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

And if that is £13.50 ph for 2 people, not each, then it is incredibly cheap.

How did you vote in the referendum OP?

I avoid this issue by having a small house

You are getting a good deal, but you need them for so many hours due to the tidying. Just put the gs away after you and you wouldn’t be paying so much.

I have a cleaner starting on Monday for the first time and some of the quotes I got were crazy. One quote wasn’t an hourly rate, but choosing from bronze, silver or gold standard and whether you had a 2, 3, 4 or 5 bedroomed house. My 3 bed house on silver standard worked out at £40 an hour!!! Suffice to say, I won’t be paying that for a cleaner. Need a PHD is chemistry for me to pay that.

I found a few others between £13-£16 an hour which seems to be the going rate in my area in the North West. There will be no tidying, as my house is pretty neat already - just a good clean.

I pay mine £20ph she does 4 hours a week split over 2days but she is perfect she finishes her hours then as she loves our dog she then walks her this is the cleaners choice she no longer has a dog of her own and misses having one so it works well for us both as I don't need the dog walker on the days she cleans. I also pay her to house sit for us when we are on holiday as that means dog gets to stay home and we always come home to a sparkling house!! She also arranges for one of her friends who is also a cleaner to cover for her when she is on holiday what more could I ask for.

Have you not watched the news recently, everything is going up and labour is in short supply. Pay the increase, stop being tight or do it yourself.

@Canii well nurses are getting pensions aren’t they, and self employed cleaners aren’t. Cleaners have to pay for fuel to multiple jobs, equipment, insurance - all things nurses aren’t. Surely nobody is that dense.

I think the way forward is to make a list of activities they need to do, ask them for an estimate for the job and how many hours this will be. Once you've got this quote it would be U in my opinion for them to raise their hourly costs for the next six months at least. If you're not limiting them on time no wonder they're pushing for a raise in the hourly rate.

That's why you're being advised to tidy up yourself, too - tidying up is such a broad and varied task which can take as long or as little as whoever is doing it deems necessary, so most people would rather take this on themselves rather than allow someone else the right to decide when something is tidy and how long this takes.

@PanicBuyingSprouts

Have you thought of getting an au pair to keep on top of looking after the children's things and for occasional babysitting?

Hahahahaha If you think brexit has had an impact on cleaners pay rates, you want to see what it’s done to the au pair market

If you want find an au pair, and that’s a big if, you are looking at at least a grand a month in pocket money for them, and you can expect a bidding war with other families over who is offering the best pay, rooms and hours

Friends outside London have all but given up looking now, because the very few au pairs actually coming to the UK don’t want to live rurally or away from a big city

@RoseStar

£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)

My point is, I’m very happy for cleaners to be paid a decent wage but

You could have left most of the post but for this part sentence.

If you think cleaning is such an unskilled job try having a bad one.

If you don't know the difference between being self employed and paid £X per hour for a service and being employed and receiving £X per hour net plus pension, sick pay and holidays then maybe your three degrees have educated you less than you think.

Your snide little jibe about tax is very revealing as well.

Cleaners should know their place beneath you, don't count for anything and are simultaneously tax dodging exploiters taking advantage of their poor middle class a professional employers.

Cleaners should know their place beneath you, don't count for anything and are simultaneously tax dodging exploiters taking advantage of their poor middle class a professional employers

Blimey!

I’m midlands based, my cleaner uses all her own supplies OP.

And £13.50 sounds right to me.

I always tidy before the cleaner comes, it’s just polite to have a tidy house so she can clean properly. She doesn’t clean my son’s room because he leaves his stuff on the floor, he’s 18 it’s his choice. I wouldn’t expect her to negotiate that mess.

@PyongyangKipperbang

I'm not normally an arse about stuff like this but fuck me.....how the other half live.

Right?!

20 hours a week?! What kind of mess do you make?

God Almighty. Pay the money. You can clearly afford it.

You're paying over 12k of your taxed income a year to keep your house clean. You're time must be very valuable or you really hate cleaning
But anything under 15 an hour is a good deal if they are effective. If they left I would be surprised if you could replace them at that cost.

That’s incredibly cheap, even with the price increase. I’m also in Notts.

I wouoe charge more with tidying thrown in. You seem to be expecting a lot.

Pay the price, set the hours and do your own tidying so all they have to do is clean.

[quote RoseStar]@crossstitchingnana I was raising same point above, I’m in a high skilled job and get paid about the same as my cleaner[/quote]
Maybe high skilled but not high demand.
That's all it is. Cleaners are in demand and good luck to them.

@Canii

If that cleaner worked full time then she’s getting paid more than the starting salary for a nurse! Either that’s too high for a cleaner or nurses are being seriously underpaid!!

I am a nurse with 25years experience. I work bank band 5 and get paid £17/hour (mon-fri days). We are both seriously underpaid.

@elbea well nurses are getting pensions aren’t they, and self employed cleaners aren’t

Yes this is a very important point and one that most self employed people don’t realise. However, for low income workers their income will be mostly replaced by the state pension in retirement so I’d say the MOST important thing for them to be doing is making sure they’re declaring their income and paying NI

As for the others it’s reasonably low level points, I personally don’t know any cleaners who pay for equipment unless it’s a company with the proviso of having to do so (and if they are paying for it, stopping doing so is a good way to lower costs). Likewise cleaners may drive around but they have the ability to choose where they work unlike nurses who will usually have to travel to a hub eg hospital.

HOWEVER… our cleaning agency has started charging travel costs and time to the customer which I’m not sure about. Everyone else pays travel costs and time themselves… I personally don’t think this is fair. It’s just another way of increasing pay.

They won’t do it for free?! What CFs!

@RoseStar

But presumably before you did and paid for three degrees, you looked at what wage you'd get?

People have been paying these wages for quite a while but the amount of kids going to university increases every year. So I think we're OK for skilled jobs at the moment.

@madisonbridges These points are both completely wrong. Firstly, real average earnings are now LOWER than they were ten years ago in many sectors because they’ve gone up at less than the pace of inflation. I don’t think anyone could have predicted that. Furthermore, the academic / charity sector has been completely rinsed for funding compared to what it used to get, another factor that depresses value even more. Also… there are very few people who pick a career path and stick to it. The aeverage person now has over 11 job changes in their life and often a career change or two as well. Linearity is not a luxury that most people can enjoy anymore, especially women.

Secondly, most kids are going to university in the hopes of either having higher income in the long term. However, I completely agree that a lot of them are doing courses that won’t lead to anything and would be better off learning a practical or vocational skill. However, they’re still SKILLS and that’s the point in question. If it becomes more lucrative to be in an unskilled job than to invest in your education and career then people won’t do it ans we will lose skilled workers and knowledge.

Again, I’m not saying that there isn’t a fair wage for everyone and I v much agree that cleaning is a luxury as point was made above. My point is that I think this is only the START of the cost of living crisis as these changes can trickle up the chain as well as down.

@RoseStar. I think there is a bit of misunderstanding here. Probably my fault. People have been paying these wages for quite a while but the amount of kids going to university increases every year I meant that the cleaners and gardeners wages have been being paid these higher wages for a while. But schoolkids are not planning to go into those jobs, instead they're applying in record numbers to go to universities to get skills which they probably won't be able to get a job with.

I also worked in FE and HE and I can tell you that wages for academics in HE are healthy. They're definitely not coming down at the uni I worked. If you say funding is being cut, they're getting the money from somewhere. Higher uni fees from kids that are being sold the idea that a degree will give them a high paying job. But they haven't realised that it won't. Instead they'll need a masters or a second degree. Eventually they'll need a doctorate. It's just a mad cycle - all to sort out youth unemployment. As for skills, I've done a fair few jobs and all of them required skills and knowledge in some form. But they didnt require a degree. How many jobs were done perfectly adequately before with no degree but now require one?

However, you have the opportunity of earning the same money now (no security, no holiday pay, no sick pay / extra costs of equipment, supplies, admin, petrol, transit time between jobs, insurance,), so why don't you change? I suspect because you prefer the work you do and don't want to be a cleaner. And that's why they'll always be young people going to uni and getting skills. Because they don't want to be a cleaner.

Ok so this is how the other half lives

I also pay 15ph (but with tiding, ironing and cooking). OP, even your new rate seems quite a good deal.

Cleaners here charge £15+ ph so I think £13 is nothing to moan at, especially if they are doing a good job.

Maybe high skilled but not high demand.
That's all it is. Cleaners are in demand and good luck to them

But the point is what would happen if all the skilled workers decided it was easier and a better work life balance to go and do an unskilled job? You can’t just train people up to these roles overnight.

@C8H10N4O2 pop the bottle away love it’s not even 10am