I heard today that the Fraser Health Authority is giving its CEO Nigel Murray a $30,000 bonus on top of his $300,000 annual salary. Put that up against the cuts the Authority is making to services for addicted youth and seniors, among others.
Remember that hospital housekeeping workers, who are the first line of defense against super bugs and other infections for patients, had their wages lowered when their jobs were contracted out to a large multinational. Contrast their current wage of $14.10 per hour ($29,328 per year, IF they can get 40 hours per week) with Murray’s $158.65 per hour ($30K bonus included, for a 40 hour week).
Evidence in a newly-released report from the UK calculated the real value to society of a range of different professions; bankers and cleaners, childcare workers and advertising executives, tax accountants and people who recycle household waste. The study indicates that for every pound or dollar that they earned, hospital cleaners contributed 10 times that amount in benefits to society. Childcare workers generated seven to 10 times their wages in social and economic benefits, but bankers on million dollar salaries and bonuses actually destroyed social value. (In BC the majority of child care workers make less than $20 per hour.)
This is our money, folks. I’d like a little better value for mine.
Cenk Guven // Dec 21, 2009 at 5:23 pm
Thank you Adrienne for sharing this report with all of us. I have never understood why there is such a huge difference between people’s wages, even for those working in the same company. I mean, of course I understand there will be a difference because of the past experience, educational background, seniority, etc. However, does this difference have to be so big? A labour is a labour. Every contribution to a company/organization is very valuable and requires some skills, although we know that there are some jobs strangely called for the ‘non-skilled’. Would it be better if those very high-paying positions were given a bit less, and that difference were distributed to very low-paying positions in the company? Was this called Social Justice?!
Tom Kertes // Dec 22, 2009 at 1:03 am
The level of resources we spend for goods and services, in both public and private sectors, should be a reflection of our value for those services. How much we spend in total on education, relative to how we spend on recreation serve as indicators of our value for one service over another. Likewise, the amount we spend on soda pop versus how much we spend on drinking water, also speaks to how much we value these products.
But pay levels for people’s times should not be measure of value , since human life is equally sacred, all persons are of equal worth – our time is equally valuable. We are born of equal value, which means that an hour of my time is worth the same as an hour of your time. This is true for everyone, without exception.
Equal value for equal time does not always mean same pay for same time. That’s because pay and value are not always the same, and there are other factors that can influence how much a person is paid for their work, besides time alone. One example is when we pay more for greater risk, such as with danger pay. Some work involves greater risk, which is reflected in higher pay (such as for miners, firefighters, health care workers). Another example is when there is more pay for work to cover extra costs incurred while learning skills (such as for a plumber, nurse, teacher or electrician). This is reflected in seniority pay. Another example is equity pay, or more pay for greater need of the worker (such as for a person raising a family, overcoming injury or illness, caring for an elder, or overcoming a legacy of cultural destruction – such as for First Nations persons). These other factors speak not the value of the person doing the work, or of the time spent doing the work, but to other factors. But even when considering extra pay for these additional reasons, the general principle that all person’s time is equally valuable should hold – there should not be pay differentials of $30,000 for one worker, and $300,000 for another – especially when $30,000 is not enough to live on.
If we value everyone equally, then pay should reflect the general principle of “equal pay for equal time”, even if we make some exceptions to reflect the complication intersections between pay, equity, investment, legacy, risk and need. Complexities aside, the “work” of an executive is of no greater value than that of a front-line worker. Coordinators. leaders and strategic planners are equally essential to getting a job done as are any other workers and kinds of work in any organization. This should be especially reflected in the public sector, where the motivation for service should be based on maximizing public benefits, not making private gains.
Many of the most socially essential and valuable jobs are either unpaid or underpaid. While pay has no bearing on the value of work, it does reflect economic priorities, and also provides for a means of survival for workers. So when child care workers – which includes parents, grandparents, nannies, domestic workers, preschool teachers, daycare workers – are unpaid and underpaid for this work, there is clearly a gap between value and resources. This gap should be addressed because we pay for it in terms of care children receive, time families can spend together, and education provided to children.
The gap between value and resources makes no sense, and should be corrected. Child care is one example of work that’s highly valued (most would consider care and education of the younger generation is a paramount duty of the older generation) but poorly resourced. Adequate supports for children and families, including for all child care workers, should be reflection of our values. Instead, as with the the $300,000 pay and $30,000 bonus, we get more distortion then reflection, and the most essential work ends up under resourced – costing the community and treating some as “more equal” than others.