New factory welcome

I was happy to hear that More Than a Bakery, a new baking factory, is coming to Versailles. This is good news to many people in Central Kentucky who are looking for a job. I am a former employee of two baking factories in Louisville: the former Mother’s Cookies factory, bought out by Kellogg’s, and Mesa Foods, a Mexican bread product factory.

One was union; the other was not. One paid a living wage with good benefits. The other did not. Both companies were mostly female and they hired mostly women because management thought women had more dexterity in their hands and were faster at picking up cookies or tortillas and placing them into trays or plastic bags.

I have worked at a thermostat factory, a plastic bottle factory, a wallpaper display book factory, Ford truck factory in Louisville, Lexmark, Toyota in Georgetown, and Trane Ingersoll Rand in Lexington. Most of the factories that employed mostly men paid a better wage and had a more accommodating working pace, and the employees were treated with more respect than the mostly female factories.

I’m praying that More Than a Bakery in Versailles will pay a decent living wage just like mostly male factories do. The gender wage gap between men and women is real.

This story was originally published September 2, 2016 at 8:16 PM with the headline "New factory welcome."