Paper round is slave labour!

[CoffeTastesGreatToday]

DS took on a paper round in January. I posted about it at the time because we couldn't tell if the pay was £13 per day or £13 per week.

Well... turns out it was actually £12.50 per WEEK!

So, he was getting up early, cycling off at 6:40am to get the papers at 7am, completing his round - which took him miles from home and up a main road. Then was getting home after 8:20am and having to rush off to school.

I did the round a few times with him. It was freezing and horrible in the rain, and the houses were so spaced out. Not many papers to deliver, to be fair. Just the route was a bit rubbish, and included a block of retirement flats which took a long time to walk around and navigate

We decided it wasn't worth giving up other activities in the evening just to get up early for a job that paid v little, so he handed in his notice! He then got really ill so I did the last week of his round for him to help out the post office and allow them time to find someone else during his notice period. Even in the car (it was cold! and hec, I wouldn't have chosen this job! So allowed myself some comfort!!), the route took me a good 45minutes each day!! I was truly counting down the days!!!

AIBU to think £12.50 a week is complete exploitation? That's £2.50 a day - for an hour cycling around delivering the papers, plus the getting up early, working in the cold, cycle time to get to the post office to collect the papers etc..

Who is actually working these hours for this money? DS really wants a job, but I just don't think the time and effort for £2.50 a day is worth it! My brother got paid more for his paper round in the 80s!!! What happened to pay rises in line with inflation etc...???

I'm late 40s. At the age of 12 I got a work from home job that paid £2.50 an hour. So same wage, but in the comfort of my home and this was over 30 years ago. And even then, I thought it was a poor rate of pay, but accepted it (because I wasn't old enough to have got a job legitimately, so was in no place to complain!!)

I am genuinely gobsmacked that a legit, well established and national company, the post office, is exploiting kids in this way!

Paper rounds were a right of passage when I was young with hoards of kids cycling away from the newsagents every morning & evening, all with a white (or later) yellow bag slung across their back.
Most runs were 1hr but for your 50p/week you did both a morning & afternoon run.
Parents helping out was never seen and if you were sick, a mate did it for you.

I bucked the trend and worked in the local butchers shop (sweeping, washing up, cleaning the windows etc) and although it was a lot more hours, I received the grand sum of £4/week (which did not go up in 3yrs).😆

Apologies -- unintentional strikethrough and too late to edit! My point was just that there were lots of jobs open to a child of that age when I was 13, probably equally exploitative, but there were lots of options, so you were less tied to a single option. And yes, as the mother of a 13 year old, the idea that in the days before mobiles, parents would go away for the weekend, leaving their 3 young children with me, now blows my mind.

Paper rounds have always been like this, When I had one we were paid a set amount per house we delivered to.

The difference is that nowadays so few people get papers delivered that the distance between houses is much bigger and so the round takes longer. I used to do around 70 houses each morning but they were all within 3 or 4 streets so I probably walked half a mile in total.

It’s not “slave labour”, he’s not being forced to do it 🙄

Paper rounds have always been underpaid as there are very few jobs available to under 16s and they are not subject to wage protection - as a way of protecting underage children from being pushed into the workplace.

If he really wants to make some money, how about odd jobs for friends and neighbours such as car washing, weeding, shopping etc?

Babysitting?

At 13 he needs to be doing chores/odd jobs for you or your friends. Businesses can't/won't take him on because it's not cost effective to insure someone of that age to work, as well as there being a lot of rules about what work a child can do, for how long, with how many breaks etc. It isn't feasible to get a P/T job until at least 16.

But the shop also charge for delivery, albeit not much.

When our friends son was asking about jobs in small local, and larger town centre shops, he was basically told they wouldn't hire him until he turned 16 which was down to insurance /payments for those under 16 being different. Another friends daughter couldn't even get work experience in year 10 due to this reason (no family/friends to help)
There's also the reason that many jobs done by teenagers have now been taken by adults unable to find a job/needing a second income for CoL.

Hopefully someone might have some ideas.

Pay was shit in the 70's too.
Only advantage was probably that more people read newspapers daily, so the houses would have been closer together.

That feels very low. I got £11 a week for my morning paper round in 1988, and then after a few years I got an extra tenner a week to mark up the papers for everyone.

My DS gets £15 per week for his paper round, but it only takes him 15 mins on his bike, so that's an equivalent hourly rate of £12ph. Pretty good.

DS did 6 days a week, 20 mins a day, 6 days for £20. He was happy enough but it was a killer in the cold and dark.
He used to get around £150 in Christmas tips though!

Of course it’s a terrible rate of pay, I don’t know why people are bending over backwards to justify it. Should be £5/day minimum, even for a child.

The margins are tight. Tbh I did it as parents couldn't give me any money so it was my only source of pocket money.

I did one 6 days per week in the 80’s and got £1.80 per week. Some nights they were so heavy I went over my handlebars with them. At Christmas I got £36 in tips -£1 from every house, I felt like I’d won the lottery 😂

Could you set him up a vinted account so that he can sell any unwanted bits and pieces on there? Ours just uses an Amazon lock box for delivery and there is one at our local station so it is super easy to get the parcels dropped off.

I’m quite surprised it hasn’t gone up a bit more. That’s the same wage I got back in the very early 2000’s.

My paper is deliver by a retired chap who likes to be up and about early!

Isn’t part of it doing it for the Xmas tips? I’ve no idea what mine gets paid but I know I give £20 at Xmas and I suspect most houses on the route do that too.

i do think we need to make it easier to employ children. I totally disagree with the previous poster that 13 is too young to work. I’m a farmer and young farmers often have a cracking work ethic precisely because they learn the value of hard work young.

If one of my teenaged neighbours were doing this I’d happily give them a 50% cut (or perhaps more, no idea what’s fair) if they took my stuff and sold it. I’m never going to have time to do it myself.

There's a lad who loves near us who is about 15 and he washes and valets cars from his home. So people drop their car there and he does them. He's always got different cars there. No idea how much he charges. Could he do something like this?

I am genuinely gobsmacked that a legit, well established and national company, the post office, is exploiting kids in this way!

The Post Office as a company does not sell newspapers, or employ paper boys, just to clarify that. Each local village newsagents/shop with a Post Office counter, will be run by the business owner not the Post Office.

Our local one pays around £25K a week for 6 days and they employ 4-5 paper boys/girls who all seem to stay until they leave school.

In 1967 I was paid 10 shillings a week for my paper round. I just checked and that 10 shillings a week would be equivalent to about £9.55 per week in 2025. So actually he was being better paid than I was!! But it was always thus. No such thing as minimum wage etc. Doesn't make it right, but I was pleased to get the money!!

I jumped ship after a year and did a local dairy's milk round instead, which paid 12 shillings and 6d instead. The round was easier as we had a wee cart to push with the milk bottles in it - so not as heavy work. Some newspapers were very heavy to carry in a bag and if you were having to go up to the top floor of the tenement flats, it was much harder work!

£30 a week here (for 5 days). I’m amazed there is so much variation!

Should also have said - I had to do 2 rounds on the milk run on a Saturday as we didn't deliver milk on Sundays. But that was ok and the tips from both the paper round and the milk round were great to get at Christmas. People on my rounds ( both were basically exactly the same area) were generous tippers in those days

I did a paper round in the late 90s that paid £10 a week - it was horrible. I’m now a teacher and barely any kids have a job (including most sixth formers I know). I certainly won’t be encouraging my kids to get jobs until they’re older, there are much happier and more valuable ways to spend your teens.
A few 16-18 year olds near me banded together and offered gardening services at £15/hour. Lots of take up, they managed their own business and it didn’t feel exploitative- maybe something like that would work for your DS in the future?