Why You Will Never Get Equal Pay for Women

[Bamspeedy]

Reading more about the case and doing some of my own research, I understand (and may agree) with some of the points, but still disagree on other parts.

She was upset to find that the mostly male warehouse workers continued to receive double pay for Sunday shifts while she and other long-serving shop staff were recently forced off that rate on to time and a half.

https://www.theguardian.com/busines...al-pay-claim-could-cost-supermarket-up-to-4bn

Agree with her, overtime pay should be either double or time and a half for everyone.

Tesco has several distribution centers, but only one 'mechanized', correct? I think what happened was the mechanized paid the same or similar to the other distribution centers. Then the stores look at the mechanized warehouse and think "Oh, that's easy work, they just watch cases go by on a conveyor belt*, we should be paid like them".

*Which may or may not be true, I don't know all the details of every job in a 'mechanized' warehouse, other than obviously a mechanized one requires fewer workers.

Reading job reviews I see alot more complaints about working in the warehouse of difficulty meeting performance standards and walking 5 miles a day and those working in stores saying they were paid pretty good and loved dealing with customers.

 

[Silurian]

Well we shall see what happens if it ends up in court then more details will come out.

 

[Bamspeedy]

Well we shall see what happens if it ends up in court then more details will come out.

She is also making the argument that the distribution center pays 2.5 pounds more per hour. Yeah, so. Most companies just don't hand out higher pay for no reason. Even if it's determined the jobs are 'of equal value', workers themselves might not think so and won't work at the 'harder' job if they can be paid the same at the 'easier' job.

 

[Silurian]

I would agree that everything is done for a reason, often the reasons are historical.
The workers in a distribution centre also have more bargaining power than shop workers.

 

[Traitorfish]

Reading job reviews I see alot more complaints about working in the warehouse of difficulty meeting performance standards and walking 5 miles a day and those working in stores saying they were paid pretty good and loved dealing with customers.

Fake news, nobody likes speaking to customers.

 

[Zardnaar]

Reading more about the case and doing some of my own research, I understand (and may agree) with some of the points, but still disagree on other parts.



https://www.theguardian.com/busines...al-pay-claim-could-cost-supermarket-up-to-4bn

Agree with her, overtime pay should be either double or time and a half for everyone.

Tesco has several distribution centers, but only one 'mechanized', correct? I think what happened was the mechanized paid the same or similar to the other distribution centers. Then the stores look at the mechanized warehouse and think "Oh, that's easy work, they just watch cases go by on a conveyor belt*, we should be paid like them".

*Which may or may not be true, I don't know all the details of every job in a 'mechanized' warehouse, other than obviously a mechanized one requires fewer workers.

Reading job reviews I see alot more complaints about working in the warehouse of difficulty meeting performance standards and walking 5 miles a day and those working in stores saying they were paid pretty good and loved dealing with customers.

I have done both (customer service and warehouse) and while customers can be unpleasant its not really a hard job as such. You stand on a rubber mat, most customers are fine and you are in an are conditioned building at a reasonable temperature.

Warehouses are cold, drafty, or to hot in summer, you are on your feet 8-12 (or more) hours on concrete and can wrack up 10 000 steps by lunchtime. In the DC a fast picker could get around 750-1000 units a shift, a unit could be a box of tampons, large pack of ramen noodles a sack of spuds, 12 large cans of dogfood or 27kg container of whatever (or a beer keg come to think of it 50L ones are 63 kg here). Only one female picker she could pick in the 750-100 range but the fastest 2-3 males were doing in the 1000-1500+ range. It can also stink as occasionally you come across things like cans of cat/dog meat that have ruptured and are full of maggots or something or broken glass jars of some sauce that has gone off and the shrink wrap can hide the smell (surprise).

If I had the choice at the same rate of pay with time and a half which we got and the checkout chicks (well most of them are female) I would take the checkout. I got injured in the warehouse, checkouts just boring and sometimes unpleasant. Its like McDonalds, worked there years ago kinda meh work but far from the worst things I have done.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

I also note that on the one hand Manfred is saying there is not a clear and self-evidently important difference between genders in leadership roles, which is fine, but then neglects to explain what force is then causing a systematic gender imbalance.

Demanding satisfactory evidence and arguments from everyone else, while never adopting any actual position himself, just hinting at one through repeated statements of disbelief, is like guerilla arguing or something.

Disagreeing with someone else's positive claims doesn't put an onus on me to make my own you know. Not sure why you don't get this.

 

[El_Machinae]

Sounds like I should replace some of those people with an automated employee. That way, I don't have to pay the higher wage the task seems to demand

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Sounds like I should replace some of those people with an automated employee. That way, I don't have to pay the higher wage the task seems to demand

A burger joint/start up just launched in Pasadena that uses a robot to flip the patties. The end is nigh for low-skilled labor. We really need to prepare for this.

 

[Broken_Erika]

A burger joint/start up just launched in Pasadena that uses a robot to flip the patties. The end is nigh for low-skilled labor. We really need to prepare for this.

Combine that with some of those Japanese robots to man the cashiers and some driverless cars to do the deliveries and soon there will be no need for humans in fast food joints.....

 

[warpus]

A burger joint/start up just launched in Pasadena that uses a robot to flip the patties. The end is nigh for low-skilled labor. We really need to prepare for this.

Our governments need to prepare for this. Industry will just slash jobs as they see fit.

The problem is convincing people to vote for parties who support things like employee protections. We also have a problem in western democracies in that our governments are not able to plan long term.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Combine that with some of those Japanese robots to man the cashiers and some driverless cars to do the deliveries and soon there will be no need for humans in fast food joints.....

Good news -

Humans still have to place the cheese on the burger patties. For now anyways.

 

[Lexicus]

Pff. Robots can't add the most important ingredient: love

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Until they put cat ears on the robots to convince us that late-stage capitalism is too cute to hate.

 

[Farm Boy]

Combine that with some of those Japanese robots to man the cashiers and some driverless cars to do the deliveries and soon there will be no need for humans in fast food joints.....

I wonder if we'll finally be mentally free of undesirables once we no longer need to interact with them for menial tasks and services and once we've disarmed them to the extent that they can't trip out and break our rhythm. Thy kingdom come.

 

[El_Machinae]

A burger joint/start up just launched in Pasadena that uses a robot to flip the patties. The end is nigh for low-skilled labor. We really need to prepare for this.

I regularly say, a universal income coupled to taxes on profits at upper income levels, along with a dedicated Employment Program, and this Employment Program can show negative returns at first order analysis. As long as the output actually has social utility. We want the low income class to benefit from an increase in productivity. And we want people to have jobs if they want to earn money

 

[warpus]

With universal income some people are not going to work, they'll be happy just taking home the amount that's dished out. And IMO that's fine. Those who want more money can get a job

 

[El_Machinae]

We currently cannot afford a universal basic income that allows people to not work. But eventually, we will. That's why it needs to scale with a tax on profits.

 

[warpus]

We currently cannot afford a universal basic income that allows people to not work. But eventually, we will. That's why it needs to scale with a tax on profits.

You mean the U.S. can't afford it or we can't afford it in general?

I've read that if we get rid of all welfare programs here in Canada, it can pay for universal income, with money left over even. But I admit I'm not sure how accurate that is, although isn't universal income supposed to be generally speaking a lot more efficient than welfare programs?

 

[Lexicus]

We currently cannot afford a universal basic income that allows people to not work.

Sure we can. What we can't afford is to keep people involuntarily unemployed in the name of fighting inflation.