So I've been with Fred Meyer about two years. I was a Parcel for about a year before transferring into Cashiering, and am just approaching the one year mark for that. I go to school, but make sure to only take off two days a week(the minimum I can get away with) so that my work can continue to schedule me.
Now, the way our pay raises work is it's strictly by hours; there are various levels, and I'm currently 500 hours from the next raise. This is an issue because, to my knowledge, I have never gotten a raise beyond the raise I got when moving to Cashiering - and that leaves me at 8.90 an hour. Cashiers hired off the street at my store typically get somewhere around $9.15 an hour. When I questioned this, I was given a variety of explanations, including experience beforehand, when I had equal experience to my friend who just got hired but am getting .25 an hour less than him. The simple reason is that when a Parcel is transferred, they do not tend to set them with a competitive rate, but leave them at a low cap(Parcels already have by and far the lowest pay cap in the store, only reaching a measly 8.95 regardless of how long they work).
Now this has me frustrated enough, but that's far from the most frustrating thing with my store right now. In addition to that, everyone in my store is assigned a Part Time/Full Time status that determines their minimum hours - typically PT 8, 12, 20, and Full time. I'm currently at a PT8, meaning they can get away with giving me 8 hours a week. To put this in perspective, out of 30-odd cashiers, we have two PT8s; The other one is an elderly lady that is only available 8 hours a week. We have two 12s(one only here temporarily) and the rest are 20 and above, with many of the 20s being students like me.
I brought this up with my boss, and the reason given to me was that I do not have full time availability, so she was not able to set me at 20 as it would be unfair to the rest. However, our store defines full time availability as "being available to work 40 hours a week) which I easily am, with 5 days available. This was the same excuse she used to deny me training in other areas required for advancement. One of the other managers, cutting to the chase, put it simply by explaining that those PT20 cashiers were hired into that position, while I was transferred from Parcels, where PT8 is much more common.
So, the gist of the situation is that I am being treated as a lesser employee and not given competitive hours and pay simply because I came from a different area rather than being hired in - even though I've worked there longer and typically have better speed than most of the people I'm being compared to.
After trying to deal with this for the last couple weeks, I've grown sick of it, and my friend, a union rep for another store, has suggested I just go straight to the union to complain, which I think is perfectly reasonable even if it will piss my boss off. Hopefully, I can get this all sorted out and get my hours/wages set to a fair level through them, although what fallout might follow I don't know >.>;
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Joyrock
Fresh from my first justified ban. Ever!