Cleaners increase in hourly rate

[user1478790138]

Hello

First thread here so pls be gentle.

We have a largeish house in the Nottinghamshire, 6 BR, 4 BA and a fairly large ground floor, 2 children and dogs. Have had a pair of cleaners who come twice a week (initially three times but then it was to hectic for us) for several months now and paid £12ph, they want to increase it to 13.5 now. They do the cleaning and tidying, of which there is a fair amount but I don’t limit them time wise. Not sure now how to react, we’ve had them since March, somehow an increase of 100+ quid a month seems a bit steep in such a short period of time? What would you do??
Thank you

An increase of £1.50 an hour where it means an extra £100 a month would mean you have cleaners in for 66 hours a month. That seems so excessive for 2 adults and 2 children. Unless you are working 24/7 surely you have time to tidy and clean anyway rather than pay a bill of nearly £900 a month on cleaners.

We previously had a cleaner who was willing to tidy up before cleaning. What we found was that we were paying her to put the same crap back into cupboards every week. We hugely decluttered, and then found that we didn't actually even need a regular cleaner anymore.

20 hours a week is A LOT. The problem isn't their hourly rate, it's the sheer number of hours you have. I'd recommend hugely decluttering, and considering whether you actually need to use all those rooms, and whether they need to be cleaned every week.

Firstly I think your expectations of their job is abhorrent. They are cleaners not housekeepers. You should tidy up after yourselves.

Secondly my boss has just done a company wide payrise of 10% due to the massive cost of living increases this year.

My gas & electric has gone from £60/month to £100 far bigger hike than your 12% increase.

Petrol has gone from being £1.20/litre to £1.40 again higher then your increase.

Everything has gone up since April and the end of the freer brevity movements for trade. Unless you live in a bubble you should be aware that life costs a lot more.

I live in the NW England. I pay £15ph. But I do agree the hours in advance. (How can you just let them clean as long as they want?) She brings her own cleaning supplies and equipment unless there's something I prefer her to use, then I supply it. But the house is tidy. Tidying would use up too much of her cleaning time. I think you need to get your family licked into shape so they leave their rooms tidy so that your cleaners spend their time doing the hard work of cleaning.

You are paying the cleaners £12 each an hour I presume?

You have cleaners in for 66 hours a month if £.15 an hour increase equates to an extra £100 a month.
Eighteen hours a week!
Just wow.
Do you and yourr OH clean at all?
You may have 6 bedrooms but there are only 4 of you- presumably half of these rooms are unused- do they need cleaned? Ditto with your 4 bathrooms, do you use them all? You could confine your ablutions to two bathrooms- so then you suddenly have 5 rooms not needing cleaned so regularly.

£15 p/h is normal here too, I pay £17 through an agency.

What’s feeling less normal however is the extent to which it’s eating into pay. I work in research and I’m on £30k a year. That works out as less than £20 an hour. On top of that I pay tax and NI, which takes it down to about £17 p/h. On top of that I work a lot of unpaid hours when we are busy which depletes the value of my pay even further.

Now I don’t know what my cleaners tax arrangements are, but basically I’m paying the same price for someone to do an unskilled job as I’m being paid to have three degrees and over a decade of industry experience (before I moved into this role). How can we incentivise people to go into high skilled jobs and “level up” when there’s so little reward for them on a relative basis?

My point is, I’m very happy for cleaners to be paid a decent wage but if the wages of people employing it them don’t go up as well then more cleaners will start to find their hours being cut as it becomes unaffordable. Now, they don’t work all the hours that I do, but in general I think it’s normal to benchmark or reference your costs to your income … and the changes really are quite unusual.

The cost of living crisis is going to take many forms, and to be honest I think we are going to have a very bumpy road before things level out again. I’d personally be advising anyone on low pay who’s seen a big increase in earnings to be sensible with their savings as I think they’re the first things to go up on account of supply shortages, but the gap will widen again as other forces come into play (eg constraints on your employers costs or rise in other goods and services)

Unless they are employed and you pay the associated costs, then they were initially too cheap. £13.50 is still cheap

The current cost of employing cleaners is between £13-£20 per hour. If you find good, honest and reliable cleaners hang on to them. And note that just because an agency charges £15 ph the cleaners will still probably be on min wage.
If tidying is expected this need agreeing in advance. I think it's a waste of time as means the cleaner is spending a lot of time NOT cleaning!
I've had clients who expect me to be their housekeeper and do everything, which is fine as long as everyone knows what to expect. Also they were v happy for me to work as many hours as necessary (eg 8 hrs doing laundry, washing, drying, ironing, putting away of clothes) but you do have to be able to trust your cleaner not to take the mick - that's why I'd always go with a local SE cleaner rather than an agency. A)I wouldn't want different people in my house every week and B) agencies rarely pay enough for cleaners to care about doing a decent job/time-keeping etc.

If they are good and reliable I would pay it. I didn’t think it was a cleaners job to tidy though. Just reduce the hours if the cost is too much.

So funny op.
🤣🤣🤣

Good work

Giant house. Preschoolers and cleaners for 20hrs a week who also apparently tidy.

Is this in the hope you get told to clean yourself and tidy?

How untidy does your house get?
You and your husband must work 6am-10pm with zero time to do anything.
🤣🤣🤣

YABVU expecting them to tidy before cleaning.

£13.50 per hour isn’t much at all.

I can't believe how much cleaners get per hour. I have trained for 3 years to become a therapist and I don't get that. 😥

It isn't a problem asking your cleaners to tidy if that's what was agreed at the start of the contact. People are odd about this. If I had time to be massively tidy I wouldn't need a cleaner.
Are you employing them through an agency? If so at £13.50 overheads such as VAT, administration, management have to be taken off before the wages filter down, so I wouldn't be surprised if the agency is paying the worker minimum wage or just over. I would ask the agency what the staff are paid.
Where I live in a very working class area its normal to direct casual employ a friend or friend of a friend to clean and pay them cash in hand at a rate of whatever is asked, usually £10-£15.

@BathMatToe

Your post doesn’t make any sense at all other than making you sound a bit bitter or deranged, hard to tell

I'm a cleaner, I work together with my sister. You're on a very low rate, we charge £14 per man hr. Which is slightly on the low side for our area.

Sometimes people don't realise, we don't do this for pocket money, it's to earn a living.
We have to factor into our cost, sick pay, holiday pay, insurance, fuel costs, equipment, laundering of cloths, admin ect
At £12 per hr, it probably ends up at close to minimum wage they're actually earning.

We personally don't mind tidying for clients, but that does fall under the role of housekeeper, which is more expensive than a cleaner.

@crossstitchingnana I was raising same point above, I’m in a high skilled job and get paid about the same as my cleaner

@RoseStar. £30,000pa at £20ph is less than a 30hr week. If you worked a full week, you'd be closer to £40,000 so you wouldn't feel the loss so much maybe? I pay my gardener £17.50ph. I'm not sure why people without degrees shouldn't earn as much if not more than you, but you could always change jobs. There's a huge demand for cleaners, gardeners and carers where I live.

@crossstitchingnana

I can't believe how much cleaners get per hour. I have trained for 3 years to become a therapist and I don't get that. 😥

What kind of therapist? The last appointments I have seen for various things have been £40+.

@pegasus78 I appreciate where you’re coming from but people on minimum wage have many of those costs too especially as many will be on zero hours contracts or SE, someone earning £12 p/h is on 30% more than minimum wage. also I thought it was the norm for people to supply equipment for cleaners?

My cleaner charges £14/hr and does what she can in 2 hours. This is usually three bathrooms, All the floors and the kitchen. She doesn’t tidy so I do this before she arrives so she can do what she needs to do easier.
I would agree a timescale with them. What they can’t do in that time they could do next time?

@roseStar it's the difference between being employed on minimum wage and running a business. The costs pagasus listed are all business costs.... if you for example work in a shop you don't pay insurance to the shop out of your wages in case you drop something. A self employed cleaner does.... If you are ill then the shop will cover sick pay....a self employed person will get nothing for 1 day sick.....there is no pot for holiday pay to come out of....etc...etc

I don't see the point in comparing a cleaners rate to other industries. They are not comparable.

Cleaners normally just clean, housekeepers tidy and do other duties too. It sounds as though you want a housekeeper but are only prepared to pay for a cleaner OP. The rate you are paying sounds more than fair. If you don't agree try and hire a cheaper cleaner who will also tidy for less. Or teach your preschoolers to put their toys away at the end of each day so they don't get the shock of their lives when they start school and they have to do things for themselves.

Inflation is rocketing, wages are slowly increasing.

They’ll be taking into account fuel increases and price increases - so if you don’t want to or can’t afford it reduce the time

@RoseStar some cleaners do use the clients products, most I know don't.

We use our own, as have years of experience, we know exactly which products are going to work the best. Which saves us time and the client money.

I appreciate what you're saying. I do love my job, but it's hard gruelling and sometimes filthy work.
If I'm taking the risk of being self employed, I'm not prepared to do that for minimum wage.

Also a lot of cleaners are really struggling, last minute cancellations are shooting up again due to Covid.

You were under paying them and now that's been corrected. £12 per hour is fuck all really, given they won't get paid for the time they're travelling between jobs. If you don't like it you could always save money and do your own cleaning?