3 ms·

The grant would have been a one-time grant, presumably for the year (or possibly 6 months). Are you talking about your 1970 father's wage being $1500 per year,

by jnbiche 10y ago

The grant would have been a one-time grant, presumably for the year (or possibly 6 months). Are you talking about your 1970 father's wage being $1500 per year, or per month, or per pay period? The bristling at the journalist is fine (after all, $3000/year in 1960 is approximately equivalent to $24,000/year in today's dollars, with which a single man could live quite well in Greece). But let's make sure we're comparing apples to apples. Canadian minimum wage in 1970 was 1.75/hr, which comes out to well over $3000/year assuming 40/hr weeks. So I'm guessing you're talking per month or other pay period.

3chelon 10y ago
I'm talking per year. A historical exchange rate calculator tells me 3000 CAD was approx 1000 GBP in 1960. According to my father, in 1970 he earned 600 GBP per annum. That was before overtime, which employers pretty much made mandatory by paying such a low basic wage. He was certainly paid way below the average wage at the time, and as the decade progressed he moved on to better paid work. There was no minimum wage in the UK until 1999, so unscrupulous employers would pay what they could get away with. I think it was something of a low point, and unsurprisingly, the 1970s is remembered as a decade of workers' strikes as they demanded better pay. People often moan about it, but I think it improved our circumstances at the time.
- jnbiche 10y ago
  Ah ok, that makes sense now. When you wrote "in the same country", I thought you meant in Canada, since that's where Cohen and the grant in question were from. You meant the same country where Cohen stayed for part of the grant, before he went to Greece. In any case, I sympathize with your complaints about the coverage, since $3000 CAD wasn't a bad deal at all for a single person in 1960, particularly for doing what he loved. Certainly not "scraping by" or having to make sacrifices like your father would have been doing in 1970, with a family to feed. Glad he secured better paying work. I didn't realize UK only got minimum wage in 1999, wow. It's surprising to me that the US had minimum wage for decades when the UK did not.

by jnbiche 10y ago

3chelon 10y ago

I'm talking per year. A historical exchange rate calculator tells me 3000 CAD was approx 1000 GBP in 1960. According to my father, in 1970 he earned 600 GBP per annum. That was before overtime, which employers pretty much made mandatory by paying such a low basic wage. He was certainly paid way below the average wage at the time, and as the decade progressed he moved on to better paid work. There was no minimum wage in the UK until 1999, so unscrupulous employers would pay what they could get away with. I think it was something of a low point, and unsurprisingly, the 1970s is remembered as a decade of workers' strikes as they demanded better pay. People often moan about it, but I think it improved our circumstances at the time.

jnbiche 10y ago
Ah ok, that makes sense now. When you wrote "in the same country", I thought you meant in Canada, since that's where Cohen and the grant in question were from. You meant the same country where Cohen stayed for part of the grant, before he went to Greece. In any case, I sympathize with your complaints about the coverage, since $3000 CAD wasn't a bad deal at all for a single person in 1960, particularly for doing what he loved. Certainly not "scraping by" or having to make sacrifices like your father would have been doing in 1970, with a family to feed. Glad he secured better paying work. I didn't realize UK only got minimum wage in 1999, wow. It's surprising to me that the US had minimum wage for decades when the UK did not.