I agree with everything you say. But on my dock, we drivers double as the forklift operators and sometimes dock men. I work at Con-way where we are trained on all the jobs involving our trade. You and I, we come from different trucking worlds. So you see, from my POV, if they paid a dock man even close to what they paid me, I'm going to be upset. I sometimes load my own trailer in the morning if I come in and I'm still waiting on freight, so I understand the benefit of having good forklift operators because I am a forklift operator, a dockman, a yard jockey, and a city driver and sometimes a linehaul driver, if they need me to be. From my perspective, it makes no sense to pay non-CDL employees 90% of drivers wages. Our company saves money because we are all cross trained and it makes us more competitive, at least that's my opinion. And right now, I'm more worried about my company remaining profitable against a bunch of new driver rules and emissions regulations that is strangling our industry to death. So as far as I'm concerned, the less my company can pay some temp dock guy to lump the freight, the better chance I keep my job going forward.
I think there are a huge amount of people that either:
1. Have skills and can do anything so don't know that others are not able to possess those skills
2. Don't believe that if you have more skills you deserve more pay to use those skills
3. Don't understand that if you put ME in an 18 wheeled vehicle I could wipe out half of a city in about 20 min... and would keep going until the truck stopped moving...
4. Don't value their own skills.
IF you go to college and become a Dr. should you get paid the same amount as the nurse and janitor that also have part of the "end product" SERVICE to the patient? Just asking....
BTW - did you know - if you chose to get out of HS and work at a fast food joint - have 6 kids by 6 different fathers... Your wage - MIN WAGE - should pay you enough to support yourself above the poverty line???? What happens if I only have 3 kids by 3 different fathers? Is my Min Wage LESS because the poverty line for my little family is lower? UUUUGGGGGG
Love the thoughts!!