BS: Minimum Wage

Subject: BS: Minimum Wage
From: GUEST,MarkS
Date: 23 Oct 04 - 09:34 AM

Saw on the news this morning that Kerry wants to set the minimum wage at $7.50 per hour. So in the spirit of the gas thread, I thought it might be fun to pose the following:

What is the lowest wage you can remember working for?

Not cash for work as most youngsters get, but a real "wage" that had taxes, etc, taken out so you only got the net on your check.

For me it was $ 0.875 per hour. A long time ago!

Mark

Subject: RE: BS: Minimum Wage
From: jaze
Date: 23 Oct 04 - 09:54 AM

When I started working in 1970, I was paid $1.70/hr. The minimum wage at the time was $1.60. I thought I was filthy rich!

Subject: RE: BS: Minimum Wage
From: Padre
Date: 23 Oct 04 - 10:20 AM

In 1959 - $1.00 per hour

Subject: RE: BS: Minimum Wage
From: frogprince
Date: 23 Oct 04 - 12:03 PM

Mark, you have a good memory; the best I can remember is that my first set wages were for a part time job on campus, in 1960, and I'm sure it was whatever minimum wage was at the time. My dad's first job, which would have been about 1920, paid $5.00 a week and the use of a bunk.

Subject: RE: BS: Minimum Wage
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 23 Oct 04 - 12:25 PM

I started work in 1957, and was paid £2.10/- per week, or £2.50 in new money, this is equivalent to about $4.50. Then it was equivalent to about $3 a week.
I feel a "kids today don't know they're born" moment coming on.
Giok

Subject: RE: BS: Minimum Wage
From: GUEST
Date: 23 Oct 04 - 12:38 PM

£2.5 in 1957 was actually equal to $5.50 at that time. It was also equal to the cost of 45-pints of beer, so was worth about £130 here in Southern England. You were ripped off being paid that little in 1957. I was paid the same amount, starting work in 1953, and I was being ripped off then.

Subject: RE: BS: Minimum Wage
From: GUEST,Clint Keller
Date: 23 Oct 04 - 01:00 PM

Eighty cents an hour in a sawmill in 1950. It wasn't very good even for 1950.

I had to go to the doctor for a bad toe, and when he got it fixed I said "How much do I owe you?"
He said "Where you working?"
I said "Thompson's."
He said "You can't afford to pay me anything."

Doctors have changed as well as wages.

clint

Subject: RE: BS: Minimum Wage
From: Metchosin
Date: 23 Oct 04 - 02:01 PM

a nickle a flat. I worked as a child, part time in the 1950's and as an adolescent, in the early 60's, transplanting seedlings in a greenhouse. On a good day, working with tomatoes and marigolds, which were easy to separate, I could do around 25 flats and eventually got a raise to 10 cents a flat. Maximum grand total daily, $2.50 CDN, which was worth slightly more than US currency then.

I worked because there was no such thing as an allowance in my family. Times were tough; a little brother with polio and a family with no public health insurance and intermittant income due to a forestry related industrial accident.

It seemed to me when I was small, lumber mills here were either on strike, closed in the summer, because the bush was too dry or closed in the winter because the snow was too deep to move the logs. I recall our family receiving a food hamper one Christmas, through my elemntary school. It left me with the impression that there is nothing colder than charity, so the warmth of a greenhouse was a welcome respite.

Subject: RE: BS: Minimum Wage
From: Don Firth
Date: 23 Oct 04 - 02:07 PM

1953. Draftsman trainee at the Boeing Airplane Company. $1.32 / hour.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Minimum Wage
From: dianavan
Date: 23 Oct 04 - 02:19 PM

$1.25 an hr. in 1963 working in retail. I spent most of it on clothes. It was the first time I could buy store-bought clothes with my own money. Until then, my dad would pay for the fabric and I would sew whatever I needed.

...but don't get me wrong. The economy and the rules are much different today. Today they hire at minimum wage and fire you before they have to pay more. There is no such thing as 'working your way up'.

d

Subject: RE: BS: Minimum Wage
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 23 Oct 04 - 05:40 PM

From 1953 to 1956, $0.50 / hour. Got a raise to $0.75 when I got my driver's license and could take the 15T dump down the road to haul scrap iron. No time-and-a-half for overtime, but it didn't matter much 'cause momma wouldn't let me work more than 30 hr per week until I got out of Jr. Hi.

A little better (weekly) than I get now from my "Enormous Conglomerate" retirement fund... after 35 years, but I don't have to work as hard for it now I guess.

John

Subject: RE: BS: Minimum Wage
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 23 Oct 04 - 05:41 PM

I once had a job that paid me £25 per week, about £5 a day, less than £1 an hour. And they called it 'Youth Opportunities'.

I didn't pay tax, but I did have to pay rent and didn't get any other benefits with it.

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: Minimum Wage
From: Amergin
Date: 23 Oct 04 - 05:54 PM

4.75 an hour at a bucket plant in the early 90's. I made more money bucking bales and digging up weeds and working in a tree farm....all in north idaho....straight cash too.

Subject: RE: BS: Minimum Wage
From: Chris Green
Date: 23 Oct 04 - 06:03 PM

I worked for a week as a door-to-door salesman (highly unsuccessfully, I might add!) for sweet effay. The bastards didn't tell me that the job was commission-based!

Subject: RE: BS: Minimum Wage
From: Rapparee
Date: 23 Oct 04 - 06:06 PM

Let's see....

My paper route paid USD 13.00 every two weeks BEFORE they took out the deductions.

My first job in college (1964) paid USD 0.65 per hour, but there were no deductions taken out and I was paid in cash. Then College Work Study raised my salary to USD 1.20/hour (I think it was) but stuff was deducted.

In Basic Training I was paid USD 72.00 per month, before deductions, but room & board & such were included without cost.

I worked for a dollar an hour (USD 5.00 per day) as a milkman's assistant in very late 1963, but again I was paid in cash and nothing was deducted.

But the all time low was probably during high school, when I "worked" for a Junior Achievement company. My total earnings, after deductions, amounted to $32.50 for five months.

Subject: RE: BS: Minimum Wage
From: Bill D
Date: 23 Oct 04 - 06:30 PM

35¢ an hour at a tiny grocery store in 1953 (14 yrs.old),,,that was bad,, even then, and I quit after 2 weeks...next store was 75¢ an hour, and soon I was making ...*gasp* ...more than $1!

Subject: RE: BS: Minimum Wage
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 23 Oct 04 - 07:02 PM

when I was a kid in Lincolnshire about 1963, I picked daffodils for 2 shillings(10p) an hour. I thought I was doing okay.

My first wage packet as a qualified teacher after deductions in 1971 was £52 for the month - £13 a week. I survived and did okay.

Subject: RE: BS: Minimum Wage
From: Rapparee
Date: 23 Oct 04 - 08:07 PM

Come to think of it, I've picked strawberries for USD 0.07 per quart -- cash paid, no deductions. And was glad to get the work, at 13 years old.

Subject: RE: BS: Minimum Wage
From: frogprince
Date: 23 Oct 04 - 08:14 PM

I do sometimes say that while growing up on the farm I worked "for fear of what I would get if I didn't work"; the folks did help (what they could) when I went away to school, though.

Subject: RE: BS: Minimum Wage
From: Bobert
Date: 23 Oct 04 - 08:31 PM

I think Rapaire and I must be about the same age 'cause my first job was workin' part time for the Northern Virgina Sun running an addressograph machine back in '64. It paid 65 cents and hour and I was thrilled!

Strangest thing about it. Accrosss the street is a place called Mario's Pizza on Wilson Boulavard in Arlington, Va. It's not only still there but also an old black man, Joe, with a nice smile and nicer style who started workin' there way back then...

Bobert

Subject: RE: BS: Minimum Wage
From: Blissfully Ignorant
Date: 23 Oct 04 - 09:00 PM

Three pounds sixty five. That was earlier this year! Being under 18, my employers were not legally obliged to pay me the minimum wage. Which was especially problematic because i was the only person earning a wage in my household. I got about £180 a week, and that had to keep three people fed, watered, and housed. What's the plan here? Keep the underclass patronised, humiliated, uneducated, exhausted and hungry? Seems to work. Can't afford to stay in education, can't earn a decent wage, can't claim benefits without getting the social work on your back....

It's only sensible, after all. There might be some working class kids out there who might learn something of history and get all Bolshie. Best keep 'em down in the gutter and on smack where they belong, eh?

And, i was paying tax on it, which i think is technically illegal because i can't vote... taxation without representation...

Sorry to get all serious on yous! :) I'm in ranting mode.

*wanders off into the sunset singing THAT John Lennon song*

Subject: RE: BS: Minimum Wage
From: beardedbruce
Date: 23 Oct 04 - 09:27 PM

I think that we should be asking what the dollar ( or pound) would BUY, as well. My starting minimum wage was $1.75 in 1972- that would buy about 4 gallons of gasoline, or 6 loaves of bread.

$7.50 will buy almost 4 gallons of gass, now... if you really shop around.


All of the amounts above need to be looked at in view of the real value of the currancy.

Subject: RE: BS: Minimum Wage
From: mack/misophist
Date: 23 Oct 04 - 11:04 PM

In the late 50's I got 75¢ an hour at Safeway for sweeping the floor and bagging groceries. Regular wage for the job at the time. Almost got fired for being polite to a union organizer.

Subject: RE: BS: Minimum Wage
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 24 Oct 04 - 11:06 AM

Blissfully Ignorant:
You must have had a generous employer, as although you say they weren't obliged to pay you the minimum wage they were almost paying you the National Minimum Wage Developement Rate;
National Minimum Wage (U.K.)

Nigel

Subject: RE: BS: Minimum Wage
From: Leadfingers
Date: 24 Oct 04 - 11:30 AM

When I started off in the R A F as an Apprentice the rate for 'under seventeen ' was thirtyone shillings and sixpence (One pound fifty seven in modern money)- Though keep was free , as was the uniform . At seventeen this went up to Three Pounds Fifty and I thought I was a Millionaire !!

Subject: RE: BS: Minimum Wage
From: annamill
Date: 24 Oct 04 - 01:54 PM

$7.50 an hour, huh? Won't that make it kind of hard on busnesses to survive? I wonder how many small busnesses will go under because they cannot afford to pay that? Oh, I guess they will just have to charge us more for their products/services. That's right! I shouldn't worry about small businesses.

Can't remember my first hourly rate. It was 1959 at McCrurys 5 & 10.

Love, Annamill

Subject: RE: BS: Minimum Wage
From: Metchosin
Date: 24 Oct 04 - 02:12 PM

Ooops, missed the taxes part, but as far as I and my family was concerned, "pricking off" was "real work".

My first job with deductions was at the Dairy Queen. I can't remember what I was paid, but it was barely enough to live on, with nothing left over to pay for university tuition, which was supposed to be the whole purpose of the job in the first place.

First government job, was as an assistant technician in 1965, which netted me about $190.00 per month, which I think worked out to about a $1.30 an hour. We females were payed less than out male conterparts, because of the assertion that we did not, theoretically, have families to support and would only quit if we got married, therefore our work was of less value. Some things have changed....a little bit.

Subject: RE: BS: Minimum Wage
From: vindelis
Date: 24 Oct 04 - 02:53 PM

When I started work as a clecrical assistant, in 1973 (aged 17) I was paid £17.20 per week. This included about £1.50 'cost of living allowance.' The rate of inflation at the time was approaching 25% (if I remember correctly)and the Labour Government gave all workers a financial top-up each time the rate of infation went up.
(I forgot I also had a meal voucher of 25p per day, net result two course meal and a cup of tea for an extra 2.5p!)
Sometimes it pays to be young.

Subject: RE: BS: Minimum Wage
From: Hrothgar
Date: 25 Oct 04 - 05:41 AM

Two pounds nineteen and six after tax in 1963. That's about fifteen cents an hour. I think petrol was about three shillings a gallon - thirty cents.

I was only fifteen, and nowadays I shudder to think how little I knew.

Subject: RE: BS: Minimum Wage
From: GUEST,Mingulay
Date: 25 Oct 04 - 06:13 AM

Hrothgar, did we work for the same company? I started on exactly the same wage at the same time (£3.7s less tax). But at least a very good night out could be had for 10 bob or less.

I still know very little!

Subject: RE: BS: Minimum Wage
From: *daylia*
Date: 25 Oct 04 - 10:41 AM

My first "real job" was slinging coffee and donuts at the first Tim Horton's here in Barrie in 1975 - for $1.65/hour, less deductions. That was a gold mine compared to the $15/week I'd earned the summer before as a full-time "mother's helper".

But it was NOTHING compared to the job I landed at a sandpaper plant the following summer. That job paid $5.50 an hour - quite the generous salary for an 18-yr old girl at the time. But silly impractical undisciplined me, I quit.

My job was to stand in front of a huge ancient cutting machine in this aging steaming-hot old factory, straightening bundles of sandpaper as they were fed out and putting it into boxes. Then taking more sandpaper out of the machine, straightening it and putting it into boxes. And taking more sandpaper out of the machine, straightening it and putting it into boxes. And then, guess what? ... taking more sandpaper out of the .... you get the idea.

Oh, and sometimes I'd get to fold the boxes too, for variety.

Well I had a pretty bad case of poison ivy on my hands and arms, as I recall, and that rash (plus the heat and monotony) was almost more than I could bear ... but I did ok until the 4th morning. I punched the clock at 6am and went over to my machine - and for the first time really, took a good look at the old fellow who'd been running and servicing it for about 50 years.

In the dim morning light coming through those dirty old windows, his skin appeared to be exactly the same color as that machine - a sickly browny-green. I was just plain horrified - what the h*** am I doing here?!? Do I want to end up looking like THIS??? Not on your life! I ran out that factory door and went home, without saying "boo" to anyone.

I regretted it when I got my paycheque a week later though - and realized I'd made almost $100 in those 3 lousy days! That was more $ than I'd earned the entire summer as a mother's helper! If I'd stuck it out I'd have earned enough to pay for my first year at university that fall ... oh well ...

Here's a thought for small business owners - in this day and age, $7.50 an hour is a starvation wage. Unless your employees are students still living at home supported by their parents, or one partner in a two-income household, it is very difficult to survive on $7.50/hour.

Here in Canada, after taxes and deductions, a full-time employee making minimum wage brings home about $800/month. You can't even rent a closet with a cot and a hot-plate here in Barrie for less than about $400/month - and that leaves only $400 for heat and hydro, groceries, clothing, transportation etc.

I wouldn't want to have to live on that - would you?

Surely if employees were paid better than a bare subsistence wage, they'd be happier and healthier. They'd value the job more and they'd perform better too. They'd have more of a "personal stake" in the small business, so they'd likely be more conscientious about their duties, with equipment and with customers. Sales would go up and losses due to carelessness would be reduced.

Justa thought,

daylia

Subject: RE: BS: Minimum Wage
From: muppitz
Date: 25 Oct 04 - 10:50 AM

£3.00 p/h
It was my first job ever, I was 17, at college and grateful for anything that could put money in my ever dwindling bank account!
Not much has changed really!

Muppitz x

Subject: RE: BS: Minimum Wage
From: Rapparee
Date: 25 Oct 04 - 11:05 AM

I probably should mention that during college my "second job" was to be a member of the National Guard.

The pay was the same as that of the regular Army for the rank, but figured on a daily basis. As a private, that worked out to US $2.40 per drill (8 hour day, or $4.80 per weekend). Lunch, such as it was, was paid for, as was military coffee. After the initial issue, you were responsible for your uniforms and everything else -- although if you were injured while on duty the State of Illinois would pay your medical bills.

I bring this up because it occured to me today that for $2.40 per day plus a cheap meal, during floods on the Mississippi I walked on levees so water sodden that they shook with each step. I had volunteered to put my tender body on the streets during the riots of the '60s. And eventually, the gummint took my frail body out of college and slammed it into the Army full time.

Of course, by then I was a three-stripe sergeant making LOTS more money....

Subject: RE: BS: Minimum Wage
From: GUEST,Teribus
Date: 25 Oct 04 - 11:46 AM

1966 Royal Navy £10 per month, of which you HAD to remit £4, food, clothing and board free, plus three cigarette coupons per month. Those got you 300 'blue-liners' for thirty bob, leaving you the princely sum of £4-10shillings to squander on what you wished - you'd never guess, some of us bought drink.

Subject: RE: BS: Minimum Wage
From: Dewey
Date: 26 Oct 04 - 02:13 AM

$7.50? In this economy? As if money grows on trees. If this wage passed nothing would chancge for the worker. The employers would simple have to work the individual longer and with less help to actual make the profit for the company.

Working conditions would most likely get worse and not improve.

Yes $5.15 is slavery. Wal-mart Corporate Crooks shipping our jobs overseas and de-valuing everything to the point of zero- contributing to the economy. Pay your bills and stay home, you can't afford to go the shopping for clothing and groceries etc.

I would propose $6.50 to $6.75 and hour to adjust for inflation a bit without killing everything and everyone else within and without the economy.

Dewey

Subject: RE: BS: Minimum Wage
From: emjay
Date: 26 Oct 04 - 02:48 AM

So businesses would go under if they had to pay $7.50 an hour? I doubt that. More than ten years ago, our very small business paid the few employees we had $8 an hour, more than minimum wage, but not enough for someone to live on. Nevertheless we did what we could to be fair. And we made a lot less than $8 an hour ourselves, but the wages we had to pay didn't put us out of business.
And I think my first job at Woolworths when I was in high school '52 and '53 started at $.65 and went to $.75 the second year and I was happy to be making some money. I remember my aunt telling me how rich they felt now that her husband was making $5,000 a year.

Subject: RE: BS: Minimum Wage
From: *daylia*
Date: 26 Oct 04 - 07:18 AM

Dewey are you in the States? Minimum wage in Canada is $7.50/hour right now (or $7.25 - can't remember). Either IS a starvation wage around here.

Well, maybe not exactly starvation, but pretty desperate ....

With the exchange, $7.50 Cdn would equal about $5.50 US. So I do hope the American rates go up. After all, we'd just HAVE to follow suit up here ... and that would put Canada's at around $9.50/hour. Much more workable.

Subject: RE: BS: Minimum Wage
From: Rapparee
Date: 26 Oct 04 - 09:04 AM

The claim that an increase in the minimum wage would drive businesses out of business (or elsewhere) has been the mantra every time someone suggested raising the minimum wage.

It's very possible -- if the will was in Congress, which it isn't -- to prevent businesses from moving out of this or any other country: slap a valued-added tax on items brought INTO the country and exempt things manufactured there FROM such a tax. There would be international repurcussions, of course.

From the reports I've seen of labor unrest in China the fat cats there are suffering from the same greed that all the capitalists worldwide are suffering from.

Subject: RE: BS: Minimum Wage
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 26 Oct 04 - 09:57 AM

Rapaire -

Unfortunately, any tax on imported items without essentially identical tax on domestic production immediately results in claims from the international treaty orgs of "discrimination" and results in retaliatory "penalties" on all exports.

The US is "defending" a half-dozen claims of such discrimination now, and is "prosecuting" a similar number against other countries, considering only the "high profile" cases that make the local news in my area.

A major rewrite of US Farm and Food Commodities regulations was recently enacted for the sole purpose of responding to an IMF charge that US wheat exports were "unfairly subsidized."

The battle over French subsidies for Airbus, vs Boeing marketing, etc. has been going on for more than twenty years - with no resolution in sight.

Countries relying on international markets are not free to use "simple solutions" for much of anything.

I think it all started when the internationl lawyers realized they are not responsible for deciding what's "legal." Their job is to tell you what you might get by with - and how much it will cost if you get caught. There's really not much difference here between countries. Every country "looks for an edge" and tries to prevent every other one from "having an unfair advantage."

John

Subject: RE: BS: Minimum Wage
From: Fibula Mattock
Date: 26 Oct 04 - 10:32 AM

£1 per hour, in 1988 or so. I was 12 and was stacking shelves and cleaning up in a grocery shop. The full-time, adult staff were also on £1 per hour. This was before minimum wage, needless to say.

Subject: RE: BS: Minimum Wage
From: GUEST,Charmion at work
Date: 26 Oct 04 - 05:26 PM

$1.35 per hour sorting donations to the Neighbourhood Services, a Goodwill-type organization in Ottawa, Ontario. It was 1971 and I was 16, and my social-worker grandmother got me the job. Most of the other workers were middle-aged French-speaking women, and to the best of my knowledge I was the only person there who could read a newspaper, a duty I performed for general entertainment and edification during our half-hour lunch break. Mrs. Willibond, the lady at the next table, had 13 children and was utterly convinced that everyone born before Jesus and his mother were invited to the wedding in Cana was a bastard because ... well, you had to be there. She explained it to me over and over again.

The plant was filthy and hot, and you never knew what was in a bag or box when you picked it up (the job required a strong back) and put it on the work table. One of the women suffered a nasty hand injury from a box of kitchen knives nestled in a box of bed linen, and bags often contained filthy clothing and rags. The only protective clothing anyone wore was a loose shop coat or housedress. I shudder when I remember the floors, and the incredibly unsuitable shoes everyone wore.

The next year I graduated from high school and joined the Naval Reserve -- $9.00 per day during summer training. It was a great improvement with respect to cleanliness and working conditions, but not nearly as educational as the Neighbourhood Services.