Are they still in business?

There was a big one on Lane Ave. across from OSU. You could redeem Green stamps (IIRC which type) there...got a few things that way back in the day

I left Columbus in 1977 and remember crying in a grocery store in Florida because it wasn't my Big Bear.

They were bought by some NY based corporation that ran it into the ground. Think Gordon Gecko like.

They lost store, I believe closed sometime in the 90s, and the employees got pennies on the dollar for their pensions.

I ended up joining the Navy and turned that into a 29 year career.

Sad what happened to Big Bear. I'll see if I can find the story and post a link.

[link:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bear_Stores#:~:text=The%20chain%27s%20demise%20was%20finalized,11%20bankruptcy%20in%20a%20decade.|

buy doing the same thing and the common man on average does not even know about it....the well to do use the common man like a thing to use and destroy when it does not enrich the well to do. And you the common man just sit there and take it, what in the h*** is wrong with you?

Most cashiers around here say they make 11 an hour

I was a Hospital photographer in 1980 (it was a thing.. film and cameras for documenting unusual surgeries, etc).
I was thrilled with my $4.25/hr

when I started working basically 10 years of no movement

still not enough

My teenage son makes 15.75 that goes to about 19 with tips to make pizza's (still not a liveable wage)

hiking club.

Anyways, I go to the local King's supermarket and apply. $10.00 and change to start.

I walked out.

I was in kings 2 days ago. I bought a couple things but they were specials because the prices on everything else? Ludicrous. $17.50 for a pkg of hamburger as an example.

Since you mentioned their staff, I recall thinking how friendly and helpful they were. I had no idea their pay was so bad. Somehow, though, they are attracting quality people.

Where do you live? I get great veggies at roadside stands. Corn -- 202 , south of Flemington. And the
boxes of 2nds at Melicks.

The hours weren't bad, so I decided to take a part-time job at one of the "new" big box hardware stores (HQ which I don't think exists anymore).

Anyway, for the pleasure of making $6.75 an hour, I had to take a urinalysis test to make sure I wasn't smoking a joint on Saturday night.

When I learned that you had to take a piss tests for a job like that, or even to work at 7/11, I realized how far the labor rights our grandparents bled for were gone.

country., second only to Hawaii which was high because of cost of living.

n/t

I think from a store on Fishinger...The kids affectionately called it "Big Bird" (from Sesame Street); it was next to a Starbucks.

When we lived in Dayton, we loved our Cub Foods. No one had better "chicken salad."

Sweet wheels parked beneath! Yours?

I liked it too.

She gave up her crumbling apartment and moved about 6 months ago to the Polaris area.

Modern finance capitalism is not sustainable.
When the working class has been starved to death, the rich will have nothing to eat except cadavers.

The people will only take so much and when they decide its over you better get out of the way.

by a bazillion people with the same story and do the math. Horrendous wage suppression.

Now this would have been in the late ‘70s …. A coworker of mine said his wife worked as a grocery store cashier and made pretty good money.

Also back then … a turnpike toll booth worker made more $ than a teacher. (Probably a first year teacher). My teacher hubby said his union told them that.

"Oh, Thurston, are you sure that having all that rabble out of work, won't it make it unsafe for us?"

"Lovey, by the time our shake-and-bake politicians get done with them - they'll be begging us to execute the very people who could've stopped it!"

It’s exactly what happened

I don't get any small paychecks for AI stealing the job and you will not either.

1981 eh?

My pay was about 30 grand
70 days vacation pay
120 days Christmas bonus
about 6% pay as production bonus.

They do not make companies like that in this world of greed. This was in another country and because I taught English on the side to the company rising stars I did not pay taxes as teachers are considered an honorable profession not a group of people for Faux Noise shitheads to scream bloody murder at.

Last edited Thu Sep 28, 2023, 03:27 AM - Edit history (2)

I was a medical transcriptionist, always listening to the accents and styles of foreign and American doctors' dictation, and striving for perfection in spelling and accuracy of information as dictated. I was also a degreed medical records coder with state certification. As an older, non-traditional student, I didn't walk for my community college cum laude graduation; I could not afford the graduation attire, a $60 expense back then. I couldn't find a job doing coding in my super-saturated area. Likely it was the credit score we shared? Do you really think my DH or I would willingly leave his obviously more excellent capabilities that were regularly unemployed and that never mentioned bad performance behind to chase my needs or desires or his daughters' stability in familiar schools, family, or friends? No, but it was a-ok to chase HIS record of success in a career and educational completion so old they could not verify it...

I was always proud to show my initials beneath my work. I now understand why one interviewer found that so funny! She laughed in my face. I had paid for my education out-of-pocket--no debt, in a state that was actively giving that education away for free and paying only a $125 stipend to employers to hire those who received it free! The truth is that physicians don't value women who spit out lists of those who don't sign their orders or notes that might later protect the privacy of their patients health information. It's been nearly two decades since they just attached their electronic signatures without even reading the coded/transcribed documents. They can then better convince juries and/or exploit that privacy themselves with diagnoses that follow patients until their dying day and bills patients can't ever hope to pay without declaring bankruptcy, or win cases by plausible protection for surgical errors if they follow SOP. Oops! Do you know who is civily responsible; the ones that code those lies and falsehoods. Coders must carry personal liability for those directed errors as well; they must keep up CMEs. It's easy unless you must instead save for many rainy days or make sacrifices for your family. Just can't wait to see what AI tracking does with the written word and numbers and electronic signatures, not just an /s on legal evidence. No wonder its all mostly now outsourced to the lowest bidders, ESLs across the ocean. I'll tell you something in jest...I imagine that no one in Dayton still has their gallbladder. I'm even more shocked I once personally knew and worked with a doc, torn between two lovers, that attempted at the very least "infanticide" of his own unborn child with a known off-label pharmaceutical in mommy's sodas (I also knew who the mommy was), and that it was not by her choice! He escaped worst scenario by copping a plea when the evidence, a still-born daughter, could not likely be proven without a doubt. He did lose his license but not number two girlfriend as wife. I NEVER wonder if they had a "happily ever after" moment.

My daughter's employer passed on health "insurance" and gave employees a sketchy health "benefits plan" that has about 8 employees; it's backed by $3M of private equity. Its purpose is to skirt government regulations for privacy, competency, and timely claim payments. The website is full of cost-saving benefits to the employer--not so much his employees' financial and/or medical health because the premium payroll deductions didn't change one bit despite the newbie in town skirting all the "safeguards" of the bloated corporate insurance systems. The outfit merely tells patients to do their work for them. Just have their unvetted docs sign the form and they will pay their claims at lower cost to the employer. No knick on the employer's credit worthiness when the claim goes unpaid beyond 30,60,90 days! How much you want to bet that that corporate employer is also the investor in that portfolio of start-ups killing their patients' credit scores but so confident in the doctors' ethical credentials as the owner/boss keeps his obligations lower but collects interest on that payroll deduction fund, the better to invest in what the free hand of the market will bear, the employees obligations still get sucked from their payroll checks each pay period. OK dear employees, just sign your consent to give up the personal data records that include your private health history, that dear employer has already provided to us via what? thumbdrive? upload?/download? to get you started on your new plan! It's apparently not even considered as a data breach! Cheers my children! I will ALWAYS worry about both of my daughters' total health, privacy, nd safety, especially now!

Medical billing and coding is still touted as one of the "hottest" well-paid occupations in America to do at home. Please note the equipment is not often provided and was expensive then. I went many years without insurance as a result of DH's unemployment, but I do have housing, food, pets and now Medicare w/gap and all that now ancient education. I'm pretty sure my next doctor won't get a clear picture of my aging physical health, emotional health, or dental/vision health as a prisoner of the system without starting at scratch, and I'm not sure I even want to be "cured." I'm terrified I have longevity genes. I tried to have an honest life, but my identity has been stolen. It's tough to be considered a "useless eater," without anyone to stand up for my unsuccessful attempt at being who I am. I will never again have that confidence. Sorry folks, I feel like a Blanche DuBois who will end up depending on government programs and the mercy of strangers I won't trust. That sensed slippery slope of loss can't be cured.

Obama struggled to get one passed. That’s the last one.

Unfortunately the people were betrayed by Manchin & Sinema so that one is on the Democrats.

n/t

I believe president Biden is going to.

From Congress.

Still reagan signed them.

RAY-Gun won 49 states. Dems in Congress were only doing what the majority of Americans voted for. Fucking Union voters voted for RAY-gun.

It was like chickens voting for Colonel Sanders.

... getting fucked over by demons with Cylindropuntia dicks.



I used to speculate here that his dementia may have saved him from that, but recently I'm not so sure.

of those employees or even the Kroger workers thought it was a good idea to vote Republicans into office.

If there's a union shop nearby, all similar companies have better wages and benefits. I've seen this over and over. "We don't need a union, we get decent pay". If the union weren't in the area, you'd never get the pay.

and making $1100 a month or like 6.50 an hour.

that everyone called the Welfare Bear. Most of the poor folks who used to shop there have been pushed out by campus sprawl and gentrification. I lived in an apartment around the corner in the early 90s, as the area was transitioning. I spent $75,000 on law school during that time, and I have now worked for the same company for 27 1/2 years minus a three month period in 2017 when I was downsized and then rehired into a different position. I took a considerable pay cut when I came back...funny how that worked out to the company's benefit. It's fucking great to know that over the past six years I have managed to get my base salary back up to the level of a 1980's grocery stock clerk.

It was at Buttles and Neil Ave.

Took the High St bus from Cooke Rd to Buttles Ave when I get out of school at Watterson High. Dad would pick me up when the store closed at 10

My grandmother owned a house back there for decades. I spent a month every summer there

(near Athens Ohio) is now a Piggly Wiggly

But of course, it was in a "right to work" state in the Deep South. (The poverty belt)

Thats why the trades should be encouraged as much as college. And most of the trade jobs cant be outsourced or replaced by robots or AI
The only thing I miss about not going to college is all the parties.

That way, I didn't miss the parties. By the time I got out I was too mature for college, so I took a trade. It is an interesting that my wife got a master's degree and held a professional job, but over the course of I careers, I out-earned her by a tad.

I did 10yrs in the National Guard; which started my tech school education after I got back from initial training.
I know many old classmates who did their 20yrs active & retired. Two became Generals. And all of them went on to different successful careers. And no school debt.

Like you, I was too immature for college. I would've wasted my parents money!

My very respectable university degree was never as lucrative as my practical skills.

You think English majors have it hard? Try English as a minor.

Otherwise I'm an evolutionary biologist by natural inclination and some formal training.

That education did qualify me to teach science, but I found lab work a whole lot less stressful.

When I was young I made good money moving furniture, loading and unloading trucks at warehouses, and maintaining crappy student housing.

Looking back, I might have been an electrician.

In my later years of college I gave all my tools to my youngest brother. He quit college with an associate degree and became a licensed contractor. His lifetime earnings are far greater than mine.

That sounds like a lot.

I pulled up a list of wages in California in 1980 out of curiosity, and your average office worker was pulling in around $7/hr back then (weekly wages of $250-$300 for full time). The higher hourly earnings I saw that were $10-$11/hour was for certain manufacturing jobs and truck drivers.

Although I agree with your larger point. Workers have lost a massive amount of economic power over time. Paragraphs like this one from the Economic Policy Institute are what bring it home.

The figure shows that in the three decades following World War II, hourly compensation of the vast majority of workers rose 91 percent, roughly in line with productivity growth of 97 percent. But for most of the past generation (except for a brief period in the late 1990s), pay for the vast majority lagged further and further behind overall productivity. From 1973 to 2013, hourly compensation of a typical (production/nonsupervisory) worker rose just 9 percent while productivity increased 74 percent. This breakdown of pay growth has been especially evident in the last decade, affecting both college- and non-college-educated workers as well as blue- and white-collar workers. This means that workers have been producing far more than they receive in their paychecks and benefit packages from their employers.

For 1981, last full year at Big Bear, my yearly wage was $26,509

You'd never see a teenage employee again.

If Safeway paid $90K a year, most other entry level jobs would pay more.

The whole point is that entry level used to get you a life in the US. Big Bear was paying $90K equivalent back then, yet teenagers still worked there, why? Well because toher places were paying much more.

This is about fair share. The workers used to get a fair share of the welath that their labor created. That fair share offered them a chance at the American Dream. Reagan and the Cons decided that the rich needed a much much bigger share of the wealth that labor creates, and that's why we are in a country now where 2/3s of the residents are living paycheck to paycheck.

I remember even in the late 90s, there was potential. There are (were? it's been a minute) two major grocery chains in Chicago - Jewel and Dominick's. If you were in high school and planned to work through college, you wanted to get into Dominick's, because they had a union. They paid. My best friend got a job there and into the union because his step-dad was an electrician for them.

Walgreens was very similar. My great aunt worked for corporate in Deerfield, and she always advocated for the kids to get in at Walgreens because it paid so much better and had a better worker culture.

And this was late 90s.

Of course, that's out the window in many places now. I know our local Safeway has unions for their meat and bakery departments. However, the last wage I remember seeing on a hiring sign was $13 or so. It might be $15/hr now, but that is nothing in NorCal. That's still-living-at-home wages. Amazon and my own company pay production $21-22/hour. That's like $36k/yr after taxes. In 2023 money. When a one bedroom apartment is $2k/month if you're very, very lucky, it's just untenable.

Something needs to give at some point.

And I agree, something needs to give.

It's remarkable how deftly the ruling class gets working people to turn on each other. When UPS workers got a good deal, it was instant hate from other working people. But some CEO gets a $50 Million bonus and it doesn't even make the news.

So yeah, we need to get to a point where some grocery store workers are making $90K a year to get back to the middle class we had 40 years ago when the American Dream was still the norm. They've trained so many working people to not think working people deserve the American Dream.

We're the richest country in human history, wokring people deserve the basics in life. A modest and affordable house, a car in the garage, savings, a retirement, health care, the things that it takes to have dignity. These things we used to have, the rich took it from us. So yeah, workers in entry level jobs deserve to live a good life, UAW workers deserve to set the standard for working lives, that's what this country is meant to be. The last 40 years ahve been gang busters for the US economy for growth and productivity, the middle class should be living better than we did 30 and 40 years ago, not worse. It would take $150K a year being the average to get us back to that.

'Young men are not getting married and having children so we are running out of workers.' Well, DUH! Young women are also not getting married and birthin' no babies too. How can any of them AFFORD to move out, start independent lives, pay rent or mortgage and feed some children, let alone pay for child care when wages do not come close to keeping up with real cost of living?

The ownership class has killed the geese that laid the golden eggs, because since Reagan "GREED IS GOOD" and corporate officers' pay had eaten away all hope of the workforce ever having any chance of making a decent living in comparison to the costs of living here. And now the ownership class is in a dither because we are soon to be a declining population of exploitable geese laying the golden eggs.

Amazing how friken stupid so many extremely rich people can be. Only a matter of time before hungry hoards storm the gated communities and dine on fat cats.

my dad retired from the 42 years at safeway warehouse and he made $17 an hour in 1972 enough to afford a 17k house 4 bedroom house with 3 baths and one kid and one dog and one boat.

Tough job, but he barely graduated high school

Just like a Republican state something but not the whole thing and let people come to an incorrect conclusion.

Hard to compete when the company is bought, loaded with debt, all the “real” assets are sold and then leased back at inflated market rates. And for $h!+$ & grins, worker pension plans, recategorized as assets after the “Reagan Revolution” are picked bare by the purchaser.
Ya know Mitt needs that car elevator at the house in LaJolla

We have valued wealth over labor for decades, and now workers are becoming restive. Unionizing. Demanding better wages and old-style pensions. Health care.

To my mind, and I've said it many times on here, the root cause is the legal doctrine of shareholder primacy. We do indeed value profits over people, stemming from the 1919 MI Supreme Court ruling against Henry Ford. The Dodge brothers sued Ford on the basis that paying his factory workers too highly deprived them of profits to which they were 'entitled' as shareholders. And they won.

That's the root cause. Change that to make worker interests, consumer interests and the environment legally equal to shareholder profits in corporate governance, enforce that through strong regulation, and we would solve many problems.

shareholder primacy is a term that makes me grind my teeth

He started working the line at Ford in the 1920's, and retired in 1967. He was paid partially with Ford stock and by the late 1970's, he was worth a quarter of a million dollars. Starting that time, he was able to buy a new car (usually a Lincoln or Mark VII) twice a year, and we still have old home movies of his vacations to Mexico, Hawaii, etc. He never lived in any kind of mansion, but he and his family always had a decent, middle-class home. His son, my father, went to a private high school. Grandma never had to work an outside job.

My grandfather on my mother's side worked the line at Chrysler during that same period. He may have gone to high school, but he never had education beyond that. He, too, had a nice middle-class home, and two cars. He was able to send my mother to a private college, and he and my grandma had a second home next to a lake, with a boat. I remember going to their main home where they had a remodeled basement with a fully-stocked wet bar and recreation room with a piano.

I got a job in the Bay Area and was paid $13.37/hr. That's 77¢ more than you were making.
No union, 2 weeks vacation & 2 weeks sick time per year with pension.

$12.60/hr. in Ohio was an exceptional salary.
I struggled with $13.37/hr. in the Bay Area.
Over half my take home pay went to renting a 1br. apartment.

I was making $8.50 an hour and sharing a house with a bunch of guys, one of the guys whose parents owned the house but they didn't trust their kid as a manager or landlord.

It was insanely weird. The chief house guy worked for Fed-Ex and I think he got a discount on rent for looking after their son.

Fools like me looking for a place to sleep and keep our stuff were side jobs.

That was the year I began to seriously rethink my life.

I did have my own bedroom.

In 1981, OP was making over $10 more than the minimum wage at that time.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/STTMINWGOH

The store manager didn't know that and scheduled me to work 8 hours that day.

I got double-time because it was a holiday, 8 hours because we got 8 hours of holiday pay, AND 8 hours because it was my Birthday.

For that 8 hour shift, I get paid 32 hours.

Boss never did that again, but I did buy the good beer that week. Molsons instead of Old Milwaukee.

They've now invented "comp time" to take care of that. Work overtime, get docked in scheduled hours next week; scheduled on a slow day - on the spot - go home! Must please Wall Street owners, you see!

DH's Target store has only two "asset protection" guys and have not hired or trained more or others. Some days, neither show up for work! Back when I worked in retail, we laughed about ours--they were the ones talking on their walkie-talkies inside the brown paper bags. Very obvious super sleuths! That "organized theft" the CEOs cite isn't all walking out the front door; even at the SCOs, mid-management isn't doing diddly to prevent that impression either. Morale is often terrible. Management, perhaps on salary, doesn't staff adequately - in hiring or scheduling; no overtime is ever permitted and there isn't anyone they can call in - yet they continue to claim they are FULLY STAFFED and it's their fault shrinkage is high. Thank goodness, Dept of Labor won that case and now mid-managment on salary can get paid overtime ostensibly to fix what's broken...hahaha! They fix it by docking the hourly staff! Get mad - call off? Lose another $100 for the day.

Recently the store got hit by lightening, and all the freezer/refrigerated foods had to get pitched because the power went out overnight - Duh? No one checked? No back-up plan? That loss is shrinkage, no? You might think "insurance" covered the lost inventory, but you'd be partially wrong...management only insured it for cost. Did they, the en-titled (purposeful play on words) accept accountability for the loss? Nope! The hourly workers were told they'd all be docked hours to make up for the full "retail" value of the lost merchandise. It was more than a week before inventory was completely restored resulting in lower store sales as well. We lost over $600 in his checks over 30 days - two pay periods. Last increase, last year: $0.05 per hour. Must be because COLA gave a special interest group (old enough for SS) 8.07% when inflation was sooo high, hahaha.

I haven't seen it in decades.

ago, 60% of Americans were solidly middle class. Now that figure is 40%. Started with Reagan and has been compounded by very Republican administration ever since. We take one step forward each time we elect a Democratic president, and two steps back every time we elect a Republican president. The trend is crystal clear.

Regular Americans have lost the belief that you should be able to live if you work, no matter what the work.

And I hear it from people I grew up with. I started working in the mid 80s, made $4.00 an hour starting some places. And even now, some people I grew up with say $11 an hour is too much for those same jobs. Worked in a kitchen in 1990 with my best friend who's adament that people working cook jobs should make a living wage because we only made $6.50 an hour back then. I said to him, "But man, don't you remember? Sure, we were high school kids, $6.50 was a lot of money to us, but there were also full time cooks in the kitchen we knew well who made maybe $7.25 an hour, but those guys made a living. They had apartments, cars, and some supported families on $7.25, which is $17.03 an hour in today's wages. You try affording anything on $10 an hour right now."

His argument is that these starter jobs should not be the end goal, they should be a start that young people work up from. He simply doesn't know that when we were making $6.50 an hour as fry cooks, it was $15 an hour in today's money. So he was making $15 an hour as a fry cook in high school, but he doesn't want today's kids to start the same as he did.

And this was 1990, after a decade of Reaganomics had already begun to destroy the middle class. But in 1990, there were plenty of people working fast food jobs who could afford to live. I knew tons of kids who worked at gas stations or in fastfood that could affor to live off their incomes in 1990. Today those same workers have to live with their parents, their fast food incomes only pay for their car insurance and phone bill, pus a few bucks to cothe and feed themselves. In 1990, I knew fry cooks who owned homes, had car payments, and some even supported their families with their spouse just working part time. It was possible, not easy, but possible.

If you work full time, you deserve the basics in life, period. I don't care if you're sweeping floors, washing dishes, or frying food, I want evryone who works fulltime to be able to afford a basic apartment, transportation, have health c are, and not have to scrouge for food or clothes. That's the America Dream I want, where those entry level jobs set a floor that has some dignity. And that's the American Dream we used to have and can have again.

If wages had kept up, people would be able to afford to live.

CEOs used to make 4 to 10 times their highest paid hourly workers, and believe it or not, they lived pretty fucking comfortable lives.

Now they are making 300-3000 times their highest paid hourly workers.

It's about a close to a feudal system as you can get.

Inflation has been low for a loing time, we had a temporary spike because of Covid. So getting people whining about inflation is an effective distraction on the Right from getting people talking about wage growth.

Reaganomics allowed wage growth to just stop for years and years. It's why we're where we are, with 63% of Americans in such dire straits that they say any $400 emergency wouldn't be something they could handle without going into more debt.

And all of this is why yesterday's trip to Michigan from the President is so important. For a President to stand with workers and demand more pay for them is a monumental thing in modern history. Trump and other Republican presidents have literally said wages need to be lower than they are. Biden gets it, workers need to be able to have a life off from their work.

...I landed my first "real" job (one that didn't have a sunset built in, such as vacation relief in the summer) in '77 and had the great blessing of it being one organized in the IBEW. That was very rare in the realm of technical specialty.

The wages were structured as a percentage of top rate - top rate was negotiable at the end of every contract, but the structure was indelible. One started at 60% of top rate, and got a 5% bump every six months. At the end of your 5 year term of advancement(s), the final 5% could only be achieved by passing a national exam.

That milestone raised my wage by literally triple - $5.40 an hour at my start date to $16, plus a list of bennies as long as your arm. Life was EASY then - my post-high school life was more school, interspersed with years of indolence. In short, I was totally unused to Having Money, and my bank account swelled so quickly that one day, upon checking my balance, I said, more or less "Holy shit! I can buy a house." So I did.

et cetera, et cetera, et cetera

Those days are SO long gone, and I'm almost embarrassed by my continued good fortune in life, then and now. I did manage to "give back" or "pay it forward" or whatever you'd like to call it, though. The rents I charged were about 30% under market, and I paid my tenants' utilities....STILL managing to make money in the process. A now-elderly lady that was in the building when I bought it was slightly-to-moderately disabled, and her rent after my 20+ years of being her landlord rose by $35 a month.

Again...those times have long been through.

made about $18/hr in 1980. 43 years later they’re making $20/hr. And yet a few years ago the mine workers voted to get rid of their union. It’s insanity.

...truth.

Given housing prices and pay of the typical job, Americans can no longer work their way into the middle class. What you made per hour in 1981 is higher than the Federal Min. Wage is today.

I voted for him the first time he ran. Learned my lesson fast, have not voted for a republican since. Have watched the attack on middle class workers with anguish ever since. There is one answer... Vote them out!

That motherfucker RUINED this country.

was the shot heard all over America in Regards to Union busting......

A week after he fired them, every trade organization, plumbers, electricians, Heat/AC firms lowered the pay by half knowing that the Unions would receive no help from the Federal Government enforcing laws on the books......

In Denver, an electrician's pay went from 22.00 dollars and hour, and 26% in fringe benefits, went to 12 an hour and no benefits.

A recent study stated that the trade people were earning more in 1969 than they are today, when inflation is considered......

I think that is pretty true all across the middle class in the U.S. .............................

Last week, I asked a checker/cashier at Safeway what the current pay was for a Journeyman Checker.......She told me 16.50 an hour.
I told her I lived with a gal in 1980 who was a journeyman checker at Safeway, and she earned 22.25 an hour...........

Keep making your argument

I’m a former management employee from the large brown delivery company. It was my first job out of college and honestly, an awesome job and a great company. But, I knew the Union was who I had to thank for my generous salary, benefits, and retirement package. I have been greatly disturbed by the introduction of “outsiders” to the managing Board of the company in recent years. Keeping the “grew up brown” folks in leadership gave me more confidence the company invested for the long term not just the short term. That’s why I had lots of explaining to do anytime I would talk to former coworkers about supporting a Union strike. Over and over I said…If Carol can pay herself $27.6mil in 2021 and $15mil in 2022, there’s room to pay the Union more and provide air conditioning to the vehicles (I live in Phoenix, year round).

You have inform people there is an fundamental imbalance in the corporate system. And once people know, they can also admit, it’s wrong and needs to change.

to try our fate at the employers here, DH was dumpster diving the trash compactor area and noticed two unopened unlabeled boxes - opening them he found two "brown company" driver jackets. He gave one of them to our neighbor who worked for that company and kept one himself for terrible winter weather. He wore it to a store with some brown pants one day, and some woman asked where and why he wore one. He told her he found it in the trash. She said she'd exchange it for another blue (management) jacket because "we can't have people think you work for that brown company." Some sort of reputation to uphold? He agreed and they met in a neutral place for the exchange. It was just as warm; both bore the logo patch, but the blue one was not as long and, of course, not easily indicative that he was a "brown company" driver. Dress blues? WEIRD!

about then versus now that hasn't gotten better. I know everybody grew up in different places with different circumstances but when/where I grew up in small town America we didn't lock our car doors when we went shopping or really anyplace for that matter. We all left for work and school in the morning and never locked the doors on the house. Nobody had things stolen. I know it sounds strange but it's true. Of course we used to read in the paper about thefts etc. in the metro areas. That was then.

About 20 years later I moved to a metro area and over the next 4 years I had my locked car slip-hooked and stolen 3 times and after I sold that car and got a convertible they slashed the top open on that one in order to get in to get a cheap $35 audio equalizer. The first car I kept getting back because it had a separate fuel pump switch hidden under the dash so the crooks could get a few blocks and then the car would quit. But it still was an obvious pain because you didn't know which direction to start walking to look for your car. That was then 2.0.

Now in the metro area we worry about being carjacked regardless of whether the doors are locked or not. I talked recently to people from the place I grew up. They still don't lock the doors. This is now.

Yesterday and today. Then and now. Which one got better and which one worse? Yes I know everybody didn't/can't grow up in a small town. But I'm thankful I did.

Don't romanticize it.

There's no way in hell I'd ever return to the communities of my childhood, not for any amount of money.

Quitting high school and fleeing was one of the better decisions I've ever made in my life.

people have different experiences. I am not romanticizing it. I made a statement of fact about an area I grew up in and how we lived regarding the aspects I stated. There are small towns that are awful. Plenty of them in certain areas of the country. But I have been in every major metro area in the country for many years and I haven't found one that doesn't fit with what I posted. The Yellow Brick Road. Do you think Big Town USA is OK for people who don't fit in there?

I thought it was clear that I'm talking about my experience and my area. I reread my post and I guess for clarity I could have added the words "like mine" to the small town part but it seemed to me that I was clearly talking about my experience on specific aspects. We had people who didn't "fit in" so to speak but nobody stole their car or burglarized their home. The point of my post was that nobody in my area had to even have that concern on their mind whereas in the metro areas it always has had to be on your mind about locking your doors.

Once again I state here as I have in other posts regarding this general "then versus now" subject that everybody grows up in different areas and has their own experiences.

Mr Poo was night stock and I worked in the deli when I was going to OSU. Worked out with my classes. We were at Town&Country and then Great Eastern.

Corporations do not operate to maximize benefits to their customers or their employees.

Corporations operate to maximize benefits to their shareholders, & a while plethora of societal problems flows from that.

I grew up in a suburb of Cleveland and dated a guy who worked part time at a grocery chain on what was called the "night crew". Back then, the shelves were always stocked when the store was closed so workers weren't interfering with customers. The store opened every morning with all the shelves neat and fully stocked. He was in a union and because he worked night crew and weekend nights he got time and a half and double time on Sunday. He wasn't even a full time employee. He was a college student and it fit well into his schedule.

At the same time, my stepmother was a nurse in the ICU at a major hospital. She made considerably less than he did and she was a full time nurse. She tried to get the other nurses to join a union and very few of them would. She was a widow and the other women were married, so they had their husbands' salaries to rely on also. She would get furious because they were willing to accept low pay. I can't imagine how angry I would be if I knew some college-aged, part time guy stocking soup cans at the grocery store was making more than twice what a nurse saving lives in the ICU was.

My point is that there have been so many examples, especially in the South, where people have tried to organize and the employees vote it down because of the propaganda that's put out about how unions are corrupt, or unions make you pay dues, blah, blah. An awful lot of people don't want to unionize even when they know they're being shafted.

Used to play that Frank Zappa song Cosmic Debris just to tease him.

"I preceded to tell him this future then,
As long as he was hanging around
I said, "The price of meat has just gone up
And your old lady has just gone down"

Look here brother
Who you jivin' with that Cosmik Debris?
Now what kind of a guru are you anyway?
Don't you know you could make more money as a butcher
So don't you waste your time on me"

Don't know if they had those in the Columbus area but they were union. He, personally, was a jerk and an alcoholic, but he made damned good money even if he showed up for work drunk as a skunk.

This should go viral.

You made more than I did.

My first check as an E1 was $473 for the entire month!

Ended up eventually earning a commission as an LDO and retired as an O5 after 29 years total.

It took a while to get there, and we made good choices, but with my pension and Social Security and assets, I am extremely fortunate.

When I told my mom I was quitting Big Bear to join the Navy, she cried and threatened to contact Senator John Glenn to get me out of my contract.

I went into the Reserves and stayed in, came back on active duty as a major in 2000...got out as LTC a few years later and even though I had deferred retirement it was still a lot better life.

Like you, my mom was not too happy when I told her I wanted to go in the Army, but it paid for my college, which would have been unaffordable even then, and I've gained lots of life experiences and practical experience I'd never have had otherwise. It's a hard life in many ways but if you buy into it it can be a very rewarding way of life.

Thank you for serving...many of our peers didn't.

How far we have fallen.

They split tips so it was 8 to10 dollars cash a night My dad made 4 times that at 10.50 hr in a union job today minimum wage is 15 hr so 4 times that would be 60 dollars an hour!

It’s obscene gluttony. My friend’s father was a union organizer back in the day and he used to say when there are no unions, there are no good paying jobs.

I’m happy to see President Biden supporting union workers. A change is long overdue.

buy a new Ducatti motorcycle and have cash and money to burn all of the rest of the coming school year. In today's dollars that works out to about $25/hr. American workers have been thoroughly screwed.

Around 88 I was making $15/hr and life was GOOD....

With that money you should have been set after 25-30 years....

Did 29 years and retired. Don't have much in investments other than a home, one rental property and a couple of CDs.

I was lucky. The military has a damn good retirement program.

I imagine you get pissed at every case of stolen valor.