What are each of us worth?
It always comes up as a key part of bargaining strategy whenever wages are up for renewal. Ie. “I’m more important than so and so, so I should be making more money than they are” or “My job is more important than so and so’s, so I should be...”
Why is wage level tied to a person’s worth? Is the working making $300,000 a better person than the one making $30,000? And yet we hear it all the time.
It’s been my observation that the more a person likes their job, the more the amount on their paycheque becomes less important.
What is it that’s so important? Is carrying a gun more important than being a brain surgeon? Is a pilot more important than a bus driver? Is a store manager more important than a burger flipper?
I tend to think we’re all important and that perhaps a kid who flips burgers exceptionally well is probably more important than a lazy, clueless store manager.
As long as we have money to pay the bills... But those bills keep getting higher and higher because wages keep getting higher and higher.
Worker A wants a raise because everyone else doing a similar job is making more money. That sounds reasonable. But perhaps the reason the others were making more money was because the basics of housing, food and travel were costing them more where they lived. And now that Worker A got a raise, they justify another raise for themselves because “so and so is getting the same amount that I am and it doesn’t cost them nearly as much to live where they are...”
And on and on it goes, soaring upwards.
Upwards for some. For the rest of us unimportant or happy people, our wages stay pretty much the same yea after year while prices rise through the roof.
When you think about the wages our parents made and the prices they paid for housing, food and fuel, compared to now, we seem to be rapidly running out of the rope that supports our economy and our lifestyles.
Yet it matters not when earning more than others is the most important thing.
Wendy Coomber is editor of the Ashcroft-Cache Creek Journal