Living wage £15.00 per hr

Lynne`s carers have just had a pay rise, to just over £9 an hour, and they only get paid for the time in clients houses, not travelling time between. I think it`s disgraceful.

I work as a nursery nurse and get £10 an hr. We track and plan and look after the children all for this amount. I started 20:years ago on £4.10 hasn’t gone up much has it? Still love the job though but feel underpaid.

PaddyAnne, I certainly bow to your business experience and accumen. I simply can't see how this current workplace unhappiness will be resolved to everyone's satisfaction.

I live in NW London and here a few domestic cleaners are asking for £15 an hour and receiving it. I could not afford to pay that amount.

I worked as a carer for over 20 years, and never earned anywhere near that. My friend gets £11.50 an hour as a Community Carer. The agency charges customers £32 per hour

The NHS supplied agency carers company charges £25 per hour but of course the staff get less. It's not a popular view but I think that it depends on what part of the country you live in. One of my 17 year old GC is earning £9.50 for a weekend job. Of course they feel rich but not so if they were keeping themselves.

The problem with having £15 ph as a minimum is that everyone on higher rates would insist on their pay being increased pro rata because they think they’re worth more than care workers etc.

paddyann54

Kim19 thats the same old arguement used when the minimum wage was introduced....it didn't happen.Any business who cant afford to pay staff a "living wage" shouldn't call themselves a business its more a hobby!
I ran my own businesses for 45 years .

take it back a bit longer and t'mill owners claimed that they would have to close down if they were no longer allowed to use small children in their factories.

I agree, paddyann.

Kim19 thats the same old arguement used when the minimum wage was introduced....it didn't happen.Any business who cant afford to pay staff a "living wage" shouldn't call themselves a business its more a hobby!
I ran my own businesses for 45 years .

Kim19

Seems to me this is an ever spiralling problem. By all means increase the basic to £15 - £20 if you like but, straight away, this additional outlay will be reflected in the new price of whatever commodity/service is being offered. Small companies will disappear and large companies will certainly not absorb this extra cost without increasing prices. I think we all know a more equal wealth distribution is essential but we also know this will never happen.

So we either have a society in which some people are stuck on a rate of pay that means they can't afford to buy a lot of things because they don't earn enough, or we pay them more, which means that a larger group of people won't be able to afford a lot of things because the prices have gone up. Meanwhile the producers are making large profits and can afford to buy lots of things.

Alternatively, the producers could take a smaller cut, and everyone can afford to buy more? Could that be enforced in law as an anti-inflationary policy? Something rings a bell that tells me that there is precedent for this.

The TUC are asking for the £15 ph by 2030, that is another seven or eight years away. If inflation keeps on increasing like it is at the moment that will still be a very low wage.
The headlines are making out they are asking for it now, to make it sound unreasonable, which it is not.

That's standard, in care now, I think.
Days/nights/weekends - all flat rate.

Seems to me this is an ever spiralling problem. By all means increase the basic to £15 - £20 if you like but, straight away, this additional outlay will be reflected in the new price of whatever commodity/service is being offered. Small companies will disappear and large companies will certainly not absorb this extra cost without increasing prices. I think we all know a more equal wealth distribution is essential but we also know this will never happen.

I work in a care home and it has been minimum wage since I worked there at present that is £9.50 an hour… £15 an hour, in my dreams..

It's far more than I earned in recent years in care roles.

The only time I earned anything like that, strangely enough, was years ago, when i was paid for unsociable hours after 6pm, night rate after 10pm, weekend rates, and so on.

That was as an agency carer.

It's been flat rate minimum wage for at least 10 years.