An Economic Profile: Starbuck

An Economic Profile: Starbuck, The Simpler Things  

             When first meeting Buck, it can be intimidating. He is a large man with a big beard, circular framed glasses, and seems to always be wearing his baseball hat. Though, once your conversation with him begins, only words associated with kindness and charisma can be tacked to this 52-year-old. Buck has lived his whole life in Portland. He attended Fives Oaks Junior High, Aloha High, and PCC. After receiving his degree he tried out a number of jobs, but in the mid nineties found a job as a generator mechanic, which seemed to fit him perfectly.

In 1996, the company Buck was working for was bought by the company he has been working for since then. This job allows him to specialize, but not too specifically as he is able to do everything from maintenance on trucks to carpentry work. Annually, Buck makes between $75,000 and $80,000. His wage fluctuates as there is a possibility of getting quarterly bonuses when productivity in the shop is increased. When asked if he believes this is livable, he answered, “I have been able to live within this amount.” He mentioned that he owns a house and cars and has a retirement savings account. He also recognizes that he is much better off than his parents ever were, allowing for him and his wife to raise their son who is now grown and married.

Though Buck is successful and holds a steady job, now, in the early nineties he tried a “get rich quick scheme.” Within three months of moving to North Carolina to work for a big meat packing company, the plant was closed. He quickly was able to get out of his recent house deal, but lost everything else including the retirement savings he began to set aside at the beginning of his adult life. Though he found himself in $20,000 worth of credit card debt he was able to pay it off fairly quickly and buy another home and begin to start saving again.

Saving was an idea that Buck continued to come back to. In lots of labor jobs, it is easier said than done to save. If you’re saving a specific percentage each month that is an absolute amount of money that won’t be available to you or your family, so being paid a low wage makes it extremely difficult to effectively save and plan for the future. Buck, who has been saving since the beginning of his adult life, leaves that as his advice for young people, “save, save, save.” He added, “Just start saving, the sooner the better, it makes all of life’s little challenges easier to cope with.” As he recalls his setback in 1992. It is because of his continued savings beforehand that he was able to comeback quickly and get back on his feet.

Many of Buck’s colleagues work in union jobs. This lays down all different types of rules in the yard from who can and cannot drive a forklift at a certain time to what time a break is allowed to be taken at. The Union is something I specifically find very interesting about labor jobs because of the fact that the company can have management and set guidelines for employees, but there is still the union which makes it so when an employee is not happy or feel their rights are being violated they have an agency that will stand up for them.

Looking into the future, Buck feels ready and says he is on track to retire at age 65. Or at least he hopes he is. Buck’s economics dreams include, common and human-like hopes, “A retirement full of travel and good food without financial worries.” In my conversation with him, I found it very interesting to hear the lack of doubt he had, along with the lack of economic reasoning. I think this is an example of where economics truly comes down to being based off of choices made by people who have a goal or incentive. Looking at this graph tracking mean income since 1990, Buck is not far off. He has reason to feel secure.

Finally, Buck does not have much interaction with the government. He doesn’t feel they have helped or hurt him, but when talking about increased minimum wage a fear of increased price of goods did rise. He often mentions the high price of a Starbucks coffee and used the example of a big mac to explain rising minimum wage to me, but finished by saying it is understandable as some of the guys he works with are close to the minimum wage, though no one is compensated at that small amount. Buck’s interaction with the government goes as follows, “I pay my taxes, those go to the government, and I got some free cheese in the eighties, but other than voting I don’t have much interaction with the government.”

As a labor worker, Buck is lucky. We discussed and I have discussed with a couple of the other men in the shop that the scrap metal company they work for now is the best job they have had throughout their wholes lives. Lots of the men never finished high school and joined the union the day they turned eighteen– a very different reality than we are all faced with at Catlin. Buck’s income for this same reason did surprise me. If you break it down, he makes close to $40 an hour. No one in the yard is paid minimum wage and that ends up really benefiting the company. It is not uncommon for someone to be there for 30 or 40 years. There’s one man who began working when he was 16. He now is married and has two teenage kids, and he still is working the same job.

 I see this as bittersweet. The company is obviously doing something right if they are able to keep loyal employees for so long, but the fact that there is no change or moving up for an individual makes me wonder, is this just how working in a factory setting goes? The fact that employees are staying a long time, I believe, shows incentives working. Wages can increase, and continually being paid above minimum wage in a steady job is always nice. This works to both benefit the employee and the company. It is a burden for a company to hire new employees as there is training and at this specific company, as they work with the union, a watch period where the employee has different rights. As one person in management said, “we pay higher wages, expecting higher quality work. You give the best, you get the best.” Finally, maybe a reason that these men stay working for so long, and why many people shown in the graph below don’t stay at jobs, plays off of the security and stability that they felt during the 2008 recession. While many of their friends and families were out of jobs, they stayed stable. Buck applauded the company for this as he said, “it’s money you can raise a family off of.”