After Amazon Increases Worker Wages, Whole Foods Responds By Cutting Worker Hours (theguardian.com)

schwit1 shared this article from the Guardian: In response to public pressure and increasing scrutiny over the pay of its warehouse workers, Amazon enacted a $15 minimum wage for all its employees on 1 November, including workers at grocery chain Whole Foods, which it purchased in 2017... But since the wage increase, Whole Food employees have told the Guardian that they have experienced widespread cuts that have reduced schedule shifts across many stores, often negating wage gains for employees.

"My hours went from 30 to 20 a week," said one Whole Foods employee in Illinois... "We just have to work faster to meet the same goals in less time," the worker said. An internal email shared by the employee from their department manager cited the across-the-board shift cuts as "the direct result of guidance from our regional team". In Maryland, another Whole Foods worker said their regional management is forcing stores to cut full-time employee schedules by four hours, to 36 hours a week. "This hours cut makes that raise pointless as people are losing more than they gained and we rely on working full shifts," the worker said...

In September 2018, several Whole Foods workers organized the group Whole Worker, with the goals of forming a union and providing workers a resource to organize since Amazon took over... "There are many team members working at Whole Foods today whose total compensation is actually less than what it was before the wage increase due to these labor reductions," said a Whole Worker spokesperson in an email to the Guardian.
Neither Amazon nor Whole Foods responded to requests fo a comment, the Guardian reports -- while the workers that they interviewed "were reluctant to speak on the record for fear of retaliation."

Comments

Of course they did

[JeffOwl]

What did people think would happen?

Re:Of course they did

[rmdingler]

What did people think would happen?

People are generally long on good intentions, and short on consequences and repercussions.

The sweet blue-haired lady who feeds the stray feral cats until their population growth outstrips her ability to dump out enough friskies.

The folks who thought Amazon was a goin' to take the wage increase out of their piggy bank, and bear the burden of it heroically.

Re: Of course they did

[armada]

Exactly. Furthermore, they are glossing over the fact that the same money for fewer hours of your life is a freaking raise and it is being perceived as a bad thing done to them Who is teaching value to these people?

Re: Of course they did

[brian.stinar]

That actually may not be true, when looking at the complete picture.

Higher wages for fewer hours are better, given all other factors remain the same. In my state, and in other states, there are laws requiring benefits to be paid when a certain number of hours per week are worked. In those situations, it's better to work the required number of hours at a lower wage, and receive the additional benefits, than it would be to work fewer hours at a higher wage, without the benefits.

This isn't rocket science. Anyone that has paid payroll to employees knows this stuff.

Unfortunately, most people haven't paid payroll to comply with multiple different state's laws, and Federal laws, and don't understand basic economics.

Minimum Wage is a Poor Form of Welfare

[ranton]

This simply illustrates the obvious reason why minimum wage is not a good form of welfare. Universal basic income combats the same problem (workers without the economic value being able to earn a living wage) but without fighting against the supply/demand curve. It has been obvious for at least a century that market forces are insufficient to promote the general welfare of all citizens, but the answer is not to combat market forces. Just let wages fall where they may and provide for general welfare in another way.

The economic value of any individual is exactly what they would be paid without any minimum wage. That is fine. Just make sure society is providing basic means for all citizens without relying on wages. Minimum wage is a very poor way of doing that.

Re: Minimum Wage is a Poor Form of Welfare

[apoc.famine]

Ubi is economically impossible....What is needed is to bring executive compensation down to merely 500 times minimum wage from the 5-10,000 it currently is.

You say it's impossible, but hint at one thing which would help.

What's not talked about much in UBI calculations is the potential economic growth that would happen under it. If everyone suddenly has financial stability, a lot of deferred or luxury purchases are going to occur that currently are not happening. And a lot of parasitic businesses that extract money from the economy will start to dry up.

One of the compounding factors of poverty is that wages are often uncertain. You're making ends meet for a month or two, then you stop getting shifts. During that time you might have made some purchases that are suddenly unaffordable. This is in part why predatory businesses like rent-to-own, pawn shops, and payday loan places set up shop in the poor parts of town. They capitalize on the uncertainty of poverty.

Those businesses right there represent another place where we can squeeze out more money for UBI.

Back to the executive paychecks, the top 1% now have wealth equivalent to the bottom 50%. That represents an economic anchor of epic proportions, as that's money that's not circulating in communities. That's money that's not changing hands daily, subject to sales tax, property tax, and income tax. At best it gets dinged a little with capital gains taxes, but given the tax accountants the 1% can afford, even that is unlikely. We've steadily chipped away at estate taxes too, so even in death this money won't go back into economic circulation.

We literally are not taxing 50% of the money anymore.

And this is all without dismantling some of the military industrial complex, and a military which is larger than the next 6 combined, which includes allies.

We've got enough money for UBI. It just requires a rather significant war on the rich and and the military. Unfortunately, they're much better equipped to fight that battle than the population as a whole.

Up the wage

[AHuxley]

Where did people really think that new wage money would be extracted from? Profits?

Re:When are the behemoths going to learn?

[tomhath]

I'm betting on the latter, personally.

I'm betting one of the choices you left out: not enough profit means the business will close

Margaret Thatcher...

[blackt0wer]

Socialism is fine until you run out of other people's money. A retail worker is not worth $30,000/year. When politicians, who hypocritically tout the wants of "the people" for their own purposes pass legislation purporting to seek a higher wage floor, corporations have no choice but to respond by slashing hours and benefits.

I'm gonna call some bullshit here

[rsilvergun]

so Amazon increased wages for the company they owned but didn't increase labor budget?

Something doesn't add up here. There's one of two possibilities.

a. Amazon didn't increase labor budgets, in which case raising their employees wages was a cynical PR stunt pulled specifically so they could then point to and say "See, we tried to help, but minimum wage just doesn't work".

b. Amazon _did_ increase labor budgets, in which case these are just asshat managers exploiting the raise to cut hours without taking the blame for it. If you've ever worked a low wage manager job you know your bonuses are tied to costs.

Either way somebody is blowing smoke up our asses.

Actually it does

[rsilvergun]

because when poor people have money they spend it.

The reason why trickle _down_ doesn't work is that no matter how greedy you are there's only so many hours in the day to spend money, and only so many yachts to buy.

Give a rich man money and he sits on it to use it as a power broker tool to get what he wants. Give a poor man money and he spends it. Multiple studies have shown that demand side economics works. That a dollar given to a poor person circulates far, far more than even two given to a rich man.

The other way minimum wage "trickles up" is that it sets a floor nobody can fall below, reducing desperation. Desperate people will struggle. Most will collapse under the weight of those struggles, but a few will make it. Those few will compete with you for your jobs, putting pressure on your wages. The guy what would have been happy in life at $20/hr in a factory is now gunning for your $90k/yr job because that's what it takes to get by. Sure, he'll fail, but there's a million guys behind him. If even 1% make it into your industry you wages will go down.

You do studies

[rsilvergun]

and when something doesn't work you take a step back, research and learn from your mistakes. In other words, you apply the scientific method.

If you want a fantastic example of what happens when you leave shit up to chance take the entire first half of the 19ths century. The Great Depression and both World Wars were basically people letting stuff happen.

Post Great Depression, for example, we heavily regulated banks and had no major crashes for decades. Then we started deregulating things and blamo, Savings and Loan scandals. Same thing happened with the 2008 crash where we let Main Street and Wall Street banks interact (we didn't used to). And then there's stock buy backs. They are absolutely wrecking our economy as businesses pour capital into them instead of investments. Pre-Reagan they were illegal market manipulation, now they're standard practice.

Yes, Human beings can solve our problems. If we couldn't we'd still be at the mercy of the elements. But the thing is, we have to try. And we can't just throw up our hands and say "Welp, that didn't work, I guess we'll never solve that". That kind of defeatism is what gets us the Dark Ages all over again. Thousands of years with no progress.

Re:That was already proved bullshit

[Uberbah]

Good thing you're free to leave Detroit.

And how do you propose to do that when you work full time but earn $20 a week? Or two full time jobs - for a whole $80! Or less! Since there's no minimum wage!

The minimum wage exists to price people out of the market.

The minimum wage exists as a floor. If your business doesn't pay a living wage, your business doesn't deserve to exist.

If anyone's sucking the corporate boot-tip, it's you.

Suuuuuure. But I ask again: why don't you Randians put your home economics where your ideology lies? Back in 2001, Nickel and Dimed was written by Barbara Ehrenreich, on what a rotten existence it is to try and get by on the minimum wage. Which hasn't been increased since Bush was president.

So why don't any of you show us all how it's done. Show us how awesome it is to live under a bridge and eat potatoes because that's all you can afford. You Randians are real big on advocating starvation-level wages for other people, but never try doing it yourselves.