I'm finishing up my college degree in civil engineering, and for the past few years, in addition to a combination of internships and tutoring gigs, I have a part-time job in the deli section of a supermarket.
The minimum wage for large NYC employers went from $9 in 2016 to $11 in 2017 to $13 in 2018 and is scheduled to go to $15 in 2019 (technically those increases all take/took place on New Year's Eve of the year before).
The workers in the store are unionized (UFCW Local 1500 and Local 342), which doesn't help much on the regular pay rate (basically, you receive an extra $0.25/hr above the minimum wage after you pass a 2 month probationary period, and then an extra $0.30/hr for every year of service, which basically ends up coming out as union dues anyway). But at the same time, overtime is after 8 hours/day rather than after 40 hours/week, and you get an hourly premium for working Sundays & holidays (after 1 year is a $2/hr premium and after 2 years is time-and-a-half).
As you would expect from a retail job, it's a mix of high school/college students, retirees, stay-at-home moms, people using it as a side job to a decent-paying full-time job, people using it as a way to get full-time hours (either try and work 35-40 hours at that store, or combine 2 part-time jobs), and then of course, the miserable ones who work part-time hours that one single job and live off welfare or off their parents.
From what I've seen, the store hasn't significantly reduced the amount of hours that employees are scheduled for each week (if it's not that busy, per union rules they can't force anybody to leave early, so they have to consider that in the budget). However, when the minimum wage rose to $11/hr, the difference I've seen is that if there's any call-outs, they'll think long and hard before filling them. When I first started, you could basically be assured that at any given time, the amount of people working behind the counter would match the number scheduled at that time. Nowadays, they could be 2-3 people short and they won't make any effort to call anybody in.
At $13/hr, what I've seen is that they're basically looking to "clean house" and get rid of the slackers. Things like the duration of breaks are being enforced according to the union contract. To be fair, they got rid of the biggest offenders first (people who would take 50-60 minute breaks as opposed to the 10-15 minutes they were allotted), but there's still an element of favoritism on who they crack down on, for whatever reason.
Also, on a side note, prices at the supermarket haven't really increased in response to the minimum wage increase. Also, very little in the way of automation.
Pay-wise, I noticed that when the cashier union (Local 1500) negotiated a new contract, they had a few give-backs. One of the things that was controversial was the Sunday premium pay. What ended up happening was that they stretched it out so that period to qualify was longer (for new-hires it went something like $2/hr premium -> $3/hr premium -> $4/hr premium -> time-and-a-half, but those who already had it were grandfathered in, and those who were already on the payroll had to wait 2.5 years instead of 2 years). I believe the deli union (Local 342) contract expired this year instead of last year, so I'm not sure what the provisions are going to be, but I'm sure they'll be similar.
Another thing I noticed while reading the Local 1500 contract is that those who started working before 1989 were grandfathered in to receive time-and-a-half for Saturday and double pay for Sundays & holidays. In that regard, it did make it that much easier to live off that type of job (basically, if you worked both weekends, you got an extra day of pay compared to now). There's one deli worker who has been there 23 years and he said back when he started, it only took 1 month to qualify for time-and-a-half instead of 2 years. So in that regard, if you hustled right, you could make a living (or at least, it was that much easier to) out of a retail job 20-30 years ago.
The thing that still never ceases to surprise me is that for $13/hr, some of the people who have this as their only job are still frequently absent from work. The larger issue is that yeah, raising the minimum wage will help those who are willing to work full-time, but quite frankly, there's still the lazy losers who don't want to work. For a higher minimum wage, employers should be able to find reliable help. I definitely support some type of work requirement to collect welfare, because it shouldn't be that you're able to work 20 hours a week at a basic job and have the rest of your expenses covered by the taxpayers (some of which include coworkers who are working the same 20 hour a week job on top of a regular full-time job).
A union representative came to the store a couple of months ago and mentioned that as part of the new contract, they wanted to negotiate a minimum 30 hour workweek with benefits for part-time workers, with exceptions for those who voluntarily wanted less because of another job or school. The issue of course, is that that comprises a good portion of the workers there. They already have full-time positions that offer 40 hours, so they might as well advocate for more of those positions. And out of the workers who are available to work 30+ hours, half of them call out once the schedule puts them over 20-25 hours, and the other half can usually figure out how to hustle the managers out of 30+ hours anyway.
As for me, that little bit of extra money might convince me to stay there a little longer after I graduate.
Close to home, and I get to socialize a bit with the customers and coworkers that I like while I work (Civil engineering and construction is not exactly known for having tons of females in the field, though that's slowly changing). If there's little to no overtime at whatever job I get when I graduate, it's decent pocket money.
Feel free to comment.
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