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Replies
What a surprise that a successful national organisation in the UK pays grassroots staff(pardon the pun) a pittance! i'll bet the directors are getting well above average pay rises along with all expenses paid jollies and all the rest of it. Stinks!
I think that working as a student, or a first job, you'll learn a lot and build a good foundation on your CV working for someone like the NT. A bit like working for the RHS at Wisley: hardly going to be netting you a 6-figure salary in your first year, but irreplaceable experience.
I have a massive issue with the higher-level staff they employ, though. My local NT site advertised a head-chef role recently, something I'd have considered as I have owned a catering business before and it seemed interesting.
Head of a team at a prestigious stately home and estate. Responsible for staff in tea rooms and high-end restaurant. Needs to constantly develop the menu, particularly working with local suppliers.
Shifts are basically the worst of anti-social hours. I did a rough estimate of 60 hours a week at least, and weekends were wiped out socially.
The salary? Just outside the M25, in prestigious Buckinghamshire.
£18K. :-(
A trained/qualified gardener working in the NT will have access to better training, opportunities, working conditions and pay than most of the same level of guys out working for golf clubs, SME and the like.
In my experience here in NI, maybe UK mainland its different...
Although I remember reading about the queen wanting to employ a qualified gardener on less than £15000 per year. Link
Local to me York Gate Garden were recuriting a head gardener for £27,000 which I think is about right for a salaried position as a gardener.
Large orgaisations like the NT etc will always try and get away with crap wages, simply becasue if they employe 2000 gardeners and can hold their pay back £2k, thats £400,000 saving they make..........
A smaller estate (I can think of 4 small garden estate sites in Leeds alone) will happily pay £25-30k for a head gardener and £20k for the operatives.... which is fair... also the management in these places tend to be very close to the front line, often working on site too, so they see the value of paying a realistic wage to their gardening staff. The NT and many other big organisations will decide wages in a head office, hundreds of miles from the "coal face" so to speak......
This applys to any large organisation, employing a workforce doing ANY form of service task that is "ongoing - IE Cleaning, Ground care, Cooking / Serving food" etc etc..... As the large workforce required relative to other proffessions makes pinching the wages back quite a big way of saving the £.
Councils are the same - Think bin men, forestry depts etc, they all get treated the same with pinching wages and wage rises as the large work force means small savings collate to large savings.