Active discussions

Meet the Other Phone. Child-safe in minutes.

Meet the Other Phone.
Child-safe in minutes.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Talk
Work

Chat with other users about all things related to working life on our Work forum.

Original poster

Why is looking after children paid less than cleaning?

36 replies

Caligula · 05/01/2006 09:33

Zapping through a list of jobs at my local council, I noticed a post for a nursery assistant at £5.20 per hour.

Cleaners around here charge between £6-£8 per hour.

Just wondered how this can be considered reasonable. I'm continually being told that people who look after children (apart from their mothers) are "professionals". Professionals who are valued less highly than cleaners. (But more highly than mothers.)

Ho hum.

OP posts:
Dinosaur · 05/01/2006 09:42

I was amazed when I found out that I pay my cleaner more per hour than one of my good friends was earning as a childminder! Quite shocking.

JenumGeranium · 05/01/2006 09:44

Childcare has always been poor money. I saw an ad yesterday and there was a difference in about 50p for a qualified nursery nurse and an unqualified one!

acnebride · 05/01/2006 09:47

I totally agree. I often wish that wages were set by the impact on people's lives if the person didn't turn up that day.

I must say though that the nursery assistant probably gets paid holidays, sick pay, access to other benefits such as a pension; the cleaners may but it's much more unlikely?

Tommy · 05/01/2006 09:50

When I was a teacher, one of the classroom assistants left becaus eshe realised she was being paid less than the cleaners....
Guess it is just supply and demand - people "want" to do childcare so will do it for less money but you need a higher wage for cleaners to get people to do it

JenumGeranium · 05/01/2006 09:51

I dont think a lot of nursery assistants get sick pay - We certainly didnt in the nursery I worked in. We got holiday pay but that was about it!

colditz · 05/01/2006 09:56

So why are elderly care assistants so poorly paid? It seems to be everyone's nightmare job, no teenage girl says "I want to work with violent and irrational elderly men" and yet when they leave school, they end up doing it, mostly for the absolute minimum wage.

Council and SS carers are a lot better paid than private home care assistants. Mostly the shift will be entirely staffed by people paid less than £5.60 per hour where I work. The carers earn the same as the cleaners, and a LOT less than the handyman.

Original poster
Caligula · 05/01/2006 10:05

Yes, I don't think it's about supply and demand either.

OP posts:
acnebride · 05/01/2006 10:05

there you go jenum, sorry for my assumption.

milward · 05/01/2006 10:10

childcare & caring roles aren't seen as work. Stay at Home Parents who look after there kids are termed as not working. I often get "so you're not working then" - yup that's me only at home with 4kids!!!!

Aloha · 05/01/2006 10:13

One vast difference is that cleaning (in people's homes) is usually for a couple of hours once a week. Childcare is needed for 8 hours+, at least several days a week. People can afford to pay £16 once a week but most can't afford to pay £10 an hour for 8 hours a day, five days a week. That's why IMO childcare has to be subsidised.

JenumGeranium · 05/01/2006 10:14

No problem acnebride - maybe I just worked for a shitty company!

uwila · 05/01/2006 10:24

Agree with Aloha. Also, childminders are not on a salary. What they make from one prent per hour is a client fee, not a salary.

Also agree with the post that people will work for less because they enjoy looking after children. You'd definitely have to pay me more to clean your house (which I would hate doing) than look after your children.

Original poster
Caligula · 05/01/2006 10:28

But how d'you account for the care work then? How many people really want to spend their time wiping the bottoms of 80 year olds? If it's to do with how much people want the work, how comes the dirtiest, least pleasant work (with a few exceptions) tends to be the most low-paid?

OP posts:
Original poster
Caligula · 05/01/2006 10:29

Also, this £5.70 p.h. was the salary - it was for a nursery assistant, so you got paid that whether you were looking after 1 child or 4 children.

OP posts:
colditz · 05/01/2006 10:35

The only thing that stops me doing cleaning instead (as money is a lot better) is that my job might be dirty, physically demanding, stressful and underpaid, but it isn't BORING!

uwila · 05/01/2006 11:06

Caligula, I was responding to Dinosaur's comparison of cleaner and childminder.

I don't know why the nasty boring jobs are so low paid. You'd have to pay me zillions to do one of those jobs. I guess because they require very little formal training... don't really know. I for one won't be applying.

As for nursery assistants this puzzles me because they charge a fortune for your kids to atend. Seems they should have more left over to pay the workers with. But I don't really know the economics of the business.

clerkKent · 05/01/2006 13:23

An independent childminder will charge the same rate per child and look after half a dozen at a time. Big difference from a nursery assistant.

Smurfgirl · 05/01/2006 16:20

When I worked as a care assistant at times the cleaners were paid more than me and were paid double on weekends when I was always paid £5.10 an hour.

I think its disgusting how little carers are paid, and more disgusting quite how much profit private home owners earn (link maybe ;))! Carers and nursery workers seem to be seen as thick and incapable of doing anything more, big stigma to the job.

Original poster
Caligula · 05/01/2006 19:41

So why do people do it then, Smurfgirl? Why not just apply as a cleaner?

Mind you, Tommy's point about the learning assistants is true as well. They're paid less than cleaners too.

I'm beginning to sound a bit obsessive about this, so I'll shut up now...

OP posts:
Smurfgirl · 05/01/2006 21:37

I did it because I wanted to be a nurse and needed the experience, currently training to be a nurse so it worked

For other people, they didn't want to be a cleaner, they wanted to be a care assistant. It is a very interesting and rewarding job. I loved the teamwork aspect of it, it is a very social job, most people working there had tried other things and settled on being a care assistant. One woman had changed from being a cleaner, and another worked as both a care assistant and a cleaner, when I left she took up my hours so she could quite cleaning.

In saying this obv being a care assistant is not without cleaning (usually diahorrea though!) but there is more to it than that. Very very undervalued job, with staff who go way above and beyond.

Original poster
Caligula · 05/01/2006 21:54

Yes a lot of the learning assistants at my brother's school did it in spite of being paid less than the cleaners because they wanted to go into teaching.

OP posts:
WideWebWitch · 05/01/2006 22:06

Because, Naomi Wolf would have it (I'm paraphrasing) "childcarers are competing with the ultimate slave labour: mothers."

WideWebWitch · 05/01/2006 22:08

Hard Work by Polly Toynbee is interesting on the subject of low pay I think

Mirage · 05/01/2006 23:22

I agree.I'm shocked that people pay me more to look after their plants than they pay my sister to look after thier children.

Its not right.

Skribble · 06/01/2006 00:20

I am a qualified SNNB and don't work in nurseries any more as I started working in shops and got paid more. Full time cleaners often get more not just private house cleaners.

Even if working for the education department or social work department you get low wages not just working for private employers or in daycare where the parents pay the fees.

I made the mistake of going for nursery nursing instead of primary teacher because i only wanted to work with the under 5's I wish I knew I would have been better qualifiying as a teacher then as a nursery teacher .

Swipe left for the next trending thread