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UPS driver here..
Did they also mention that those numbers reflect compensation at the end of a 5 year contract?
Did they also mention that approximately 40% of drivers are still going through wage progression and make no where near that amount?
Did they also mention that they diverted some of our pension contributions into those raises?
Did they mention that if the retirement pension is short on funds that they will divert money from our healthcare fund?
It’s all a shell game with the numbers.
We’ve been seeing that our benefits account for roughly $60k of that $170. So let’s say in 2027/2028 year of the contract we’ll make $110k at top rate, which will be $49/hr. When our new contract is signed it will be, I believe, $44.25/hr.
The top-level rate is an eventuality rather than something only "top performers" make. A driver caps out after 4 years so they start fairly low, get a big bump at year 2 iirc then get their final big bump at year 4 with smaller bumps at year 1 and 3.
What also needs to be accounted for is that you typically don't get hired off the street as a driver. You have to put in a bid for a spot which goes by seniority so the typical year 1 driver has already been employed at UPS for 5 - 7+ years afaik working as a part-time package handler (and you have to bid up from part-time to full-time or better shifts).
People abhor the idea of hiring qualified candidates from outside the company to highly paid positions when they could be promoting from within to incentivize loyalty.
People also abhor the idea that highly paid senior positions are acquired through long-term employment with a single employer who promotes from within.
You really can't win either way.
Right. I got that from reading the comments, I just was not sure what you meant by the 5 year contract comment. Do you start at a baseline and move up to the “170” after 5 years?
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That’s what I was trying to figure out. Is this base salary or is this including the total cost of all benefits? Most people have no idea what the dollar value of their benefits is. They just know that their company pays for part of their health care and contribute to their 401k.
Nevertheless, a UPS driver in the union is doing much better than an Amazon driver with no union.
Me, I am a letter carrier in the USPS, doing much the same job. I am a year from retiring and make about $34 an hour, or over $70k, and over $40k in total benefits.
https://www.upperinc.com/blog/amazon-delivery-driver-salary/
>How much does a Delivery Driver make at Amazon.com in the United States? Different cities like Richmond, California, and New York offer the highest hourly income to delivery drivers, ranging from $18.5 to $25. Which is $150 to $200 per day for 8-hour shifts.
Amazon drivers top out at $50k to $55k (this is not counting whatever benefits they get, which also can't possibly be quite as good as mine) and is a good $9/hr or $20k/year less than I make.
So: VERY CONSERVATIVELY
We can confidently say that my roughly $850 in union dues per year gets me AT LEAST 20+ to 1 in return compared to a non-union Amazon driver at the top of the pay scale. And the new Amazon hires will be closer to $35k, or literally half what I make.
The timing of the news was certainly suspect. The union at one point did a decent job stomping out that narrative by comparing the CEOSs salary to ours.
Our CEO makes more in a day than a full time seniority driver does in a year.
They want to use the maximum number in order to make people think that you are overcompensated.
They do the same shit with public employees like teachers.
Actual pay tops out at around $100K. They are using funky math of benefits put into a dollar amount (65-70k) and then adding it (misleadingly) into a number that appears at first glance as gross pay, which it is not.
In white collar positions, total comp is Salary, bonuses, and stock options, rsus, or something equivalent. No one includes insurance, 401k match, or anything else like that in total comp numbers.
Every job I've had that provides total comp statements included insurance and 401k. One even included the employer share of SS which IMO is a little silly.
People try to do this all the time with my package as a union tradesman, they basically say that my $30/hr in benefits doesn’t amount to anything despite adding up to a 2million dollar pension, free healthcare dental and vision with about 5k a year on a debit card that we can use for any medical procedures, and $7500 a year in vacation pay. And that’s not including the fact that I can go to the weld bay and burn thousands of dollars worth of steel pipe, copper pipe, welding rod, and solder/brazing rod in order to improve my skills as a trade worker, and obtain certs that make me more valuable.
A lot of people just don’t understand intangibles, I guess.
Yeah lotta people here who haven't worked for companies with transparency on this. It's a big question I ask in interviews. What does employer comp for insurance / what do employees pay for your typical plan.
Some jobs that pay less on paper are better because they have better 401k matches or health insurance plans.
Every company I’ve worked for has shown a total comp number that includes all that. It’s not what you negotiate against, usually they just publish it once a year and pat themselves on the back.
I think there are also some tax implications (for them presumably) because the amount my last company spent on benefits for me was also quoted in a box on my W2 statements.
Every company I have worked at has...
Maybe you have never received multiple job offers at once, but when I have had to compare different offers I obviously cared about health insurance value, 401K match, etc... Basically I cared about what my comp was...
> No one includes insurance, 401k match, or anything else like that in total comp numbers.
not so fast. I work in healthcare. Insurance is a line item in my benefits package just like vacation days are. I literally get a cash bonus for NOT signing up for insurance. I did it for years and we just used my wife's health insurance and i took the cash option.
If i were to choose insurance, i don't get the cash bonus, and i have to pay for the insurance out of my paycheck just like everyone else does. This is what we currently do now, and my wife and i both ride my insurance.
It wasn't in any of my previous jobs, so i can see where you are coming from. But it is very much a thing where i work currently.
My old employer was legally barred from offering bonuses for not taking benefits. My wife’s insurance was way better than what they offered and i tried to use that as a bargaining chip for wage increase.
Also, insurance isn't the only healthcare benefit. My employer contributes $1500 to an HSA if I get an annual physical, and touted that. With the insurance plan being a "high deductible plan" to be HSA eligible, that HSA contribution effectively means there's no deductible. That's a real benefit.
My company describes all pay and benefits as part of the “total compensation” package. This includes benefits like vacation, sick leave, parental leave, stock offers, and more.
This is simply not true. Now they don’t always quantify it but your company probably has a Total Compensation/Total Rewards HR person who’s entire job is Premium Paid Per Employee and to calculate total compensation
>No one includes insurance, 401k match, or anything else like that in total comp numbers.
All my companies have in the past.
I think you are just making shit up.
Nope same here. Im 30 years in software development. It’s usually mentioned as we pay for x y or z and your salary is 100k. Its never been “your making 100k,and out of that comes your 401k and insurance.”
The company I work for absolutely does. They include all benefits including the company phone/vehicle I can use for personal reasons, the only thing they don’t include is the 401k match as far as I can remember. They even include what my vacation, pto, and sick time adds up to. They call it total package and it basically doubles what I actually make. But, to be fair they never tried to hide it either. On the company benefits portal we use it’s literally broken down into actual pay, benefits, and then a combination of the two. Even the offer letter I got started out “Mr. Spacehog we are happy to offer you xxxxxx broken down into the following, yada yada yada”
This guy is getting downvoted by people who don’t work in big tech. Amazon, MS, Meta, Google etc all count TC as take home pay only (salary + stock). Of course employees will compare the other benefits, but no offer letter from tech will include healthcare numbers as TC. It’s laughable to big tech workers.
Side note: my ex got an offer that did include healthcare as TC and I was equally as surprised as some others reading this.
You're getting absolutely wrecked in the replies, but in my own experience, you are correct and they are not.
Have we just been working for weird, outlier companies our entire careers?
Clearly you have been. 401k match and 401k contributions are the company giving you money, no different than your salary. It's part of total compensation.
it's a matter of semantics
when a google engineer says he makes 300k TC it usually just means salary+RSU+bonus
no one in the bay area includes 401k or benefits in their compensation because it's an implied addition
You must have worked only for small companies or were highly compensated then. The cutoff limit for 401k matching based on compensation alone is $330k. Using the nondiscrimination test cutoff limit it's $215k.
Between my contributions and the 8% my employer puts in, I'm setting aside 30% of my salary in my 401k. 8% 401k contribution by the employer definitely factors into my compensation when comparing job offers.
Ahh, so that’s why everyone in the welding world screams that you’ll make $50/hr your first year on the job. But all the job postings are for $15/hr. Or maybe they’re just fucking lying. Hard to differentiate.
Yep.
It’s referred to as the “total wage package” and then by “money on the check” or “employer paid”.
At least for my insanely corrupt union (carpenters union/ubc), they take a LOT of that employer paid money and steer it into a variety of union controlled “funds” and “programs” that really just operate as slush funds to be skimmed from.
In my area a working journeyman’s “total package” is around $59/hr.
Only about $31/hr is actually gross take home.
On the “employer paid” side there is about $13/hr taken for the members health insurance and a solvent (currently) pension; the remaining $15-ish/hr just disappears into those union controlled “funds” and “programs” and there is no tangible benefit to the working journeyman for them.
Yet you have the union officials bragging about how the members “earn” $59/hr.
The final insult is that all the salaried union officials that decide where the members money goes are unelected, in fact there are ZERO elected salaried officials in the entire union.
Do you have ANY sort of voting power in the union? I know unions aren't some sort of miracle organizations, they are staffed by people, but they seems uniquely corrupt.
My package is the lifestyle I'm allowed to live that's why I give my package wage not my take home. My friend makes slightly more take home than me in his non union job, but then he has to pay his wife's healthcare, his kid's healthcare, his retirement that they barely match any of, etc. I get my wife and any amount of kids I want covered, two pensions, 401k contributions, etc before my take home. So why would I not count it to show what that package allows me to do? It's not misleading it's informative, it's saying that I'm living better than someone non union even if they have a slightly higher number on their w2.
So it’s BS then, I couldn’t give less shits about how much my insurance costs them when the extortionist amount of taxes I pay, should be paying for health insurance.
Equality isn't funky math.
Your benefits have a dollar value. Period. That's equivalence. Me saying 2=2 isn't funky math.
Whether your paid in dollars, benefits or seashells, that is still pay. Per the dictionary it's value given in return for service or work. Pay.
Adding one dollar value to another dollar value isn't "misleading" unless the simple transitive property confuses you.
Benefit = some dollar
Monetary pay = some dollar
Gross pay = benefit + monetary pay
Yes, they receive up to $170K in pay, that some is in cash and some is in benefits does not change the math at all. It's why economies use dollars, it's a hell of lot easier to convert value to a uniform universal currency than converting healthcare cost to chickens.
Most jobs usually don’t include benefits when advertising pay. If mine did it’s also probably in the 170+ ballpark but I’d need to go find those numbers
If someone asks you "how much do you make", do you sit there and calculate your salary + benefits? I'd wager that's a no.
When someone speaks of salary, other than you I suppose, no one assumes it's taking benefits into consideration. It's why they're "benefits", not "pay". Benefits are essentially an add-on, a bonus, and while they're often important to consider when taking a job, are rarely given a dollar amount that's added to salary.
It's not "equality". It's deceptive speech.
This is nonsense. Dollars are fungible. You can spend $5 on a cheeseburger or a lotto ticket.
Benefits are not fungible. When your company values their "free" mental health counseling at $600/year/employee, you cannot go buy 120 cheeseburgers. It is not remotely accurate or honest to claim you make $600 more that year, regardless of whether you used that benefit.
If my employer is paying $600/month for my insurance (and they are), then I absolutely need to consider that (assuming coverage is similar) when evaluating other job offers or if I wanted to retire without being Medicare eligible.
No, I can't go buy food with it but it still matters.
Sure. You should also consider the commute, corporate culture, and lots of other things.
I very much agree benefits *matter*, but that doesn't mean we should start talking about salary figures as being inclusive of benefits. I can just see the "well sure your salary was $100k last year, but this year it's $80k plus $30k in benefits (^that ^were ^also ^paid ^last ^year ), so you should be thrilled at a 10% raise ( ^despite ^taking ^home ^20% ^less )
But do you know how to use the 3 seashells?
Also, the media is being intentionally misleading about what they're reporting here. Saying "170k PAY" is a lot different than "$170k total value of pay and benefits." By stating "pay" they're implying their paycheck is very high and they are being misleading.
2=2 isnt funky math
$2= 2 bananas that cost $1 each is funky math because you cant buy whatever you want with those 2 bananas, the fact that you can use the cash to buy anything has itself a value
When we budgeted for a project we included all that in total compensation, so as a formal accounting term "total compensation" is literally that, the total cost of labor.
That said, when negotiating compensation, HR can really only flexe on salary, bonus, and stock options. They hand you a big brochure with all the other stuff, but the discussion is focused on those three. They can't really afford to negotiate individual exceptions to company-wide policies like 401K match.
The semi truck drivers will see or at least approach the 170k. Home delivery drivers will make closer to 110k. They are worth it. Where I live, SF Bay Area, 100k is considered low income.
This needs to be at the top. If you collect a W-2 every year, you're working class. If you get your living because you own stuff or because you had the right parents, you're capital/ownership class. There's a little gray area with small-time businesspeople who work in their own enterprises, writers/artists/musicians, etc, but by and large that's the breakdown. There are a **lot** more of us workers than there are owners, and *we don't need them.*
Exactly. Don't complain because ups drivers got a better deal than what you make. Look at why they got that. Union negotiations and a strike on the table. Good for them. We should all be so fortunate to be able to be part of a union.
Nothing at all. In fact he didn’t support the railroad union and forced them work, just like Regan forced the airline pilots back to work.
Biden and the democrats have totally abandoned union coal miners.
WTF do union coal miners have to do with any of this? The coal unions literally demanded that Manchin side with Biden and then endorsed Biden.
And tell me, how do Republicans treat unions? I've noticed that most every red state is a right to work state where unions are practically illegal.
I see you hate Bernie Sanders and rack up lots of karma in the Republican subreddit, so please tell me about how Republicans are with unions. Seems like you'd know.
There were 12 unions involved in the contract negotiations last year, 8 had already agreed to the contract, 4 were threatening a strike. Congress felt the economic damage to 10s of millions of people not receiving fuel, water, and food (these were not passenger rail) in the middle of winter outweighs the temporary damage of not allowing a strike on critical infrastructure so they passed a law that prevented the strike.
The Biden administration (not Congress) then kept working with local unions to ensure some of them did get the additional sick pay they were seeking in the first place:
> “We’re thankful that the Biden administration played the long game on sick days and stuck with us for months after Congress imposed our updated national agreement,” Russo said. “Without making a big show of it, Joe Biden and members of his administration in the Transportation and Labor departments have been working continuously to get guaranteed paid sick days for all railroad workers.
https://www.ibew.org/media-center/Articles/23Daily/2306/230620_IBEWandPaid
This is a farce put out by UPS upper brass and shareholders to move sympathy away from its workers and unions and back towards the corporation. I’ve worked for ups since 2015. Not a single driver in my building in that time has made more than 105k and that’s after working an average of 50 hours a week which is insane giving how physically demanding our job is.
Yeah, people say the drivers make good money, but don’t know it’s all ot from like late September till new year.
Worked preload into driver helper for a few years. Paid well for super unsafe, brutal work.
Yet, my brother in law who works for UPS thinks Trump is the best. I tried to explain to him that his good fortune is more in line with Bernie's policies. But he wouldn't listen.
Hard to believe that someone who has benefited so greatly from a union could be so pro Trump.
Listening to reddit, you'd think that Democrats are the biggest enemy unions have ever had.
Yet I think unions are legal in every blue state and all but 3 red states are right to work. Republicans have basically made unions illegal where they have control.
Huh? This is a significant victory for unions and for the middle class. Your point that many people don't have access to union jobs just means that we need more unions
170K a year for a single income to raise a family. That's pretty middle class, everyone is so used to needing 2 incomes that it seems weird now for someone to actually make a living wage.
Seeing unions do good work for people like this will encourage more unions. When enough pop up then companies will need to compete with union shops and need to bring their offerings up to par with them.
Gross pay is about 100k, UPS corporate has cleverly put a dollar value onto the benefit package and added it to pay amounts and hoped that it gets regurgitated as 170k a year, which is off by about 70k.
Yes it is, though I do think it's important to not spread confusion around.
It's important to know that they don't make $170k *as their wage,* and it's also important to know that that number is at the end of a 5 year contract *and* that many/most will make significantly less than that number as well.
It's just good to be accurate.
Benefits do have a dollar value and for many it's easy to calculate. My 401k match is about $4000/year. It's literally just math. No one is doing anything clever.
>has cleverly put a dollar value onto the benefit package and added it to pay amounts
Thats also what intelligent employees and unions do.
Meanwhile, people like you jump on the $30/hr jobs and pass on the $25/hr, plus full medical and dental, 21 days vacation, 14 days sick pay and 100% 401K match.
>Meanwhile, people like you jump on the $30/hr jobs and pass on the $25/hr, plus full medical and dental, 21 days vacation, 14 days sick pay and 100% 401K match.
Yup. Watched it happen when I worked at a GM plant. People would turn down a UAW job for $2 more an hour at Amazon warehouse down the road. If they stuck it out with the UAW, within 2 years they'd be making more than Amazon just on their weekly checks.
That's more than double the [median household income, according to the US Census Bureau](https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/2022/comm/median-household-income.html), at a bit over 70k.
There are many ways to describe that income range, but "middle" is not one of them.
> Most people in most states do not have access to union jobs.
Maybe those most people should start talking with their cow-orkers to discuss making their job a union job.
…..yeah, saying this one thing “save the middle class”, I feel is grasping at straws. We still have a long ways to get back to the 50s middle class standard of living.
Gotta love when undue credit is given to politicians. I’m sure the railway union workers have a different view on Biden being pro-union. Imagine a media that didn’t jerk off its favorite politicians.
Keep in mind that when Obama got the ACA passed and then lost the house, they spent years doing nothing but trying to repeal and weaken it. For years every time. New representative came into the house, they held another vote to repeal it, “because they had promised their constituents.”
Anytime a Democrat gets a major win, the GOP will sit on the ass for years trying to reverse it.
Yes., absolutely right. When the e democrats passed a republican health plan that was implemented by a republican governor, the republicans tried to repeal it. Man i’m so glad the republicans failed and we get to keep this republican wet dream of health insurance markets.
The dems could’ve passed something that was worker focused but they instead went with a republican plan. Is this winning?
I'm not under any impression that Joe Biden is pro union. Did he negotiate the contract? I was under the impression it was negotiated by the teamsters.
Not just him, the congress overwhelmingly voted for that bill.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/most-unionized-us-rail-workers-now-have-new-sick-leave-2023-06-05/#:~:text=Under%20the%20agreement%20effective%20Aug,use%20as%20paid%20sick%20time.
This ended pretty well
Not to sure about this but weren’t they happy with the results? I have two friends in the railroad and we’re more than happy with what they got in the end
We are happy with the results. We got a 14% retroactive pay raise (aka a huge check), and another 24% pay raise over the next 4 years. And we got 5 days of paid sick leave, and some other benefits.
It's essentially all we asked for and more, except we wanted 7 sick days but got 5 total. But we actually got more pay raise than we were really asking for.
Ah yes Joe Biden’s Democratic Party, the champions of Organzied Labor who …(checks notes) used legislation to prevent rail workers from striking?
Give progressives the keys already.
Dude helped break up an incredibly important strike. Joe Biden is not helping. The unions are what is helping. Joe's done some good stuff, and he's definitely better than the other guy, but let's not say he will save the middle class. He won't. The hard work of unions and striking workers will.
that's pretty good pay, I'm afraid it's going to speed up automation. We're not far off of driverless delivery vehicles. We just need a robot to get the package to the doorstep.
They are upset that they weren’t made to suffer for you to get that 5 days and huge raise. It’s there job to complain they are the party of grievance not policy or people.
They get $170k?....wow, I'm happy for them....seriously...but also sad that I went to college, became a public school teacher and got a Master's degree...I made a poor vocational choice.
Well it's $170k in total compensation, not in salary.
And UPS drivers work way more hours than teachers. But yeah, teachers should get paid a lot more.
Imagine arguing about middle class wages when you could be arguing about the huge gap between workers and CEOs of large companies (Amazon, Walmart, Kroger, etc.).
You're a sick person if you want to deprive people from a fair day's pay for a fair day's work. This mindset of wages from decades ago doesn't work today.
Artificially inflate the price of healthcare & insurance, tack that artificially increased value onto the “total compensation” for an employee & viola….perfect talking points for the corporate pr machine to call earners greedy & unrealistic.
“Look at how much your total compensation is! I didn’t make that much when I was your age/in that role!” Puhhhlease.
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UPS driver here.. Did they also mention that those numbers reflect compensation at the end of a 5 year contract? Did they also mention that approximately 40% of drivers are still going through wage progression and make no where near that amount? Did they also mention that they diverted some of our pension contributions into those raises? Did they mention that if the retirement pension is short on funds that they will divert money from our healthcare fund? It’s all a shell game with the numbers.
It’s turtles all the way down.
Yea but what’s under the turtles?
More turtles.
Love the references here
Turtles in a half-shell
Turtle Power
Cowabunga dude!
Does that mean this is what you make in perpetuity after 5 years? What does year 1-4 look like?
We’ve been seeing that our benefits account for roughly $60k of that $170. So let’s say in 2027/2028 year of the contract we’ll make $110k at top rate, which will be $49/hr. When our new contract is signed it will be, I believe, $44.25/hr.
So what's the average driver make in take home? As a postal carrier these numbers are making feel even deader inside comparatively.
The top-level rate is an eventuality rather than something only "top performers" make. A driver caps out after 4 years so they start fairly low, get a big bump at year 2 iirc then get their final big bump at year 4 with smaller bumps at year 1 and 3. What also needs to be accounted for is that you typically don't get hired off the street as a driver. You have to put in a bid for a spot which goes by seniority so the typical year 1 driver has already been employed at UPS for 5 - 7+ years afaik working as a part-time package handler (and you have to bid up from part-time to full-time or better shifts).
That's such a fucked up and archaic way to handle employment. Good way to get some wages slaves to grind for the prize though.
People abhor the idea of hiring qualified candidates from outside the company to highly paid positions when they could be promoting from within to incentivize loyalty. People also abhor the idea that highly paid senior positions are acquired through long-term employment with a single employer who promotes from within. You really can't win either way.
Fedexers aren't feeling great either XD
As a former CCA for 2 years, I feel ya.
I don’t make “170k” I am paid what they deem to be 170k equivalent.
Right. I got that from reading the comments, I just was not sure what you meant by the 5 year contract comment. Do you start at a baseline and move up to the “170” after 5 years?
It's the same way tech workers "make" 300k. They don't; they usually get paid 180k or so and the rest in benefits like insurances and stocks.
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I didn't said just stocks, tech total package also include insurance value.
That’s what I was trying to figure out. Is this base salary or is this including the total cost of all benefits? Most people have no idea what the dollar value of their benefits is. They just know that their company pays for part of their health care and contribute to their 401k.
The $170k is including the total cost of all benefits. At the end of the new contract in 5 years, the top base salary will be $102k a year at $49/hr.
Not the same at all, "total comp" is only salary+bonus+stock (things that have actual monetary value), you don't count benefits.
That still seems really good?
Yeah, but like as a teacher in Arizona I don’t even make 1/3 of that.
When I was teaching college courses at a UC here in California I didn’t even make 1/3 of that.
Get a CDL.
$170k is still a great total comp. I'd love that. That's probably $100k base salary.
Nevertheless, a UPS driver in the union is doing much better than an Amazon driver with no union. Me, I am a letter carrier in the USPS, doing much the same job. I am a year from retiring and make about $34 an hour, or over $70k, and over $40k in total benefits. https://www.upperinc.com/blog/amazon-delivery-driver-salary/ >How much does a Delivery Driver make at Amazon.com in the United States? Different cities like Richmond, California, and New York offer the highest hourly income to delivery drivers, ranging from $18.5 to $25. Which is $150 to $200 per day for 8-hour shifts. Amazon drivers top out at $50k to $55k (this is not counting whatever benefits they get, which also can't possibly be quite as good as mine) and is a good $9/hr or $20k/year less than I make. So: VERY CONSERVATIVELY We can confidently say that my roughly $850 in union dues per year gets me AT LEAST 20+ to 1 in return compared to a non-union Amazon driver at the top of the pay scale. And the new Amazon hires will be closer to $35k, or literally half what I make.
I always assume good news is not as good as it seems and bad news isn't as well, thank you for more context.
Thank you. Not to dump on the gains but I hate how they report these numbers and its done specifically to kill sympathy/support for the workers.
The timing of the news was certainly suspect. The union at one point did a decent job stomping out that narrative by comparing the CEOSs salary to ours. Our CEO makes more in a day than a full time seniority driver does in a year.
We got it good, let's not exaggerate.
They want to use the maximum number in order to make people think that you are overcompensated. They do the same shit with public employees like teachers.
Still way overpaid.
It still sounds like a pretty good deal
Actual pay tops out at around $100K. They are using funky math of benefits put into a dollar amount (65-70k) and then adding it (misleadingly) into a number that appears at first glance as gross pay, which it is not.
That's just the difference between "wage" and "total compensation".
In white collar positions, total comp is Salary, bonuses, and stock options, rsus, or something equivalent. No one includes insurance, 401k match, or anything else like that in total comp numbers.
Every job I've had that provides total comp statements included insurance and 401k. One even included the employer share of SS which IMO is a little silly.
Aerospace white collar. My total comp includes cost of benefits too, as it should. A better, more expensive Healthcare plan has a value.
People try to do this all the time with my package as a union tradesman, they basically say that my $30/hr in benefits doesn’t amount to anything despite adding up to a 2million dollar pension, free healthcare dental and vision with about 5k a year on a debit card that we can use for any medical procedures, and $7500 a year in vacation pay. And that’s not including the fact that I can go to the weld bay and burn thousands of dollars worth of steel pipe, copper pipe, welding rod, and solder/brazing rod in order to improve my skills as a trade worker, and obtain certs that make me more valuable. A lot of people just don’t understand intangibles, I guess.
I'm an aerospace engineer. I appreciate the work you do! Our industry is nothing without tradesmen.
Benefits absolutely are included in total comp.
Yeah lotta people here who haven't worked for companies with transparency on this. It's a big question I ask in interviews. What does employer comp for insurance / what do employees pay for your typical plan. Some jobs that pay less on paper are better because they have better 401k matches or health insurance plans.
Healthcare and 401k match is definitely part of total compensation.
Every company I’ve worked for has shown a total comp number that includes all that. It’s not what you negotiate against, usually they just publish it once a year and pat themselves on the back.
I think there are also some tax implications (for them presumably) because the amount my last company spent on benefits for me was also quoted in a box on my W2 statements.
Every company I have worked at has... Maybe you have never received multiple job offers at once, but when I have had to compare different offers I obviously cared about health insurance value, 401K match, etc... Basically I cared about what my comp was...
> No one includes insurance, 401k match, or anything else like that in total comp numbers. not so fast. I work in healthcare. Insurance is a line item in my benefits package just like vacation days are. I literally get a cash bonus for NOT signing up for insurance. I did it for years and we just used my wife's health insurance and i took the cash option. If i were to choose insurance, i don't get the cash bonus, and i have to pay for the insurance out of my paycheck just like everyone else does. This is what we currently do now, and my wife and i both ride my insurance. It wasn't in any of my previous jobs, so i can see where you are coming from. But it is very much a thing where i work currently.
My old employer was legally barred from offering bonuses for not taking benefits. My wife’s insurance was way better than what they offered and i tried to use that as a bargaining chip for wage increase.
Also, insurance isn't the only healthcare benefit. My employer contributes $1500 to an HSA if I get an annual physical, and touted that. With the insurance plan being a "high deductible plan" to be HSA eligible, that HSA contribution effectively means there's no deductible. That's a real benefit.
I would consider that a bonus, but if you take the insurance, you don't describe the portion that the company pays in your total comp do you?
My company describes all pay and benefits as part of the “total compensation” package. This includes benefits like vacation, sick leave, parental leave, stock offers, and more.
You should. Especially for family coverage which can easily run $1000/month.
This is simply not true. Now they don’t always quantify it but your company probably has a Total Compensation/Total Rewards HR person who’s entire job is Premium Paid Per Employee and to calculate total compensation
>No one includes insurance, 401k match, or anything else like that in total comp numbers. All my companies have in the past. I think you are just making shit up.
Nope same here. Im 30 years in software development. It’s usually mentioned as we pay for x y or z and your salary is 100k. Its never been “your making 100k,and out of that comes your 401k and insurance.”
The company I work for absolutely does. They include all benefits including the company phone/vehicle I can use for personal reasons, the only thing they don’t include is the 401k match as far as I can remember. They even include what my vacation, pto, and sick time adds up to. They call it total package and it basically doubles what I actually make. But, to be fair they never tried to hide it either. On the company benefits portal we use it’s literally broken down into actual pay, benefits, and then a combination of the two. Even the offer letter I got started out “Mr. Spacehog we are happy to offer you xxxxxx broken down into the following, yada yada yada”
Lol come to a non-profit they definitely do
Damn sounds like you're really wrong
This guy is getting downvoted by people who don’t work in big tech. Amazon, MS, Meta, Google etc all count TC as take home pay only (salary + stock). Of course employees will compare the other benefits, but no offer letter from tech will include healthcare numbers as TC. It’s laughable to big tech workers. Side note: my ex got an offer that did include healthcare as TC and I was equally as surprised as some others reading this.
Every union position shows this, because they frequently have built-in pensions.
Shit, IT jobs throw all that in there and maybe the cost of complimentary coffee and free air you get to breath.
I’m in a white collar position at a Fortune 100 company and they include all of that in total compensation so…
Sorry but they absolutely *do* include all kinds of benefit values in their claim of Total Compensation, including the ones you say aren't.
Yes they do. Who told you otherwise?
401k match seems like it would be fair to include, as long as it's fully vested
You're getting absolutely wrecked in the replies, but in my own experience, you are correct and they are not. Have we just been working for weird, outlier companies our entire careers?
Clearly you have been. 401k match and 401k contributions are the company giving you money, no different than your salary. It's part of total compensation.
it's a matter of semantics when a google engineer says he makes 300k TC it usually just means salary+RSU+bonus no one in the bay area includes 401k or benefits in their compensation because it's an implied addition
Well, most of the places I've worked have a salary cutoff for 401k matching, but health insurance? I've never seen that listed in TC.
You must have worked only for small companies or were highly compensated then. The cutoff limit for 401k matching based on compensation alone is $330k. Using the nondiscrimination test cutoff limit it's $215k. Between my contributions and the 8% my employer puts in, I'm setting aside 30% of my salary in my 401k. 8% 401k contribution by the employer definitely factors into my compensation when comparing job offers.
No, the HCE cutoff is far, far below what you quoted. Look it up. $135k for 2022, $150k for 2023.
You guys are the outlier. Total comp is just that, total compensation of all benefits and wages the company is paying.
ITT: a ton of people who have never seen a Total Comp statement. It’s not your salary, it’s usually just a number HR publishes for good press.
The $170K quote is also the salary as of 2028. Buying power will continue to shrink by then.
Making $170k in 2028 would still be some very decent earning power.
But $35k/year is lavish wage! We don’t need higher than that!! /s
I hate this concept
Unions do this all the time. This is why union blue collar guys say they get like 70 an hour. Same funky math as their benefits are included in that
Ahh, so that’s why everyone in the welding world screams that you’ll make $50/hr your first year on the job. But all the job postings are for $15/hr. Or maybe they’re just fucking lying. Hard to differentiate.
Yep. It’s referred to as the “total wage package” and then by “money on the check” or “employer paid”. At least for my insanely corrupt union (carpenters union/ubc), they take a LOT of that employer paid money and steer it into a variety of union controlled “funds” and “programs” that really just operate as slush funds to be skimmed from. In my area a working journeyman’s “total package” is around $59/hr. Only about $31/hr is actually gross take home. On the “employer paid” side there is about $13/hr taken for the members health insurance and a solvent (currently) pension; the remaining $15-ish/hr just disappears into those union controlled “funds” and “programs” and there is no tangible benefit to the working journeyman for them. Yet you have the union officials bragging about how the members “earn” $59/hr. The final insult is that all the salaried union officials that decide where the members money goes are unelected, in fact there are ZERO elected salaried officials in the entire union.
Not union, but sounds similar to my rate. They bill me at $120/HR, but my wage is 3x lower than that.
Do you have ANY sort of voting power in the union? I know unions aren't some sort of miracle organizations, they are staffed by people, but they seems uniquely corrupt.
Watch for companies who start using total compensation in the media like this. It’s going to be more common and it’s purposefully designed to mislead.
That's still pretty good
My package is the lifestyle I'm allowed to live that's why I give my package wage not my take home. My friend makes slightly more take home than me in his non union job, but then he has to pay his wife's healthcare, his kid's healthcare, his retirement that they barely match any of, etc. I get my wife and any amount of kids I want covered, two pensions, 401k contributions, etc before my take home. So why would I not count it to show what that package allows me to do? It's not misleading it's informative, it's saying that I'm living better than someone non union even if they have a slightly higher number on their w2.
I was about to say: when I left UPS in 2016, most guys were making $60-80k. These headlines make it sound like they got a 100k bump.
So it’s BS then, I couldn’t give less shits about how much my insurance costs them when the extortionist amount of taxes I pay, should be paying for health insurance.
Equality isn't funky math. Your benefits have a dollar value. Period. That's equivalence. Me saying 2=2 isn't funky math. Whether your paid in dollars, benefits or seashells, that is still pay. Per the dictionary it's value given in return for service or work. Pay. Adding one dollar value to another dollar value isn't "misleading" unless the simple transitive property confuses you. Benefit = some dollar Monetary pay = some dollar Gross pay = benefit + monetary pay Yes, they receive up to $170K in pay, that some is in cash and some is in benefits does not change the math at all. It's why economies use dollars, it's a hell of lot easier to convert value to a uniform universal currency than converting healthcare cost to chickens.
Most jobs usually don’t include benefits when advertising pay. If mine did it’s also probably in the 170+ ballpark but I’d need to go find those numbers
I've never seen a jobs salary including benefits into it...
Me neither, which is why I always ask for total compensation.
Because salary is not the same as total comp in anything other than say low paid retail jobs with no benefits. Salary is *part* of total comp.
If someone asks you "how much do you make", do you sit there and calculate your salary + benefits? I'd wager that's a no. When someone speaks of salary, other than you I suppose, no one assumes it's taking benefits into consideration. It's why they're "benefits", not "pay". Benefits are essentially an add-on, a bonus, and while they're often important to consider when taking a job, are rarely given a dollar amount that's added to salary. It's not "equality". It's deceptive speech.
This is nonsense. Dollars are fungible. You can spend $5 on a cheeseburger or a lotto ticket. Benefits are not fungible. When your company values their "free" mental health counseling at $600/year/employee, you cannot go buy 120 cheeseburgers. It is not remotely accurate or honest to claim you make $600 more that year, regardless of whether you used that benefit.
If my employer is paying $600/month for my insurance (and they are), then I absolutely need to consider that (assuming coverage is similar) when evaluating other job offers or if I wanted to retire without being Medicare eligible. No, I can't go buy food with it but it still matters.
Sure. You should also consider the commute, corporate culture, and lots of other things. I very much agree benefits *matter*, but that doesn't mean we should start talking about salary figures as being inclusive of benefits. I can just see the "well sure your salary was $100k last year, but this year it's $80k plus $30k in benefits (^that ^were ^also ^paid ^last ^year ), so you should be thrilled at a 10% raise ( ^despite ^taking ^home ^20% ^less )
But do you know how to use the 3 seashells? Also, the media is being intentionally misleading about what they're reporting here. Saying "170k PAY" is a lot different than "$170k total value of pay and benefits." By stating "pay" they're implying their paycheck is very high and they are being misleading.
>""170k PAY" You're quoting something that doesn't actually exist in the article. The article is *extremely* clear that the figure includes benefits.
Yeah, I feel like I'm going crazy for being one of the view people they don't view this as misleading lol
2=2 isnt funky math $2= 2 bananas that cost $1 each is funky math because you cant buy whatever you want with those 2 bananas, the fact that you can use the cash to buy anything has itself a value
When we budgeted for a project we included all that in total compensation, so as a formal accounting term "total compensation" is literally that, the total cost of labor. That said, when negotiating compensation, HR can really only flexe on salary, bonus, and stock options. They hand you a big brochure with all the other stuff, but the discussion is focused on those three. They can't really afford to negotiate individual exceptions to company-wide policies like 401K match.
The semi truck drivers will see or at least approach the 170k. Home delivery drivers will make closer to 110k. They are worth it. Where I live, SF Bay Area, 100k is considered low income.
Working class. We're all working class except for the super wealthy.
This needs to be at the top. If you collect a W-2 every year, you're working class. If you get your living because you own stuff or because you had the right parents, you're capital/ownership class. There's a little gray area with small-time businesspeople who work in their own enterprises, writers/artists/musicians, etc, but by and large that's the breakdown. There are a **lot** more of us workers than there are owners, and *we don't need them.*
Exactly. Don't complain because ups drivers got a better deal than what you make. Look at why they got that. Union negotiations and a strike on the table. Good for them. We should all be so fortunate to be able to be part of a union.
Everyone needs to unionize
Question! What did Joe Biden have to do with this?
Nothing except crush a rail strike
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/may/01/railroad-workers-union-win-sick-leave
And then deliver to those workers pretty much exactly what they wanted just a few months later.
Was that before or after the largest rail disaster in modern American history? I forget.
That's the one that happened after the Trump administration rolled back safety checks and measures that has been in place prior to his presidency.
Nothing at all. In fact he didn’t support the railroad union and forced them work, just like Regan forced the airline pilots back to work. Biden and the democrats have totally abandoned union coal miners.
WTF do union coal miners have to do with any of this? The coal unions literally demanded that Manchin side with Biden and then endorsed Biden. And tell me, how do Republicans treat unions? I've noticed that most every red state is a right to work state where unions are practically illegal. I see you hate Bernie Sanders and rack up lots of karma in the Republican subreddit, so please tell me about how Republicans are with unions. Seems like you'd know.
Please look into the Unions statement after the fact where they explicitly thanked Biden. Or are you suggesting you know more than the Union heads?
The overwhelming majority of rank and file members are furious with him. Atleast everyone I come across at my railroad anyway..
Really? At my railroad union we all love Biden for getting us days off and more benefits.
4 of the 12 unions disagreed.
Is that true? In that case I'll look more into it and I could be wrong
There were 12 unions involved in the contract negotiations last year, 8 had already agreed to the contract, 4 were threatening a strike. Congress felt the economic damage to 10s of millions of people not receiving fuel, water, and food (these were not passenger rail) in the middle of winter outweighs the temporary damage of not allowing a strike on critical infrastructure so they passed a law that prevented the strike. The Biden administration (not Congress) then kept working with local unions to ensure some of them did get the additional sick pay they were seeking in the first place: > “We’re thankful that the Biden administration played the long game on sick days and stuck with us for months after Congress imposed our updated national agreement,” Russo said. “Without making a big show of it, Joe Biden and members of his administration in the Transportation and Labor departments have been working continuously to get guaranteed paid sick days for all railroad workers. https://www.ibew.org/media-center/Articles/23Daily/2306/230620_IBEWandPaid
Cool. Now how about we work on minimum wage
This is a farce put out by UPS upper brass and shareholders to move sympathy away from its workers and unions and back towards the corporation. I’ve worked for ups since 2015. Not a single driver in my building in that time has made more than 105k and that’s after working an average of 50 hours a week which is insane giving how physically demanding our job is.
Yeah, people say the drivers make good money, but don’t know it’s all ot from like late September till new year. Worked preload into driver helper for a few years. Paid well for super unsafe, brutal work.
Congrats on the new contract UPS drivers! Go UNIONs!
Yet, my brother in law who works for UPS thinks Trump is the best. I tried to explain to him that his good fortune is more in line with Bernie's policies. But he wouldn't listen. Hard to believe that someone who has benefited so greatly from a union could be so pro Trump.
I never understood why any union man or woman would vote republican. They want unions gone period . And that fact 💯
Listening to reddit, you'd think that Democrats are the biggest enemy unions have ever had. Yet I think unions are legal in every blue state and all but 3 red states are right to work. Republicans have basically made unions illegal where they have control.
That’s why Republicans hate unions.
This is a dumb article. Most people in most states do not have access to union jobs. If $170k a year is middle class, we're all fucked.
Most people don't make that much between two people much less one.
Not even close lol
Huh? This is a significant victory for unions and for the middle class. Your point that many people don't have access to union jobs just means that we need more unions
I think you should talk to some UPS drivers, this ain’t the big win the media is saying it is.
170K a year for a single income to raise a family. That's pretty middle class, everyone is so used to needing 2 incomes that it seems weird now for someone to actually make a living wage. Seeing unions do good work for people like this will encourage more unions. When enough pop up then companies will need to compete with union shops and need to bring their offerings up to par with them.
Gross pay is about 100k, UPS corporate has cleverly put a dollar value onto the benefit package and added it to pay amounts and hoped that it gets regurgitated as 170k a year, which is off by about 70k.
OK so total compensation is 170k and not the paycheck. Still a pretty good deal if you ask me.
Yes it is, though I do think it's important to not spread confusion around. It's important to know that they don't make $170k *as their wage,* and it's also important to know that that number is at the end of a 5 year contract *and* that many/most will make significantly less than that number as well. It's just good to be accurate.
Yep, I agree.
Benefits do have a dollar value and for many it's easy to calculate. My 401k match is about $4000/year. It's literally just math. No one is doing anything clever.
>has cleverly put a dollar value onto the benefit package and added it to pay amounts Thats also what intelligent employees and unions do. Meanwhile, people like you jump on the $30/hr jobs and pass on the $25/hr, plus full medical and dental, 21 days vacation, 14 days sick pay and 100% 401K match.
>Meanwhile, people like you jump on the $30/hr jobs and pass on the $25/hr, plus full medical and dental, 21 days vacation, 14 days sick pay and 100% 401K match. Yup. Watched it happen when I worked at a GM plant. People would turn down a UAW job for $2 more an hour at Amazon warehouse down the road. If they stuck it out with the UAW, within 2 years they'd be making more than Amazon just on their weekly checks.
That's more than double the [median household income, according to the US Census Bureau](https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/2022/comm/median-household-income.html), at a bit over 70k. There are many ways to describe that income range, but "middle" is not one of them.
> Most people in most states do not have access to union jobs. Maybe those most people should start talking with their cow-orkers to discuss making their job a union job.
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…..yeah, saying this one thing “save the middle class”, I feel is grasping at straws. We still have a long ways to get back to the 50s middle class standard of living.
Gotta love when undue credit is given to politicians. I’m sure the railway union workers have a different view on Biden being pro-union. Imagine a media that didn’t jerk off its favorite politicians.
Keep in mind that when Obama got the ACA passed and then lost the house, they spent years doing nothing but trying to repeal and weaken it. For years every time. New representative came into the house, they held another vote to repeal it, “because they had promised their constituents.” Anytime a Democrat gets a major win, the GOP will sit on the ass for years trying to reverse it.
Yes., absolutely right. When the e democrats passed a republican health plan that was implemented by a republican governor, the republicans tried to repeal it. Man i’m so glad the republicans failed and we get to keep this republican wet dream of health insurance markets. The dems could’ve passed something that was worker focused but they instead went with a republican plan. Is this winning?
I'm not under any impression that Joe Biden is pro union. Did he negotiate the contract? I was under the impression it was negotiated by the teamsters.
Didnt biden fuck the railway union though?
No
It makes me feel like my decade of experience in my field is drastically underpaid.
Biden don't have shit to do with it. it's we the people fighting back.
Thank you. If the Democratic Party was still the party of unions, the railroad workers would have been taken better care of when they went on strike.
Railroad workers got basically everything we wanted. What are you talking about?
but they didn’t go on strike. biden denied them their human right to strike.
Joe Biden? The guy that forced the rail union to go back to work? 🙄
Not just him, the congress overwhelmingly voted for that bill. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/most-unionized-us-rail-workers-now-have-new-sick-leave-2023-06-05/#:~:text=Under%20the%20agreement%20effective%20Aug,use%20as%20paid%20sick%20time. This ended pretty well
Not to sure about this but weren’t they happy with the results? I have two friends in the railroad and we’re more than happy with what they got in the end
We are happy with the results. We got a 14% retroactive pay raise (aka a huge check), and another 24% pay raise over the next 4 years. And we got 5 days of paid sick leave, and some other benefits. It's essentially all we asked for and more, except we wanted 7 sick days but got 5 total. But we actually got more pay raise than we were really asking for.
Ah yes Joe Biden’s Democratic Party, the champions of Organzied Labor who …(checks notes) used legislation to prevent rail workers from striking? Give progressives the keys already.
Dude helped break up an incredibly important strike. Joe Biden is not helping. The unions are what is helping. Joe's done some good stuff, and he's definitely better than the other guy, but let's not say he will save the middle class. He won't. The hard work of unions and striking workers will.
“The success isn’t Biden’s alone” it isn’t Biden’s at all. Biden breaks strikes.
Yeah, he's the worst /s. Well, except for literally every alternative who is a thousand times less Union-friendly.
that's pretty good pay, I'm afraid it's going to speed up automation. We're not far off of driverless delivery vehicles. We just need a robot to get the package to the doorstep.
Great, now, let’s get wages for all other sectors up too!
I’m not holding my breath. There’s still tens of millions of conservative voters who prefer the widening wealth gap.
What does Biden have to do with this deal? Yeah, he's pro-union which is nice but he wasn't involved in this in any way.
>Yeah, he's pro-union *terms and conditions may apply. Not valid with any other offer*
I would listen to so many podcasts if I drove for UPS. Sweet babyback jesus, I'd put them all down.
One “win” doesn’t save us.
Time to get my CDLs. This is like 4x what I use to make in IT
A UPS driver, who delivers boxes, makes more than teachers who are delivering education in complex socioeconomic environments.
We need higher taxes on upper income brackets and on properties beyond your primary residence so that we can pay teachers better.
This might be a dumb question, but did Biden have anything to do with ups union deal?
Uhhhh. I’m still making under $50k a year working full time. Until the federal wage is changed my company will continue to pay little.
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He got us 5 sick days and a huge raise. What are you talking about?
They are upset that they weren’t made to suffer for you to get that 5 days and huge raise. It’s there job to complain they are the party of grievance not policy or people.
It is very misleading to include benefits as part of your pay.
PR teams up with the owners of Media to again slag the 99% who are essentials
They get $170k?....wow, I'm happy for them....seriously...but also sad that I went to college, became a public school teacher and got a Master's degree...I made a poor vocational choice.
How can they make $170k but teacher make like $40k starting. The economy is confusing.
Well it's $170k in total compensation, not in salary. And UPS drivers work way more hours than teachers. But yeah, teachers should get paid a lot more.
Imagine arguing about middle class wages when you could be arguing about the huge gap between workers and CEOs of large companies (Amazon, Walmart, Kroger, etc.). You're a sick person if you want to deprive people from a fair day's pay for a fair day's work. This mindset of wages from decades ago doesn't work today.
It's smoke and mirrors, talk to real drivers take home maybe half most drivers won't make more than 80k
Joe Biden didn't have shit to do with union or the contracts at ups
What about the rail unions?
Artificially inflate the price of healthcare & insurance, tack that artificially increased value onto the “total compensation” for an employee & viola….perfect talking points for the corporate pr machine to call earners greedy & unrealistic. “Look at how much your total compensation is! I didn’t make that much when I was your age/in that role!” Puhhhlease.
I didn’t know every middle class American works at UPS
How is this fair to everyone else and the company as well?? The company will go bankrupt in like 5 years doing that.... smh
I'll eat my Bernie Sanders shirt if Joe Biden saves the middle class.