63 replies to this topic

[yorkshirechris]

Interesting article "from the horses mouth" on Paid Holidays here

It used to be 20 days holiday a year, but in October last year it went up to 24 days, or 4.8 weeks of your weekly contracted hours if you work less than five days a week.

In April 2009 this increases to 5.6 weeks a year.

It is also noted that your employer has the legal right to control when you take that holiday and that it can include bank holidays, so if you aren't required to work on a bank holiday (if the business is closed) then they have the right to tell you not to work and take that day out of your entitlement.

[ferrit]

You can survive on 20k a year yeah. But like it's already been said, it's an existence, not a comfortable lifestyle.

Yeah your parents may have been ok on 20k a year. So were mine. But this was when taxes were lower, house prices were lower and the general cost of living was pretty low compared to now. So a fairly good "working class" job a few years ago would've given most people a comfortable lifestyle but not now.

More or less every year for the last 3 or 4 years (since I've cared) energy prices have risen dramatically, the latest one was around 15%. Seeing as though my wages have only gone up about 4% (and I'm supposed to be with a decent company) and taking into account the fact council tax has gone up 5%, petrol prices have gone through the roof, this willl in turn push everything else up yet again such as food prices due to increased operation costs of businesses... it's all pretty grim reading really.

20k a year isn't a very good wage if you're wanting to get a start in the real world i.e. getting your own place or even sharing with a partner. The average wage in this country I believe is around 26-27k, a wage I'd consider to be comfortable but unfortunately without a degree there really isn't many jobs around that pay these sorts of wages. This is partly due to, dare I say it, influxes of cheap migrant labour which has pushed everyone's wages down, or should I say kept them from rising at a reasonable rate. The main reason of course is that the trade unions in this country are more or less non-existant in lower paid, unskilled areas of work which enables greedy businesses to exploit mainly younger people and pay them the bare minimum.

Then again I should be grateful that I'm "surviving" (just) because if I were on minimum wage I wouldn't even be scraping £8k a year after tax.

Oops I went a bit off topic there, I agree with the fact teachers should get paid more, as should everyone who provides a service to society, whether they be armed forces, police officers, teachers, electricians, plumbers, binmen, and countless other people we rely on to keep the country going. It was interesting to read about the different pay levels of Professional people, in all honesty if I knew after 3 years of Uni plus another one year doing the PGCE (I actually considered this when I was at college) all I would be on is 20k a year I wouldn't bother going to the effort.

As per usual it's all about businesses and employers being greedy. What they don't understand is that if they treat their staff well, they will be loyal, and if they treat them like this, imagine how demotivated the teachers now feel? Undervalued and unappreciated must be a couple of appropriate words.

Some good points well made about the cost of living their Yorkshirechris. To be honest if I knew what i know know when I was leaving school I would have gone into a trade. Probably would have been sat on my fat arse counting my wad as a director of a firm by now.

[yorkshirechris]

Same, thankfully I got lucky and got myself in a 'trade' (although I can't really use my skills in many other companies, but still...) and I'm happy here, but like I say there isn't really many skilled "working class" jobs around that pay a wage you can live comfortably on.

I aspire to be sat on my fat arse in a few (dozen?) years counting my wads

[sazal]

Im 19, so not that much of a youth!

muck fee I wish I was 19 again, I considered myself a youth up until 30

19s that age where you still feel like a kid, but kind of more mature. But if you act like a kid you get frowned at! But you get more respect from old people!