Part-Time Trend Is a Foreboding One

Bank of America’s change to part-time tellers is a foreboding sign for all American working people and our society in general. Other companies, such as Sears, have switched over to using large numbers of part-time workers for many years.

According to articles on the subject, the average B of A teller in San Francisco earns about $19,000 per year. This figures out to about $9 per hour plus benefits such as medical insurance.

Bank of America will now hire part-time workers at a great deal less than $9 an hour and with no health care benefits, sick leave, vacation time or parental leave.

The workers affected by this change will either be unemployed or, in the case of the part-time employees, will be underemployed because of the impossibility of providing a decent living for themselves and their families on low-paying, part-time incomes.

Bank of America and other like-minded firms are not only adversely affecting economic recovery with this backward policy, but are also hurting themselves in the long term. Subsistence-level workers have trouble buying food and clothing. They don’t buy new cars or purchase homes or nonessential items, and they don’t borrow money from banks.

It is time for American business to wake up and stop blaming their workers for management’s inability to compete in a changing business environment.

Maybe some of Bank of America’s top management should be paid $5 an hour so they can see what it means to go to bed every night worrying about unpaid bills. Then they would not be so eager to deny their employees a living wage.

ERNEST SALOMON

Santa Barbara