Posted on 10/22/2019 8:32:27 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Under pressure from activists, Target announced in September 2017 that it would hike wages for all 323,000 employees to at least $15 per hour by 2020.
This was a major victory for the "Fight for $15" movement—a win that was supposed to have repercussions for retail and fast food workers everywhere. "Our momentum is unstoppable," a Minneapolis Fight for $15 organizer told Common Dreams.
Two years later, the story is pretty different.
"I got that dollar raise but I'm getting $200 less in my paycheck," a Target employee named Heather told CNN. Heather's hours have been cut from about 40 per week to around 20, she explained.
And she's hardly alone. CNN Business (which withheld employees' last names) has interviewed 23 Target employees in the past month. Many tell the same story: They are working fewer hours and have lost some employment benefits as a result. Target only provides health insurance benefits to workers who average at least 30 hours of work a week.
It's almost as though hourly wages are only one part of a worker's compensation—and that hiking wages might cause other, unintended consequences.
Unlike businesses in states that have recently set higher minimum wages, Target made the decision to raise their wages voluntarily. So it's likely the company undertook its decision with a more holistic view of how to compensate its employees—and how to offset a wage increase with reductions in hours or benefits, or by overhauling its operations. Target COO John Mulligan told CNN that the company created more specialized positions focused on efficiency.
It's also possible that the employees interviewed by CNN don't represent the norm across the more than 360,000 workers at Target stores in America. In any company of that size, there will always be some people who are having their hours reduced
(Excerpt) Read more at reason.com ...
Pyrrhic victory.
Wait until they see their paycheck when the robots take their job.
Rejoice in your stupidity.
Didn't I hear recently that Target is bringing back Toys R Us as a part of the Target companies?
We tried to tell you! Now live in the mess you made.
“Get woke, go broke” seems to apply here.
And Sears bought KMart.
WTF is the government business to tell business what to pay?????
March to communism, Fast Forward!
Don’t assume that wait staff earns standard minimum wage. There is a seperate, much lower minimum wage for waiters/waitresses. I speak from experience. When I was a waiter, my wage was about $2/hr. Practically nothing. Wait staff are in practical purposes, freelance employees and rely on tips to survive.
They all think they deserve $15 per hour. They just weren’t prepared to do the amount of work required to earn $15 / hour.
Almost any of us could have told them that.
Walmart (The Martian Store) near me just eliminated all manned registers and went to all self check outs.
Retail stores will become internet ordering hubs. Back to the Service Merchandise model but updated.
Minimum wage: if you can’t produce $X/hr of value, you’re not allowed to work at all.
When government interferes with free market transactions, the result is always bad.
Besides, government has no right to set a minimum or maximum hourly rate.
Car wash employees get $15hr to wipe water off your car. They can do 5 cars easily per hr and get average $5 tip per car. $40hr job!
The biggest scams are the cash only ones...plus tip! Haircut, gardener, sprinkler repair, AC repair, painters.
The gift that keeps on giving!
They “passed” it to find out what was in it and we STILL don’t know what’s in it! Little bombs were placed everywhere within oblowmecare.
In certain cities they do...it’s been so mandated.
So they can do without tips.
It is not so in my area so I still tip.
A place I used to work at had the provision if you worked 6 weeks of 36 hours or more you were full time with full time benefits.
My schedule would be 36,36,36,36,34,36.
Mgr instructed the scheduler to do that. Per the union rules of the shop I could have demanded more hours based on my seniority.
That’s just not true.
It’s government that enforces contracts, truth in advertising, product safety, worker safety. Those are all good government interventions.
And government does have the right to set minimum wages. Government defines the rules of the marketplace.
Like most other things, Government is a tool that can be used for good or evil.
If government is stupid, drops the protective tariffs and then raises minimum wage, that’s a recipe for offshoring jobs.
Government needs to weigh the consequences of what it does.
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