Soldato
Maybe the warehouse workers are being paid too much?
Equal Pay for different Job roles?
- Thread starter J.T
- Start date
Maybe the warehouse workers are being paid too much?
Soldato
Less than a year isn't a Necro!
Associate
- Joined
- 19 Aug 2018
- Posts
- 74
Warehouse workers do harder job, more physically demanding with more responsibilities maybe those complaining should work in warehouse?
Oh wait it's probably too difficult, they want all the benefits but not the real equality they just pick and choose.
Not just picking on your post as a few have touched on this, but what about warehouse worker in stores who essentially do the work of those in the RDC in reverse?
Man of Honour
I worked at an assembly factory called Creda/Hotpoint for 27 years so saw 'equal pay' first hand.
In the 80s the women wanted equal pay so the bosses said yes if they could do male jobs and after a couple of months everything went back to normal.
It also happened in the 90s and early 00s with only one woman on the assembly lines being able to do a man's job.
They were given equal pay anyway and the men weren't allowed to go on the easier jobs.
Stinks.
In the 80s the women wanted equal pay so the bosses said yes if they could do male jobs and after a couple of months everything went back to normal.
It also happened in the 90s and early 00s with only one woman on the assembly lines being able to do a man's job.
They were given equal pay anyway and the men weren't allowed to go on the easier jobs.
Stinks.
Soldato
A bit like how those Dinner ladies got the same pay as as the Bin men in Birmingham when everyone know a Bin Man's job is much more physical and harder.
I'd love to see why you think warehouse work is harder, with more responsibility
I can buy that, on average, the work is more physically demanding (though there are similar jobs in stores). But the rest is almost certainly nonsense. Stores are directly responsible for generating revenue and profit (which, arguably, is the ultimate responsibility in any business). They also have to deal with a much broader amount of legislative responsibility than Distribution. Pricing, advertising, financial services advertising, a much larger amount of applicable food safety legislation, alcohol licensing, PFS, etc. Plus, there's customers, who basically wreak havoc from opening until close.
I wouldn't call warehouse work easy. But it's hardly complex or complicated, either. It's a tough job, but for a whole other set of reasons than those in supermarkets.
Last edited:
Had to deal with similar stuff working in stores. Last place I worked, 55/63 staff on the checkouts were women. Only one of them would retrieve trolleys. The rest protested, complained, forgot their safety footwear, dragged the union in to the discussion, or came back with doctors notes. It's not even a particularly physically demanding job; a machine does all of the pushing - you just have to steer.
But in fairness, it was largely just a problem with that department. Of the 55 women, probably 45 of them had been working there, in the same place, doing the same thing, for at least a decade. They were not (and from what I hear, still aren't) very accommodating toward change. Elsewhere in the store, most people would do what they could (factoring in any physical problems) to help out.
It is a little amusing that the lines between male and female roles remain so distinct though. My OH works in childcare. In 14 years, she's had one male colleague. TBH, from what she has told me about working in that industry, I think I'd sooner do warehouse work
Perhaps
I'd love to see why you think warehouse work is harder, with more responsibility
I can buy that, on average, the work is more physically demanding (though there are similar jobs in stores). But the rest is almost certainly nonsense. Stores are directly responsible for generating revenue and profit (which, arguably, is the ultimate responsibility in any business). They also have to deal with a much broader amount of legislative responsibility than Distribution. Pricing, advertising, financial services advertising, a much larger amount of applicable food safety legislation, alcohol licensing, PFS, etc. Plus, there's customers, who basically wreak havoc from opening until close.
I wouldn't call warehouse work easy. But it's hardly complex or complicated, either. It's a tough job, but for a whole other set of reasons than those in supermarkets.
It's obvious that the warehouse work is way more physically taxing, compared with either sat at a till or standing around chatting and occasionally swiping a card on a self-serve checkout. At my local Asda they have a few big lads do all the shelf stacking and the women on the tills, I bet the lads aren't getting paid more.
Sitting on a checkout all day is a doddle of a job. Very little activity. Very little responsibility. But that's maybe 25% of a store's staff. The remaining 75% are doing jobs of various levels of physical demand, complexity, and responsibility. The toughest jobs I had at "shop floor" level weren't always physically demanding ones. And I'd spent time in most areas before moving in to management. Warehouse was actually one of the bits I liked the most; minimal hassle, a clear and steady workload with little interruption.
But roles are changing. When I left Sainsbury's they were rewriting staff contracts and reorganising the business to be more like Aldi and Lidl (i.e. everyone does a bit of everything). The whole industry will go the same way, as it's simply impossible to compete on price while running on old, inefficient staffing models.
Last edited:
Soldato
Things are getting pretty grim for Glasgow City Council by the looks of it. Assets being "sold" to fund a massive claim.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-47096596
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-47096596
It is fascinating watching companies going down this route - it seems a false economy to me in many cases - having reasonable overlap of abilities is good but when they go overboard and try to make everyone across the business broadly multi-skilled it often drives away people who are good at specific things resulting in a decline towards the middle in ability and a very average workforce.
As I've said before for example those people who are naturally outgoing, good with people, etc. don't tend to be people who are well suited to getting their head down in the warehouse on repetitive tasks and will often quit sooner rather than later if pushed towards it and these are the people that often inspire others who aren't so naturally people oriented and others improve their level of ability by seeing how they handle situations and tasks, etc. and vice versa those who are good at getting their head down and doing repetitive tasks over and over without their concentration wandering are often introverted, etc. and pushing them towards people generally achieves very little except make them more inclined towards finding other employment.
Man of Honour
When Merloni came in 2002 they had a fabulous idea that people would rotate their jobs to make it more interesting so for example an 'Oven Team' worker could now be working on the 'Wiring Team' or 'Packing Team' and vice versa. What they failed to understand is that workers find their own level and what they prefer to do, Oven team was notoriously hard but the lads on there preferred it to anything else, put them on something easier like the Packing Team and they would be useless.
Anyway after a week all the assembly lines had dropped production by a massive amount and everybody went back to their Teams.
It all comes down to money. Store staffing costs were in the region of £2.5bn/year. Net profit for 17/18 was about £0.5bn before tax. So any savings on Labour have a huge effect on the bottom line. When Aldi and Lidl manage just fine with a fraction of the staff, it's fairly inevitable that at least one of the "big 3" supermarkets will try to do the same thing (but on a larger scale, given the shops are on average 4 to 5 times the size).
From what I gather, it hasn't been a very successful decision so far. Lidl and Aldi have store formats suited to working that way, and they recruit people who can handle working like that. Sainsbury's has store formats that have barely changed in decades, and staff that have been there just as long, who aren't necessarily suited to working that way. Plus, a huge chunk of the in-store management (certainly the majority around here) has only been in the role a few months, after most of the existing managers took redundancy rather than reapply for redefined roles.
Last edited:
Soldato
I would imagine that even if made policy, for practical reasons and simple sense of fairness, people will still end up settling into the roles they're most capable of. I.e. Dave might officially be the same job as Sally, but you'll usually find Dave doing the heavy lifting in the back and Sally keeping customers happy at the checkout. Obviously it's not a hard gender split but it'll happen. And then you get some people doing harder jobs for no more pay.
Which one is the harder job?