Costco workers in Norfolk have unionised and Costco are seething.

  • lazyvar@programming.dev
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    11 months ago

    I’m not the person you replied to, but I’ll take a stab.

    @cmbabul stated in GP that they hand out raises for exceptional work of no more than 3% per year.

    So, to recap in a piecemeal fashion, we’re talking about:

    • at best 3% in a year, lower is possible
    • for what is deemed exceptional, so by no means guaranteed

    You saw this and ran with it. While doing so, you changed the premise to:

    • guaranteed 3%
    • everyone
    • every year

    On top of that, presumably, because inflation currently exceeds 3% and has well exceeded 3% for almost the last three years, you changed the premise somewhat more into a career’s length timeframe.

    The average inflation rate for the last 50 years is 3.8% per year,

    Even when looking at a break-even inflation rate for the last 30 years, we’re looking at 2.40%, so we’re talking about a .60% pay increase. No wonder that this doesn’t impress @bunchofnumbers.

    Never mind all that, though. I’m more interested in why you decided to change that premise.

    • Kecessa
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      11 months ago

      I didn’t change the premise, we’re talking about work so you need to look long term not just over two years. That’s 3%/year if you keep the same job from the beginning of your career to the end of it, that means getting 3% even during the years where inflation is under 2%, which people don’t take into consideration since it the last few years are fresh in their memory and it makes 3% seem like a bad deal.

      As I mentioned a guaranteed 3% would be better than most collective agreements. I’ve been under 6 of 7 of them with 3 different major employers and most times when inflation was normal our raises were at 2% or even a bit under that.

      We haven’t taken the seniority pay rate increases into consideration either, only the employees at the max step would be at 3%/year max.