Notice how he wouldn’t be tightening his belt so that workers can have a better wage.
Where does the owners say that the owner is making sacrifices? I read the article, but the title actually tells most of it, for once: I’m a California restaurant operator preparing for the $20-an-hour fast-food wage by trimming hours, eliminating employee vacation, and raising menu prices.
Nothing in there about the owner trying harder or making sacrifices, just passing the cost to his workers (eliminating PTO) or customers (increasing menu prices). Who knows, maybe he is…but the article does not say it.
How much you think there is to tighten? Restaurants run on thin margins. Let’s play with numbers.
Say this guy profits $1,000,000/yr., ALL profit. And he gives up every penny of that to make payroll. Let’s say his labor and risk are worth nothing. I’m OK with that. Hell, you’re lucky to take a loss, for years, starting a business, let alone break even.
At $20/hr., that’s 50,000 manhours he can employ. But not really. An employee pocketing $20 probably costs his employer $40. OK, 25,000 manhours. That’s about 480 hours of work per week he’s able to use. So 12 employees? Spread over 4 restaurants?
And notice the part where he said $20 was rock-bottom? And higher-level employees will need more to keep them on?
So instead of saying fuck it and pulling the plug and selling his assets, he’s trying to tighten up, keep those people on the payroll. And gets demonized for it.
Thank you for coming to my TED Talk. In our next Talk we’ll be bitching about sky-high fast-food prices.
tl;dr: Y’all seeing billionaires and megacorps raiding the economy and conflating them with guys like this.
IIT: Buncha people who have never worked payroll and have no clue how it works.
If he had left it at “I’m raising prices”, then no one would have an issue with what he said.
The rest of it is just him being a giant asshole
Everyone except dumbasses with no critical thinking skills understands that in order to pay people a living wage, prices have to adjust accordingly
Everyone except dumbasses with no critical thinking skills understands that in order to pay people a living wage, prices have to adjust accordingly
Except not really. Businesses have much wider profit margins than they pretend to.
For example, in Denmark the McDonald’s entry-level wage is the equivalent of $22 and a Big Mac costs LESS than in most of the US.
If McDonald’s couldn’t make a profit doing that, they’d simply stop doing business in Denmark. They don’t.
Restaurants run on thin margins.
Not anywhere near as thin as you think. The official numbers are AFTER artificially deflating their profits for tax avoidance reasons.
he gives up every penny of that to make payroll.
Ridiculously unrealistic.
An employee pocketing $20 probably costs his employer $40
What have you been smoking?? In the real world, workers produce a hell of a lot more value than they’re given in return. That’s how companies profit.
he’s trying to tighten up, keep those people on the payroll.
No, he’s trying to recoup the profits lost from paying his workers a living wage by making it less livable for them. He’s protecting his profits, not workers.
And gets demonized for it.
And rightly so. He’s acting like the put upon victim when in reality he’s complaining about having to pull other exploitation levers now that one is fixed at a lower setting.
Your numbers are wildly off. The raise amounts to 4$, your going from 20$ and jumping to 40$ is irrelevant because the employees are already employees, the only cost increase here is the 4$ extra per hour.
So you’re looking at closer to 200k manhours based off your calculations or around 100 employees.
He runs 4 restaurants, and with that million dollars in profit he could cover the raises of 100 employees, and I highly highly doubt he’s running anywhere near 25 employees per restaurant.
The new California law doesn’t apply to employees at full-service chains such as Chili’s or Cheesecake Factory.
That’s really strange. A minimum wage for just fast food?
That’s because they have a joke of a governor. They didn’t raise the minimum wage, just for fast food.
Full-service chains have their own minimums because of our shitty tipping culture.
Funny thing I’ve noticed over the years, the people actually working for tips are never the ones bitching. What do you make of that?
Based on my experience in jobs with tipping, the people who don’t get tips quit and do something else and the ones that get good tips like to complain that all servers would get less if there was a reasonable minimum wage because they assume everyone else gets the same.
Note that there is constant turnover in tipping positions because most people don’t make good tips.
The is a poor excuse and will cause lost of business because this guy wants all the money, not just some.
“Eliminating employee vacation”
His workers had an average 48 hours of yearly vacation time. That is not vacation time.
What trash
The paid vacation he’s eliminating was capped at 72hrs per year. He warns that high schoolers will have a tough time competing with more valuable employees, but this is due to the wage increase only applying to fast food. Also, the big layoffs in in-house delivery are similarly due to the narrow scope of the law which excludes gig workers.
“Landlords won’t lower their rents”-- these things take time.
“Landlords won’t lower their rents”-- these things take time.
For sure. A market correction on landlords require businesses leaving the property and then the landlords defaulting their loans to the bank. But no matter what that still needs to happen, because an economy where we value parasitic capital over paying labor a living wage is fundementally broken.
