Go you bus drivers!
Today I intended to catch a bus into the city. Unfortunately, the company's drivers were meeting today to discuss wage negotiations with their management. Initially this annoyed me a little - purely because of the inconvenience. However, once I foun dout what the drivers are paid, I now support them totally.
I personally feel aggrieved to get out of bed for less than $15 an hour, and the thought of doing what bus drivers do for under $14, horrifies me. Drivers in this city range from astonishingly aggressive, to downright dreamy. Passengers often take their frustrations out on the drivers. As I discovered the day I tried to text to gain information about buses, the system is not always user-friendly - I would have been hot under the collar that day if I had boarded a bus rather than walked.
The median wage is this city is between $28 - 29K - even two people earning this money would struggle to buy a house, let alone raise a child. It amazes me that whenever politicians speak of saving money spent on welfare, they are keen for beneficiaries to move into work, but fail to address the problem of low wages. I hope one day to hear a politician talk about raising productivity through increased participation in the workforce.
It is hard to imagine that unskilled workers see any advantage in moving off benefit (which includes an accomodation subsidy) into work which pays $10 - 12 an hour. And the problem doesn't stop there. One acquaintance of mine had two law degrees, one from a country where English is not the first language, the other from Australia. This highly-qualified lady signed up with recruitment agencies, who offered her secretarial roles paying around $15 per hour. Not surprisingly, she was reluctant to take them on. (By the way, she does not receive benefit). I also worked in a call centre once, alongside a qualified environmental scientist from India. She had struggled to find an employer interested in her skills, despite speaking better english than many native speakers in addition to her teriary qualification.
As long as the issue of low wages is not addressed, and skilled immigrants forced to accept work in call centres or driving taxis, the opportunity to improve productivity remains an overlooked resource.
