I would love to work with Jon (pronounced Joan) and many other liberals/progressives like her (/no-sarc)
She has goals different from me (I think) but understands the worth/value of employees as an element to wages. She likes the goal of $15/hour but understands a lot of employees are not worth it. I probably like the goal for different reasons - having more people “worth” $15/hour is good for the economy.
I’ve worked for a number of companies who put a lot of effort into making employees “worth more”. And those employees get raises in relation to their value to the company (in one large company almost anyone with ANY personal drive could be doing great financially in a few years after starting at minimum wage if they take advantage of training/mentoring provided).
Politicians give a lot of lip service to education and training but more into minimum wage in places like Oregon. I think Jon (and many other liberals/progressive business owners) could teach politicians a lot about how to make low wage workers WORTH $15/hour. And that’s how to raise the wages that people earn. Paying $15/hour to those who are not providing that value is an economic drain. Making more people worth $15/hour is a huge productivity boost for the economy. And it’s doable if people like Jon start pushing “worth” rather than “wages”.
For years, she says, she and her business partner would hire teenagers at entry level, training them in both the nuts and bolts of the business and a meaningful work ethic.She wants her money's worth from the employee. If she has to pay a $15/hr, she wants a $15/hr value employee, not a $9/hr value employee.
But as higher rents and rising taxes converged with the new minimum wage policy, Milazzo says she was forced to trim her staff and use fewer resources on training beginners. “The water level was going up all around us,” she says. “So we made that decision. When you come in, you’ve got to have skills.”