The Cleaners of London

[Martinus]

My firm has been pretty decent with it, with our Warsaw office paying a decent living wage to trainees and even getting a small studio flat for those who live too far from Warsaw to be able to commute (in fact, I'm renting my old flat on that basis to my firm - I charge them less than a market rate, but at least I don't need to worry about something going wrong with it).

But there are many law firms (and corporations) which do not pay anything for trainees and "job experience". Which is pretty shitty.

[CountDeMoney]

I hope you cleaned it before you rented it out.  Bet it's all sticky.  Towels probably don't even need racks.

[Martinus]

I hope you cleaned it before you rented it out.  Bet it's all sticky.  Towels probably don't even need racks.

I had it repainted.

[Richard Hakluyt]

It all seems pretty counter-productive to me. The best cleaners are motivated cleaners, why not pay them a decent rate and demand high standards.

I've been an employer myself at various times in the past few years and have paid £10 per hour for what is essentially minimum wage work, I don't think I've lost anything from doing so, despite any apparent altruism.

[CountDeMoney]

My cleaning lady misses me dearly.  And I miss her back.   

[Martinus]

It all seems pretty counter-productive to me. The best cleaners are motivated cleaners, why not pay them a decent rate and demand high standards.

I've been an employer myself at various times in the past few years and have paid £10 per hour for what is essentially minimum wage work, I don't think I've lost anything from doing so, despite any apparent altruism.

I blame outsourcing and tendering process. It ends up making price the only criterion.

[Martinus]

My cleaning lady misses me dearly.  And I miss her back.   

My cleaning lady just demanded a raise.

[Richard Hakluyt]

It all seems pretty counter-productive to me. The best cleaners are motivated cleaners, why not pay them a decent rate and demand high standards.

I've been an employer myself at various times in the past few years and have paid £10 per hour for what is essentially minimum wage work, I don't think I've lost anything from doing so, despite any apparent altruism.

I blame outsourcing and tendering process. It ends up making price the only criterion.

Yes.

I think that one way round this conundrum would be some sort of sticker or label that qualifying firms could boast about and put on their websites.

The "we pay all our staff at least the living wage and only sub-contract to other firms that do the same" sticker.

It is not as if Saatchi need to exploit Latin American cleaners to make a profit, it is more or less a mere accident.

[Norgy]

The death-knell of the northern European manual labourer is part of all this. Very few want to do manual labour, so we import it, pay them less, and all the while rather untalented youngsters try to become pop stars, lawyers or "something in the media business" and simultaneously get a huge reserve of dropouts and morons on benefits. People who could, you know, be cleaning stuff.

[Martinus]

Incidentally, 10 quid per hour would be pretty sweet by Polish standards. I pay my cleaning lady about half of that, and it is still over twice the minimum wage rate in Poland. No wonder Poles emigrate to the UK.

[CountDeMoney]

My cleaning lady misses me dearly.  And I miss her back.   

My cleaning lady just demanded a raise.

Give it to her.  She's cleaning your toilets, for Christ's sake.  And don't forget the fucking Christmas tip, you cheap bastard.

[Richard Hakluyt]

Incidentally, 10 quid per hour would be pretty sweet by Polish standards. I pay my cleaning lady about half of that, and it is still over twice the minimum wage rate in Poland. No wonder Poles emigrate to the UK.

In Lancashire too 

I had some work done on the house a while back, the bulk of the actual grafting was done by a couple of Polish guys. I quizzed them about whether it was worth their while to go back to Poland, what with England being expensive and so on. I'd visited Krakow a bit earlier so may have had an inflated idea about how well Poland was doing. They insisted that prices were roughly double here but their wages were quadruple. Turns out they came from some one-horse town in Eastern Poland near the frontiers with Russia and Belarus.

[The Brain]

Poor guys.

[Norgy]

Incidentally, 10 quid per hour would be pretty sweet by Polish standards. I pay my cleaning lady about half of that, and it is still over twice the minimum wage rate in Poland. No wonder Poles emigrate to the UK.

Poles are, according to official data, the biggest group of immigrants in Norway. Yet no-one is talking about creeping catholification. 

[Siege]

Have you guys watched Black Mirror?
Is it good?