California raises its minimum wage to $20

[dolphins4life]

The early results appear to be bad.  Massive closing and layoffs, (this is according to Tiktok).  Huge price hikes.  Many people not happy.

Massachusetts has raised its minimum wage to $15 an hour.  However, my store continues to give its employees raises every year.  However, we are not even close to making $20 an hour in retail.  I hope they learn from CA.   

[Spider-Dan]

This is false.  CA did not raise "the minimum wage" to $20, but instead the minimum wage for fast food workers.

Like many corporations in the US, fast food restaurants have been hiking their prices since 2020, leading to record corporate profits during the pandemic.  But the increased prices were widely blamed on inflation due to free money for poor people instead of corporate price gouging during a global emergency.

[Fau Teixeira]

in short, GOOD.. let fast food places price themselves righto out of the market. It's already a better deal to go to the supermarket or local bakery and get a large sub for $7 - 8 and it be much better, higher quality food for half the price of a big mac meal.

I saw an example where an owner of 10 fast food restaurants claims that the wage increase results in an extra cost of $500k yearly for him. That makes his profit from the restaurants from 1.3 million / year to 800k / year. If he'd rather close his stores than settle for $800k / year then that's his problem.

In the age of corporations are people and the only motivator a corporation has is the share price of their stock. I'm fully in favor of government increasing the minimum wage. Those who can compete will, those who can't will fail. That's capitalism.

Also while we're on the topic of government and wage floors. Any job you work at for over 30 hours a week that results in you being eligible for welfare payments or food stamps should get taxed twice the amount spent on those welfare payments or food stamps. We also need to as a society do away with part time / full time distinctions. You work for a company or you don't. Making someone ineligible for health insurance or any other widely distributed benefit because you cut their hours from 35 / week to 32 / week on purpose to make them inelligible is incredible bullshit.

[Spider-Dan]

One more thing:

The early results appear to be bad.  Massive closing and layoffs, (this is according to Tiktok).  Huge price hikes.  Many people not happy.

Massachusetts has raised its minimum wage to $15 an hour.  However, my store continues to give its employees raises every year.  However, we are not even close to making $20 an hour in retail.  I hope they learn from CA.

What are you "hoping that your store learns" from the bad results, massive closing and layoffs, huge price hikes, and unhappy people in CA?

Unless you're saying that you don't want your employer to pay you too much money, you seem to be having some internal conflict between the right-wing talking points you're seeing on Tiktok and the impact of a raise on your real-world quality of life.

[Dave Gray]

Whether you legislate it or not, it's gonna have to happen.  California cost of living is too high to pay less than this for hourly work.  People just won't work at these places for less and there will be an exodus and then your Burger King experience won't exist.  You can legislate to help the industry along or to normalize it and stabilize it, but capitalism will do this job, too.

We have no laws like this here and these places are already starting you out at $15, because why else are you going to live in Boca and work at Dunkin Donuts.  This idea that these are summer jobs for kids is just not reality.  It's unskilled labor for people who need to live.

[Fau Teixeira]

It's unskilled labor for people who need to live.

There is no such thing as unskilled labor. I can no more run a Dunkin' drive thru than i can fly an airplane. They're both skilled positions, the skills are just different.

[CF DolFan]

There is no such thing as unskilled labor. I can no more run a Dunkin' drive thru than i can fly an airplane. They're both skilled positions, the skills are just different.

You equate taking orders in a drive-thru to flying an airplane? I honestly don't know how to respond to that. I sure hope you don't select doctors the same way.

[CF DolFan]

We have no laws like this here and these places are already starting you out at $15, because why else are you going to live in Boca and work at Dunkin Donuts.  This idea that these are summer jobs for kids is just not reality.  It's unskilled labor for people who need to live.

This is where we disagree on the issue. People who "need to live" should not be working at Dunkin Donuts or McDonalds unless they are in management. There is a point where you just cannot charge enough to make a decent profit when you sell something like fast food and that's what business owners are in the business for in the first place. Plenty of manual labor jobs that pay more and offer more benefits because only they are making more on the end product.

Recently a popular local Coney Island hot dog and ice cream place closed down because the owners were killing themselves but couldn't afford to hire people to help them. They had plenty of business coming in but decided it better to work for other people.

[MyGodWearsAHoodie]

You equate taking orders in a drive-thru to flying an airplane? I honestly don't know how to respond to that. I sure hope you don't select doctors the same way.

It is a different skill set, but still a skill set.  One person posted the question, "why are assistant managers at McDonald's better at deescalating than the police?".  Response, "because if we don't we get fired". Every job requires skill!  Ever had a brand new cashier or waitress?

[Dave Gray]

This is where we disagree on the issue. People who "need to live" should not be working at Dunkin Donuts or McDonalds unless they are in management.

That's fine, but then you won't (and you don't) have staff at Dunkin' Donuts.  That's why you go to places and there's nobody behind the counter.

[MyGodWearsAHoodie]

It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By "business" I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry; by workers I mean all workers, the white collar class as well as the men in overalls; and by living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level-I mean the wages of decent living.
Franklin D. Roosevelt

[Dave Gray]

More to question what CF is saying -- why would you work at Dunkin for X amount of dollars when there are other jobs that will pay you more?  That's just how capitalism works.  Where I live, this concept of a high school workforce just champing at the bit to take $10 an hour jobs just isn't a thing.

[Phishfan]

There is no such thing as unskilled labor. I can no more run a Dunkin' drive thru than i can fly an airplane. They're both skilled positions, the skills are just different.

Thanks for the semantics but it is the proper term when hiring employees.

[Spider-Dan]

This is where we disagree on the issue. People who "need to live" should not be working at Dunkin Donuts or McDonalds unless they are in management. There is a point where you just cannot charge enough to make a decent profit when you sell something like fast food and that's what business owners are in the business for in the first place. Plenty of manual labor jobs that pay more and offer more benefits because only they are making more on the end product.

Your philosophy doesn't work in the US, where people working for poverty wages receive government assistance.

When you advocate for places like McDonald's or Walmart to pay adults less than a living wage, you are effectively subsidizing the profit of those businesses with taxpayer money.  And as we have seen over the past 4 years, corporations will raise prices whenever they think they can get away with it, whether their costs increase or not... so you aren't even "keeping prices low" by allowing these businesses to pay their staff pennies.

Recently a popular local Coney Island hot dog and ice cream place closed down because the owners were killing themselves but couldn't afford to hire people to help them. They had plenty of business coming in but decided it better to work for other people.

Then raise the prices.

I don't understand why people have "plenty of customers" but would rather just fold up shop than attempt to raise prices to a sustainable revenue.  Again, we have big corporations out here gleefully price gouging and posting record profits, yet there are small businesses who won't raise prices even if the alternative is closing down entirely.

[Dave Gray]

Thanks for the semantics but it is the proper term when hiring employees.

Sure, I think the point he's making here, and it's true as someone who hires people, is that after you've trained someone to do an entry-level job, they have value to you.  Sure, you might be able to find someone to do the job for less, rather than giving that person more money, but you'll have to train that other person, and in my experience, it takes a long time for that person to be fully self-reliant after training.

I've never worked in fast food, but I imagine it takes a while to become "good at your job", even in something like that.  And when we're talking about the completely uninitiated, you kinda have to teach people or let them learn through modeling, how to be polite, how to speak, how to engage, etc.  I could probably work fast food and be good to one once I learned the technical stuff, but I have decades of customer service experience in unrelated fields.