Posted on 12/03/2013 9:34:29 AM PST by Kaslin
On Friday, Salon reported Breaking: Massive Black Friday strike and arrests planned, as workers defy Wal-Mart.
Defying the nation’s top employer and a business model that defines the new U.S. economy, Wal-Mart employees and allies will try to oust shopping headlines with strike stories, and throw a retail giant off its heels on what should be its happiest day of the year. By day’s end, organizers expect 1,500 total protests in cities ranging from Los Angeles, Calif., to Wasilla, Alaska, including arrests in nine cities: Seacaucus, New Jersey; Alexandria, Virginia; Dallas; Minneapolis; Chicago; Seattle; and Ontario, San Leandro, and Sacramento, California.
On December 1, the New York Times reported Wage Strikes Planned at Fast-Food Outlets.
Seeking to increase pressure on McDonald’s, Wendy’s and other fast-food restaurants, organizers of a movement demanding a $15-an-hour wage for fast-food workers say they will sponsor one-day strikes in 100 cities on Thursday and protest activities in 100 additional cities.
The movement, which includes the groups Fast Food Forward and Fight for 15, is part of a growing union-backed effort by low-paid workers — including many Walmart workers and workers for federal contractors — that seeks to focus attention on what the groups say are inadequate wages.
The fast-food effort is backed by the Service Employees International Union and is also demanding that restaurants allow workers to unionize without the threat of retaliation.
Officials with the National Restaurant Association have said the one-day strikes are publicity stunts. They warn that increasing pay to $15 an hour when the federal minimum wage is $7.25 would cause restaurants to rely more on automation and hire fewer workers.
On Aug. 29, fast-food strikes took place in more than 50 cities. This week’s expanded protests will be joined by numerous community, faith and student groups, including USAction and United Students against Sweatshops.
Fight For 15
Inquiring minds are investigating the Fight for 15 website. Here is a snip.
Stand with striking Chicago fast food and retail workers!
We, hundreds of fast food and retail workers, went on strike at 30 stores in the Loop and the Magnificent Mile to demand $15 an hour and the right to form a union without retaliation. Employers like McDonalds, Whole Foods, and Sears are raking in enormous profits while workers like us, mostly adults with families, don’t get paid enough to cover basic needs like food, rent, health care and transportation.
We are risking our jobs as we continue to stand up and say ENOUGH. And we need everyone who supports us to join us. It’s time to give every worker a chance to survive and thrive – and strengthen Chicago’s economy.
Applicants a Mile Long
Whenever Wal-Mart opens up a store it gets tens of thousands of applicants for a couple hundred openings. People want the jobs.
Here's the deal. If you don't like the job, then don't take it.
It really is as simple as that.
Should Companies Pay Workers More?
The economic illiterates think companies should be forced to pay $15 per hour. Is it even possible?
Let's do the math.
Wikipedia reports Wal-Mart is the largest retailer in the world as well as the biggest private employer in the world with over two million employees.
In its last annual report, for the 12 months ending January 31, 2013, Wal-Mart had $16.999 billion in net income.
That sounds like a lot of money, and it is, but not as much as you might think. I do not have a breakdown in headcounts, pay scales, or number of part-time employees, but let's assume that half of the 2 million workers make $8 an hour (75 cents above above minimum wage) and work 30 hours a week.
$15 an hour would be an increase of $7 per hour. $7 multiplied by 30 hours per week, multiplied by 52 weeks a year, multiplied by 1 million workers is $10.92 billion, well over half Wal-Mart's profit.
There would also be a large number of full-time employees making above $10 per hour but less than $15 per hour.
Bump up those employees to $15 per hour and the company would not even be profitable at $15 per hour minimum. Moreover, sales would plunge at Wal-Mart, as would sales at McDonald's and Wendy's.
The pressure to automate would be great, and marginal stores would surely close. Yet, prices across the board would soar, and so would yields on US Treasuries (and of course interest on the national debt would skyrocket).
Then, how long would it take to discover that $15 was not a "living wage"? Less than a year?
Wal-Mart a Savior or a Pariah?
The idea that raising the minimum wage to $15 would fix anything is ridiculous.
I am not totally unsympathetic to the plight of those struggling, but I am totally unsympathetic about minimum wages because the problem is the Fed, not minimum wage laws.
Cheap money coupled with rising minimum wages encourages investment into automation as opposed to hiring of individuals. Cheap money also drives up costs of goods and services.
And given that cheap money primarily benefits those with first access to it (the banks and the already wealthy), it is not surprising that people are struggling.
Rather than protest Wal-Mart (a company that does the world a service by providing over 2 million direct jobs and millions more indirect ones), people ought to be protesting the Fed.
lol
good one
My next job was in a hospital where I got $3.13 an hour. With that amount I paid cash for a brand new 1975 Chevy Nova, paid cash for my wedding and had $2,000 leftover to put down on my first house.
If I had gotten $15.00 an hour to begin with I never would have been motivated to do better for myself job wise.
It depends primarily upon location. Well, in the world in general too of course, however specifically I refer to locales such as one of the tiny towns near where I live.
I have to laugh when I think of anyone locally attempting to strike for higher wages here. As soon as anyone tries it, there will be a line out the door of the building where the business is located with others applying for that position and happy to have found work for the pay offered.
Speaking as someone tasked more than once with hiring qualified individuals for necessary work: I am not paying 50 dollars an hour simply for someone to read the test equipment and write down the results. Neither, as a businessman, will I pay some pimply-faced kid fifteen or even ten dollars an hour to stand there and make change at the register. No bloody way.
It’s going to happen because you can’t ever win this argument with the sort of people who gave Obama a majority.
It needs to be pointed out that the left’s argument on this is based on the “need” of the worker, not on the “worth” of the worker’s output.
This is right in line with the communist credo - from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.
Depending on your goals, that could be a good thing.
“Elite” leftists want more people dependent on them so they are more easily controlled.
Sheeperals want more people dependent on government so they won’t feel so bad about being dependent themselves.
I remember one effort to raise the minimum wage (maybe through congress) Democrats were seeking an exemption for their staffing to push the issue. They wanted to pay below the CURRENT wage to petition to raise it.
All those “low” wages can be forced up to some “living wage” level. It will cause prices to rise thus negating the benefit of the larger paycheck and will cause greater automation that will reduce the number of people making the nominally higher wage. No one will be ultimately helped and many will be harmed as happens with any artificial hampering of market relationships.
That’s only part of it...and it is a part of it...but the other side is making investment in people worthwhile - increasing legitimate demand for workers. Instead, we have been making investments of many sorts not worth the risk both from the taxation side, from the regulation side, and from the mandated costs side. In this environment, it makes more sense to hoard money.
As a result, people get kicked down towards the bottom of the ladder, at which point, a minimum wage kicks a portion of the people right off the ladder. Being down the ladder is painful. Being off the ladder means you are likely not developing even basic job skills, and are likely to stay off the ladder.
Both/each
Liberals only see one distinction.....buying votes!!!
Under this minimum wage rule, he would only get $11.25 (3/4th of the minimum). But I suppose he could learn to make the job last three hours so he could collect $45.
Or care. Obamaphone, food stamps and a flatscreen.
>> “End Corporate Rule”
Start your own business, douche bag.
One of my daughters graduated from UVA with a degree in architecture — she’s really gifted and talented in this area — but only could find a job at a firm paying $12 an hour upon graduation. And she felt as though she was lucky to find that given the economy at the time.
She is in grad school now, making $17 an hour during the summer, but nothing makes her madder than the argument that a high school dropout should make more than her!
“They wanted to pay below the CURRENT wage to petition to raise it.”
The “Do as I say,not as I do” crowd.
.
Recognition of that fundamental cause/effect relationship will reveal that proponents' claims that it won't cause unemployment are simply lies. It is only by removing from the marketplace workers who aren't able to demand more than minimum wage that the rule has any effect whatsoever. If there weren't any workers whose labor wasn't already worth the proposed new wage, workers could simply refuse to accept anything less than the proposed wage and companies would be better off paying them than doing without their labor.
To be sure, raising the minimum wage may raise the amount companies are willing to pay for of some labor, but not in a way that really benefits anyone. Ignoring (for simplicity) employment costs beyond wages, assume a company which needs something done; person #1 could do it in 2.5 hours; the next best usage of his labor would be worth $10/hour; person #2 could do it in 2 hours, but the next-best usage of his labor would be worth $15/hour. It would make sense to have person #1 do the task, and person #2 do something else, but imposing a minimum wage would prevent that from happening. There's no reason the company should spend $15/hour on someone who would take 2.5 hours to do a task if it could for the same price get someone who could do it in two. So worker #2, who could have done something more useful, ends up doing the work that #1 should have done, while #1 is forced onto the welfare rolls (meaning that everyone else, including worker #2, has to pay him to not work). Democrats may benefit politically, but nobody else does.
The laws of economics are just as certain, inevitable and inexorable as the law of gravity. You can fool it for a while, but like Wyle E. Coyote, gravity wins and gravity is merciless.
Workers do not compete with employers. Workers compete with other present and prospective workers. While immigration is something of an issue, the fact that improving by $1,000 the lot of someone who would otherwise be a welfare recipient will cost a company a lot more than $1,000 is a much bigger factor.
One idea you mention, however, I hadn't seen expressed in such terms. I wonder what the effect would be if the EITC were modified to particularly reward married breadwinners?
A principle that I wish prominent people would articulate is that the basic principles taught in Econ 101 apply in 99% of real-world situations, and probably in 99.9% of situations where politicians insist they don't. If the principles of Econ 101 says that a certain policy would have a particular side-effect, then any politician who pushes the policy without acknowledging the side effect is either a liar or a fool, and that goes double if the politician denies that the side-effect would occur but cannot articulate the particular reasons why.
On a related note, conservatives need to make people more aware that almost any policy which is supposed to solve any sort of problem will have side-effects. Side effects may be good or bad, and their particulars may vary in magnitude and predictability, but side-effects are a natural part of existence. Further, the only reason policies should be expected not to have side-effects that are worse than the problems they're supposed to solve would be that policies whose side-effects are that bad shouldn't be adopted in the first place or, if they are adopted, should be rolled back as expeditiously as possible.
Any reasonable policy proposal should recognize what the side effects are apt to be, and explain why they are not worse than the original problem. If there are unexpected harmful side-effects, the failure of the original policy's proponents to predict them should be recognized as implying that either they don't understand the mechanism of the side-effects or were simply lying about them, and in neither case should they be entrusted with trying to "fix" them.
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