Evidence is surfacing that some workers are asking their bosses for fewer hours as their wages rise – in a bid to keep overall income down so they don’t lose public subsidies for things like food, child care and rent.
Full Life Care, a home nursing nonprofit, told KIRO-TV in Seattle that several workers want to work less.
“If they cut down their hours to stay on those subsidies because the $15 per hour minimum wage didn’t actually help get them out of poverty, all you’ve done is put a burden on the business and given false hope to a lot of people,” said Jason Rantz, host of the Jason Rantz show on 97.3 KIRO-FM.
The twist is just one apparent side effect of the controversial -- yet trendsetting -- minimum wage law in Seattle, which is being copied in several other cities despite concerns over prices rising and businesses struggling to keep up.
Some long-time Seattle restaurants have closed altogether, though none of the owners publicly blamed the minimum wage law.
“It’s what happens when the government imposes a restriction on the labor market that normally wouldn’t be there, and marginal businesses get hit the hardest, and usually those are small, neighborhood businesses,” said Paul Guppy, of the Washington Policy Center.
Monday, July 27, 2015
Hey Seattle!
"How’s that $15 an Hour Minimum Wage Law Working Out for Ya?"
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15 comments:
In Britain, they pay whole families to do nothing.
We can do it, America.
I'll bet that every single one of those people asking for less work hours, voted for Obama both times.
Who needs small neighborhood businesses anyway? One more sign of white privilege expunged.
Guppy better watch his mouth... He's in the big pond now.
I'd love to see summary reports by zip code that list the total value of govt benefits bestowed each year on each neighborhood including free school lunches, free day care, food stamps, section 8 housing, supplemental soc sec, Obamacare, etc.
I think many people would be shocked at how much money we plow into the low income areas. And if we divided the total value into a per capita rate, we'd be even more amazed how much each family has at their disposal.
This protest proves the minimum wage workers have an awful lot of govt benefits to lose as their wages rise and it also proves they can count. I love unintended librul consequences.
Seattle has already begun the capitulation process to the poor and sharia, so let's see what that clusterfuck looks like in five years or less, shall we?
I've described my business here ad nauseum, but everyone loves nausea, so here goes some more.
I have spent my 30+ year business career creating a business that mostly hires unskilled people, and trains them into skilled accomplished people who are self-sufficient. Some stay with us and continue to develop, but most eventually either move on to better paying jobs or start their own businesses. We have done this with over 1200 people. That's exactly what I've always wanted, and it's worked out pretty well as a business strategy too. We do very well in an industry that has always struggled in the U.S. and especially California: labor intensive, highly regulated manufacturing.
L.A. city just passed a $15 minimum wage. Although we are surrounded by it on all sides, we are not technically in L.A. city, so it does not apply to us yet, but it is inevitable that the county will copy the policy and thus include us. It will likely go statewide.
Our main competition is China, who we do alright against because they are harder to work with and their quality is so bad, so until now it has not usually been worth it for our customers to leave us for imports. We also have some competitors in the U.S. They will now have a minimum wage that is half what it is here. We cannot compete with that and continue to hire unskilled people at $15/hr. Consequently we have already reduced our employee count through attrition by about 15% in the last 2 months, and we will have to continue to do that until we only have people worth $15/hr or more. Believe me, you cannot make a profit paying an unskilled person $15, and also train them, give them good healthcare, mandatory paid sick days, two weeks paid vacation, 7 paid holidays, quarterly bonuses, and pay their workers comp at twice the cost of other states. It just does not work out. Our customers have been just barely willing to pay for everything else, because it creates motivated employees, but they do not have to pay for this minimum wage increase, which everyone here gets regardless of merit. Our customers have other states at half our wages, and they have other countries at a fraction of them.
I will have to abandon my main reason for being in business, my main reason for working at all. We are now investing in labor-saving (job-eliminating) machinery, and giving up on business that cannot be forced into the new model. Most of that equipment is not made in the U.S anymore, so no benefit there. We will stop hiring and training people. Those people will now depend on welfare, food stamps, disability fraud, and lawsuits. The honest, ambitious, hard-working ones will move to other states to find work. Eventually, I will either sell the company, or move it to another state with some level of sanity.
Good job lefties. Being a lefty means never having to say you're wrong or you're sorry.
On the positive side, we will have a slow speed "bullet" train that nobody will ride, but everyone will pay for, and we will continue to have the worse roads in the country, the highest taxes, and the highest energy cost (because we think we will stop global warming all by ourselves out here).
At least they haven't banned Fridays, but they might someday make them mandatory paid days off ... with free ice cream.
If only one of the leading Repub prez candidates would read & fully grasp Bago's comment.
Politicians are so removed from the daily lives of small business owners. The pols pay it lip service, but they really have no clue how their bureaucratic nannyism and well-intentioned utopia is screwing everything up.
Bag, it's easy being a lefty. It requires no thought to be a lefty. You can give away anything you want as a lefty without repercussions, consequences, or reprisals.
Lefties are all children of Freud.
As such, they lack shame and , like toddlers, never accept responsibility for anything they do.
Their only problem is that reality doesn't give a rat's ass about Freud.
Business opportunity bags: Enroll hard workers in a training program who can't afford to escape California. Successful graduates receive travel expenses to and an apartment and job in Texas in exchange for a small repayment plan for costs and interest.
bagoh20 ... your story mirrors mine, somewhat, during my brief sojourn in the piravte sector (only a 20% stake), but you've been far more succesful. My issue was the competition who "hired" all their employees as "contractors" (with the cost savings involved) when they were no different than ours (paid within 12% or so of the Detroit Autromotive Big 3 wage scale and benefits in order to retain the best)...eventually we just could not compete. A W.Virgina firm bought us out. Only good thing I did was negoatiate a sale that included keeping all employees on board, except me with a 6 months to 1 year's window in my case....that as foreclosed in 9 months...fair enough. The W. Virginia firm succeed by agressive marketing, somethng I wasn't very good at obviously...at least for my 20% part...though I had considerable opposiiton within our firm. My idealism may have been my downfall. Part of success in busines is promptly and efficiently adapting to changes and you appear to be doing that (where I did not)....I wish you nothing but the best going forward.
We had the same situation as far as taking in unskilled people and training them (roughly a $50,000+ expense) so they could be worth the wages paid. That part worked. Dang, one can't be wrong all the time, eh :-)
BTW...bagoh20...I've read all of your comments and descriptions of your firm and its polcies. Were I not way too old, retired, cranky, and obstinate these days, I'd have happily worked for you. Good leadership insires that response. Your forward planning demonstrates that feature of your leadership. As I said, I wish you the very best going forward...you deserve it.
PS: That $50,000 training expense was in 1980's dollars...would be far more today.
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