As a 21 year old who lives in the UK and has worked sins I was the age off 18 I feel like my age has always been a factor off less pay and discrimination.
People my age and younger work the same hours and work just as hard are harder in the environments we are placed in to get recognised by our peers or our managers. Age should not be a factor in pay however even during this pandemic the amount of young people who have worked throughout this pandemic still get paid less then your peers even though we are putting our own lives at risk.
The law
What the Equality Act says about age discrimination. The Equality Act 2010 says that you must not be discriminated against because: you are (or are not) a certain age or in a certain age group. someone thinks you are (or are not) a specific age or age group, this is known as discrimination by perception.
However because off my age I am paid less. It is a bit controdictive. As a female support worker we are already discriminated enough as it is due to the fact males are not allowed to bath women however females are allowed to bath men.
Yes this to help protect a womens decency but what about the males. We live in a system where the younger you are the less money you have but we are in a system where teen pregnancy is higher then ever? How can a women or a man look after there children getting paid half off what someone only a few years old gets? Teen moms or dads are getting criticised for working to meany hours and there children having to spend more time with there nana and grandads because they have to work 2x the amount off shifts to even keep them for a month.
As I get older I have seem my self personally be attacked by age discrimination even though I work 36 to 48 hours in a week and I still get paid less then my peers because off my age.
The national living wage
The new UK living wage was announced by the Living Wage Foundation this week. It will be £9.30 across the UK and £10.75 in London. Employers registered as Living Wage employers have until May 2020 to implement the changes.
The national wage
The full set of rates can be seen below: the National Living Wage for those aged 25 and over will increase by 6.2% to £8.72 an hour. the National Minimum Wage for those aged 21 to 24 is increasing by 6.5% to £8.20 an hour. the National Minimum Wage for those aged 18 to 20 is increasing by 4.9% to £6.45 an hour.
How can they expect us to live on a wage that even experts have said is too low?
And the truth is?
Because we get on with it we live each day like we have no other we work ridiculous hours just to get taxed half off our wages the system for us is very floored but to them we make there money so they arnt bothered. We are just the hamsters in the wheel that keep turning.
So what i have learnt is that being discriminated against isn’t fun and that if we want younger people to come off the dole and start working at least pay us more then what we would get on the dole
wellbeing 