I was channel surfing last night and came across CBS's Undercover Boss. This program is a reality television series that takes CEO's of companies and puts them to work with entry level employees from their own companies. These employees are not told about this and do no learn that they've been working with the "boss" until later. This particular episode featured the founder and CEO of Belfor Restoration, a billion dollar disaster recovery and property restoration company founded in Michigan in the 1980's.
In instance after instance last night while the CEO, Sheldon Yellen, went to work with entry level employees on various assignments, he discovered that many of his employees were not making enough in salary to pay their bills. One employee was working side jobs along with his job at Belfor to try and make ends meet. Another employee had worked an entire year after her promotion without receiving the new salary increase that was supposed to accompany her promotion. She could not even pay her bills.
My first thought, these employees are doing very hard physical labor all day and are still not able to make enough in salary to pay their bills. Second thought, is this company unionized? Take an educated guess. It is not. While the CEO of this company certainly showed a lot of heart, emotion, and compassion about the fact that many of his employees were working very hard for him everyday and yet were still unable to make ends meet due to apparent low salaries at the company, it illustrates yet again the importance of having unions at companies to represent the employees so that they can have a voice at the table when important decisions are made at companies about what the compensation should be, what benefits packages should be, and whether or not there should be salary freezes or not so that you don't have situations like what had been occurring at Belfor, a billion dollar company.
In my own work experience, the job that paid better wages and benefits was at a company that was unionized. The jobs that were non-unionized paid substantially lower wages and benefits. In states like West Virginia, union worker wages are 11.1% higher than non-union worker wages. According to a July 2010 Bureau of Labor Statitstics report on wages, union workers earn an average of $4.95 per hour more than non-unionized workers which equates to $10,300 annually. Although wages vary based on sector and occupation, it is clear when viewing wage data that the union worker has the advantage. This is the connection that corportist in America do not want average Americans to make.
Here is a clip from last night's episode.
In my own work experience, the job that paid better wages and benefits was at a company that was unionized. The jobs that were non-unionized paid substantially lower wages and benefits. In states like West Virginia, union worker wages are 11.1% higher than non-union worker wages. According to a July 2010 Bureau of Labor Statitstics report on wages, union workers earn an average of $4.95 per hour more than non-unionized workers which equates to $10,300 annually. Although wages vary based on sector and occupation, it is clear when viewing wage data that the union worker has the advantage. This is the connection that corportist in America do not want average Americans to make.
Here is a clip from last night's episode.
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