Posted on 02/02/2021 7:56:47 PM PST by lowbridge
Kroger Co. will close two Southern California supermarkets in response to a local ordinance requiring extra pay for certain grocery employees working during the pandemic.
The decision announced by the company Monday follows a unanimous vote last month by the Long Beach City Council mandating a 120-day increase of $4 an hour for employees of supermarkets with at least 300 employees nationwide and more than 15 in Long Beach.
Kroger said it will close a Ralphs market and a Food 4 Less on April 17, the Press-Telegram reported.
“As a result of the City of Long Beach’s decision to pass an ordinance mandating Extra Pay for grocery workers, we have made the difficult decision to permanently close long-struggling store locations in Long Beach,” the company said in a statement.
The statement added: “This misguided action by the Long Beach City Council oversteps the traditional bargaining process and applies to some, but not all, grocery workers in the city.”
A city statement characterized Kroger’s decision as “unfortunate for workers, shoppers and the company.”
A $5-per-hour hazard pay wage increase was approved Tuesday by the Oakland City Council. In Los Angeles, the City Council voted to draft a similar ordinance.
Last week, Santa Clara County supervisors voted to draft a $5-per-hour measure, which could come up for a vote next week.
The Los Angeles suburb of Montebello previously approved a hazard pay measure and others are being considered in the L.A. suburb of Pomona and in San Jose and other San Francisco Bay Area cities.
Last week, Santa Clara County supervisors voted to draft an ordinance for a $5 hourly raise for some essential workers, including grocery store workers. It could come up for a vote next week.
(Excerpt) Read more at apnews.com ...
Close all the stores in CA. How can any business do business in CA is beyond me.
Liberals never ever learn. No matter how often their policies result in disaster they just keep pushing them down our throats. I believe Einstein said, the Definition of Insanity is, doing the same thing again and again always expecting a different result.
Way to go Long Beach. I guess you showed them who’s boss.
Now... if you think for a second that these same liberals who voted for this forced wage increase give a rat’s ass about people losing their jobs as a result, you are simply delusional. They KNEW what the result would be. It is what they wanted!!!
The more people who lose their jobs, the more people will start getting mad and join the rioters.
Once they start getting violent, they can blame anyone and everyone except themselves to justify more pain.
They will end up trying to use the military for the very thing it was not created for.
Time to go Gault on CA.
I do business at a Ralphs.
Sure hope they don’t close. I’ve been a customer of theirs
for 50 years.
Are these cities planning on reimbursing the companies for this cost?
The average wage at most grocery stores is probably around $12, $13 an hour? Requiring a company to pay a $4-5 an hour “hazard” wage means their labor costs are jumping 30-50%. That’s a pretty big hit for just about any company!
Just did the same thing here in Seattle, $4/hr increase for “hazard duty pay”
“Close all the stores in CA. How can any business do business in CA is beyond me.”
My cousin had a very prosperous business in Truckee California. He loved living in Truckee. He manufactured motherboards for the gaming industry. He was quite wealthy and is today. As he tried to expand his physical plant he ran into multiple governmental rules, fees, etc and red tape. He became frustrated and said the hell with it.
He took his essential personnel with him to Nevada with a friendly business climate. About 70 non essential personnel lost their jobs.
Part of this story is that there are simply a ton of grocery stores in this region, and none of them are financially doing that well.
If you look ahead at the $15 an hour minimum wage coming, wouldn’t surprise me if 10-to-20 percent of groceries around the US close within a year.
They are LEFTIST ideologues. Results are unimportant. It is all about virtue signaling.
I guess I missed the part in the US Constitution that says governments have the right to compel a company to pay their workers whatever the government says they must.
Just why is this constitutional??
When did any government entity get the authority to order a private business the amount of wages to pay employees?
Hey some of us freepers live in California. The rotten city councils are causing tremendous hardships.
Which will mean eventually food shortages. Especially after Biden dumped the billions President Trump had earmarked for farmers.....
Hope everyone likes soup lines.....
As a Californian I agree!
The businesses in CA. are huge tax write offs for the very successful stores they have in other parts of the country!! MANY NOW will not survive the rents are out of control, utilities out of control, minimum wage is 15.00 an hour, regulations are out of control I see CA. with VERY FEW grocery stores ect VERY SOON!!{
If you drove around in 1980...in the regional town where I grew up, we had a total of maybe twenty grocery stores within a 20-mile circle. Today? There’s probably forty of them (one even specializing as bio or natural).
If downsizing did occur (over the $15 min wage), I don’t see grocery or food shortages occurring. You’d simply be correcting what was a poor design of big huge structures with a customer flow that didn’t meet the business requirements.
Now, if you said truckers are not happy with metropolitan deliveries (too much crime or looting), that would trigger a grocery/food crisis. Or if Biden triggered some farm crisis and prices suddenly escalated by 30-percent...that would also be different.
All of this chatter should focus on the fact that minimally-trained or minimally-capable workers aren’t worth $15 an hour, and the system will correct itself with these people being let go and finding no real job potential in the end.
“Especially after Biden dumped the billions President Trump had earmarked for farmers.”
Some people think these dictators can’t destroy the country irretrievably before the “voters” chuck them out. I think they can.
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