I'm Being Underpaid, Advice?

[kindayellow]

Okay so just to add context, I'm 19, male, live in the UK, with parents, and the highest level of education I have is an extended diploma

I've been working in a lab under the title "Junior Laboratory Assistant", for 3 months and I've just finished my probation period and they want to keep me on. 

I'm currently on £12,500 a year. Which is 6.50 an hour, 35p above minimum wage for my age group. I know that for the type of work I'm doing, this is a poor wage, but I sucked it up because it's a probation period and I figured they'd give me something closer to market rate.

However, there's no such thing as a "Junior Laboratory Assistant", it's not a recognized job role, and there's no average salary. The word junior is thrown in because it's specific to my age group and is a tool to justify the age discrimination.

My coworker, who is the "Lab Assistant" makes between 18-20K a year, he is 52 and his previous job experience isn't valuable to his work, directly anyway. 

Me and my coworker share 95% of the same work which we both do to the same standard. The only difference between me and him is that he does a couple of things I don't yet do, that aren't any harder than anything I currently do and isn't a large part of the role.

I had a meeting today and my employer told me he was bumping my salary up to £14,472 a year. Which is abismyl. I feel like he acts in a manor that's welcoming, but manipulative. He said it as if he was doing me a big favour by increasing my already shitty wage by £2000.

I believe I shouldn't be earning anything less than £1000 under what my coworker, the "Lab Assistant" makes. And I feel like I'm being unfairly treated due to my age. But using the job title to justify the poor treatment.

Unfortunately I really like the work I do generally speaking. It's not my life purpose, I would like to become a qualified Life Coach in a few years once I feel I've done enough inner work to succeed in the field.

I'd make a couple grand more, maybe even 3 or 4 thousand more than I do somehwere local but in a job role I wouldn't enjoy as much. So I'm just really unsatisfied.

I welcome any advice, obviously, that's why I'm on here lol

 

 

[Deepconcepts]

It all comes down to mental maturity and physcal responsibilities, you are very mature for your age but you do live at home. I would never pay a 19 year old the same as a 52 year old, not to mention someone who has only worked for a measly 3 months. The older person in the end would likely take less money home than you after expenses. You're doing great, you can always tell him to take a break and relax while filling in his responsibilities, or offer to fill a shift.

 

My dad once told me I was ungreatful, I truly was but only at a mental level. Try to be more forgiving with your boss and thankful at a verbal level, keep working and trust me. Great things up ahead, if only you could see what i see in you. 

Edited August 19, 2019 by Deepconcepts

[kindayellow]

@Deepconcepts if I had to be brutally honest, I can live right now on my current wage, I pay for my car, and I pay a very small "rent" bill, but within 3 - 4 years I'm going to be coming of age and moving out etc, and this job absolutely can't support that. I couldn't live with in a caravan eating boiled rice every day on that wage. So to pay so much below what my coworker earns, a bad wage for his age group just isn't promising long term. I'm managing to save most of my money I'm earning and it'll do till Christmas time maybe, sounds better being somewhere for over 6 months than for under. 

[outlandish]

Working in a lab at your age is such excellent experience, you're earning double or triple your wage in awesome work and life experience right now. Yes, you can't eat that, but it's really going to pay off in the long run.

You might be a super effective 19 year old, but more likely you're a fairly normal 19 year old, which means it's a bit of work for your boss to take you on and he probably is doing you a bit of a favour. A mutually beneficial favour to be sure, but he's probably got to train you and supervise you a lot more than someone with more experience and age. 

Don't worry too much about what your salary will need to be in 3 years to support living away from home, you're not there yet, and when that time comes the money you need will be there for you. In the meantime you're getting paid something like a stipend and gaining priceless experience.

In 1 or 2 years you'll be way more valuable to the lab than you are right now, and that's when you'll be in a better position to be a bit more aggressive about your earnings.

[SerpaeTetra]

5 hours ago, kindayellow said:

Okay so just to add context, I'm 19, male, live in the UK, with parents, and the highest level of education I have is an extended diploma

I've been working in a lab under the title "Junior Laboratory Assistant", for 3 months and I've just finished my probation period and they want to keep me on. 

I'm currently on £12,500 a year. Which is 6.50 an hour, 35p above minimum wage for my age group. I know that for the type of work I'm doing, this is a poor wage, but I sucked it up because it's a probation period and I figured they'd give me something closer to market rate.

However, there's no such thing as a "Junior Laboratory Assistant", it's not a recognized job role, and there's no average salary. The word junior is thrown in because it's specific to my age group and is a tool to justify the age discrimination.

My coworker, who is the "Lab Assistant" makes between 18-20K a year, he is 52 and his previous job experience isn't valuable to his work, directly anyway. 

Me and my coworker share 95% of the same work which we both do to the same standard. The only difference between me and him is that he does a couple of things I don't yet do, that aren't any harder than anything I currently do and isn't a large part of the role.

I had a meeting today and my employer told me he was bumping my salary up to £14,472 a year. Which is abismyl. I feel like he acts in a manor that's welcoming, but manipulative. He said it as if he was doing me a big favour by increasing my already shitty wage by £2000.

I believe I shouldn't be earning anything less than £1000 under what my coworker, the "Lab Assistant" makes. And I feel like I'm being unfairly treated due to my age. But using the job title to justify the poor treatment.

Unfortunately I really like the work I do generally speaking. It's not my life purpose, I would like to become a qualified Life Coach in a few years once I feel I've done enough inner work to succeed in the field.

I'd make a couple grand more, maybe even 3 or 4 thousand more than I do somehwere local but in a job role I wouldn't enjoy as much. So I'm just really unsatisfied.

I welcome any advice, obviously, that's why I'm on here lol

 

 

Isn't his minimum wage higher since he is older?  Maybe that's the only reason why.  Plus, maybe they can only pay one person the higher wage.  It sucks, but just a part of the system-try not to take it personal.  Many companies see people as objects, just let it be motivation for you to work for yourself as soon as possible.  Also appreciate that you are 19 and not 52, working that position.  He might not have had some of the same advantages you had early in life - so thats how the age based minimum wage helps balance that out just a bit.

[Deepconcepts]

If you're so dissatisfied then find a new job, or improvise. Sure you're an adult, but honestly there is always room for more maturing which happens from making these decisions on your own. We can't give you the same experience as you would get doing something for yourself, and it might not work out either way, even if you have good intentions.

I've met people who've come accross the world and have earned a living and then some but it took trial and error. They've been doing fine too and some have even started their own business and are paying off their own house at 20years old. You will make mistakes and likely a big one sooner or later, don't take this so seriously right now you're just in the beginning stages of life. All these successes stories on the internet is not real life it's just a collective self observed minority of people. Don't think about them...

Edited August 19, 2019 by Deepconcepts

[universe]

I would learn as much as I can. Then after 3-9 month I would start looking for a new job. If there are more jobs available at your place, in your field. 

Repeat.

You might need to move a bit further away.

[Knock]

Your first year working is not about the money, its about gaining experience and skills. Once you have exceptional skills in your field, you will get paid exceptionally. Be so good that your boss can't ignore you. Be so good that you have recruitment agencies giving you offers for a better job. Be irreplaceable, then demand a higher salary, because you know your value.

Remember to focus should be on growing your roots, and not the fruit. Focus on being irreplaceable, on being a high-value member. Your boss would be an fool to let you go work for a competitor because he tried to be too cheap. 

 

[Sunder]

This may be a strange first post, but I am still passively working through threads in this forum, and this one caught my attention. The reason? I work with a lot of new graduates - Mostly 21 years old and up, but your post struck a chord with me.

Almost exclusively, every graduate I have worked with, has wanted $100k AUD (58k GBP), within 2 years of starting with us. That's not as ridiculous as it sounds, both for the typical wages in Australia, and the nature of the industry I am in. (Infosec), but it's also not a realistic expectation for all of them. The problem is, some of these guys that have been here 2 years, are actually outperforming 20 year industry veterans, and some are barely better than the day I took them on, but the demands are almost inverse to capability. If you've ever heard of the Dunning Kruger effect, you might know what I am talking about: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect

My advice to you, after 12 years of mentoring graduates, is that there's no guaranteed ways of getting a pay rise. Even if I wanted to give a person a decent pay rise, I'm limited by my budget too. There have been times where I have had to tell my highest performers, "Take my advice, take your time, find the perfect position for you - I'll even help you - but I feel like you're wasting your potential here, and while the company will suffer for losing you, I don't want to hold you back". That's the reality.

That said, there are good and bad ways to both think, and negotiate. Here are some tactics you can use:

1. Thinking - Jobs are either for learning, or earning. And it's never a one way trip. There are times where you will take a pay cut to improve your skills, or take on more responsibility, and not get rewarded for it. If you are either learning, or earning, you shouldn't care too much as long as you are paying the bills. If you're doing neither, it's time to change the situation.

Also, don't think you finish learning once you grasp the basics. From an outside perspective, someone who has worked under supervision for 6 months, bills out at the same rate as someone who is a 10 year veteran. But what you can't see behind the scenes, is that the 6 month consultant has his work rigorously checked. This costs money. The 10 year consultant has so much of a reputation, a 10 minute phone call can lock him in for a month of work, where as a sales person might need to prospect and negotiate many times to get the same amount of work - again, that costs.

So when the junior looks across at the senior, and wonders why he gets paid half of what the senior does, he sees no difference. He's doing 40 hours a week, the same kind of work, and getting paid half. From the business perspective, the senior is a lot more profitable. They both bring in the same money, but one costs $200k to bring in and deliver the work, and the other costs $300k to bring in and deliver the work. This might not be entirely applicable to a junior lab assistant, but hopefully you see the point. The work may be the same - but the processes behind it may cost the company a different sum of money. "Learning" can include the business side of your job, not just the technical.

2. Negotiating - There are many techniques and articles on this, but the one I find works best, is to work collaboratively, rather than see your boss as an authority figure you need to convince to give you what you want. Many advice books tell you that you can gather evidence of what the market is paying, show evidence that you have achieved great things beyond yourpay grade etc. That's all great if your manager has budget, and is only holding you back because s/he thinks you're not worth it yet. If he or she is not in that position, you can impress them all you like to no avail.

The way I work, I tell my boss where I want to be: how much responsibility, willingness to take on targets, what skills I will learn by when, and tell him how much I would like to hit that. Alternatively, I tell him how much I would like to be on, and ask him what it would take to hit that goal. He wants my practice to be bringing in $4m a year? Sure, but I want a cut of the extra growth. I get 5% of everything over last year's target. He needs someone to build a new practice? I'll do it, but as soon as that practice is self sustaining, he's upping my base. For bosses who need to build business cases to get funding for pay rises, this really helps, especially if the pay rise or bonus is tied to measurable performance. He tells his boss that next year he's likely to need a bigger pot for salaries, but his own targets will go up with it.

@OP - At 19, and only 3 months in the job, it's hard for any manager to get the feel of whether you are a consistent performer, let alone have learned the skills to make the company the money they need to justify a pay rise. Pay rises are easy to give, but very hard to take back, as is dismissing someone without proof of pretty serious misconduct. Put yourself in their shoes. Give them every reason to want to keep you, and a good boss will see your value when you make a reasoned case for a rise. If they don't, they might not be worth working for anyway. Some bosses really do just want to pay the absolute minimum, and keep their staff in the same position with no promotions or pay rises ever. Learn who they are, and move on quickly.

Edit: By the way, you can see how you compare to the industry through sites like Payscale.

While everyone would like to be at least "average", it would be unusual to find a new starter position above the bottom quartile (Bottom 0-25%) . So yes, you are probably underpaid, but not by a huge amount. 14.5k pound (sorry, my keyboard doesn't have that symbol) puts you just below the 10th percentile, indicating your employer is paying below market for a new starter. 

l

Edited August 20, 2019 by Sunder

[kindayellow]

@Sunder Wow, I'm shocked by the effort you've gone through to reply in such detail, thank you!

I think with this post and the replies, it's made me feel less, entitled per-say, and made me evaluate my position and to be a bit more grateful, even if they are underpaying me. My employer said that this job isn't a glass ceiling, and there is room for me to become more valuable. I'm happily going to welcome that and work with him and set some targets we can both agree on.

 

The lab is a lot less scientific than labs I've seen either through working (just one lab) and interviews. Because they're in different industries. If you're interested I'm in colour matching for iron oxide pigments for things like concrete, asphalt etc. So the testing we do isn't super complicated, purely because it doesn't need to be. But just because the lab work isn't really very difficult, it doesn't mean there aren't other things I can't help with. 

Another thing, every last Thursday of every month, they buy all 30 people either a chippy, or pizzas from Sainsbury's across the road (they make them fresh not like frozen ones). And I really enjoy the much less formal work environment. My previous experiences of people in the science field is very reserved, not interested in bantering etc. So I'd happily work where I am now for less money than a more traditional lab assistant role

 

[archi]

change job

or work on better degree and get better paid position

As a PhD I used to earn 1500eur but that was 15+y ago. 

[Michael569]

When I came to UK in 2015 my first job, although being an internship earned me £12,000 a year, the UKI minimum wage. I accepted that as being the gateway into the country for an Eastern European immigrant. My boss was an arrogant French dickhead who treated me like an easily disposable piece of shit but I knew if I wanted to survive in this country as a foreigner with little experience, it had to be endured.  However after the end of internship, I managed to find an actual full-time position in a large corpo where the salary went rapidly up in line with UK standards comparable to what natives earned.........the fact that studying business and entering global finance sector was a terrible decision that I later on came to regret is a different story  but I did not know any better then. 

What I'm trying to say is that when you start, you are gaining valuable experience but most importantly you are building your CV. Being just 19, you have your whole career ahead of you. So as harsh as it sounds you just gotta suck it up and carry on with what you do. Take it as investment in your skill portfolio. Take on as much new work as possible and learn all the aspects you can. After a year you are free to leave that place and find better employer but if you start haggling about pay rise now, you may end up being made redundant with no experience and back to ground zero,. 

 

Edited August 22, 2019 by Michael569