Posted on 07/30/2019 11:05:25 AM PDT by Brian Griffin
Many retail employees are having a hard time making ends meet. Leftists have proposed raising wages to $15/hour, and sometimes have done so, but such wages are unrealistically expensive for most retail employers.
If retail stores had restricted occupancy apartments above their selling floor, retail employees could live in these and not need to pay for a car and liability insurance. Residential restricted occupancy is sometimes found in English agricultural regions to keep housing affordable for people working in agriculture.
Retail store residency would have additional benefits of reducing road congestion and CO2 emissions, increasing employee reliability, the amount of employee free time and the number of people able to live in an metropolitan area without overcrowding its roads.
Employees might get paid $4/hour plus usage of the apartment plus $.01/hour for each square foot of their apartment less than 600.
In some cases there might be sliding wall system in an apartment to make for either one large bedroom or two small bedrooms.
To fund adequate Social Security benefits for the employee, an added $1/hour FICA tax might be levied on the employee.
The apartment might be valued at $700/month for income taxation, welfare and health insurance subsidy purposes.
There might be a 10-day grace period to live in the apartment after quitting or getting fired from a job. There might also be a waiting period of up to 10 days to move into such an apartment.
Whether or not specific apartments are employer furnished and their exact size would be left to employment market forces.
Employees not needing or currently getting an employer apartment would simply work for the usual wages and benefits.
Excess retail store apartments might made available to nearby restaurants and their employees on a similar basis.
In the back of my brother's office space, there was a little kitchenette type room divided by curtains with a hot plate, fridge, washer/dryer, commode and shower, so no need to commute either. When closing time rolled around, he would lock up, eat and get ready for bed by folding down the couch in the office. Worked nice until one night the cops came knocking and told him the area was zoned commercial and he wasn't allowed to sleep over.
We can't prove it, but suspect the visit was prompted by a competitor complaint.
$4.00 an hour ? LOL...
That won’t even pay for internet and phone charges for the month...
Most retail workers are young and entitled....
$4.00 an hour would be an insult
this is like an apartment complex manager getting free rent.
Tennessee Ernie Ford
“Adjusted for inflation the 1969 minimum wage of $1.60 would be $11.60 in today’s dollars. So $15/hr is not ‘outrageous’.”
Walk inside a mall that’s not in an affluent Washington, DC area.
Business is about a fifth of what it was twenty years ago at the mall nearest me here in Florida.
Even the leftist New York State Legislature knows $15/hour is generally unrealistic for most of Upstate New York.
Retailers are free to try this idea. Anybody is free to try this idea. I think it has some merit, as long as it isn’t compelled by government edict or indirect favoritism.
By the way... as far as I know, the big theme parks do not have on-site housing for their large numbers of summer employees. Many of these employees come from foreign countries. I’d think that if anybody did the hire-the-employee and house-the-employee thing, that it’d be these big theme parks. ... I dunno.
Tennessee Ernie Ford, one of the great joys of the fifties. He was funny and had a great voice. If you are too young to remember check out his big song “Sixteen Tons” about working as a coal miner.
Thanks, mbarker!
“Back in the 70’s and 80’s....”
In 1978 I paid $87/month to live on affluent North Charles Street in Baltimore.
In 1980, I paid $263/month to live in a nearly new apartment in Frederick, Maryland.
In 1981, I paid $346/month to live in a nearly new apartment in Reston, Virginia, ~18 miles west of Washington, DC.
Rents have soared since.
The ability of most retail operations to pay wages has collapsed because of Amazon.
Web e-commerce killed the mall not the min wage!! LOL!
Best Italian family deli I’ve ever been to was a an old house converted to store below and living quarters upstairs.
I had the same initial reaction as you but after further thought, it could be quite awkward if the employee was to quit or even be fired. Nothing like having a disgruntled ex-employee living right over your business!
We could even have a name for folks who were so cared for. I propose “serfs”.
“$4.00 an hour ? LOL...
“That won’t even pay for internet and phone charges for the month...”
You won’t get a “free” apartment if you only work two hours a week.
Many stores offer free Wi-Fi (which usually is snail slow).
My library system has Wi-Fi.
Stores could do what my library does (after business hours).
My local buses have Wi-Fi.
Obamaphone service is available. One plan offers 1GB data per month too.
“Why not put in a company store for groceries while you’re at it and pay the serfs in company script?”
The largest supply of low skill work in the USA, local retail, is collapsing.
Welfare rolls will need to expand unless action is taken and soon.
I propose action.
the used to do this above department stores when they were a new fangled thing. Dorms for men and women.
Trailer for sale or rent, rooms to let, fifty cents.
No phone, no pool, no pets, I ain’t got no cigarettes
Ah, but, two hours of pushin’ broom
Buys an eight by twelve four-bit room
I’m a man of means by no means, king of the road...
What part of this idea are you not getting?
If it was a viable concept, it already would be happening...on a much larger scale...
Still common in Japan and other Asian countries.”
Asian store owners do it here, too, but with their multi-generational families living there. One of the reasons many Asians are prosperous, they combine living spaces.
Grandma can tend the small kids and sometimes pinch hit at the counter, while mom and dad do most of the store work. Teenage kid lives there and works in the store when not in school.
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