Think you're underpaid? One of the CA&E documents we got with the Brookins collection is a list of pay rates for the Mechanical Department from June 1957 - right at the end of service.
Of course the value of money has changed greatly since that time, but what surprises me is how little difference there is between the highest and lowest wage rates. Car cleaners and the oil house man make only $1.72, but everybody else is in the range of $1.85 to $2.16, from unskilled new hires to toolmakers and air brake experts. Helpers get a two-cent raise per year. That doesn't seem like much incentive.
And what does a "benchman" do? In the car shop we somehow manage to get along without one.
2 comments:
A benchman probably worked at a bench assembling or rebuilding mechanical components for stock, as opposed to somebody changing out components on the railcars in the shop.
$2.00 in 1957 is equal to almost $22.00 in today's dollars.
Different calculators spit out a little above and a little below.
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS.gov) has it at $21.72 June 1957 compared to June 2023.
Colton MDV.
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