Posted by
grad_1986 on Thursday, May 05, 2011 2:41:20 PM
Have you ever heard people talking about a group of works as "under paid". Have you ever thought about what that phrase means. To me it means that some unidentifiable entity out there has measured the quality and necessity of various workers and has determined on their own what some one is worth. What made me to start thinking about this was when my son who is 19 started earning a living for the first time as a "lube-tech" at a Nissan car dealership. Even though he had almost 2 years of training at a major auto-tech-school, he started out at this level making $9.50 an hour. It was difficult at first and a bit depressing. I encouraged him to keep looking and that this was just a start. A few months later an Acura dealer called him (he left a resume several months ago) and they wanted to interview him for an auto-tech position. He got the job and is now making $16 per hour.
When I looked at this I thought about the whole aspect of "under paid". One might argue that in his first job he was "under paid" given his experience and training. However we are not paid on our exerience, we are paid based our our contribution and our level of responsibility. My son could have said "no" to the first job and kept looking, but instead he accepted it and when he did he made a conscious decision to VALUE HIMSELF as being worth $9.50 per hour. When he took the new job, he was willing to accept the HIGHER level of responsibilty and VALUE HIMSELF as being work $16.00 per hour. We are paid what we feel we are worth. Since this is still a free country, no one forces us to work for a certain wage (except unions). We have the right to say "yes" or "no" to the offer. If my company gave me a 10% or even 20% cut in pay, I would still continue to work for them because I like my work and I would still feel good about what I am doing.
Are there "under paid workers" ? Yes there are, just not in this country. Go to China where people are forced to work in factories (and even live and eat there too) who cannot say "yes" or "no". Those people truly are "under paid", but not here in our country. So the next time you think you are "under paid", I would tell you this, until you leave that job (say no to it), and find something else to do, you are being paid EXACTLY WHAT YOU ARE WORTH and not a penny less.