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

[quote RoseStar]@DaisyNGO untrained then, generally means the same. The point being that “skilled” jobs are ones you just can’t put people into overnight without training or experience. HGV drivers are a good example of skilled job which is underpaid / undervalued and look what happened, it caused a huge crisis.

Perhaps the takeaway from this is threefold:

1. Everyone should be paid a wage that affords them a decent standard of living
2. There’s a premium to be paid for cleaners in part because they’re doing a job that other people don’t want to do (and could do without if they had to)
3. There are a lot of “highly trained” workers who are also highly underpaid, particularly given the cost of living crisis. We really need to look after these people as we simply cannot replace them overnight.[/quote] Agree

I think we mean the same thing perhaps

My point was that it's no bad thing for wages for important jobs to go up.

This thread is really interesting.

@doggydaft

My cleaner is £15 per hour and that seems pretty standard. They do offer a deep clean list of jobs for a set price which doesn't take a set amount of hours. I can't imagine you'd get much cheaper to be honest. I'm in Scotland and not an expensive part of the country either.

Could have written this myself £15ph

You could always become a cleaner if you want to

Yeah you’re right I could. And whilst I’m about it, how about I also take my colleagues with me, as well as a bunch of friends who are nurses, social care workers and maybe a few teachers too. You could just live without us all right, there are too many skilled workers with tickets on themselves anyway. Cool cool.

Such a ridiculously PA thing to say.

I hate how much people complain about how much some "low skilled" self-employed people earn. If you think it's so easy and well-paid, there's nothing stopping you giving it a go.

But I suspect none of you want jobs that come with no sick pay, no paid annual leave and no employers' pension. You don't want jobs where you have to pay for your uniform, your equipment, your liability insurance...

But the thing is any of you could already be cleaners if you thought the money was so good. But you're not which implies:
a) the moneys not that good
b) none of you want to be cleaners

Cleaners are a bargain. I commented in the small hours but I'll repeat it again anybody that is self employed and charging less than £35/hour is actually wasting their time, you can not run anything approaching a normal life style on less (and many of them that try haven't worked it out themselves).
I don't pay my cleaners that but pay them a good chunk more than the figures here because I don't care about the "going rate",appreciate how hard it is to make a self employed living and pay accordingly for the standard of work they do, then factor in the ball ache of trying to replace them and potentially going through cleaners like water until finding others I'm happy with and I'm still getting a bargain.
Be glad that you've got someone coming in for £15/hour and doing a good job.
I have a house keeper and pay her what would be an attractive salary pro rata for many people, because she's worth it.
Honestly, the peace from no raised voices/agro/nagfests in this household over domestic duties is probably worth 10 times what it costs us.
Appreciate your cleaners/gardeners etc if you're fortunate enough to be able to have them

@RoseStar

You could always become a cleaner if you want to

Yeah you’re right I could. And whilst I’m about it, how about I also take my colleagues with me, as well as a bunch of friends who are nurses, social care workers and maybe a few teachers too. You could just live without us all right, there are too many skilled workers with tickets on themselves anyway. Cool cool.

Such a ridiculously PA thing to say.

If they want to be cleaners and earn more money maybe they should. You obviously think yourself above cleaners, such a ridiculously PA thing to say.

This is a genuine question...

If you have the money for such a big house. And money for an "unlimited time" type schedule. Why are you worried about a £1/hr payrise?

Personally, if I was struggling to pay that, then I would either do tasks myself before they arrived (I have 3 under 4yrs, it would take 30mins to pack away toys and clear most surfaces, especially if the house was cleaned a few days prior).

OR

I would ask them to do specific tasks within a set time.

I don't understand your rationale for worrying over £1/hr when presumably you have, quite frankly, loads of dosh. If you're struggling to keep it clean or pay for cleaners, then maybe downsize.

I pay £15 an hour. I have 5 hours a week as she also cuts the grass and does the laundry. It is a smallish house but we are elderly and it is so lovely not to worry about the house. I regard my cleaner as a friend with mutual benefits though not of the usual sort!

@RoseStar

You could always become a cleaner if you want to

Yeah you’re right I could. And whilst I’m about it, how about I also take my colleagues with me, as well as a bunch of friends who are nurses, social care workers and maybe a few teachers too. You could just live without us all right, there are too many skilled workers with tickets on themselves anyway. Cool cool.

Such a ridiculously PA thing to say.

It's not at all PA.

You chose your career, they chose theirs. If you think cleaners have such a great deal and earn such great incomes, then there's nothing to stop you becoming one, is there?

You don't have some kind of moral obligation to society to remain in your "worthy" job, lol.

Trying not to be harsh but you pays yer money or you cleans yerself.
Time the underdog got decent recognition.

You're expecting a servant to walk around picking stuff up and putting it back in its place - how do you even expect them to know where everything goes.

I bet if you were able to keep the house reasonably tidy you may only need them in for 2 - 3 days a week for 4 hours at a time to hoover, dust, sweep and mop floors and clean your 4 bathrooms.

I can't imagine making the house that much of a mess you need 20 hrs a week to clear it up. You must literally not lift a finger all week to make that necessary.

I think £13.50 is cheap. I’m in Scotland. I pay £15 an hour for usual cleaning and £20 an hour is it’s deep cleaning. The cleaners work in a pair and only clean. No tidying as we can do that.

If you have to quibble over an increase of £1.5 per hour then it sounds like you can’t afford a cleaner (which is a luxury that most people can’t afford by the way). Maybe you need to revise down your expectations a little?

@HireStarter

This is a genuine question...

If you have the money for such a big house. And money for an "unlimited time" type schedule. Why are you worried about a £1/hr payrise?

Personally, if I was struggling to pay that, then I would either do tasks myself before they arrived (I have 3 under 4yrs, it would take 30mins to pack away toys and clear most surfaces, especially if the house was cleaned a few days prior).

OR

I would ask them to do specific tasks within a set time.

I don't understand your rationale for worrying over £1/hr when presumably you have, quite frankly, loads of dosh. If you're struggling to keep it clean or pay for cleaners, then maybe downsize.

In fairness 6 bed houses in the Nottingham area are not necessarily palatial. They vary from £400k up to £1M+ We have no way of knowing if the OP has moved from, say, the Home Counties where they could have traded in a 3 bed property with money to spare.

@Reviewer123456

Another person missing the point. Any of those people COULD just go off an become a cleaner or gardener overnight. Could you replace the people who have left? No. There’s nothing controversial about this.

One of the main reasons people aren’t leaving is because they have spent a long time learning in their field, and often they love their jobs. But we shouldn’t be exploiting the fact that some people do love their jobs by underpaying them.

The next crisis coming up (that we are already in) is social care workers. Many of these people are very very experienced and are paid absolutely pittance. If they leave, sure it might be faster to replace than eg a nurse but it’s not that straightforward at all the the senior ones have years of training and are amazing. So again, we need to look after skilled but underpaid workers AS WELL.

@icedcoffees an another missing the point entirely

And another. Honestly this really shouldn’t be so hard to understand.

@thegreylady

I pay £15 an hour. I have 5 hours a week as she also cuts the grass and does the laundry. It is a smallish house but we are elderly and it is so lovely not to worry about the house. I regard my cleaner as a friend with mutual benefits though not of the usual sort!

That’s amazing value!

£15 ph here. 6 hours pw. The cleaner irons, probably for two hours of that. Does hard floors, carpets, dusts and cleans bathrooms and bogs (4 and 6). 3500 Square feet.

I keep the kitchen and utility spotlessly clean and the house is always tidy and always was tidy even when we had littlies. Just put things away and teach the children to do the same.

She does a cpl of spring cleans a year. Vacuuming upholstery, thoroughly dusting, wiping down paintwork, etc. Usually take about 8 hours.

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 would go as far as to question how a 'skill' should be defined if there is no use for it in society. I'm all for HE, but kids should train as doctors, nurses, IT, engineers, architects, technicians. There's too many degrees being offered to learn concepts that are worthless, and the market will soon reflect this when funds are tight (as we are beginning to experience now).

Money for charities will be scarce, so only the (local) ones that can prove their worth will survive. Same for grants awarded to social studies, arts and research. Practical outcomes will be essential, and that's a good thing IMO, it will hopefully rid us of toxic ideologies, and nonsense

I also worked in FE and HE and I can tell you that wages for academics in HE are healthy
Until now, but we need to wait and see what happens when the penny drops and students realise they can't get a job unless they have learnt real skills

So again, we need to look after skilled but underpaid workers AS WELL

Yes

[quote RoseStar]@icedcoffees an another missing the point entirely

And another. Honestly this really shouldn’t be so hard to understand.[/quote]
I'm not missing the point.

If you love your job, then that's great. But it's still in poor taste to complain about that other "less skilled" people earn more than you for their work.

If Jane and 10 of her friends decide to leave nursing to become cleaners and they can't be replaced, that's a fault in the NHS, it's not the fault of the cleaners who, rightfully, charge £15 an hour as they have a lot of expenses to cover before they calculate their take-home pay.

A self-employed person charging £15 per hour won't be taking home the same amount of money as an employed person who earns £15 an hour.

@PyongyangKipperbang

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

I was thinking the same, and also how messy do you need to be that it takes 20 hours a week of dedicated labour to sort it out.

My house is small, but I have a preschooler and a dog and husband is WFH so not hugely different impact on the house compared to OP.

I'd say we put in a absolute maximum of 10 hours a week, including all tidying,cleaning, laundry, Windows (bungalow plus veluxes so I do it myself every couple of months), dishes (no dishwasher).

I think OP either needs to pay the expected and reasonable rate for a cleaner or start looking after her own house properly (along with her DH) and reduce the hours the cleaners come so she keeps paying the same amount of money out.

Can you find cheaper? No, you can't

I don't think the OP has tried

I’m in London, £15/hr is standard
The OP is in Nottinghamshire

@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 don’t get your argument at all.

My SIL works as a cleaner in a hospital. She’s on minimum wage so not £13.50/hr. If she wanted, she could become a self-employed house cleaner and charge £13.50 but she’d no longer have the pension, sick pay, annual leave, and benefits her employer currently pays. Out of her £13.50, she’d have to pay the relevant taxes, and fund her own pension, annual leave, and sick pay.

Adversely, if a nurse in a hospital is being paid £12/hr, that does not reflect the true cost of employing them once you factor in NI, pension, holiday entitlement, sick pay etc.

if I wanted to hire an experienced nurse to care for somebody in my home, it would cost a lot more than what an experienced cleaner could command in a domestic setting.