Originally published at: CVS will raise minimum wage to $15, | Boing Boing
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Putting this into historical perspective:
When adjusted for inflation, the 2020 minimum wage in the United States is around 33 percent lower than the minimum wage in 1970. Although the real dollar minimum wage in 1970 was only 1.60 U.S. dollars, when expressed in nominal 2020 dollars this increases to 10.67 U.S. dollars. The minimum wage in 2019 was 7.25 U.S. dollars, which decreases to 7.15 U.S. dollars when expressed in nominal 2020 dollars.
It’s great that CVS is doing this and using its clout, but depending on businesses in the U.S. to do the right thing by their employees has never exactly been a surefire path to reducing economic inequality.
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I needed some breathing space today and this good news gave me some.
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No, it hasn’t for sure. The race to the bottom has been very real and there’s been a terrible impact to working people.
I left the retail grocery business in the Bay Area about 22 years ago. My last year there in a union job I was making 21 dollars an hour. These good union jobs really came under attack during my time there but the worst part was that public support also started to falter as other working people questioned whether plebs at a grocery store should be “paid so much”. The problem, of course, is that these jobs set the standard - the baseline if you will - for other jobs, union and non-union, service and non-service industry. My real world experience when leaving for my first IT job was effectively based on what I was making as they brought me in for a salary just over what I was making at the store.
Fast forward to the pandemic and all the talk about our essential workers and service industry folks.
I called what is now the consolidated union up there and talked with a rep. I flat out asked him what a journeyman makes now as I was curious how wages have kept up over the years - he said for more recent hires, it tops out at what I was making 22 YEARS AGO. My peers, if any of them are still around after 22 years falling under different contracts/wages make a couple bucks more than that. He said the most is about 24/hour. In the Bay Area.
The fact that these multi-billion dollar companies are still paying people the same wages 2 decades later is appalling at best.
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I hear they’ll get the extra funds by planning to only print 1 foot per item on their receipts…
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You know, now they have a decent phone app that automatically shows me all the coupons they print for me, and a bunch more, and lets me use them automatically just by scanning my card with no paper coupon needed… and there’s still no way to avoid the giant receipt.
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In the app under settings you can choose an option to get the receipt be email only.
Thanks!
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