Hotel Workers - Rock bottom pay

lainey_d_123

Sardonicat wrote: »

What utter insulting hogwash. You do realise that most front of house hotel staff have studied 'Tourism' or related to degree level, don't you? It's often stated as a requirement for reception staff for the 4 and 5 star hotels. My niece did this. She has an Honours Degree in the field and was working in a 5 star as a receptionist at just above minimum wage! She quit the industry (which she loved) because if the sh1t pay . She emigrated and is now in a great job in a totally unrelated field for a company that appreciates her education and work ethic.

You have to be a special kind of stupid to spend several years (and now thousands of euros of your own money) learning how to work in a hotel. Tourism/Hospitality are joke degrees that people do when they can't get into a real degree course. You can't learn those jobs at 'universities', you learn them by doing them. Why would anyone expect more than minimum wage for doing unskilled work? I worked in hotels every summer throughout my degree. It's basic, common sense work. Some of those working alongside me doing 'Hospitality' degrees didn't even have any foreign languages and had less to offer than I did, yet swanned around thinking they were great because they had done a degree which qualified them to do....exactly what I was doing without one.

HappyAsLarE

Minimum wage for minimum ability. If every job paid a higher minimum wage (so called living wage) then the price of everything would just increase.

Osborne

I'm a Hotel Manager in Dublin. We don't pay anyone minimum wage. The least we pay is €11 p/hr. Even this is too low in my opinion, especially for Dublin City Centre.

I try and add value to the employees where I can via various incentives and benefits as I understand how difficult it is.

Some Hotels take the absolute p*ss but some Managers genuinely care about their teams.

Edit: I started off as a pot wash on minimum wage.

Plumbthedepths

HappyAsLarE wrote:

If every job paid a higher minimum wage (so called living wage) then the price of everything would just increase.

Or profits would not be as high.

enricoh

Do many hotels have staff accommodation? the one nearest me did.
It'd be a big bonus in dublin.
Dunno if its all that rosy in the hotel industry, iirc half our tourists are from the uk, brexits gotta be hitting their numbers. Sterling very weak against the euro now also.

FTA69

I used to be the union rep in a prominent Cork City hotel; absolute joke of a gaff.

Everyone working deserves a decent living wage. The idea that people working in hotels, or driving a bus or delivering a bin are somehow uneducated thicks is patronising snobbish nonsense.

I’ve worked in all of the above scenarios and met some of the soundest, most interesting and smartest people in my life. Nobody should be condescended to while working hard.

bucketybuck

Sardonicat wrote: »

You do realise that most front of house hotel staff have studied 'Tourism' or related to degree level, don't you?

And I'm sure most circus clowns went to clown college as well.

My sister has one of those, a degree in hospitality or something. Such a load of rubbish, wasting her time in university on a course to help her succeed in the shittiest industry outside of slurry economics.

"Tourism", the course you do when you like going drinking and think it would be great to work in a pub or as a rep in Ibiza.

lainey_d_123

FTA69 wrote: »

I used to be the union rep in a prominent Cork City hotel; absolute joke of a gaff.

Everyone working deserves a decent living wage. The idea that people working in hotels, or driving a bus or delivering a bin are somehow uneducated thicks is patronising snobbish nonsense.

I’ve worked in all of the above scenarios and met some of the soundest, most interesting and smartest people in my life. Nobody should be condescended to while working hard.

You're missing the point. You can't expect to do a job literally anyone could do and be paid the same as a GP or a software developer. People earning decent salaries have often spent a lot of time (and often money) on their education. Hospitality jobs pay minimum wage because they require minimum qualifications and minimum skills.

FTA69

lainey_d_123 wrote: »

You're missing the point. You can't expect to do a job literally anyone could do and be paid the same as a GP or a software developer. People earning decent salaries have often spent a lot of time (and often money) on their education. Hospitality jobs pay minimum wage because they require minimum qualifications and minimum skills.

I’m not missing any point at all. I said a living wage, i.e a wage that doesn’t leave you on the poverty line after working your bollix off for some hotel earning a fortune. I never once said they should be on doctor’s wages.

That’s a silly exaggeration.

Still waters

topper75 wrote: »

Accuses somebody else of economic illiteracy.
Proceeds to explain how hotels should operate like charities.

Irish people end up in minimum wage jobs because they deliberately and consciously avoided educational opportunities offered to them not only earlier in life but also on an ongoing basis as an adult (may not be the case for foreign hotel workers).

What a load of horse ****e

freshpopcorn

enricoh wrote: »

Do many hotels have staff accommodation? the one nearest me did.
It'd be a big bonus in dublin.

I worked in a place and you used get left over breakfast food for lunch or something that was going off and it was generally burnt to a crisp from sitting in a ban marie from 6:30 that morning. I'm almost certain it was deducted from my wages.

I had friends stay in staff accommodation in a five star hotel before.
A cost for it was deducted out of there wages even if they didn't avail of it from what I remember.
It was cold/damp/etc/few people in one room and you lived with the people you worked with.

lainey_d_123

FTA69 wrote: »

I’m not missing any point at all. I said a living wage, i.e a wage that doesn’t leave you on the poverty line after working your bollix off for some hotel earning a fortune. I never once said they should be on doctor’s wages.

That’s a silly exaggeration.

I used to do a job requiring far more education and skill than a hotel employee and was barely surviving on that wage. Lots of people are underpaid, not just hotel workers.

cena

raise minimum wage to 20 euro an hour

Del.Monte

topper75 wrote: »

Accuses somebody else of economic illiteracy.
Proceeds to explain how hotels should operate like charities.

Irish people end up in minimum wage jobs because they deliberately and consciously avoided educational opportunities offered to them not only earlier in life but also on an ongoing basis as an adult (may not be the case for foreign hotel workers).

This is absolutely sweeping generalisation says more about your educational attainment than that of the people you are slagging off. How on earth do you pretend to know how people end up in poorly paid jobs?

Always Tired

Sky King wrote: »

Great idea, lets pay some flunkie who failed their inter cert and answers phones all day the same amount as someone who worked and got a qualification.

Yeah buddy guess what you could be a genius but if you're in Donegal, Sligo, Mayo there is no job for a genius but plenty hotel jobs. And your description of the job shows you have NO CLUE how much mental and physical stamina hotel work takes. All the biggest morons I've worked with were not in hotels they were in big companies usually managers too. People don't work in hotels because they failed and you're an utter gob****e if youre going around thinking that. Im guessing people like you hold that opinion to justify not tipping.

freshpopcorn

A friend of mine worked in another famous five star property.
All there tips were pooled to bring them on a lively day out when then hotel was closed on a wet January day.
Seasonal workers or from colleges abroad who they were delighted to have during the Summer benefitted nothing from it.

Lackadaisical

Well, it's hardly surprising when we've a government that priorities 'flexibility' over everything and a bunch of trade unions who are largely only interested in chasing the low hanging fruit and representing people who already have hugely protected working conditions i.e. mostly civil servants / public sector stuff.

I know there are some exceptions like the nurses unions and so on, but for the most part I don't see what the Irish trade unions do to protect those in some of the most unstable and vulnerable employment in the state.

It's all very well evoking the tales of the Dublin Lockouts or whatever, but when you've still got exploitive labour practices going on in an economy that's currently very flush with money, it's really not saying a lot for our trade union movements.

Lily_Aldrin7

I work in a hotel for very little money, my job is actually revenue related so I know how much money the hotel makes and it’s a lot. Many of the staff who signed contracts 10-11 years ago make a lot of money compared to everyone else which is even more unfair - some making 24 euro an hour when the majority of workers make under the minimum.
The housekeepers for example get minimum wages but get 4.50 a day deducted for staff lunch which is served at 1 pm and if you can’t go at 1 you don’t get anything. Also, when you do go at 1 you get leftovers or frozen chips and nuggets. I bring my own lunch but still get it deducted from my salary- they won’t stop deducting it regardless. It’s so ****ty it hurts ...

freshpopcorn

Lily_Aldrin7 wrote: »

I work in a hotel for very little money, my job is actually revenue related so I know how much money the hotel makes and it’s a lot. Many of the staff who signed contracts 10-11 years ago make a lot of money compared to everyone else which is even more unfair - some making 24 euro an hour when the majority of workers make under the minimum.
The housekeepers for example get minimum wages but get 4.50 a day deducted for staff lunch which is served at 1 pm and if you can’t go at 1 you don’t get anything. Also, when you do go at 1 you get leftovers or frozen chips and nuggets. I bring my own lunch but still get it deducted from my salary- they won’t stop deducting it regardless. It’s so ****ty it hurts ...

Yes. The food I got was poor. Mainly dried out white pudding or sausages.

Hobosan

lainey_d_123 wrote: »

I used to do a job requiring far more education and skill than a hotel employee and was barely surviving on that wage. Lots of people are underpaid, not just hotel workers.

If you could barely survive in a job that required far more skill than hotel workers, then hotel workers must be the living dead, since their jobs require 'minimal skill', in your own words.

punisher5112

Oh I hate this.., use to hear oh the poles would work you under the table...
Yeah maybe when the boss is looking or on site other then that they done sweet f all.

goose2005

Redsky121 wrote: »

If you're boss offered you a salary of €x or €x+1 which woul you choose?

The whole point of a business is to make as much profit as they can, why would they pay staff more than they need to?

when an individual acts in this way they're seen as a sociopath, when a company does it's seen as some sort of 'law of nature'

goose2005

topper75 wrote: »

Accuses somebody else of economic illiteracy.
Proceeds to explain how hotels should operate like charities.

Irish people end up in minimum wage jobs because they deliberately and consciously avoided educational opportunities offered to them not only earlier in life but also on an ongoing basis as an adult (may not be the case for foreign hotel workers).

So if everyone worked hard in school everyone would have good jobs? How would that work, 5 million network admins? You're always going to have unskilled labour and need someone to do it, that doesn't mean that unskilled workers 'deserve' to be crushed

lainey_d_123

Hobosan wrote: »

If you could barely survive in a job that required far more skill than hotel workers, then hotel workers must be the living dead, since their jobs require 'minimal skill', in your own words.

What are you banging on about?

Lots of jobs are poorly paid for what they are. Hotel workers aren't unique in that regard. If you want decent money, then don't work in a bloody hotel. I worked in them for years while I studied and gained qualifications to do something better, and worked my way up from there. You can't do a job literally anyone with a pulse could do and expect anything more than a basic salary.

goose2005

HappyAsLarE wrote: »

Minimum wage for minimum ability. If every job paid a higher minimum wage (so called living wage) then the price of everything would just increase.

meanwhile, in the real world, there is little correlation between minimum wage and inflation.

jay1988

Sky King wrote: »

Great idea, lets pay some flunkie who failed their inter cert and answers phones all day the same amount as someone who worked and got a qualification.

That's a proper dickhead response right there.

DaveyDave

You'd be surprised at how many people just don't care. Myself and the GF are in our late 20s and know a handful of people earning anywhere between 20-28k that have no interest in moving up. Only care about going on the piss or getting cheap package holidays and happy to live at home.

If someone is earning crap money for years it's on them. If they can't land themselves in a better paying job easily then they need to upskill.

Lots of jobs are poorly paid or the company itself is crap so you won't go anywhere but at a certain point it's up to the person to move somewhere better. You can do the same job in a better company for more money, you don't even always have to upskill.

If you don't like a job - find a better one, or train for a better one. "Hospitality" jobs are well known for poor pay and crap conditions. Why anyone whose daddy doesn't own a hotel or works for Bord Failte would waste their time on a masters in it is beyond me.

AulWan

Some people work to live, they don't live to work.

I've been pushed to go for promotions in work and I didn't go - not because I am not interested or underqualified, but because I already earn enough to meet my needs comfortably, imo the payrise offered is not worth the added stress or responsibility , plus I have enough going on at home (caring for elderly parent etc) that I need no extra stress.

Life isn't always about clawing your way to the top so you can make as much money as possible. You can't take it with you.

Wanderer2010

DaveyDave wrote: »

You'd be surprised at how many people just don't care. Myself and the GF are in our late 20s and know a handful of people earning anywhere between 20-28k that have no interest in moving up. Only care about going on the piss or getting cheap package holidays and happy to live at home.

If someone is earning crap money for years it's on them. If they can't land themselves in a better paying job easily then they need to upskill.

Lots of jobs are poorly paid or the company itself is crap so you won't go anywhere but at a certain point it's up to the person to move somewhere better. You can do the same job in a better company for more money, you don't even always have to upskill.

True. I know a few people who don't even consider changing their lot, they are in their mid 30s or older, same job since 17 or 18, they don't feel the need to go for promotions, or even find another job. They are content to get by on between 20-25k, they make just enough to pay rent and spend all weekend knocking back pints until the cycle starts all over again. For every person who sees such a job as a tough lesson in life not to settle for less than your talent demands, you get a 100 more people who don't care. Each to their own..