MEXICO CITY, MEXICO – At 82, Ernesto García Martínez bags groceries in Soriana supermarket in Mexico City, the capital of Mexico. He doesn’t receive any wages for his work from the store, only the tips that customers give him.
He used to work as a taxi driver and a chauffeur.
“But it’s now dangerous for me because of my age,” he says.
Despite his years of work, he doesn’t have a pension. He and his wife both receive subsidies from the Mexico City government of 1,000 pesos ($80) per month for residents older than 70 in Distrito Federal to buy food and necessities. Their children provide support as well.
But it’s not enough to live on, so García Martínez works for tips at the grocery store.
“I earn more than a minimum salary and sometimes even three times as much,” he says.
The minimum wage in the country is 64 pesos ($5) per day. The tips he earns as a grocery store bagger range from 5 pesos (40 cents) to 20 pesos ($1.60) per client. He says that on two occasions, customers gave him 50 pesos ($4.70).
Because it is not a formal job, García Martínez doesn’t have labor rights or benefits, although to be eligible for the job he had to submit identity documents, a medical certificate and letters of recommendation.
But for García Martínez, that fact that it’s an informal, volunteer position is irrelevant. For him, what’s most important is the opportunity to earn money and, even more valuable, to stay active.
“If I’m in the house, I go downhill,” he says. “So the activity that we have here is healthy for me.”
Stories like García Martínez’s are becoming more typical in Mexico, where the elderly are replacing teenagers as grocery store baggers.
More than 10,000 senior citizens work for tips as grocery baggers at supermarkets in Mexico thanks to agreements with the government to offer them work. The lack of employment opportunities for people older than 60 and a universal pension system have forced many of them back to work in the informal sector. Economic specialists allege that supermarkets are taking advantage of free labor, but supermarket representatives respond that the program enables the elderly to earn money, to feel useful and to stay active.
In Mexico, 10.5 million people are ages 60 and older, and nearly 3.2 million of them still work, according to the Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía, the government’s statistical agency.
Since 2001, 16,000 people older than 60 have become voluntary grocery store baggers, according to Instituto Nacional de las Personas Adultas Mayores, the national government agency for the welfare of the elderly.
One of INAPAM’s responsibilities is to arrange employment opportunities for the elderly so that they have a source of income. During 2001, it established agreements with supermarket chains to take on people older than 60 as volunteer baggers.
The volunteer role used to fall mainly to 14- and 15-year-olds from lower-income families as a way to contribute economically, according to Sistema para el Desarrollo Integral de la Familia del Distrito Federal, the public agency that looks after the welfare of the family.
Currently, private grocery store chains Chedraui, Soriana and Comercial Mexicana have an agreement with INAPAM to hire only elderly people to bag groceries. Another eight supermarkets, such as Superissste, also have agreements with the agency to give the volunteer jobs to people older than 60 at some of their stores.
Manuel Pérez Mendoza, 74, prepares to start his shift from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. at Chedraui. He says that he worked for 40 years in a printing house until new technologies and younger employees made his skill set irrelevant.
“I lost the energy to be able to work in my profession,” he says. “That’s why I had to resort to this. It is the only form of survival that I have.”
In addition to earning tips, he also volunteers to stay active.
“Because if you stop working and are in your house,” he says, “you pass away faster.”
Gloria Oropeza, 77, has volunteered as a bagger at Superissste for seven years. Superissste is a chain of supermarkets operated by the government’s social security and social services agency, Instituto de Seguridad y Servicios Sociales de los Trabajadores del Estado.
She says that it has become a trend for senior citizens to bag groceries.
“It’s the norm at all the shopping centers,” she says.
The government-run chain offers lower prices in order to make groceries more affordable to customers. But as with the private chains, baggers don’t receive wages here either.
Oropeza says it’s the only job available for someone her age. It enables her to earn money and to entertain herself.
María del Carmen Velasco, 69, earns a pension from working in the private sector. But she still volunteers bagging groceries at Soriana supermarket in order to earn tips.
“Because the pension is really not much and is not even enough to pay the rent,” she says.
Less than 20 percent of people older than 65, the official retirement age in Mexico, have a pension, says Berenice Ramírez López, a specialist in social security and the pension system at the Instituto de Investigaciones Económicas at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.
This is because the country doesn’t have a universal pension system, Ramírez López says. Rather, only those who work in the formal job sector receive pensions, which come from contributions from employees and employers. The rise of fee- or project-based employment has decreased formal jobs and, as a consequence, social security.
But even having a pension doesn’t guarantee retirement without economic worries, Ramírez Lopez says. Ninety percent of people who worked in the private sector receive a pension of 64 pesos ($5) a day. Former government employees’ pensions are double, though still insufficient.
Pensions are not only insufficient but also a limitation to obtaining another job. Under Mexican law, citizens who are working are not eligible to receive their pensions, says María Elena Ramos Muñoz, deputy director of agreement and promotion at INAPAM.
“They don’t want to lose their pension,” she says, “and they can’t go work at a company, so what they are able to get, which is not a formal job, they do it.”
Ramírez López says that people are also living longer than before. Thirty-five percent of elderly people live in moderate poverty, and 10 percent live in extreme poverty.
“This situation obligates people to continue working,” she says. “[But if] they have many difficulties reincorporating themselves into formal employment after their 50s, it is much more difficult to incorporate themselves at 65 or 70.”
Every day, 800 people turn 60 years old in Mexico, according to INAPAM. The government agency predicts the number of elderly people to triple within 40 years and to exceed the number of people of working age.
Ramírez López says that if a general pension system existed for the elderly, they would enjoy an easier retirement and other activities to stay active rather than continuing to work. She also calls for more formal employment for youth so that they don’t face a similar situation.
Ramírez López calls hiring elderly baggers without paying them exploitation.
“This agreement basically functions for the benefit of the business sector,” Ramírez López says, not the elderly. “It’s not offering them anything in exchange. The only thing they do is open the space so that they direct an activity in which they don’t participate directly because they don’t give any salary.”
But Ramos Muñoz disagrees. The opportunity enables the elderly baggers to earn money.
“The true benefit is the work that they do,” she says.
The supermarkets don’t have to hire them.
“It doesn’t cost them any more or less,” she says. “They don’t have to do it. They aren’t obligated.”
Supermarkets usually prefer to hire baggers who are pensioned because this guarantees that the workers have social security, which the stores don’t offer to them, Ramos Muñoz says.
Supermarket management has also recognized that the elderly are more responsible, punctual, committed and friendly than young baggers, Ramos Muños says. There is also less turnover.
Mireya Reyes Gomez, manager of corporate communication and public relations for Soriana, wrote in an email that 9,350 senior citizens volunteered as baggers for Soriana as of January 2013. Proof of social security is one requirement to volunteer in the program.
The program enables the elderly to feel useful, stay active, earn tips from customers and interact with other people their age, she wrote. In exchange, the supermarket benefits from the elderly’s experience, dedication to their jobs and friendliness.
García Martínez agrees.
“This helps me a lot,” he says. “I am always busy and seeing people. I have a great desire to work because it is what nourishes me.”
