$15.00 Minimum Wage

[Streck-Fu]

Originally Posted by Pete

Lost the link but L.A. Unions are fighting to be exempted from the $15 per hour law.

Here's one from the LA Times: LINK

[mark46th]

So the unions want to be exempt from a minimum wage so union businesses can under bid non-exempt businesses?

I would start a RICO investigation if that goes through...

[Badger52]

Originally Posted by mark46th

I would Start a RICO investigation if that goes through...

Such a thing would make for a very conflicted DoJ. Gotta love unintended consequences when they try to legislate human behavior. I predict they'd ignore it though. Lots of cans they can kick down the road till Jan 2017 and, as we've seen, they're very talented at it and they've had lots of help from inside Congress.

[Skelepede]

An often overlooked fact is the people that succeed are the people who work hard no matter what their job is. So they're a janitor at Mcdonalds, but they are determined to be the best janitor that works there, and then that guy becomes Manager and has his living wage. I'd almost make the argument the pendulum is swinging towards that rather than education. So you could either work at Mcdonalds for 8 years, or go to college and a get a Political Science Masters degree, while not working, and not building contacts and references. Who do you think will come out with the better paying job? Your college counselor will tell you the guy with the Masters, but his living wage depends on it. I was just at Wal-Mart, and now they have a lot of automated registers and less people working the cash register, consequently the t-shirts were on sale at a lower price than I've ever seen them. Cool. Raising the minimum wage is kind of a moot point, because what does it matter if the minimum wage goes up, but so do gas prices, and consumer products?

[Hand]

Originally Posted by Skelepede

An often overlooked fact is the people that succeed are the people who work hard no matter what their job is.

Exactly!

As has been stated previously in this thread, the fast food workers dream will be obscurity via automation.

yet...

I find it interesting that this snopes article refutes the claim that Mcdonalds is testing self service kiosk based ordering systems as a direct result of the minimum wage increase. While this may be true, I think it is the writing on the wall for human counter help in the future.

[PSM]

Originally Posted by Hand

I find it interesting that this snopes article refutes the claim that Mcdonalds is testing self service kiosk based ordering systems as a direct result of the minimum wage increase. While this may be true, I think it is the writing on the wall for human counter help in the future.

Why a kiosk? On our recent RV trip, I ordered and paid for several fast food meals with my phone.

Pat

[Box]

Jimmy Hoffa would have absolutely fucking loved to live in the modern era.
...hell, he's probably be the White House Chief of Staff if he was alive today.

[PSM]

Seattle CEO who set firm's minimum wage to $70G says he has hit hard times

The Seattle CEO who reaped a publicity bonanza when he boosted the salaries of his employees to a minimum of $70,000 a year says he has fallen on hard times.

Dan Price, 31, tells the New York Times that things have gotten so bad he’s been forced to rent out his house.

Only three months ago Price was generating headlines—and accusations of being a socialist -- when he announced the new salary minimum for all 120 employees at his Gravity Payments credit card processing firm. Price said he was doing it, and slashing his $1 million pay package to pay for it, to address the wealth gap.

“I’m working as hard as I ever worked to make it work,” he told the Times in a video that shows him sitting on a plastic bucket in the garage of his house. “I’m renting out my house right now to try and make ends meet myself.”

The Times article said Price’s decision ended up costing him a few customers and two of his “most valued” employees, who quit after newer employees ended up with bigger salary hikes than older ones.

“He gave raises to people who have the least skills and are the least equipped to do the job, and the ones who were taking on the most didn’t get much of a bump,” Gravity financial manager Maisey McMaster, 26, told the paper.


She said when she talked to Price about it, he treated her as if she was being selfish and only thinking about herself.

“That really hurt me,” she said. “I was talking about not only me, but about everyone in my position.”

Approaching burnout, she quit.

Grant Moran, 29, also quit, saying the new pay-scale was disconcerting

“Now the people who were just clocking in and out were making the same as me,” he told the paper. “It shackles high performers to less motivated team members.”

Price said McMaster and Moran, or even critic Rush Limbaugh, the talk show host, were not wrong.

“There’s no perfect way to do this and no way to handle complex workplace issues that doesn’t have any downsides or trade-offs,” he said.

The Times said customers who left were dismayed at what Price did, viewing it as a political statement. Others left fearful Gravity would soon hike fees to pay for salary increases.

Brian Canlis, co-owner of a family restaurant, already worried about how to deal with Seattle’s new minimum wage, told Price the pay raise at Gravity “makes it harder for the rest of us.”

“It pains me to hear Brian Canlis say that,” Price said. “The last think I would ever want to do is make a client feel uncomfortable.”

More here (including video): http://www.foxnews.com/us/2015/08/03...ake-ends-meet/

Who would've thunk it?

Pat

[Team Sergeant]

Google "Dan Price and a Fool and His Money"

He can find "sympathy" in the dictionary right between "shit" and "syphilis".


"Life is tough, but it's tougher when you're stupid." John Wayne

[Badger52]

Originally Posted by PSM

Seattle CEO who set firm's minimum wage to $70G says he has hit hard times



Who would've thunk it?

Pat

Completely expected. Actions have consequences. Now that some "Atlases" at his place have "Shrugged" and moved on, let's see who picks up his socialist slack.

[Flagg]

Originally Posted by PSM

Why a kiosk? On our recent RV trip, I ordered and paid for several fast food meals with my phone.

Pat

Last year while driving non stop from Normandy to Bordeaux in France I stopped at a French McDonalds.

Inside was quite busy(so much for the French turning their nose up on American fast food battle space projection and dominance).

There were only 3 people working that I could see(may have been more but couldn't have been many more)

Everyone ordered from kiosks, 1 person facilitated the orders, 2 people made everything.

Certainly seemed like a way lower employee /customer ratio what with France's higher minimum wage and lower work hours.

Minimum wages go too higher., then it's McRobot asking if you want fries with your McLard.

-----

The credit card processing guy who raised everyone's wages seems like a genuinely good person.

And he's entitled to do what he wants with his company.

I've done something similar in a country with a relatively high minimum wage as well as statutory minimum of 4 weeks paid vacation, 12 statutory holidays, 5 sucks days, bereavement leave, long paid maternity leave, and difficulty in firing losers.

We pay more than our competitors, but we pay more by position, rather than just a blanket high minimum for all.

While our compensation structure is flattish, there's obviously big difference between the guy who cleans the place and the guy that brings in heaps of profitable business.

I think where he failed was looking to pay janitors $70k, and instead paying them the most in that janitorial role fir that area.

And demanding the highest performance to ensure sufficient productivity bang per buck.

Pay the best, demand the best.

If you pay and they don't perform, you lose.
-----

I reckon if $15 an hour is good, then $100 an hour would be awesome!

I reckon it hinges on two things:

1) growing divide between shrinking proportion of workforce being superstars bringing in superstar profits, and growing proportion of workforce in low value McJobs bringing in low profits.

No scope for wage inflation in the bottom and middle, of the workforce.

So they force it, and artificially disrupt wage structures.

2) by doing so they gain populist votes, and think they've fixed the problem they created in the firm of excessive cheap credit which has driven property prices into the stratosphere and out of reach of the bottom and middle in terms of average multiples of average wages to purchase the average home.

I reckon it's a bit like politicians dropping a batch of arsenic in the village well that they last dumped polonium into in the belief that it will make the water magically potable.

The worst part is that when villagers start to economically die(again) from drinking from the village well, it's probably going to be the folks who poisoned it both times to point fingers and blame.

[Box]

Dan Price never expected human nature to interfere with his attempt at social engineering.

He probably didn't expect the co-founder (his older brother) to file a lawsuit over differing business practices either. Now because of his salary issues the company doesn't have a fiscal margin of error needed to pay the 2-million dollars in legal fees he is dealing with.


Slick move Dan.
...social engineering is a bitch, isn't it.

[Flagg]

Originally Posted by Billy L-bach

Dan Price never expected human nature to interfere with his attempt at social engineering.

He probably didn't expect the co-founder (his older brother) to file a lawsuit over differing business practices either. Now because of his salary issues the company doesn't have a fiscal margin of error needed to pay the 2-million dollars in legal fees he is dealing with.


Slick move Dan.
...social engineering is a bitch, isn't it.

Is social engineering necessarily a bad thing?

Wouldn't a profit sharing, incentive base pay for performance, ESOP, etc compensation system also qualify as social engineering?

Shaping work behavior is social engineering isnt it?

I would think this fella is learning more about unintended consequences and the catastrophic dangers of the Good Idea Fairy.

As well as 1st, 2nd, 3rd order effects.

I know in my business I've got one of my senior managers whose stated job is a license to kill the Good Idea Fairy.

The good idea fairy always seems to pull some of her trickery and witchcraft on me, cause it couldn't possibly be my fault.

Thankfully I've got someone to shoot her on sight so I don't wreck everything like Dan.

And my team have someone to mercilessly blame and effectively get their point across without having to conduct a bloody coup or get fired.

It's a funny thing, we've had some amazing performance from our team will well thought out and tested compensation schemes.

But its a moving target, nothing stays static or perfect forever. No magic formula.

I applaud this guys intent, but his appreciation, planning, COA development, and red-teaming was @ss.

[PSM]

Originally Posted by Flagg

Is social engineering necessarily a bad thing?

Yes. We are not ants.

I applaud this guys intent,

I don't because he wasn't the first to try it so the he should have known what the outcome would be. Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream comes to mind. Unilever owns it now.

Pat

[Box]

Is social engineering necessarily a bad thing?

Yes.
It is my opinion that social engineering is always a bad thing.
...continuing forth with the ant metaphor:



When I was young, I learned how to set things on fire with a magnifying glass.
...it was a neat discovery; the ants were not amused.

Social engineering is a bored person fucking around with his magnifying glass.
...again, the ants are rarely amused.

Ole' Danny boy played with fire and got burned. The employees that suffered were not amused.

Just my two cents.