To feel undervalued and under paid

[serc]

I've worked in care homes for many years, my current hourly rate is £9.50 per hour.

My son is 18 and is about to leave school he has got a job in a factory assembling parts. To bridge the gap between school and uni. It's his first job so has no experience. His starting rate is £11.25!

AIBU to feel seriously undervalued and under paid?

You should be paid 15-20 an hour at least. I'm so angry for care workers.

I work in a private care home if that makes a difference.

It's dreadful. It's more than a job: it's a vocation as it's something that a lot of people couldn't do. You should be paid much more.

I’m a miser with years of experience, and a degree plus numerous other specialised courses at uni level. I am paid £15.65 ph.
was looking at cleaners recently and most of them were looking for £15ph.
OP, you are definitely undervalued and underpaid. That’s a hard physical graft every day, plus I know how much caters put in to their patients.

Same. We literally can't recruit or retain at the moment at my work because of it. We get hardly any replies, when we interview a couple don't show up, we've had loads of first day no shows and the ones who do stay we get them part trained then they leave and I can't say I blame them. Executives won't raise wages despite us barely functioning because of this loop, and it's been a long long time since they themselves came anywhere near our actual place of work. Morale is LOW.

Nurse, not miser.

I'm not in a care home btw but work for an employer that has a lot of low wage employees.

I did care work for 20-odd years (about 2 years in the office at one company where I got a lot more money but hated the hassle of doing rotas). Could you work in an office at a care agency?

YANBU. I'm in childcare and also on £9.50 an hour. The job is so stressful now and I feel totally undervalued and underpaid.

Yes, I'm so sorry. Round here employed cleaners can get £13-£14 per hour, hotel porters or even pot washers £11-£12ph.

YANBU

care work is hugely undervalued and underpaid. Something is going to have to drastically change if there’s to be enough carers for the ever increasing elderly population.

A miser? 😂

Carers (and nursery workers) deserve better pay, but a majority of customers can’t afford more than they already pay. There needs to be something to break the deadlock. Probably the state needs to intervene with subsidies. My child’s nursery is already a charity, no shareholders are making a profit, costs are are low as they can make them, and they are fighting to turn over enough to stay open.

One of the problems at the nursery is that the free funded childcare that the government offers barely covers the cost of the provision.

And YADNBU!

Why do you think Carers get paid so poorly? I don't understand the reason. We have to undertake training, there's a huge amount of responsibility and we work extremely hard and we actually still care and go above and beyond for the people in our care. I actually see it as a privilege at times to care for people when they are so vulnerable. Respecting their wishes and keeping their dignity. Not everyone gets to do that for their loved ones, some people have nobody and we are there for them, we don't discriminate. But it feels like carers are seen as the lowest workers.

Where I work residents rooms start at £1200 a week! I know the cost of living has gone up etc but they hardly live expensive lifestyles.

Yanbu care workers deserve better pay. I certainly couldn’t do care work.

I just can’t understand why this job is so badly paid and how on earth will they be able to recruit good, qualified workers in the future or how they are even able to get people to work in these areas now at those wages? It’s just bizarre , probably one of the hardest jobs out there physical and mentally. The same with childcare , wtf like ?? They won’t be able to get people to work in these jobs in the future. In my town all the crèches have closed and I’m not remotely surprised.

Yanbu.

We're facing (are actually in already tbh) a crisis in care both private and NHS.

We have an elderly population that we don't have the staff to care for.

We have a general public who think they deserve gold standard care but who also don't want to (or cant) pay for it and who begrudge nhs staff a 10% discount on their shopping never mind an actual appropriate wage

My gran is in a private carehome and pays £1400 a WEEK. I realise they have overheads etc but someone, somewhere is making a hell of a lot of money off the backs of underpaid and undervalued carers.

It’s unbelievable really. Never mind a Windfall tax how about we just start paying health care workers properly instead of relying on kind.

I think a lot of things have changed in the last 50-70 years. Families can no longer rely on one salary so woman go to work and there is nobody to look after elderly relatives. That combined with the fact we are living longer and more medical advances mean there are more treatments which means more work.

YANBU. You do an amazing job that not many people could do and you should be paid bloody double. People wonder why there are so many job vacancies in care homes - it's because carers don't get paid what they deserve!

I really don't understand the disparity with your son's factory job.
He's just out of school, he hardly has any specialised skills that the factory needs?
Or is his job very physical? But so are care jobs...
It makes no sense!

Surely they'd be inundated with applications?.

YANBU, care workers are in a position of huge responsibility and a skilled and compassionate care worker can have a huge positive impact on quality of life. Plus, as you say, residential care costs are so high I cannot fathom how little goes to the care workers themselves.

YANBU!
I'm a support worker for adults with profound and multiple learning disabilities, I also get 9.50 an hour, i feel so under valued and we are so short staffed, we rely on multiple agency workers on every shift who we are meant to 'shift lead' ie be responsible for all the medication, dysphagia etc for minimum wage . It's so disheartening and to top it all off the company i work for are going to give all new staff a higher rate of pay than the old staff because we were originally employed by the council and have so called better terms and conditions. So i will be training new starters who are on a higher rate pay than me. Its so unfair not just for the employees but for the vulnerable adults that we support.
It's time to do something different and reclaim my self esteem.

I am doing cleaning work at the moment as my business crashed during Covid.
I charge £15 an hour (more if a house is really dirty) and no-one raises an eyebrow. I pick and choose jobs I want to do. I live in the North where wages are very low. I finish my work, get paid that day and forget it.

I could never be a care worker - that sort of pay for life and death work is a disgrace, and the roots of why is it so low paid is because it was seen as women's work, as an extension of what women normally do anyway (like my two grandmothers, who both moved their parents in with them and had to care for parents and children at the same time). This is why is will never be well paid.
The other reason is that back in the 70s and 80s when girls were neither academically gifted nor gifted in anything else, they were pushed towards ''hair or care'' which was considered extremely low status. Perhaps that attitude prevails still.

I would think about yourself. Someone is getting wealthy off your hard work, which is not only physical strain, but mental strain.