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I know this has been done to death but I'd love some input. I pay my amazing cleaning woman $100 for 2300 square feet. She's here 6 1/2 hours (and cleans under rugs, books on shelves, etc.). I think she deserves a raise but how much? She comes every other week and has never asked for a raise or anything else. Would a 5$ raise look cheap? $10? Tx!
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Actually, worse than cheap, it'd be an insult. I think you go up by $20 minimum or nothing.
[ Reply | Options ]OP: OK, but who is giving 20 - 25% raises in the working world? I'm lucky if I get 3% in publishing. And she's not paying taxes on it. 5$ might look cheap, but it's 5%.
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A 25% raise when you're making slave wages is hardly the same as a 3% raise when you're making six figures. Get a freaking clue.
[ Reply | Options ]Yup. If you go to a diner and get table service and the bill comes to $6, do you leave 15%, i.e. exactly 90 cents or do you at least round up to a dollar or a dollar plus whatever coins you get back? Same principal.
[ Reply | Options ]I don't know if you know anyone in publishing, but in all seriousness, I probably make less than my cleaning woman. And I get killed in taxes. I'm going up another $20. No need to get nasty!
[ Reply | Options ]Sorry, didn't mean to come across nasty. That makes no sense; if you're paying a lot in taxes, that means your husband makes plenty of money and his income is making your marginal tax rate high. Do you mean you make less per hour than your cleaning lady after you pay taxes? If so, wouldn't it make more sense for you to clean your home yourself?
[ Reply | Options ]Unless you're at the lowest level in of the publishing industry, you're making at least $60K. At her rate of pay -- $100 for 6.5 hours of work, or $15.38/hour, even working full time she'd only be making about half what you pull in -- $31,999.
[ Reply | Options ]Total tangent - I don't want to out myself but in the area of publishing I work in, it is common for people with 5-10 years of experience to make less than $60K. I'm not joking. And I started at way less than $32K. But it doesn't matter. I agree she deserves a big raise.
[ Reply | Options ]ITA. And let's not forget that while Mizz Thang over at Hearst is spending half her day updating her Facebook page, pumping her breast milk in the conference room, UBing, "doing lunch", and generally not scuffing her manicure, the cleaning woman is on her hands and knees scrubbing someone else's shitty toilets.
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Do you have health benefits in your publishing jogb?steady, guaranteed hours,bonuses or other benefits resulting from salaried employment? Your reply seems like you don't want to hear that a $5 raise looks(is) cheap. Do you regularly tip? If yes, how much? You're paying her a pretty skimpy rate for every 2 weeks and a promise of dependability,imo.
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Here's another way to go about this.We are talking about $130 a year increase (at 5, very two weeks) or $520, with $20 every two weeks. If you can't afford the $500, a nice way might be to say Here's your holiday bonus (maybe $100/200/whatever and we're going to raise your hourly rate from 15 to 16 this year. That doesn't seem cheap to me. I wouldn't take my nanny from 20/hr to 25 an hour in one year. Do you normally give her an xmas bonus? How much? How long have you had her? Glad you are trying to be fair.
[ Reply | Options ]I thought this was a joke post but given the level of discussion, I guess not. OP should not be thinking in terms of percentages... the cleaning lady is grossly underpaid as a base and she deserves a huge salary adjustment to just bring her in line with other cleaning people. A recent post on this same subject (maybe 1.5 wks ago) showed that very few paid $15/hr, most paid $20-25 and the highest paid $30/hr. We are on the high end, paying our cleaning guy $180 for our 3000 sq ft apt which takes about 6 hrs to clean. I wish I could poach OPs cleaning lady... I'd gladly give her a 50% raise and still pay less than I am doing now!
[ Reply | Options ]Thanks for your response. I always give $100 bonus at Xmas. We've had her almost 4 years. Raised her from $70 (her quoted fee) to $100 when we moved to bigger apt. This year we'll do $120 bonus plus $20 raise. I think she's worth it and the people here convinced me it's the right thing to do. Thanks!
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Sounds like you are already doing a nice raise so I'm not being critical, but the hourly rate you pay your HKer is well below norm. Especially for someone you've employed for 4 years. Even in this economy new hking jobs are starting above 15/hr (where your hk of 4 years is!). Going rate for hk is $17-22/hr (even up to $25) and that's for weekly. For biweekly they sometimes charge more.
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