawn]

Do you feel that your wages fairly reflect your skills and labour?

I'm just curious how people generally feel after chatting with my own colleagues a few days ago. They were complaining that we're underpaid and that they will struggle to live on these wages as they get older and want to start families etc. We're all nurses on a public payscale so on the same or similar pay (working in Ireland where nurses are better paid than in the UK). I felt really surprised as I consider myself well paid for doing a job that I love, probably more than many of my friends in other professions.

Are you happy with your wage in relation to what you contribute to your employer or do you think you're worth more?

Also I have worked for the first decade of my working life in various NMW jobs and I look around and see how incredibly hard so many people work for absolute peanuts. Care workers, nursery staff, amazon warehouse people. And I can’t honestly in good faith complain that in the NHS I’m not paid well enough.

@RoseLimeade

Absolutely.

I work for the NHS in mental health. I’m paid a heck of a lot more than I’d get doing anything else within my grasp and more than the majority of my social circle. Love my job, love my employer. I don’t do this just for the money but it sure helps!

I’ve worked for the NHS for approx five years and always felt well paid for the role, even when I was a band four starting on £18k. It’s a matter of perspective I think, where I’m from if you manage to earn £25k you’ve done very well for yourself indeed and £40k is the kind of money nobody really earns. MN may scoff at that amount as in my experience people here say they earn a lot more than that but to me it’s honestly mega bucks and I’ve never been able to get on board with the whole ‘badly paid NHS’ thing. My team largely feel the same as me (band fours to sevens), that we are paid really fairly for what we do

If you started on a band 4 you’re not a graduate though? If you had spent 3 or 4 years at university on no wage amounting 15k debt a year you’d be 120k worse off on day 1 and you wouldn’t have amassed 4 years of a pension. To start at a band 5. I agree not everyone in the NHS is badly paid, professionals working in clinical roles are not particularly paid by and large

No. Haven't been appropriately paid for 9 years.
Have changed jobs, but my industry tends to look for cheaper labour straight out of university.

I think my pay reflects my skills but not my labour.

I do a specific and rather specialised job in a specific and rather specialised branch of financial services for a generous salary.

Most weeks, I don’t do an awful lot that couldn’t be done by someone paid half as much as me, and I work very part time hours.

But a few times a year, the shit hits the fan and I have to sort things out. If they didn’t have me doing it, they would have to hire in an agency, which would cost far more than they pay me, so over the year, they are better off.

And I have one of those mythical unicorn jobs of well-paid and very flexible (until things go wrong and I have to work flat out for a week)

But in the last 2 years, I’ve been headhunted (yes @Iamthewombat the proper sort where my name is given by an industry contact) 3 times to come and do what I do for competitors, so in that sense, I’m not overpaid because there aren’t many other people who can do it
In all 3 cases, when I turned down the job, they carried on using an external firm because they couldn’t find anyone else to do the job in house

I know, I wasn’t making any comment on whether the band four job required a degree or not sorry! I was personally in a position where I took a job that was lower banded because it was in the field I wanted to get into, despite having had the option to get a better paid job with my degrees. But if I’d started at band five with a degree again, I wouldn’t have thought that was badly paid. I did get a band five six months later and felt really happy with that pay. Also bearing in mind your pay increases over the spine points for quite a few years even if you just remain in the same role.

Three years at uni to train as a nurse, say £60k debt per year (£9k fee and then living costs) and you’d be in £45k debt right? Although now nurses are getting £5k a year bursary which is great and much needed. If my maths are wrong happy to be corrected! At band five if you remain in that role without progression you’ll be working up to over £30k with the spine points as you gain experience.

@RoseLimeade

I know, I wasn’t making any comment on whether the band four job required a degree or not sorry! I was personally in a position where I took a job that was lower banded because it was in the field I wanted to get into, despite having had the option to get a better paid job with my degrees. But if I’d started at band five with a degree again, I wouldn’t have thought that was badly paid. I did get a band five six months later and felt really happy with that pay. Also bearing in mind your pay increases over the spine points for quite a few years even if you just remain in the same role.

Three years at uni to train as a nurse, say £60k debt per year (£9k fee and then living costs) and you’d be in £45k debt right? Although now nurses are getting £5k a year bursary which is great and much needed. If my maths are wrong happy to be corrected! At band five if you remain in that role without progression you’ll be working up to over £30k with the spine points as you gain experience.

But the point is that yes band 4 is not a bad salary if you don’t have to have a vocational degree as a mandatory requirement , if you do a band 5 salary is not so good because of the debt involved to get there. It’s not only the cost of the course but the lack of earnings compared to non graduate. Many HCP are 4 year degrees with no bursary. So 60k debt plus 60k in lost earnings. Surely you see the difference? Non graduate starting salary of band 4 is a good salary, I agree. The 30k salary is after 7 years in the job. Many of the other pay bands give practically no increase until you’ve been in the band for 5years. When you get promoted to ward manager you go up to 31k and after 6 years in that post you’re still on less than 34k.

NHS (specialist role) but not Specialist salary! I feel underpaid for my skill set/level of knowledge required to fulfil the role.

Voluntary sector so definitely underpaid but I do live my job.

Yes, IT Consultant in Fintech, paid the same as the guys.

I'm a learning support assistant and love my job but it's term time only so I could never live on the wage so have no choice but to consider other careers. It's a shame as a lot of experienced, dedicated people in my job leave for better paid options

@zzzebra

Work in tech and feel I'm overpaid for what I do, even though I'm on the going rate.

It's skilled work but I wouldn't say it's hard work.

The moment you end up doing something where the cost of failure is high the pay to effort scale gets skewed crazily.

"No no don't over work them it costs millions if they screw up that very simple task they do every day"

I'm an academic, fairly early in my career. I'm happy with my salary and there's good opportunities to progress and a better pension than many let on

Secondary teaching is the other career I considered. If I'd gone into teaching straight from my degree, I would be earning more now and wouldn't have had several years on

No. Public sector administration and so my pay has been frozen for the last 10 years. No progression and no opportunities for promotion. In that time my team has halved due to job cuts and restructuring.

Workload is demanding and subjected to constant change as central gov make cuts elsewhere and pile on more services to our team. No entitlement to furlough and not key workers either, so many of us with kids are exhausted after this year. Levels of responsibility are v high for our roles and many feel unqualified and exposed doing the work we’re expected to, which is stressful.

I set up a little business of my own to try and make some money for extras, as although I work full time I’m fed up of no cost of living increases and 10 years of continually tightening my belt. I just can’t work any harder.

@BungleandGeorge The BBC article does show the gap between public and private sector pay for the years before furlough. It also includes a skills/age adjustment which suggests the gap has closed recently to parity However that is excluding pension and the article links to ONS data which says that once pensions are included the premium in the public sector is 7%. Clearly these are averages but if you feel you would be better off in the privates sector why don't you move? You will have to contribute to an equivalent private sector pension but that just requires doing the maths on how much it would cost when comparing salaries

Yes I can't complain. 6-8hrs a week for just over 20k. Lots of responsibility though and the buck stops with me.

I'm happy with my salary, it's not massive but when I leave the office (pre Covid) I can leave it there. I don't have masses of responsibility on my shoulders either.