Nurses’ pay compared with other jobs

[Pinkapron]

Would anyone be prepared to share what they pay tradespeople in their homes, eg cleaners, gardeners, plumbers, electricians etc, per hour please?
I am a staff nurse, 32 years qualified, with post graduate qualifications, and earn £16.84 per hour.

I think nurses are hugely underpaid,

but i dont think this is a useful comparison, as their hourly rate is not the full package. Their employer will also make a pension contribution and they should get paid annual leave. I dont know the sick pay terms but it is likely there would be a level of pay if you broke your leg and were off work for 6 weeks. Self employed trades have to cover those benefits in their hourly rate, plus have dead time securing work, sorting accounts, travelling between job etc.

It's not a direct comparison as nurses also get pension, sick pay, paid holiday etc. But I do think there is a massive gender bias going on. Nursing is largely a female vocation. These tend to be paid way less than male-dominated professions. Plumbers and electricians around here charge around £60 an hour, or £240 as a day rate. I even pay my (male) window cleaner £30 which is the going rate for a 4-bed house - it takes him 45 minutes!
Nurses also have anti-social shifts, meaning higher transport/parking/child-minding costs. I fully support the nurses' strike and wish you the best of luck.

We pay our cleaning lady £18 an hour and she deserves every penny. I'm not sure what you are really looking for from this thread? Validation about what a tragedy it is that these all these 'lowly uneducated' cleaners, gardeners and tradespeople earn more than you? Get over yourself, nurses are hardly the intellectual elite. Tradespeople and cleaners all deserve to be paid well, they are highly skilled. You also deserve to be paid well, just probably not the vast sums you have in mind.

It's a terrible comparison I'm afraid, as has been mentioned already.

You are most definitely underpaid. That is the crux of the matter, but you can't compare hourly rates like you're trying to do. I'm amazed this isn't more obvious.

Top band 5 is £32,934

I'm also a staff nurse qualified 18 years. I pay my cleaner £15 an hour.

I also do agency for a bit of extra pocket money. It pays very well.

You can’t compare a nurses salary to self employed trades jobs as they aren’t like for like. Nurses get pension contributions, full sick pay and holiday pay, whilst self employed don’t get this, so their salaries take this into account. What are your employee pension contributions, holiday pay and sick pay worth per year? Then we can start to compare.

I’m sorry , I hadn’t actually considered the full impact of sick pay, pension etc.
And I absolutely have every regard and respect for everyone doing these jobs, as I stated earlier, it was meant to look at it from a different perspective.

To put it another way, the self employed also don’t get their hourly rate for one hours work and that’s it, that hours pay also has to cover sick pay and holiday pay, as well as planning, getting work, travel time throughout the day between clients and admin.

Dp is a plumber-call out.
Call out £50
First hr £80
Thereafter £60
Materials mark up sliding scale from 20-400%. (Sales).
For some emergency jobs eg he had a bath holed, he called, organized labor, and the job was finished within 5 hrs He took £1200 for organization and sales, and the subby took £600.

On the books, he was on price work, he was provided with brand-new van, phone, and tools. set off at 530am and traveled the country installing boilers. Between 2 of them, they shared up to £700 per day plus scrap. So £350 a day 5 days a week.

Most large plumbing companies charge upwards of £100 per hr.

I full agree that nurses should be paid more, but the premise of this thread is flawed.

Tradespeople are self employed. Their hourly rate has to cover overheads, tools, materials, wastage, protective gear, work vehicles, savings for sick pay and annual leave, and their pension (no employer contributions for them!).

It's madness to try to compare the hourly rate of e.g. a self employed plumber to that of a similarly skilled employee who doesn't have to cover those things.

I think nurses should be paid somewhere between 40k to 55k range allowing for different grades. I think that seems fair to me.

Exactly. It's not a reasonable comparison at all.

Nurses deserve better, and I fully support the strikes, but their pay has to be looked at alongside the sick pay, annual leave, pensions etc. that they get.

I pay my cleaner £11 per hour and my gardener £15 per hour. I find that tradespeople such as plumbers, builders earn far more than I do as a lawyer - I earn approx £38 per hour. A roofer recently quoted me £900 for a day’s work!

I completely agree that nurses should get paid more, but I don't think you can compare with tradespeople. Most tradespeople are self employed, meaning they get no pension, sick pay, paid time off or ny other benefits of employment. They have to factor all of that into their rates.

Presumably the roofer was going to use some materials for that work? Possibly have someone assisting him? It won't be his daily labour rate.

I pay my cleaner £17 an hour and the last tradesperson i had was £40 an hour although that was a while ago so maybe more now?

@TomTraubertsBlues no that didn’t include materials. It was to adjust the existing guttering and replace two roof tiles. My DH said that he doesn’t even think it would be a full day’s work. Even if he has someone assisting him and he divides the day rate equally that’s £65 per hour each for a seven hour day!

I pay my cleaner £15ph but that includes insurance, cleaning products etc.

I pay my gardener £20ph - brings his own tools and takes waste away.

Decorator is £125 per day, arrives about 8am and leaves at 4pm.

I had a new boiler put in last month and was charged £2000. I believe the boiler cost £1500. £500 was two men, half a day.

Why is there an assumption that the self employed trades are unskilled? Just because they don't necessarily have a degree it doesn't mean they haven't got skills. Most of the good tradespeople earning the 'big money' will be qualified in their field with years of experience behind them.

Wow. That’s way more than a supply teacher.

Fair enough but you also need to consider job security.

I don't mean this to be funny but the majority of people I know in civil service jobs have jobs for life. In the extreme, performance isn't often a factor in determining continued employment. Trades are completely opposite. Tradespeople can lose out on work for a myriad of reasons (even if you don't like the look of them) and finding your next client can have a level of stress that civil servants often have no concept of. Running your own business requires a different mindset and it can be liberating but also debilitating, knowing that your family and everything you own is dependent on having enough business to keep the plates spinning.

Personally I find job comparisons a bit pointless, sorry. Obviously you're underpaid and this should be rectified but comparisons are a bit meaningless.

I‘m ex-NHS.

Considering a dog walker who charges £17.50 an hour. Appreciate there will be a premium to cover tax and sick pay etc but puts your £16 into perspective.

@cardibach

Agency nurses get paid LOADS. Yeah I picked the wrong career too (teaching 🤦‍♀️ 😂).