Fighting Two-Tier Systems
As corporations maximize profits by nearly any means necessary, they continue to alter the terms of work and try to suppress worker power. While workers constantly fight for rights and fairness in the workplace through collective bargaining and direct action, employers seek to divide workers by employing an unfair, tiered system of wages.
Two-tier employment is a system where employers offer lower wages and benefits for the same work. This system benefits corporations’ bottom line, while also perpetuating inequity amongst already marginalized workers like immigrants, low-income rural workers, Black women, and women of color.
Two-tier wages appear in workplaces through official contracts but are also easily implemented in other less official methods employers use to suppress wages and benefits. From delivery drivers to the assembly line, contracts that allow for two-tiered systems extend into several different industries and have a common motive regardless of the work: corporations want to use part-time work and gig work to save on labor costs. It is not uncommon to find workers doing the same work – whether they’re stocking shelves at your grocery store or serving your favorite beverage – receiving a wide discrepancy in wages amongst themselves.
Not only do employers wield two-tier systems to grow profits, but they use it as a means to attack workplace organizing efforts and control workers. Most recently, Starbucks denied unionized stores wage increases, benefits, and a new tip system in an effort to punish union workers and discourage organizing (it’s not working).
Corporations like to cast workers as the villains when they demand equal pay for equal work. Yet greedy CEOs have yet to rectify the gender pay gap: for every $1 that men make, women earn $0.83. When you add race to equation, it’s even more devastating.
Employers are fueling wage inequality and denying life-saving benefits with part-time and gig work. Previously employed by a corporate pharmacy and retail store, I was unable to meet the 30 hour per week requirement to receive benefits after being strategically scheduled to only work 29.5 hours. I’ve also witnessed raises for rank-and-file employees forgone for manager bonuses.
The gigification of work has created even more avenues for employers to create tiered systems of wages. Gig drivers’ rates fluctuate, and there are few to no mechanisms to compare wages with others in the industry. Drivers might make a substantial wage in one hour of work then find themselves grossly underpaid the rest of the week. Workers can’t survive on unreliable wages set by billionaire tech giants and aren’t provided with accurate information to advocate for themselves.
This phenomenon hasn’t proceeded without pushback though. Unions and other organized workers around the country are fighting back against the very idea that they should be compensated as second-class workers. Uniting across industries, workers are demanding corporations pay workers for seniority and full-time commitment, while still delivering a thriving wage and fair benefits to new workers and part-timers.
Just this summer, Teamsters mobilized thousands of workers to demand equal pay for equal work and won the immediate removal of 22.4 tier from their contract, proving again that when we fight, we win. If we remain united, corporations that satisfy their endless greed by pitting workers against each other will be a thing of the past.