chester:
rob22888:
I used to work as a shelf stacker for Tesco.Hourly rates look alright on paper vs truck drivers but full time contracts were hard to come by unless you were management, increasingly so as time went on. Staff working full time on days in the likes of Tesco are usually old timers on old contracts.
A full time contract is 37.5 hours… 37.5 x £8.50ph x 52 weeks = £16,575 per year. Overtime? Forget it. I could pick up the odd shift every now and again but usually got met with “sorry, no money in the budget” when I asked for extra hours. Section manager salaries are only in the low 20s, you have to get to senior management level in store before you would start matching your Class 1 earnings.
It is NOT a viable alternative to driving lorries for a living. You’d be skint. Why does this lame argument keep being rehashed?
Tesco full time contract 37.5 hours per week
A truck driver can often find himself working double this, per week to achieve the same standard of living as a shelf stacker.
Hence why it gets rehashed.
We can have a valid discussion about work/life balance and living within ones means, but the fact is a bloke currently working 70 hours a week to achieve a yearly wage of well over £30k, will not currently be able to afford to do a supermarket job paying £16k. It’s night and day. 16k is a near poverty wage is todays society. Same standard of living??
Very few jobs that pay you £30k+ are 40 hours in reality anyway, not unless you in some gravy train council office gig or the like. The FLT drivers that tip our wagons on a 6-2 shift, do not represent the rest of society. People working like dogs & doing long hours to achieve a decent wage, is not exclusive to HGV drivers - not by a long shot.
I’m not defending truck drivers wages, just trying as ever to apply some perspective to this issue.