Christine
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Aug 31, 1999
I hear that excuse a lot to keep certain jobs low wage and without benefits or job protections. And I find it ironic given that many people in our grandparents generation (maybe even your grandparents themselves) did that very job and were able to make a living doing so. As for the other jobs, I was pointing that....well, it's all relative. There are plenty of people that don't think those jobs should be well paid livable jobs too.
Now you've made me have memories!!! Historically where I live, grocery stores have been unionized. I grew up in the 60s and 70s and remember the same grocery store clerks working in the same store for their whole lives. While I believe they were making a lower wage, they got benefits and a pension from the union. While most of our grocery stores are still unionized, I believe their benefits have eroded and basically the union keeps their wages up. I think the last grocery store cashier "lifer" that I know here locally retired about 5 years ago after about 40 years of working the checkout.
Now I don't think it was enough to live on by herself, but it certainly was a worthy job in her mind and better than a regular run-of-the-mill minimum wage job.
I think even though unionized, those cashier jobs were relatively lower paid, you have to factor in that the minimum wage has not kept up with inflation so that's why people don't live well enough on them to begin with.