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Why do we accept low pay for key workers as the norm?

Steve Bridger

Key workers tend to earn less and suffer poorer job quality than others: why do we accept this as the norm for so many roles that play such an important part in our society?

Melanie Green poses this and others questions in a new post here:

https://www.cipd.co.uk/Community/blogs/b/research-blog/posts/does-low-pay-and-poor-job-quality-really-need-to-be-an-inevitable-fact-of-key-worker-life

I'd be particularly keen to hear from those community members who work in care settings.

  • in reply to Sharon
    Hi Sharon,
    I like your thoughts on what HR could do and agree that the fear of being seen as not on the managers side can be a barrier. Indeed, I have experienced this in practice whereby senior leaders were horrified when I started to push for closing the pay gap for our core workers. In previous roles I have seen the HR function develop into nothing more than an administrative function that does the will of the company without pushing the ethical practice and fair pay agendas. Happily I am now with an organisation that sees the HR function as one of strategic importance and a key contributor to business decisions.
  • in reply to Sharon Lesley
    Hi Sharon

    I am really pleased to know this. We have had posts in these forums from HR professionals in the care sector grappling with sickness absence when staff are deployed on contracts that do not provide for the cost of sickness cover. This has not happened recently, but I can remember more than once posting that if a contract has been won on terms which only work when all the staff are healthy all the time, you don't have a viable business model. It's been a while since I've seen a post like that, so if contracts are now being won by care providers offering their staff more generous terms, i.e. covering their legal responsibility to pay SSP, that is a really good thing. If the care commissioner is looking at bids from an ethical perspective, a bid that doesn't allow an employer to meet legal minimum payments shouldn't be accepted.

    Again, it is a while ago, but I got to see a care company up close when a member of my own family needed domiciliary care to live. The carers themselves were fantastic but the organisation behind them was shambolic. The whole structure seemed to depend on the good nature of the staff to go above and beyond the minimum, often working in their own time to complete work. I brought safeguarding issues to the attention of Social Services and the CQC in writing every time they occurred, but nothing ever happened as a result. Not once. If I sounded cynical, it was based on my experience.

    We actually had two family members who were terminally ill at the same time. One was in the West country and one in London. It was the London care provider that seemed barely able to cope. The carers supporting my other family member seemed much better trained and administered.