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

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that's not true at Whole Foods, they give benefits to part time employees as well. Glad I could educate you.

Re:Unions

[Anonymous Coward]

Each of the 13 original colonies should have stood up to Great Britain individually. If they were truly strong, they would have gone it alone. Why do you hate America?

Re:Minimum Wage is a Poor Form of Welfare

[Anonymous Coward]

Minimum wages are nessesary if you dont have strong unions. In Denmark we dont have a fixed minimumwage. Instead the wages are handled through negotiations between unions, politicians and employers unions. Take a Mcdonaldworker in denmark. The startning wage is just below $20.... and yes we still have plenty of fast food stores. American workers should never have abandoned their untions.

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.

Fix the systemic problems

[rsilvergun]

and the problems go away. The trouble here is that this wasn't a minimum wage increase. It was a pay increase by Amazon.

I've pointed this out elsewhere on the thread, but either Amazon didn't increase payrolls and set their store managers up to fail or they did and the store manager is taking advantage of the situation to lower his wage costs in the hopes of netting a nice fat bonus.

In either case the solution is to fix the systemic problems at the top. To wit:

1. Raise Federal minimum wage so the employees can go find other work at the same pay.

2. Implement Medicare for All so employers no longer fear paying benefits just because they gave somebody 30hr/week.

As an added bonus you'll get a stronger economy from increased spending by low wage earners (who tend to spend 100% of their income), studies show you won't see inflation and you'll save $5 trillion every 10 years on healthcare while giving everyone access.

There is literally no reason not to do this except "I feel like I earn less when somebody earns more".

True story, a bud worked for a shitty call center that cut everybody's pay. This caused a ton of backlash so they company said that, as a reward for their years of good service, they would be starting new employees at $2/hr less than the existing employees.

No

[rsilvergun]

We are not

This wasn't a minimum wage increase. Amazon increased their wages. If we'd done a federal increase then the workers could leave or go get second jobs and do just fine. If we did Medicare for All they wouldn't have to fear losing health benefits (and the employers wouldn't have to worry about paying for them).

Progressive policy works when it's not being actively sabotaged by bad actors.

Re:Which is why the gov't and larger orgs step in

[Rick Schumann]

The business world left entirely to it's own devices, with no laws or oversight to regulate them, would bring back horrors like the mining camps of old, where your wages were charged against for the tools and supplies necessary to do your job, and the only place you could buy food or other necessities to live was the 'company store', which price-gouged the living daylights out of you; life in those mining camps amounted to indentured servitude, if not outright slavery; workers families were de-facto held hostage, because if you were 'fired' you were thrown out of your company-owned housing, and would have no money or transportation to go anywhere else. Lack of regulation of business would also bring back things like Debtors' Prison and child labor.

As an aside to this subject, if you look at the 'for-profit' prison system, and how certain demographics of our citizens are treated by law enforcement and the criminal legal system, it comes close to slavery. But that really is a different subject.

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.