I work in the public sector — basically doing manual labor in various capacities for a community. We are about to enter contract negotiations between the bargaining unit and management. In doing research, I have noticed that pay of those in similar positions of public work, in similar communities does exist as a higher wage rate — as much as $5-6 dollars more per hour. I was talking to my lead yesterday — he is union, too — and we we discussing the last job opening that was posted at our place of work. Our employer doesn’t hire very often and rarely fills positions. So to see something be open was great to see. Turns out nobody in-house took the position, and out of 8 external applicants, 6 were not invited back for a second interview and 2 had committed to the job but then backed out because they found better paying positions elsewhere. I make a comment to my lead, basically saying, “yea, I can understand why those applicants backed out. We are underpaid. We are all underpaid.” I wouldn’t say he lost it, but he became a bit angry at the comment. He said, “We’re not underpaid. Think about the job for a second. You’re here 40 hours per week, but out of that 40 hours, how many hours of work do you think we do some weeks? 30? 32? Plus in the winter, we don’t get laid off and basically hang around. So you’re not underpaid. If you were in the private sector, you’d be making less, you’d be getting laid off. So just stop. It doesn’t matter what the other communities are paying their workers. I’m saying, for what ‘we’ do here, we aren’t underpaid. I think the mechanics should be paid more and I think the truck drivers should be paid more, but the laborers aren’t underpaid.”
While I get the logic, it’s a pretty weak argument I think. For one, workers in a similar community may or may not be doing as much or as little work. That is simply making assumptions at this point. I was simply trying to get the point across that a market exists close by where the wages are essentially 20-30 percent higher, for similar work and titles…and I’m being berated per se, and looked at like I have 5 heads. He thinks the wage is appropriate, yet I also heard him say to someone, “All those years we had to take 0 percent raises, 1 percent raises, furlough days on occasion, they’re paying up this year.” I thought my wage was appropriate? But by your logic of not getting raises some years, it should have fallen behind the times.
Additionally, I went into an inflation calculator and found that the starting wage at my job is the equivalent of what his starting wage was 30 years ago. That’s all well and good, but the problem is: prices of goods and services has gone up. And if I’m essentially making the same as you 30 years ago — based on inflation — your starting wage was actually better than mine due to my wage having less buying power.
My lead had been employed here for a long time. He’s jaded, he’s been toyed with by management over the years. I get where he’s coming from to some extent. He just wants to finish up his last years and get to retirement. But, man, there are people here who need to make a living too. There’s people here who don’t benefit from a lot of the same benefits you did. For example, he received longevity bonuses at various intervals over the years. Longevity for people like me has been eliminated when the union voted it out a few years back. We are trying to get it back, but at a smaller scale no doubt. My longevity bonuses won’t match what he received over the years. It’s just frustrating. Our union is basically composed of guys who reaped benefits and guys who don’t because the older guys voted on some raw deals — “they got theirs”
Lastly, if you try to make sense with my lead about some of this stuff, all it basically comes back to is “you knew what the job contained when you took it.” I love my job; I love what I do. That doesn’t mean I can’t try to fight for better wages or fringe benefits. I definitely think it’s a generational divide. My lead is in his mid 50s. I’m about 20 years younger. I just feel like it’s talking to a wall. You can’t get though to some people. And whenever you try to have a regular conversation, but you have an opposing or differing viewpoint, people just become loud and upset, and the whole conversation becomes fruitless. Just needed to vent is all.
So what are your thoughts? I’m not saying I should be paid exactly the same as, say, the other community workers. Maybe they do more work than we do. Maybe they don’t. I’m not certain. But a 5-6 dollar swing is pretty substantial, in my opinion. A market exists for the wage in jobs with similar/same titles and job descriptions.