Why I am pro £15 minimum wage

Why I am pro £15 minimum wage

I am pro a £15 minimum wage. These are the reasons why.

Recently, I was discussing with someone I know why I am pro a £15 minimum wage. He was vehemently against it because, as he said, other people, managers and such would need a price hike to bring their wages in line with expectations.

I was horrified by this. I will tell you why. As a manager for over 8 years, I never earned close to £15 an hour. This work was complex, required decorum, sensitivity, proactivity, discretion, empathy, strategic planning, timely administration, customer service and satisfaction, daily health and safety, and fire checks, in-house recruitment; so interviews arranged and conducted by myself with very little help or assistance from the private and public companies I worked for, calculating and budgeting for staff wages for employees who worked for me as manager, managing customer complaints, organising shop refits and maintenance and repairs, carrying out banking, after cashing up daily, carrying out 1:1 with assistant managers and conducting staff reviews, relief management cover for other shops ( so driving to another town and managing another business and staff in a colleague’s absence), attending management meetings, and organising and running appropriate training for my own staff. This list could go on, but I will stop there.

My point is that although not all these businesses were run during the past decade, many of them were, and as recently as 2010, 2012, and 2015, and 2019. None of them paid managers even £12 an hour. (My salary was always under £10 an hour.) One or two offered reasonable pension contributions of 7%. Still, for the responsibility, the salary was not large and this meant there was little left over to save for a deposit on a house without two salaries and there was little left to save.

I retrained, after gaining a degree and a good 2:1 and went into supporting teaching in schools and colleges; some of the pupils were vulnerable and diverse learners and needed support which required specific knowledge and continued professional development. I learnt pecs (picture exchange communication), signing, behaviour management, deescalation, and did my own research on specific presentations of autism and dyslexia in order to manage these children better. Did I earn £15 an hour for this role? No, except once when a particularly good agency listened to my request for exactly that in 2018 when I was 52 years old, and, by that time, very experienced at this work. The role was in an outstanding college and was for temporary cover and I drove 30 miles every day to get there, and was not compensated in any way for my car or petrol. I got on really well in this role and was almost certainly going to stay on long term. However, I was forced to leave because of the long distance to travel every day, which was impacting my car which broke down three times. The agency found me another college, but at the end of the second placement, I was told they couldn’t afford to keep me, and was let go even though I was told by management that I fitted right in.

Does it surprise you to hear that I am a woman?

This is why staff need higher wages. Staff need higher wages because many people in the private and third sector are not properly remunerated.