If your business cannot survive paying living wages then your business does not deserve to survive.
Your business is not more important than the employees, despite whatever they try to say.
this post was submitted on 13 Jun 2024
459 points (98.7% liked)
Work Reform
9857 readers
1 users here now
A place to discuss positive changes that can make work more equitable, and to vent about current practices. We are NOT against work; we just want the fruits of our labor to be recognized better.
Our Philosophies:
- All workers must be paid a living wage for their labor.
- Income inequality is the main cause of lower living standards.
- Workers must join together and fight back for what is rightfully theirs.
- We must not be divided and conquered. Workers gain the most when they focus on unifying issues.
Our Goals
- Higher wages for underpaid workers.
- Better worker representation, including but not limited to unions.
- Better and fewer working hours.
- Stimulating a massive wave of worker organizing in the United States and beyond.
- Organizing and supporting political causes and campaigns that put workers first.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
+1. A lot of pushback I've seen is along the lines of "but all these business owners will have to close their businesses!". What short sighted BS. We are talking about decades and decades of wage stagnation and business models that are not teneble with living wages. We are talking about a history of having the public subsidize the profits of these businesses through social programs for their workers, while the money stolen from labor goes right into the pockets of the owner.
Will some, or even many, businesses need to close? Yes. Should they have to? Yes. We collectively need to get out of this mindset that MBA-think is the way. It is not.
They can survive by paying living wages. They just don't want to. How would they rake in all that money if they had to spend a little bit extra? Preposterous!
The businesses don't care about employee's lives in the slightest so why should the employees care about the business?
My employer promised a raise after 3 months. It took them over a year and a half for them to finally give me a small raise and it's still below a living wage. They think I'm actually gonna care about my job and do it right when they fucked me over like that? I mean sure it's my fault for sticking around at a shitty company but this situation shouldn't be allowed to happen in the first place. They cost me thousands of dollars that I should have been making. I don't care if I cost them thousands as well.
Also my coworker who gets paid way more than I do does less than a 1/5th of the work that I do but they won't get rid of him.
Oh, I know they won't close. That's just their threat. They keep saying "oh woe is us, if we have to pay living wages then we won't be able to keep the staff hours or we'll go out of business and look at all the employees that would lose their jobs."
But it's a thinly veiled threat and always has been. What they are saying is "if you do this, I'll hurt all these people in response."
If your business closes because you can't manage your costs, then another business will fill the void that can. Isn't that how they always describe capitalism and the "free" market? They have money to pay for all this media and "reporters" to repeat their propaganda. They'd rather pay that then spend the same on their employees.
I live in a state on the lower-wage side of states in the country.
Fast food places here are advertising $22+ an hour to try to attract talent. Corporations are such fucking liars.
Now the question is if they actually pay that or if they interview and say "Well, depending on experience so we'll start you off at $10 and see how it goes." Lol
They try but it’s hard when target is paying 15 for stockers. My work tries to pay state minimum of $12 in several departments and the average tenure is measured in one or two pay periods at most, most don’t even stay til sign on bonus payout because they find something paying $4+ more per hour. HR argues that target, McDonald’s, and Starbucks can’t possibly hire everyone so we’ll take what’s left of the crop for our staff
That's fucked up man
I'm guessing they only ever employ the minimum number of people they need to run things. And changing the minimum wage doesn't change how many people you need.
Its not like they're going to say "well with this wage increase we'll need to get rid of all the excess staff we kept around for no reason"
Irrelevant. Studies have already been done and countries with a high minimum wage (literally 2.5x the US) have cheaper 1:1 menu items than the US.
Corporations exist to extract as much value as possible; not provide value.
often fewer than the minimum
Worked in retail for awhile. Got promoted to lower rung management. Saw the writing on the wall and positioned myself repeatedly in front of my team and simultaneously out of the way of blame when shit hit. Lost three front end leads in four months, each the most experienced. Didn't get asked a single question.
Course I was the one who reassured them that they could do better, asked them why they were still working there when they were clearly unhappy, gave them extra breaks when they felt overwhelmed, and reported dumb shit from corporate when it affected them, even if Upper didn't want to say anything. Like the hour cuts and hiring freeze, typical of retail.
My team was the most efficient and well organized. I taught each of them how to handle and de-escalate situations, and what to actually look out for with respect to fraud and scams. They knew they could call me for any issue and tried like hell to handle it themselves. Other team leads came to me rather than go to another manager. This isn't me being amazing, tbh I felt it was because I followed through on things, not because I was any better than anyone. If you say you'll do something, keep that word.
If there is even a single person in a position of leadership reading this I hope you take note. A business cannot run without a strong and enabled team. It might walk, it will not run. We ALL know you can pay more and treat people better, so fucking do it.
Which is what they're already doing.
I've always said this. Even if you're paying your employees $2 an hour why would you have more employees than you need? That doesn't make business sense.
Of course their numbers are fake. Everything that comes out of their mouths and assembly lines is fake.
To be fair, $22/hour is still not a living wage here.
Concur. Where I live it’s between $45-60/hr. The problem I see is that recognizing this requires recognizing that you’re not wealthy either. The bourgeoisie have nothing if not their illusions.
Doesn't matter, as with all lies fox news gets their bullshit message to yell and Republicans will eat it up fighting wage increases even harder now that they have "proof"
From skimming TFA, it's not that the numbers are fake per se, it's that they're wildly misinterpreted.
Job cuts coincided with minimum wage laws, however, they also coincided with seasonal reduction in workforce. So it's entirely expected that that would happen.
Adjusting for seasonal expectations
which you absolutely must do for a proper comparison
gives you the opposite conclusion, and emphatically does not point to the minimum wage having a negative causal link to fast-food employment numbers.
Corporations and lying for profit: Name a more iconic duo.
Politician lying for profit.
Is there really much of a difference in America anymore?