To think warehouse workers and shop assistants have very different jobs?

[LovelyBitOfHam]

Inspired by this article regarding Next workers, similar to previous cases with supermarkets.

AIBU to think these are very different roles, and it’s fair to pay warehouse workers a higher wage?

I have worked retail before and didn’t love it, but I don’t think I would ever accept a job in a warehouse.

I’m also very aware that working in a store in a shopping mall or city centre is far easier to get to than an out of town warehouse on an industrial estate, and pay should reflect this.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cj0817jd9dqo

Which is utterly ridiculous. Employers pay the minimum they need to to fill their vacancies and attract workers in to the job. If they need to offer a higher wage to get people into the warehouse then that's why they've done it. Not because they think the warehouse work is more important.

II do think that there can be some significant differences in these jobs. They are similar in that they don't really require any special education, you need to be a good worker, average intelligence, in reasonable health.

Warehouses of course aren't public facing, but they can be much more physically demanding, dangerous, and in some cases the environmental conditions are worse. (eg, not air conditioning, customer facing roles usually have things like a/c, good lighting etc.)

In a lot of ways I think it's actually quite artificial to try and make wages equivalent across differernt jobs like this. If I want to gire ten warehouse workers and ten shop assistants, and offer the same wage, and I get ten good applicants for the shop job, and none for the warehouse job - well, that suggests that people are not willing to work in a warehouse for that wage.

Maybe more people like shop work, maybe it is harder to find people fit enough for the warehouse, but I don't know if you can really argue with what workers will accept, or not.

Maybe the people who say they are the same should try moving their shop workers over to warehouses? It would be interesting to see how that would work out.

Very sad to see so many people who do not understand equal pay legislation and why it is so important.

i think part of it is some see certain tasks more challenging than other tasks and then think it should be x for x tasks and eg higher or lower for x tasks, i guess its the argument of why should someone aspire to be better or work harder eg if they were all paid the same as the CEO vs eg the self stacker. (rightly or wrongly that's my basic understanding of the points some people have)

Maybe more women would work in the warehouses if they were given toy diggers.

when young

Yes, this.

It's not a;; that straightforward to calculate value of work like that anyway, in terms of what each worker is producing financially. Partly because the price of the products is set in large part by the costs of production. So the whole idea of calculating the value of the work is backward. The cost of the work determines the value of the product.

@LucasNorth1 that is not what is happening!! Routinely jobs done by women are devalued. Look at nursery workers. Many are just above minimum wage, they have a qualification, have to follow the regulatory framework of OFSTED, and deliver the EFYS curriculum. And yet their pay does not reflect the level of qualification or skills.

Surely that’s a historical cultural thing though - warehouses were and probably still are(?) more likely to be the workplaces of men? As a student I had a summer job in a warehouse fixing mobile phones and other than me, it was all men. I didn’t enjoy the job precisely because it was such a male environment, I am referring to the early 00s so things have probably changed.

I think it's more that there are more people in the pool of those who could do the job.

Competition for positions mean there is not much need to increase the wage.

Both men and women are equally able to do something like check out groceries, say, unlike when I was growing up you often see men in these positions now.

But if work is very heavy, there are fewer people, man and women who can do it. If they are likely to do things like put their backs out more often that is also a contributing factor.

They have to offer more to get the positions filled with people who are not doofuses.

Who says they don't understand it? Maybe they just don't think it's making valid comparisons?

I'm not sure about that. A lot of warehouse work can be quite heavy, and even size can make a difference. People who are even a little less fit or smaller can more easily get hurt.

I am quite happy with male dominated workplaces, I was in the military for years and I liked it fine. I wouldn't like to work in a warehouse though (doing warehouse specific work), and a lot of that is down to the physical demands of the job. Of course that just fine for some women, but on average, more of them might struggle, especially as they move past youth. Also - a lot of heavy dangerous jobs are not great during pregnancy so some women get out of them and sometimes don't go back.

But the other element with this is, not all warehouse jobs are the same. Some aren't that physical, and it's a perfectly nice environment. But others are high volume fast work very physical, very uncomfortable.

I think comparing across sectors is very fraught and really artificial.

The physical demands are the same as shelf stacking. You use forklift trucks for really heavy loads, and forklift truck drivers are paid more than warehouse workers.

And being physically fit is not a skill. Be an Amazon picker. You walk bloody miles every day and it is low paid job.

The higher pay for bin lorry drivers is due to the need to have LGV licence which is harder to get than fork lift trucks etc.

Plus also pushing around stinking bins and shift work, although the latter also applying to retail and warehouse of course.

But it's incredibly disappointing to see so many people arguing against the need to pay women as much as men for work that has been repeatedly determined to be of equal value in court.

I think we as women often think more manual jobs are 'harder' as our innate strength, or rather relative lack of it compared with men, is against us.

What we fail to recognise is that women tend to be better at some other skills (as a group, possibly due to socialisation) and also tend to more often want (often due to childcare or elderly care needs) shorter working hours.

Employers take advantage of the latter and we sell ourselves short with the former.

Neither of these jobs are "easier" or "harder", they just suit different people.

Some people would hate to deal with the public and would rather be physically active.

Some people are well suited to public-facing job and would hate pushing boxes around a warehouse all day.

Why do you feel they should be paid differently? I'd say they require around equal amounts of time/ commitment/ skill in different ways and are on around the same level.

Also in this case the warehouse split was 53% men 47% women.

I do not understand that.They employees both men and women in both the warehouse and the stores.Presumavly there is no barrier to a woman working in t he warehouse to get a better wage if she wanted to.The 'price' of labour is surely determined by supply and demand

Any job dealing with the batshit public deserves triple pay.

I’ve done retail (Sainsburys) and now work in a warehouse. Retail was very easy compared to what I do now. There is a massive difference

Warehouse work is generally done by men, and is a full time job.

Retail work is generally done by women, and there are all sorts of shifts, mainly part-time. Because it's considered to be pin money, it is paid less.

I also think that a customer-facing role probably requires more skill than a warehouse role, but I've never worked in a warehouse so I don't know. I don't know if it's harder. It might be physically harder, but dealing with nasty customers is going to be mentally harder.

The law is the law on equal pay. Whatever anyone thinks, it’s been around for decades. Individual companies can pay a different rate to another company for what looks like a similar job. Their choice. However within a company, there must be adherence to equal
pay legislation. That means comparing jobs based on equal value. Not what some posters seem to think is relevant! Within a pay policy there can be enhancements for qualifications, length of time in job, discounted purchases etc but the standard basic pay must be the same if the jobs are equal in terms of value.

I've done both and the warehouse was a piece of piss. Switch brain off, work at a steady pace all day.

Retail, my life was threatened by irate customers. I had more death and violence threats in customer service roles than in decades of prisons, shelters and addiction work.

They’re different jobs but that doesn’t mean one is less skilled or less difficult (or less important) than the other. You just need different attributes. Warehouse work is more physically demanding and requires a lot more safety/manual handling/logistics type skills - but doesn’t require (for example) customer service or sales skills or money handling. Plenty of retail workers wouldn’t last five minutes in a warehouse but plenty of warehouse workers wouldn’t last five minutes working in store. It seems perfectly fair to me that they should be paid equally.