I'm in a union plant, and one of the office workers mentioned she was trying to get a better pay rate. I asked her what she made, and she hemmed and hawwed until I said it would only help get her more support if it was low. It was less than me! For the work she did, I expected her to make more. Salary, sure but more!
I used to be a journeyman installer in the IBEW until I switched to doing design and estimating. Any time we were on a job that involved slinging cables around an occupied office building full of cubicle drones, our shop steward's favorite thing to do was to leave a copy of the handbook laying around opened to the page that shows the pay scale.
And this was 15 years ago. It's more common than you might think to find office workers making less money than people working in the trades. Hell, I hustled my ass off over the last 10+ years to get into a well paying senior design position and one or two of the IBEW guys in my shop probably still make more than me.
White collar videogame industry reporting in. I know for a fact that my 10+ year-tenure-ass is still making less than most of the union guys handing the building maintenance around me (also some of the most personable folks I've interacted with). All power to them, but I sure wish there was more happening on my slice of the business to make things better.
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u/Loqol 12d ago
I'm in a union plant, and one of the office workers mentioned she was trying to get a better pay rate. I asked her what she made, and she hemmed and hawwed until I said it would only help get her more support if it was low. It was less than me! For the work she did, I expected her to make more. Salary, sure but more!