To wonder why I’m working for £9.20 an hour

[Dragula333]

Care work, it’s chronically poorly paid but I know there are still care companies paying £10/11 an hour.

I have a degree and a Master’s, not that it makes me any better but I just feel I should and could be on a higher wage. It’s an important and very rewarding job, and I do like it but I’m starting to feel like a fool.

So many places pay better, Aldi, Amazon etc.
Would you accept this wage ?

@2020isnotbehaving

We need more HGV drivers up goes pay and visa for people come in. We need more care workers… deadly silence no visas and up to business to pay more which isn’t going happen because care is money making business. Every winter I think this year surely they have start paying carers at least same rate that cleaners get £10-15 hour given instead of cleaning loos they are literal cleaning poo off living breathing people but nothing as yet.

Best of luck, I hope something major happens and you will get more but just likely to leave in 6m feeling totally wrecked and unvalued.

But if care pay goes up, someone will have to pay it. Self funders already pay 40% more than council funded care recipients. Councils don't have enough money to pay any more, so you'll end up with self funders paying almost twice as much as council funded people for the same level of care.

I' not saying it's right that carers should be paid so little of course it isn't, just trying to highlight what a mess the system is.

I pay my care agency £22 an hour the carers get £9.50 even with tax NI pensions and office staff there is plenty there going into someone pocket.

Why not combine your experience and skills and do training, in a health area?

• Become a BLS/ILS or ALS trainer
• Teach mandatory training
• Teach basic first aid
• Teach health and safety in the workplace

You do realise that it's perfectly normal for people with masters degrees to be in badly paid jobs? I work in a shop for £9.50 per hour, and every member of staff under 50 has a postgraduate degree apart from the summer temps who are students.

Yes of course, I never insinuated that it was abnormal , just that I am capable of earning more and that I am not using my qualifications as such. People are not obliged at all to use them though and if happy in lower paying jobs then that is the main thing

What's your route into using your qualifications?
What happens usually after people with masters graduate? What line of work do they go into? And what's the blocker for you being able to do the same?

My dd has a degree, she worked for charity shop till covid happened. My she is in a job using part of her degree working in a lab.

There's a screwed mentality in this country where the norm is to think it's acceptable to pay the people who care for our family be them children, elderly or others that need care the absolute minimum.

No, I wouldn't be a carer for that salary nor nursery nurse or childminder.

Why haven't you pursued any graduate level opportunities with your qualifications though?

I know people who are self-employed carers and get a decent rate of pay. That might be an option?

Op YANBU I'd move on, your clearly a talented individual.

Rightly or wrongly listening to managers in the care sector moaning about not being able to get staff, I just think pay more money. If qualified carers can get more money looking after shelves than people, then the care sector need to up the money they offer. For years they have relied on staff from Eastern Europe and other staff getting top up benefits, better wages in that sector can't be a bad thing.

Have you considered working in special needs schools? Where I am there has been an appeal for any teachers to come forward to support these schools due to massive staff shortages.

People without degrees can also earn well

A degree doesn't guarantee anyone a well paid job

It is about potential, doing a job that you enjoy, opportunities, being in the right place at the right time, networking, tenacity

If you are unhappy move jobs

Yes I have a Masters and work for £9.50/hour but it's a much easier job than caring.

My DD is a Deputy Manager for a care company, she's been in Care for 10 years, she's on a salary and has just done 4 17hour days on the trot she's demoting herself on Monday and is going over to Bank Staff plus looking to join the NHS to work in a Surgery/Clinic/Hospital where there's more structure. Those that own Care Homes/Companies are just lining their pockets on the backs of the Carers that are slogging their guts out for mininum wage.

Even when I had a job that I hated and was applying for loads of others, I wouldn’t ever consider applying for a carer job, or go back to hospitality. Such shit industries need to value their workers, until they choose to do that, they don’t deserve our labour.
(Got a WFH job £11ph, paid time off, pension, bonuses.)

In my experience, people only accept low wages if:

• They cannot get any higher wage elsewhere; and/or
• The job they are doing feels like a calling, and it's incredibly rewarding.

They earn more than you, but for example, junior doctors aren't paid nearly as much as the general public thinks they are, and they have horrific conditions. They only accept them because medicine feels like a calling - they could get paid more to do other jobs, but they feel drawn to the role.

The question therefore is, how much do you love what you do? Enough to put up with this wage?

And if you don't love it enough... can you get a better job? Have you looked?

I get min wage when I am with the agency and then they charge the clients about 30ph and I get a tiny wage :(

How old are you and what is your previous work history? Given your qualifications why are you looking at minimum wage jobs?

Care work is one of the very hardest jobs in the world and one of the least well paid.

Gosh that sounds difficult. My dd has just landed a job cleaning at her school and is going to be paid £9.20 per hor. She turned 16 in June. My wages don't work out to much more then this though and the job is emotionally draining dealing with one terminally ill person atter another.

Have you considered working in special needs schools? Where I am there has been an appeal for any teachers to come forward to support these schools due to massive staff shortages.

@Stickyblue1987 what qualifications do you need to be a teacher or teaching assistant in special needs schools?

I want to do this and have similar qualifications to OP - but was under the impression that you needed to do a specialist training course. Is that true?

It’s disgusting how little we value care work in this country, people who care for our young, elderly and vulnerable seem to get paid very little. The classroom assistants in our school are very poorly paid (special needs) it’s a demanding job and they would get more in Tesco they stay because of the term time hours and because they love the children.

We pay £19/hr to the agency for my dad, I'd hope to God the carer sees a good chunk of that.

Probably not. An agency charges me £17 an hour, the carer gets £9 an hour. I asked a carer. I only use the agency for holiday cover. Think staff are exploited.

There’s no need for anyone today to be sad about shit pay. Quit. Labourers have their pick of jobs at the minute, employers exploiting us for poverty wages deserve to be discarded and ridiculed.

I'm on £8.91 an hour in retail. When I was a carer years ago I was on £6 an hour it's a disgrace.