To not agree that anyone can do lower paid jobs and top jobs have to pay well as few people can do them?

[CheekboneMagazine]

Following on from the 6 figure thread and a comment about justifying these wages.
I get annoyed by hearing this over and over.
I'm a social worker on 28K. I don't think everyone could do my job. Or do it well. Today my day has consisted of getting a small child to trust me enough in a half hour visit in order to talk to me about their feelings, speaking to an unaccompanied asylum seeker about benefits with no translator available, writing a report for court, being sworn at repeatedly by a teenager who was under the influence and chairing a multidisciplinary meeting with police, school, local authorities, NHS etc. I have to be able to talk to parents about their drug screening results without them feeling judged and disengaging, yet be able to turn around and hold my own with solicitors and judges.
I have to be relatable to people who are in the midst of a mental health crisis or addiction, but also professional and articulate. I have to be flexible and adapt to the many urgent referrals which come in but I cannot let any of my regular contact or statutory visits breach timeframes.

I'm certain that not people many could be teachers or nurses or air hostesses either. I'm certain I would make a terrible barista or bank clerk! Many doctors I know say that they wouldn't have the skills to be their own secretaries or P.A's.

These jobs are not poorly paid because they are unskilled or because anyone could do them. They are poorly paid because they are traditionally done by women and/or because they don't make anyone else substantially richer. In fact I really struggle to think of a female dominated profession which pays well. Maybe accountancy?

Also many CEOs preside over rounds of workforce cuts and wage suppression for which they are richly rewarded, so "being responsible for the ability of thousands of workers to pay their bills" in this case means an inability for those workers to pay their bills.

You're absolutely right

I have an early years degree and 20 years experience in childcare. Our sector is tragically underpaid for the response so ilitu and work that we do.

like you say, men wouldn't do it.

Female dominated roles have always been historically underpaid. I earn 28k before tax as a full time intensive care nurse. I’m generally controlling multiple body systems with my level 3 patients; controlling their ventilation mechanically, titrating their blood pressure up or down with inotropes (very scary meds), haemofiltrating them when their kidneys don’t work (sort of like dialysis), interpreting their blood results and topping up all their electrolytes. HUGE amounts of autonomy and responsibility. The nursing role has LONG evolved from just bedpans and popping a few paracetamol. Yet the wages haven’t improved with the responsibility.

The best way I have heard it described is that HCAs do the old nursing role and nurses do the role of junior doctors. Junior doctors now do the role of everything LOL.

My local Lidl is offering supervisor roles for thousands more than I’m on currently. I’m honestly tempted.

What do we want other than capitalism? I'd like a balanced and regulated social democracy, run by a genuinely equitable and fair democratic system, where capitalist enterprise alongside other forms of wealth and wellbeing generation are equally valued. Where nature, youth and non human interests are given a voice in negotiations.

The problem is how to get there from here - because all our wealth and standard of living is built on the tottering unstable edifice of the history of global theft, different flavours of colonialism and white supremacy. One country (or even, say, Europe) can't make change by itself.

Since you asked!

That is terrible pay for intensive care nurse.