An employment ad for a maid position, with a salary of 5,000 lei, caused heated reactions on social networks. Some Romanians were outraged that such work could be paid better than some jobs that require education.
An employment ad published by a cleaning company divided Romanians into several camps. Employers claim to be offering a salary of 5,000 lei for the post of maid, with no experience, for full-time apartment cleaning.
The salary displayed by the commercial company, without specifying whether it is gross or net, surprised many Romanians. The message of a young man, who complained on social networks that cleaning staff can reach 5,000 lei, while many educated young people earn less, sparked a wave of reactions.
“5,000 lei net as a housekeeper? I just saw an ad. And young people barely find 3,500 after many years of school and hundreds of applications and interviews”, he complained, on the Reddit platform.
Romanians, angry that the maid earns more
Other Romanians believe that the ad is fake and is only meant to attract CVs, or that the money offered to employees is “black”.
“What kind of resumes do you attract for a maid? The ones where you have nothing to say and no high school graduation, 8-10 grades max”, another netizen asks ironically.
Some Romanians dispute the job advertisement because it only addresses women.
“It’s the paradox of jobs: everyone is studying to become a boss, but there are no more subordinates”someone else comments.
Other Romanians say that they have met cleaners in apartment blocks who earn more, and those who work in the same positions in the West have much better salaries.
“My wife is a pharmacist, she has five years of college. I don’t think she can find a job where she will receive 5,000 net”complains another Romanian.
A netizen points out that there are jobs where employees have more responsibilities and are paid the minimum wage in the economy.
“We encourage children to go to school, to learn well, to go to university, to have a good job, and then we judge them that they don’t want to work as sweepers”someone else claims.
A Romanian says he was “crossed” when he heard that the maid in his apartment building earns 6,000 lei a month.
“It’s good that I study for six years and then work for three years for less than that” notes, ironically, this one.
Someone else tells that the employee who cleans his apartment building earns almost 5,000 lei, and sometimes he calls his family members to help.
“The service boy is well paid, but frankly I have nothing to comment on. Someone once tried to say that his salary should be reduced and the whole block rioted.” add this one.
Maids, wanted on the labor market
Other Romanians, however, argue that manual labor is still looked down upon, although times have changed, and wages are influenced by employers’ difficulties in finding people willing to work for them and by market demand.
“Some are still living in the Renaissance and think that manual jobs pay and should pay worse than office jobs. Wake up, brothers, those days are long gone, and now the poor have college and go to the office. The days of the bourgeoisie are over, and the market is free.”notes a netizen.
Someone else adds that the employees are paid from the profits of the companies, and if they were small, the salaries offered would be commensurate.
“The market also influences prices, and that’s why we have all kinds of biologists, teachers, scientists, bank staff, call center staff, translators, etc. who have lower salaries than street sweepers. Electricians are always needed, but translators not as much, although they both probably struggled to learn.” comments another Romanian.
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He believes that in the past, people who worked intellectually were generally better paid than blue-collar workers because there were fewer people with higher education.
“There are a lot of schoolchildren now and the ‘brain’ jobs don’t all pay well anymore. You need more knowledge to work in a call center than to sweep the street, and yet the latter earn more. Those who go to the office and earn well are fewer and fewer. It’s just that people don’t seem to understand this, and they want the poor street sweepers to earn even less than they do.” he adds.
A Romanian claims that the labor market works on the principle of demand and supply, and in many situations the demand for cleaning personnel is much higher than the supply and, automatically, such cases can arise.
“The problem is not that a maid earns that much, that’s very good, she has the right to live at least comfortably. The problem is when other jobs pay less than that, given the cost of living. Every working person should be guaranteed an income from which they can live comfortably, with everything they need. Work is not slavery for a plate of food.” says someone else.
Some internet users think that a salary of 5,000 lei is a normal salary for eight hours of work.
“It is a salary from which a man who works for real can live in Bucharest. Not good, but anyway. No man should be without money from one month to the next if he works”says someone else.
Work as a maid, difficult
Other Romanians believe that the salary of 5,000 lei should not be judged by the name of the job, but by how hard the work can be in reality.
“The problem is not just a staircase. That ad is from a subcontracting company, and you have to walk, during your full working hours, about 100 stairs – the point is, I don’t know how many it takes you a day – to do work continuously, so if you stand to catch many four-story blocks without an elevator, it’s kind of crazy and physically exhausting.” states one of them.
Another Romanian claims that the work can be much harder than it appears in the ad, and the employer could underestimate the time needed to clean a block of stairs and burden the employee’s daily schedule.
“If you clean a staircase in two hours—swept, mopped, changed the water on each floor—they’ll approximate it to an hour and make you do eight stairs a day, possibly without counting the time to move from one staircase to another”he adds.
A Romanian wonders, ironically, how much the woman who cleans the stairs of a block of flats should earn.
“Those who don’t earn that much should be upset that they’re underpaid, not that a man they despise can make more money doing a much harder job than theirs.” adds the netizen.
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Someone else thinks the salary offered is decent for someone unqualified and with zero experience.
“The salary difference between someone with an education and someone without, sometimes, is almost non-existent. The only difference is the working conditions and schedule. Do you want a comfortable and relaxing job, from the office or at home, or do you want to work in a toxic environment, long hours, lost hours, physical effort, high temperatures? There are jobs for all categories, both educated and uneducated, but the work is hard!“, he concludes.
Some Romanians claim that maids can earn more money if they work to the point of exhaustion.
“There are blocks of flats with one staircase and 150 studio apartments. You hit the mop until you fall down. Or, when you are chased for 12 hours a day from one block to another and you go up and down washing dozens of floors, see how easily you get the 5,000 lei”, writes an internet user.
Some think that it shouldn’t be a problem that an unskilled person, who does very hard and harmful work, earns enough to live in Bucharest.
“What stops the young people from doing this steady work in the end? The young people want to work in the heat. Well, then they should go to the pretzel shop, because there I saw ads for 5,000 lei. Or they want to work in the heat, but not get their hands dirty”says someone else.
One of the comments shows that those 5,000 lei could, in fact, be the gross amount, and much less would remain in hand, around 2,700–3,500 lei, so the real salary would no longer seem spectacular.
“And with the broom you have to know how to give, that comes with experience, and experience costs money. A young man barely takes his eyes off TikTok and finishes college with difficulty (I’m not talking about the good ones, because they find jobs anyway) and he dreams of high salaries. That’s it, you start from the bottom, stay with six in the house and, after a few years, you’ll have a grandfather’s salary to afford more”, adds another Romanian.
