Re:Ex-Googler says she exposed company-wide pay inequality w...
by ensignavenger on Saturday July 18, 2015 @11:23AM
(#9907738)
I've never worked in the supermarket industry, but I have worked in warehouses and on retail floors- and in my experience, the pace and magnitude of the physical labor is significantly higher in the warehouse. Again, I can't generalize my experience to every company.
One way they might address the allegations would be to transfer some warehouse employees to the sales floor and vice versa, providing a better mix, and a good opportunity for employees to see a different side of the operation. Of course, locations may not allow this easily- and may actually play into the pay disparity.
Warehouse employees get paid a bit more than shopfloor employees. Warehouse employees are mostly men. Shop floor employees are mostly women. The jobs are not identical, but they are similar. Shop floor employees include the shelf stackers - they take pallets of boxes of goods and unload these onto shelves. That's very similar to the lifting work that warehouse employees do. (There might be a need for some warehouse workers to have forklift licences, which would explain a small amount of the pay differential).
In this legal case the wages of both group are pretty close to minimum wage.
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/oct/24/asda-mass-le...
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/jul/09/sainsburys-f...