You are here: Home / Updates / UK: The Queen of England is hiring! You won't believe what the job will pay
UK: The Queen of England is hiring! You won't believe what the job will pay

UK: The Queen of England is hiring! You won't believe what the job will pay

Comments
by IDWFED published Aug 14, 2013 12:00 AM
Domestic workers are notoriously poorly paid. But you'd think that the maid to the Queen of England might fare better than the typical housekeeper. But that's not how it works with the British Royal family, who employs a total of 1,200 workers. The official website for the British Monarchy has just posted a help-wanted advertisement for a housekeeper at the Queen's Holyroodhouse residence in Edinburgh, Scotland. The pay? £12,000, or $18,000 for 37.5 hours of work per week. (The pay -- roughly $9.60 an hour, assuming 50 weeks work a year --is just around the British minimum wage.)

Details

UNITED KINGDOM -

Read the original article in full: The Queen Of England Is Hiring! - You won't believe what the job will pay. | AOL Jobs

Domestic workers are notoriously poorly paid. But you'd think that the maid to the Queen of England might fare better than the typical housekeeper. But that's not how it works with the British Royal family, who employs a total of 1,200 workers. The official website for the British Monarchy has just posted a help-wanted advertisement for a housekeeper at the Queen's Holyroodhouse residence in Edinburgh, Scotland.

The pay? £12,000, or $18,000 for 37.5 hours of work per week. (The pay -- roughly $9.60 an hour, assuming 50 weeks work a year --is just around the British minimum wage.)

The Queen, for her part, is the recent beneficiary of a 5 percent income increase next year, as the Telegraph reported, which means she's slated to receive £37.9 million, or $58 million. But the pay for this housekeeping position is in line with other recent openings posted by the Windsors; last year the Windsor family was hiring a housekeeper to clean Buckingham Palace and was getting paid the equivalent of $22,000 a year.

The Holyroodhouse gig pay is about the average pay for British maids and housekeepers, according to PayScale.com. But it does come with some significant perks; the Holyroodhouse job comes with free lodging at the residence, which of course would help offset any strain caused by the low pay.

Interested in applying? The mandatory requirement is to "enjoy working as part of a team," and the duties will include caring for antiques and greeting guests.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that maids and house cleaners in the U.S. earn an average annual salary of $21,820, but the National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA) surveyed its members and found one in four domestic workers paid below their state's minimum wage. (Federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour.)

In recent years, domestic workers have begun rallying for greater rights, as AOL Jobs has reported. The NDWA was founded in 2007, and has since begun pushing states to pass Domestic Workers' Bill of Rights. And back in 2010, New York state was the first to enact such a measure. The law extended basic labor rights such as a day of rest for every seven work days to domestic workers.

Photo: Michael Gwyther-Jones/FLICKR

Source: Dan Fastenberg/AOL Jobs

Story Type: News

blog comments powered by Disqus