03-06-2011, 02:17 PM
quote:
I am surprised that more people I know here are OK with the fact that the electric company wants to impose 2 tiers of raises (wage increase) giving the office workers far less annual raise than the field workers (this is not starting pay, which is based on job classification & hazard). This will create a case where the office workers will actually fall farther behind the field workers each year.
Think of the average office worker & the average field worker. Wage parity was fought by some of us, and Hawaii was the first state to ratify the wage parity laws - HEI & HELCO seem to working against this.....
I assume the average office worker works in a chair, in an air conditioned, dry environment. The field workers are out day and night, rainy or dry, hot or cold, driving on bumpy back roads, walking through scrub or dangling in bucket trucks handling live electrical wires. If the office worker isn't happy, their skills are easily transferable to other jobs, but the field crew, not so much. So yeah, I guess I'm OK with the tiered pay grades.