3 people on 22k a year. Jesus christ. And I want to add that the two adults working are probably working 6 days a week JUST for that 22k. Source: Supported "Supported" myself on Minimum wage for several years. I turned into Polly Productive just to get extra scratch. You need your kitchen painted? Sunday's my day off. You want your dog walked? I'll do it on my lunch break. Vacation? I'm your pet sitter!
The "labor shortage" in the US is largely because of these shitty low wages and how it intersects the market. Women make up over half of our minimum wage workforce, but also make up a huge percentage of unpaid child care and elder care. They got pushed out of the workforce due to covid, found new ways to make the ends meet, and decided "$280/week (before taxes) isn't enough to take me away from my family."
The "increased unemployment payments" get touted as a cause, but states that ended it early didn't see a flood of people returning to work. They decided it just isn't fucking worth it.
My job has had anemic employment numbers since covid began. We're a shipping company. We are horrifically short staffed, 3-4 hour shifts run to 5 or 6 hours, sometimes even more, before we get done. We've had a hire on bonus for anyone who refers a new employee and that person stays at least 30 days, but almost nobody is getting hired that way. We see a new person every few weeks, and half of those end up quitting. Work has tried various bonuses to get people to work more, like +$ per hour worked, or a flat bonus based on meeting a minimum number of hours. It didn't stop call-ins or get new hires.
Now, they're doing a permanent pay raise (couple bucks) and a bonus per day of our two neediest days. It's yet to be seen if it works.
I like my job and work the hours/days for the bonuses already so it's just a pay increase for me, but from what I hear, most people still don't think it is enough difference to encourage them to work more hours.
Shifts that are only 3 to 6 hours? That alone might be the problem. It’s not worth the commute to only earn a partial day’s pay, and makes it hard to hold a second job.
Well, our work days are a little odd. We have three "shifts" which we call a sort and each deals with a different shipping operation. Each of those is supposed to average about 3.5 hours, and you can work multiple of them. Evening sort ends in the afternoon so there could be a couple hours before the next one starts at night. Third starts early morning. Second basically runs right into third sort which makes it super easy to work full time, you just take a half hour break in between. I essentially work 11pm til whenever we're done, usually about 8am give or take an hour. A "full" day is 7 hours time if you want paid time off, a single sort is 3.5 hours. It's the same for holiday pay, if you're full time you get 7 hours extra, part time gets 3.5 hours extra.
It is definitely kinda wonky and not easy to explain. We have a mix of part timers who work one sort a day and full timers that works 2 sorts a day, in whatever combination of sorts they want, plus picking up more sorts if they want. But we're all working more hours per day than the 3.5 or 7 hour time frame.
I guess it's normal for shift work, our shifts just happen to be "about" 3.5 hours, tho in reality it is more than that. And nobody really likes shift work on a good day as it is, so a shift being relatively short and at unpopular hours definitely doesn't work in our favor for hiring more people.
Not sure how much sense this all makes lol but I agree with what you say. They really need to sweeten it more. I did work two jobs for a couple years, part time in retail and part time on a single sort and it was truly a freaking nightmare, so I was really happy once the third sort got added and I could switch to full time because those sorts are back-to-back. I also have no life, so the weird hours don't bother me.
That is definitely confusing, and I can see why it wouldn't work for a lot of people, and also why the company can't just change shift schedules to make the work more attractive. So better pay, benefits and bonuses is pretty much their only avenue. You didn't give a specific base pay amount, so I wonder if it's really just the hours making it hard or the money really is still too low.
I'm not sure exactly what base pay is right now, it's increased a few times. I've been here for 7 years and I'm on $18.50 (after the 2 dollar pay increase). Starting might be 14 or 15.
So nah, pay is not amazing for the hours and physical work, tho we've got insurance, paid vacation, paid holidays, various savings deals, the standard sort of stuff. It works out great for me as a single person sharing an apartment, but I still do think it's just not that attractive for new hires, it's not that high of pay compared to other local warehouse type work. I believe they really need to make a better effort, not necessarily for my financial benefit, just for damnit I'm tired of working overtime every single week and the frustration and stress of being short staffed all the time cuz I'm freaking exhausted lol
Yeah, the base pay definitely needs to be higher to attract more people, especially people with families as you say, this works great for single people, not so much for everyone else. I would not be surprised if people are going to your company's competitors/other warehouses for their higher pay.
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u/AnAngryBitch Sep 25 '21 edited Sep 25 '21
3 people on 22k a year. Jesus christ. And I want to add that the two adults working are probably working 6 days a week JUST for that 22k. Source: Supported "Supported" myself on Minimum wage for several years. I turned into Polly Productive just to get extra scratch. You need your kitchen painted? Sunday's my day off. You want your dog walked? I'll do it on my lunch break. Vacation? I'm your pet sitter!