Holy cow almost 20 bucks an hour to bag groceries/stock shelves or run groceries over the price scanner. Now I understand why the grocery stores have a strike on their hands and it costs me $200 to just fill up one grocery cart. With no actual skills and because of a union they get that wage. The union wants the public to change their lives by shopping somewherelse and support the Union. For what? So it can cost me more money when I go through the checkout......ya right don't think so. I'll be doin the moonwalk right through the picket lines. I live in San Diego and they get about the same down here. If anything, fast food workers should get more than grocery clerks. At least the fast food workers gotta work quick, are under much more "stress" and they also have to show some skill by turning off the french fry buzzer.

 

Actually $2.65 is for servers. (waitress's) The minimum wage is in $5 something an hour.

Oh congrats Wall. Get your stuff payed off and then you can get even more mods. [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-smile.gif[/img]

 

The Federal Minimum Wage is $5.85 per hour

 

YardBird, as always there is the uninformed. The strike in California is not about money it is about the proposal of a two tier scale, which is the idea that Safeway wants to be able to hire new employees and be able to work them 40 hours or more and the old employees 20 hours and the second proposal is that the new hire's will not be eligble for insurance for 3 years and their family members will not be covered, to me that does not make sense. They tell us we built the company but at the same time they telling us to get screwed. I know every time you see a strike everybody thinks it is over money but in this case it is not, I know it is the same proposal they gave us 2 years ago and I was on the contract committe. As for making almost 20 an hour I did a diservice to the my fellow union members by not including that I am managment and not everybody makes that kind of wage. The front end is around 12 to 13 range in fact it is the company that chooses who makes the big dollars, the night crews and meat dept and produce is the ones who usually get it. Do you feel that is too much to? As for skills, in every job there is skill required, you may not see it but the grocery industry sees it and pays for it, they want the people who can do the job with most productvity and the least amount of babysiting. I went thru 19 people on my night crew in less then 2 years because most of them just did not like the hours and several felt they should be making the same wage as Iand my fellow journeymen {yes the industry regonizes the journeyman classification} but do not want to put the hours in to learn the job. A few quit because Safeway would not pay and they were good which was unfortunate as the were very productive and I did not have to watch them, oh, maybe bacause they had been in the business elsewhere and they knew the job. That is the going rate up here for stockers union and non union, we lose people all the time because the other stores Fred Meyers{Kroger} offers more, some of their best stockers make over 20 and they are non union. In fact Arizona which is a RIGHT TO WORK STATE non union pays 17 an hour, how do I know that, because I vacation in Parker Arizona on occasion and had the chance to talk to there employees of Safeway and found out one employee in particular came from San Diego, reason was he was making the 19 an hour and could not afford to live there. With all your high taxes i can not beleive people still live in your state. So don't get pi@@ssed off at the workers because they are just doing a job, blame the right persons. It used to be that companies took care of their employees but they are getting more and more pressure from Wallstreet to improve their stock value and the way they recomend is by raising prices and cutting labor costs by either cutting pay or hours, they use the route of the hours. When if they just stop giving them selves large bonuses and take care of the employees the customers will come and everybody would be happy. Afterall if you do not put stuff on the shelves or have people to ring you up there will be no money to give bonuses. I agree that FASTFOOD workers should earn more, they do work hard in fact, I know this is going to be hard to swallow but it was the unions in Alaska that got a petetion drive and got over 50000 signatures to get in the ballot to raise the mininum wage to 7.50 an hour up here, guess what it worked so now everyone who was making mininum wage got raises. I know I will not change you opinion on this subject but at least I got the otherside of the story out. Any questions just ask me, I am a UNION SHOP STEWARD as well.

 

Wallstreet- Congrats and it is a good start. I worked at a grocery store while i was in high school. ( i think min wage was 2.70) But beer and cigs were cheap then. The good old days.....

 

Minimum wage is $5.15 an hour.

 

Alaska has a 7.50 mininum wage. Alot better then other states, thanks to the unions who got the petetion drive started. Unlike some people think unions do good things without expecting money in return.AlaskaBoy.

 

Started work when 2.15 was minumin.... always remember...there's nothing wrong with earning a honest living, no matter what it pays....

also, your only as poor as you choose to be.

 

I worked at a Wendy's flipping burgers for 3 years while in high school. I think I got $6.15 an hour. Easy job, kept me out of trouble(for the most part) and I ended up hooking up with one of the managers! Can you say, "special priveleges." LOL[img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-wink.gif[/img] We all have to start somewhere. Try to build up your work history as someone else said, it looks good for you in the long run. Good luck!

 

I'll catch some wrath for this one, but it's too true.

Unions are good for 2 things - getting (usually) unskilled laborers relatively better pay than others and 2) moving their own jobs out of the country (manufacturing especially).

Can we fix this, yeah... but not how we look at it now.