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

I agree that, at first sight, one would have thought so, BUT if the reports in the press are correct, Next's legal team didn't push this line very hard (if, indeed, at all).

Perhaps there isn't as much difference (at least if you work for Next) as one would have thought.

Ithink this is a good point.

Any kind of PT job in my experience is likely to pay less than a full time job with an equivalent set of skills. There are valid reasons for that I think in a lot of cases, mainly it can give a bigger pool of potential workers to choose from. It in some cases can also include teenagers and students, so that is more potential people.

In terms of PT positions, usually people with jobs like this are not the only source of income in a household. There might be a spouse, their might be some kind of student funding, which means the employer can get away with offering less of a wage. This group has historically included a lot of women with kids who want more flexible work, or who are maybe going back to work after their kids have grown.

I think this is actually becoming somewhat less true. It's been a common pattern in the sector I work in, for many years it was very much female dominated and included a lot of PT shift work. Large numbers of the women had kids in school and maybe took a few years off. It was a nice environment to work in.

Interestingly there has been something of a shift. Wages and shifts are similar, but the environment has changed to be much more stressful and even physical, and there are a lot more men in the job now. Both men and women are more often needing and wanting a full income - one wage in a family plus a topper upper job isn't enough, so there is pressure to increase wages.

I do wonder, where some of these jobs aren't so unbalanced in terms of sex as they used to be, as it seems in this warehouse job in question, how legislation like this really applies - you can't argue that warehouse workers are getting more because they are men since about half are women? Doesn't that suggests there are other factors determining the wage?

There aren’t valid reasons to pay pert time staff less! Are part time teachers paid less? No. They acquire their salary the same as fi
time staff do. It’s not working hours, it’s about equal pay for equal value.

So many people here defending sex discrimination. I think society is going backwards.

@Nadeed Plus a massive misunderstanding of employment law. Shocking really.

@Runnerduck34 I worked in the leisure centre about 15 years ago, but as far as I am aware the pay structures remain the same.

Not in law, but in practice, yes. Part-time jobs are sought after, so employers can get away with paying less because they are offering "flexibility".

Next has discovered that if the law gets involved, it's a little less easy.

@parkrun500club Next and plenty of others may well be finding out that the law is what matters. We shall see as other claims are not as advanced. By the way, I used to work with job share deputy heads and knew of job share head teachers. No salary reductions there. If a job is assessed at a salary or grade, part time doesn’t alter that. Hopefully women wake up a bit now. It’s only taken 50 years !

I have often heard the argument that wages should be decided by supply/demand market forces in a free market.

I disagree in the free market for determining wages as it always ends up being sexist, ageist and ableist, and sometimes also racist and classist.

The wages for jobs should be calibrated according to skill, qualification and experience. There should be caps on CEO and other senior managers pay. Caps on bonuses.

Wages are regulated already and I think they should be regulated further for equity and fairness.

Wages are decided by free market forces, except where we interfere in some way to say they aren't.

It's not necessarily wrong to interfere - that might mean setting minimum wages, or having a union to negotiate (though really that's the market) or laws against paying people differently based on race or sex, but it's important to understand the primary driver of wages is what workers are willing to work for. And there are cases where workers, even professional ones, are willing to have a lower wage for a more flexible job.(Or you could look at it the other way, the employer is paying a premium to workers who will be available for any shift or extended hours.)

No business can pay workers less than they are willing to work for, whether or not some egghead has decided that one type of job is "equivalent" to another. If it is easy to get warehouse workers, but not shop clerks, the question is if the work is equivalent, why is there this differential? The metrics used to determine that kind of thing are pretty crude (and I think this is the main reason people resist that kind of comparison - they are obviously so crude people see they are different kinds of work.)

PT vs FT does also can affect value to the employer in real ways, it' s not only a neutral value. Especially when there is a squeeze on the number of workers, where there is an element of expertise or continuity issues, or they are investing in training. And that should not be a surprise, because it also has a value to employees - lots of people will choose a certain amount of flexibility, or fewer hours, for a lower wage.

I'm not sure why people keep thinking you can calculate backwards from some absolute value of the product or service to determine wages. The cost of the final product is determined according to the costs to produce it, including wages. If the employer needs to pay a certain amount to workers (whatever he can get workers for, which should generally be baselined at a living wage), that will be accounted for in the final price. If the final price is too high and people won't pay it, the product isn't viable.

If you determine wages dependent on the final value of the product, that means a product that sells only for a tiny amount would only need to pay workers a tiny amount which would be clearly unfair.

The changing face of a lot of employment is also going to change this attempt to calculate female vs male dominated jobs in a lot of cases. There are a lot more male shop assistants now, and a lot more female warehouse workers, so it's much harder to argue that a wage differential is based on sex discrimination.

All of this is to say - wages are already determined mostly by the market. We put certain lines around that to prevent exploitation, but they are not based on some kind of artificial setting of a wage based on an intrinsic value of the work.

So you think it is fine if free market forces decide women should be paid less than men, or disabled people should be paid less than able bodied people. What about that women who is good looking - lets pay her more to work in the office because the boss likes looking at her, but her male colleague who does the same job a bit better we will pay less?
We have laws to protect people from stupid bosses.

It doesn't take any more skill, training, qualifications or experience to work in a warehouse than it does to work in a retail shop. Therefore the jobs, although different, are on a par with one another, and the workers deserve to be paid accordingly. The main difference is that warehouse workers are overwhelmingly male, and retail staff are overwhelmingly female. Hence the historic differences in remuneration.

That is what is being put right here.

I would have thought that the floor assistant needs additional people skills?

My impression is women can find manual jobs harder than men when the job is set up for the maximum reach, height and load carrying of a man. Other jobs, which include manual handling but aren't set up for men, then aren't categorised as a manual job - even if they involve a lot of manual handling.

I agree, but social value isn't the same as market value. That's possibly where the problems lies. A DJ getting paid £100k a gig isn't really doing an essential role but he can charge that if he's in high demand.

But warehouse work is more dangerous and usually more physically demanding.

It’s equal value to the company that matters. So different aspects of each job, in this specific case, were deemed to be equal. Therefore pay should have been equal. Danger is somewhat subjective. Shoplifters cause danger to shop workers. So it’s possibly deemed equal. Not that I know this to be a fact but it’s important not to think jobs traditionally done by men are worth more in pay.