Posted on 03/25/2022 6:24:33 PM PDT by blam
As American workers and businesses struggle with the fallout from the most vicious bout of inflation in 40 years, workers across the US are struggling as wage growth lags behind inflation. For example, federal jobs data released last month showed that wage growth was disappointingly slow, as the YoY growth rate actually declined from January, coming in at just 5.1% (and missing the Wall Street consensus forecast of 5.8%).
Since the start of the pandemic, most economists expected near-record numbers of open jobs would force employers to hike wages significantly. And while wages did indeed climb for public-facing workers during the pandemic, that once-torrid growth has since leveled off.
While businesses with large numbers of white-collar workers have the option of saving on office rents by shifting to a permanent all-remote or hybrid model, restaurants, brick-and-mortar retail businesses, restaurants and other businesses that rely on a permanent in-person workforce simply don’t have that luxury.
This has created new tensions between management and labor that is, in some cases, leading to conflict. And one particularly interesting example of this tension played out at an Applebees in Lawrence, Kansas, when workers quit en masse in protest of a suggestion by management to try and hire new workers at a lower wage, based on the notion that higher gas prices would force more of the millions of Americans currently on the sidelines of the labor market to seek employment.
Here’s what happened, according to a report in the Lawrence Journal-World.
The restaurant on south Iowa Street was closed for large parts of Tuesday because of high gasoline prices, but perhaps not for the reasons you would think. Multiple employees of the chain quit after seeing an email from a regional manager urging the restaurant to begin hiring employees at lower wages, under the theory that people are becoming more desperate to take a job as fuel prices increase.
“Everyone has heard that gas prices continue to rise,” read an email that came from the account of Wayne Pankratz, executive director of operations for Applebee’s franchisee Apple Central LLC. “The advantage this has for us is that it will increase application flow and has the potential to lower our average wage. How you ask?
“Most of our employee base and potential employee base live paycheck to paycheck. Any increase in gas price cuts into their disposable income. As inflation continues to climb and gas prices continue to go up, that means more hours employees will need to work to maintain their current level of living.”
The workers’ revolt started when one of the managers at the restaurant saw the email, and was so enraged, he made copies and distributed them to other employees. By the time the restaurant was set to open on Tuesday, the staff refused to work, and a walkout began.
When Jake Holcomb, one of several managers at the Lawrence restaurant, ended up seeing the email on Monday, it upset him enough that he made copies of the email and distributed them to several employees of the restaurant.
When opening time arrived on Tuesday, the manager who was scheduled to open the restaurant at 2520 Iowa St. declined to open the restaurant after reading the emails. She has since quit over the email. Holcomb has too. In total, Holcomb said three of the six managers at the restaurant quit in protest of the email.
“I was just stunned and disgusted,” said Holcomb, who had worked at Applebee’s in Lawrence and elsewhere since 2020.
By Wednesday, the Lawrence restaurant had reopened. A spokesman for Apple Central LLC confirmed the Lawrence location was closed for a time on Tuesday, but he couldn’t confirm how many employees had quit or what role a lack of employees played in Tuesday’s closing.
The restaurant reopened on Wednesday, but word was out, and now Applebee’s corporate has stepped in to do damage control.
But the spokesman said he agreed that the email was stunning.
“It is embarrassing. It really is,” said Scott Fischer, director of communications for Apple Central, which is based in Kansas City and has 47 Applebee’s restaurants in the Midwest.
As the cost of everything from housing to gas to food continues to surge, America’s hourly workers are indeed feeling the pinch far worse than their white collar peers. Let this be a warning to any other businesses looking for savings by lowering wages: America’s wage laborers are officially stretched to the breaking point.
Zero brains.
uncle joe will feed them
when i grow up, i want to be a millenial middle manager
Now that those workers walked out, they can hire new ones at a lower wage.
PEOPLE WERE SO MUCH HAPPIER 3 YEARS AGO.
Some people,were.
Those that weren’t were afraid about losing abortion protection at the federal level.
Restaurant margins are cratering. If they don’t lower wages, they will close. That’s why so many restaurant chain stocks are trading near multi-year lows. This manager may think his company exists to employ people. That’s not reality.
Stupid move on the part of management. In my neck of the woods, I’m seeing “help wanted” signs everywhere. Folks evidently don’t want to take entry-level jobs.
So now this regional manager decides to alienate the workers he has by suggesting that new workers be hired at a lower pay. Good luck finding those new workers.
By the way, two-tiered pay schemes usually work against the older workers. Because you can bet management will find ways to let those older workers go (or cut down on their hours). Sure, absent a contract that’s the right of management. But ignore employee morale at your own risk.
Typical Harvard MBA logic, trying to correct supply/demand to their whim with known results.
.
We are governed completely by the Elites.
And they believe that the middle class eating meat is not sustainable, and higher energy prices will force them to ride buses, as they should, and to live next to public schools.
They all believe in higher taxes, too.
Who needs to be fired for letting employees see a sensitive communication from the Regional Manager, or was it the Regional Manager who addressed the email to the minimum wage employees?
Wherever I worked for forty years nobody was allowed to talk about salaries or pay. And no, I never did, even when co-workers asked.
I have always found Applebees to have average food, at best. The one near our home closed last year. I bet no one will care if it stays in business or not.
If I’m reading this correctly, nobody is getting their wages cut.
New employees will start at a lower rate.
If they want to cut wages around here, they'll either have to hire illegals, or recruit at the elementary schools. Fast food places are having to go to drive through only not from fear of covid, but because they can't get staff at the current wage offered.
If the chain really wants to cut costs, they need to get rid of the idiots and deadweights at corporate.
Lawrence, KS needs to fall off the earth and the state would be better for it.
That being said, this is just what upper mgmt knew the lackey manager would do so they could just fire the lot and hire totally new staff at lower pay. KS is an at will state and the minimum wage for your job can be as low as Zero. Maybe you need another liberal arts college loan to mull it over.
Lawrence, KS needs to fall off the earth and the state would be better for it.
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I was born, raised and graduated from Basehor Kansas.
I couldn’t agree more, except that its mostly because of KU and the riffraff that it attracts and breeds.
I’d be disgusted if I came to Applebee’s for lunch at Applebee’s and it was closed because of woke employees. Same with Disney.
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