What Is a Just Wage?

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In my career (nursing), our wages are roughly commensurate with the amount of stress we are percieved to be under and the hours we work.
So, for instance, a hospital or nursing-home nurse, who has to give up holidays and weekends will make a lot more than a school nurse or another care setting (such as a doctor’s office) where you have your weekends and holidays (and possibly also summers) off.
Of course, it becomes an issue if you’ve always worked for the higher wage and for whatever reason you need better hours–be prepared for a sharp pay cut.
 
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Nelka said:
We received a 0.38% pay rise and the management received 12%.

Just?
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Depends on what you do, and depends on what the managers do. My managers make more than me, but they are also responsible for running the entire company, ensuring that we stay in business and in the black to make sure that all of their employees remain employed. They work more hours than me, and their work is more crucial for the company to continue functioning.
 
redbetta said:
Instead of talking about wages, we should be getting adults who should have the skills and experience by now to know how to do something other than flipping burgers out of these dead-end teenager jobs.
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How about we recognize that “dead end jobs” are honest labor that deserves respect and compensation? Demeaning the work does not advance the cause of justice or the dignity of labor.

We are moving more and more to a service-based economy. Whether someone is flipping burgers or picking lettuce, if they are reliably coming in and doing work that needs to be done, they deserve the dignity due to an honest laborer. It is a scandal how many employers generate enormous wealth by shaving from the wages and benefits of those who work very hard and yet already make a small fraction of what the employer is pulling in.
 
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“Dead-end jobs” may be a term with negative connotations, but it’s a factually-accurate description of certain kinds of works. Some jobs lack the capacity for advancement, and are not meant to be long-term or sustaining.
 
These are called dead-end jobs because nobody is supposed to stay in them beyond their thirties. They are meant to introduce people to work, not to live off of.
 
redbetta said:
Honestly, we need to do something about all these adults in entry-level jobs.
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Careful, that might lead you to some uncomfortable places concerning immigration and the idea that we should flood our country with one million foreigners a year when half our 30-year olds are underemployed.
 
ProdglArchitect said:
“Dead-end jobs” may be a term with negative connotations, but it’s a factually-accurate description of certain kinds of works. Some jobs lack the capacity for advancement, and are not meant to be long-term or sustaining.
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Why should an honest day’s work that the employer is going to need to have done and that represents a major portion of the employer’s workforce be something “not meant to be long-term or sustaining”? Where does the employer get off deciding that the employment they offer doesn’t need to pay a sustainable wage when it obviously is not an unsustainable business enterprise? If their business plan won’t support the people whose sweat equity is required to make the plan turn a profit, perhaps that is what is not “long-term” or “sustaining.”

I’m not talking about a lower wage for someone who actually does do less work because they don’t have the skills required to do the job at a more senior level yet. It is reasonable to pay someone less than others with similar responsibilities because his labor is of lower quality.
 
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Let’s take that one step further. The 18 year old has a high degree of manual dexterity, and is noticeably faster than the 35 year old, and is more accurate (facing is an issue; shelves have little or no “spare space”).

The 35 year old is slower than average (meaning, noticeably slower than the 18 year old, and measurably older than other shelf stockers).

Now, where do we go? My recollection is that Walmart is not unionized (out here it would be Local 1053, if I recall from 50 years ago when I worked part time in grocery in college). Because the unions are divided into locals, the rates vary and are driven at least in part by local economies. In some instances, starting pay is between $8.40 and 9.50 an hour. an average top-out is about $17.hour, again with variations based on local economies.

Additionally, grocery stores on average have a profit margin of about 3%. In other words, they make money on volume; lacking volume, they will fail. Walmart has exercised two options: they provide mediocre products (e.g. clothing) and price food products at or slightly below local competition and has gone to the store model of “one stop shopping” to drive more business. I don’t know their profit level, but I doubt it varies significantly from the norm.

And if we decide (as a number of jurisdictions have) that we will have a minimum wage of$15/hour, in other words almost what a 5 year journeyman at peak would earn, we are either going to have tremendous wage compression, or we are going to see acceleration of the wage scale.

Accelerate the wage scale, and the store is faces with one of two options; raise prices or reduce work staff.

In short, it does not matter what the background (age, children, home/apartment and any other details) of the employee is. What matters ultimately is what is the cost of having the door open to do business with customers in the morning.

I am well aware of pay disparity between owners of companies (particularly large ones) and the “worker bees”. But it is also a fact that productivity has a direct effect on the bottom line of a business, large or small. Paying based on age and family issues (kids, mortgage etc.) is totally irrelevant to production.

Retailers are going out of business or bankrupt in spite of paying retail clerks minimum wage, as Amazon is eating their lunch. You can demand the local bookstore pay its clerks a minimum of $15/hour (Seattle has done this) and it will simply result in the bookstore closing - which does the worker how much good? The same goes for the chain bookstores; one by one they are going, going, gone.

So now, blackforest, how do you wish to roll it?

I understand thoroughly the issues being asked. I also understand that many who promote higher wages have a) never rund a business of any sort having employees, and b) have a whole lot of false assumptions as to what may or may not be possible in wage structures.
 
ProdglArchitect said:
Depends on what you do, and depends on what the managers do. My managers make more than me, but they are also responsible for running the entire company, ensuring that we stay in business and in the black to make sure that all of their employees remain employed. They work more hours than me, and their work is more crucial for the company to continue functioning.
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My managers work about 30 hours per week and dumped much of their managerial work on us. In other care homes only the senior staff/management would deal with all the medical side but we do it all. We also do a lot of the management paperwork.
 
Because of the nature of the nature of the industry that employs those people, and the type of work being undertaken. The only way these places stay in business at all is to operate cheaply. If they raise prices to pay their employees more, we will stop going to them.

Our society created the conditions that allow this to happen and, while it would be wonderful to pay everyone a livable wage, attempting to do so would likely result in their entire establishment being closed down.

If we want to fix the problem, we need to move beyond the demand for cheap and fast and be willing to collectively only support those places which pay their employees well.
 
Nelka said:
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ProdglArchitect:
Depends on what you do, and depends on what the managers do. My managers make more than me, but they are also responsible for running the entire company, ensuring that we stay in business and in the black to make sure that all of their employees remain employed. They work more hours than me, and their work is more crucial for the company to continue functioning.
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My managers work about 30 hours per week and dumped much of their managerial work on us. In other care homes only the senior staff/management would deal with all the medical side but we do it all. We also do a lot of the management paperwork.
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Then I would say that that is a clearly unjust situation which does not meet the criteria outlined in the CCC.
 
If you are not a socialist at age 20, you have no heart. If you are not a capitalist by age 25, you have no brain.
 
otjm said:
I understand thoroughly the issues being asked. I also understand that many who promote higher wages have a) never rund a business of any sort having employees, and b) have a whole lot of false assumptions as to what may or may not be possible in wage structures.
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This is pretty accurate. I had a teacher friend of mine take me to task about my ideas on education, as she thought my proposals lacked insight to the reality of the education system, yet, she thinks nothing about providing proposals about business to which she has no real insight.

My father owned his own one-person business, and I work for a large corporation. My customers either run medium-large sized businesses, or run major P&Ls at large businesses. I agree with your perspective.

(side note: Walmart’s net margin is around 4%…its around 2% if you use their “income from only Walmart operations”…I looked at their latest financial statement. Your 3% profit margin for grocery is accurate)
 
redbetta said:
Instead of talking about wages, we should be getting adults who should have the skills and experience by now to know how to do something other than flipping burgers out of these dead-end teenager jobs.
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The question a lot of us have is whether we even have the jobs in our economy to put everyone into a skilled job. There’s no hardcoded reason that an economy is going to necessarily generate enough living wage jobs for everyone who needs a living wage. We’ve been over the years in the u.s. losing skilled jobs and gaining unskilled jobs, which means more people end up in unskilled jobs.

The problem we’re seeing is if you give people skills, employers start demanding MORE skills. So you have a job that used to require a college degree. Only now there are more applicants than college degrees, so you need an advanced degree or a degree and a year’s unpaid internship, or a degree and a number of hours of volunteering. So you end up with people who now have a degree in something they were assured would get them job skills and are still only employable in dead-end jobs.
 
I think we need to get out of the mindset that degrees = skills. The bachelor’s degree has become just a lazy way for employers to weed-out applicants. The more years I spend in college, the more I’m convinced that most of what I learn I’m never going to use at work. And I’m not studying basket-weaving either.
 
You’re in health care, also?
Agencies are a curse and a blessing.
They’re very expensive for the facility, and also a bit risky, because you’re bringing in strangers off the street who aren’t familiar with your residents or your policies.
But on the other hand, they fill in the gaps for staffing.
But on the other-other hand (as somebody who works for agency in addition to having a permanent job), agencies don’t have to pay for benis for the per diem staff, so they like that…
 
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redbetta said:
I think we need to get out of the mindset that degrees = skills. The bachelor’s degree has become just a lazy way for employers to weed-out applicants. The more years I spend in college, the more I’m convinced that most of what I learn I’m never going to use at work. And I’m not studying basket-weaving either.
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The only reason I’m really glad I went to college is because I met my wife there. I barely use any of what I learned there in the real world.
 
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