FROM Supermarket News:
[EXCERPT]
CGA [California Grocers Association] said it commissioned a study finding that grocery costs for a family of four could increase by $400 a year with a $5-per-hour extra pay mandate, as proposed in Los Angeles County. The report pegged grocery industry average profits at 2.2% during early to mid-2020, at the height of pandemic-triggered panic buying, but determined that the higher wage would hike overall costs 4.5%, twice the size of the industry profit margin and three times historical profit margins.
“The Long Beach City Council rushed to enact the misguided extra pay mandate without any meaningful dialogue with grocers in their community. We repeatedly warned that a $4/hour increase would have major unintended consequences, including potential store closures, the reduction of work for employees, and higher grocery costs for customers,” according to CGA’s Fong, who said a $4 hourly increase translates to a roughly 28% rise in retailers’ labor costs. “There’s no way grocers can absorb that big of a cost increase without an offset somewhere else, considering grocers operate with razor-thin margins and many stores already operate in the red.
The Long Beach City Council put politics ahead of families and jobs in the middle of a pandemic. This was entirely avoidable. We are hopeful that Long Beach and other cities reconsider these misguided proposals that do far more harm than good.”
Well who elected these morons? The people of Long Beach did. Let them suffer, but like most all Democrat voters they're too stupid to realize that they did it to themselves.
the best way to compensate “essential” workers, which I was until last November, would to have had a tax holiday for them....and I’m talking the ones who actually had to GO OUT TO WORK and not stay home in their jammies getting full pay....