Company Raises It's Minimum Wage to $70,000 and All Hell Breaks Loose

Let me start by saying I've never paid anyone the minimum wage and that includes the janitor, who pretty much developed into a key part of the company by being a gofer, remembering shit I or someone else said etc...

I always looked at minimum wage even the low end of pay in a business that's not the minimum wage as how easily you are replaced. Buger flipper? I'm pretty sure they could hire someone else with minimal time investment to do it. When the economy is down in places you might have a line so to speak of people wanting that minimum wage job.

Somoene key to the company or someone that might take months to find someone qualified and then months of "absorbtion" as the president here calls it before you are 100% productive and on your own. Of course you get paid more, you're not easily replaced.

On the commute deal, at the business I owned and the last place I worked were both in Baton Rouge. Not a single person at either place lived in East Baton Rouge Parish. For reasons I don't want to get into here to avoid politcal talk it has undergone a massive demographics change post Katrina. The neighboring parish has grown by leaps and bounds. My sister lives there, 15 years ago the entire parish (county) had one redlight. I saw a few months ago the average income now was $75k. All the people with a good job left EBRP.

I drove 1-1/2 hours each way. It wasn't bad, except during turnaround season when the shit hit the fan and I had to work 16 hour days on top of that. We had an apartment so to speak attached to the office for such cases. Lots of people do the same. Drive almost 100 miles each way to avoid the city.

wormie_sl said:

No one loves the commute but its not something that stops people from living in the suburbs of NYC.

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I think you're missing the point of my post. Of course people do it, but it fucking sucks. NOBODY on earth likes commuting into NYC from a suburb. Well, maybe sadists do. Like Sterling said, they do it because they have to or think an inflated salary for a few years in NYC will help them make more money outside of NYC down the road.

I liked my 1-1/2 hour commute. I got more stuff done on they way to work than at work some days. Just getting mentally prepared and work out problems and such.

Saw this immediatly after posting here.

An Unintended Consequence of Wal-Mart Pay Raise: Unhappy Workers - Bloomberg Business

When Wal-Mart Stores Inc. chief Doug McMillon announced plans to boost store workers' minimum wage earlier this year, he said the move was intended to improve morale and retain employees.

Yet for some of the hundreds of thousands of workers getting no raise, the policy is having the opposite effect.

In interviews and in hundreds of comments on Facebook, Wal-Mart employees are calling the move unfair to senior workers who got no increase and now make the same or close to what newer, less experienced colleagues earn. New workers started making a minimum of $9 an hour in April and will get at least $10 an hour in February.

"It is pitting people against each other," said Charmaine Givens-Thomas, a 10-year veteran who makes $12 an hour at a store near Chicago and belongs to OUR Walmart, a union-backed group that has lobbied for better working conditions. "It hurts morale when people feel like they aren't being appreciated. I hear people every day talking about looking for other jobs and wanting to remove themselves from Wal-Mart and a job that will make them feel like that."

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I can sort of understand the thought. An easier solution would be the current phase-in, plus a new employee phase-in. You start atx. Stick around for 6 months, we'll bump you toy. Stick around for a year, and it'll bez. My wife's a manager at Panera and the washout rate for food/retail is really fucking high. Even with the promise of better pay, many will not make it even to the 6 month mark.

This wouldn't stop the griping (truthfully, senior employees should see a similar phased in bump as the lower end increases), but this would solve the "pay everyone a high amount right off the bat". Yeah, we need to be paying people enough so that they're not working themselves to death with two jobs, but we also need to stand our ground on the idea that if you work and put in the hours, you should get rewarded. Half the problem is that this idea isn't propagated as it should be. Employers tip-toe around wages as if they're Christians in a pit of sleeping Lions.

Slightly off topic, but this is why merit raises based on employee evaluations are shit. Lots of places implement a "1-5" score and do some weighting on goals. The problem is that they treat 5s like they're diamond-studded horses, to be handed out only in the event of a celestial alignment that doesn't end the world. You can do everything you're asked, and then some, and end up with a 3 and the minimum merit raise.

Deathwing_sl said:

ftfy

From the company's perspective, it's understandable. 1.05^20 is pretty big from just a numbers standpoint. But then again, I'd think someone who's been with the company getting substantial raises each year is going to be worth 2.5x what they were 20 years ago.

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Balking at paying 80k for an employee that's made you money for 20 years isn't really understandable to me.

Deathwing_sl said:

I agree, it doesn't make much sense. But I imagine most of us are on the "not getting raises even in line with cost of living increases" side of the discussion. Do we have any accounting or HR types here that could explain the other side?

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Something something bottom line something something investors.

I really do understand it, at a certain point you are just way overpaying someone to do the work they do. You are paying a warehouse employee way above average to do his job, he doesn't really have the aptitude to advance beyond his position and you could replace him and pay literally half as much for a comparable worker.

You just have to take a moment and be a human being and say you know what, repaying loyalty and treating your employees with respect is maybe more valuable than the money you can save.

I owned a company. Pay was all over the board. It's kind of hard to describe. For example in the shop, some fitters worked all day every day and never had an issue come back from the field, never complained etc..They were paid more than the guy who took too many smoke breaks, had to take off for personal stuff, and stuff came back from time to time for a refit. They were both titled "fitters".

Same stuff in the office, and some guys are happy with X and other guys will bitch and moan till they get more even tho they do the same exact thing or maybe a little less. Why pay the guy that is happy with his pay a bunch because the other guy complains.

I didn't have a fixed pay for each title/job. Of course I got the company it was already like that. I've mentioned it before, but everyone got a pretty big bonus. The very low end in the shop that were "helpers" got $1,000 or whatever and the top end of management like project managers, estimators, some of the draftsman got between 20% and 50% of gross pay and while not called profit sharing that's what it was.

I know guys talked about how much bonus they got, some would say "It went up this year". But some would give amounts.

The scale of the bonus had a lot to do with how productive you were, how you problem solved, how little drama etc...

Palum_sl said:

lol, this is the most basic issue with the $15 minimum wage bullshit.





Well, no shit. If you work your ass off for $15 now, why would you continue to do so when you could go get a less stressful job at a fast food or big box retail chain?

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Pretty tired old argument there, Pal.

If you want people to work their asses off, you have to pay them a bit more than $15/h.

Woosh. It doesn't matter what number you pick. If the base salary is 50k and you work your ass of to make 80k doing a hard stressful job and suddenly base is now 80k, why would you continue to do the hard stressful job instead of the easier one for the same pay?

The $15 thing is only relevant in its relation to the minimum wage. There's a lot of salary space between X and 2X that if you collapse it immediately those who had to fight to earn the 2X are going to feel betrayed.

Palum_sl said:

Woosh. It doesn't matter what number you pick. If the base salary is 50k and you work your ass of to make 80k doing a hard stressful job and suddenly base is now 80k, why would you continue to do the hard stressful job instead of the easier one for the same pay?

The $15 thing is only relevant in its relation to the minimum wage. There's a lot of salary space between X and 2X that if you collapse it immediately those who had to fight to earn the 2X are going to feel betrayed.

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Because you would demand a raise now?

Quineloe_sl said:

Because you would demand a raise now?

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If EVERYONE gets a raise no one's purchasing power will change. If people making above minimum wage do not get a proportional increase in wage, they will effectively be receiving a pay-cut (relative to the minimum wage).

opiate82_sl said:

If EVERYONE gets a raise no one's purchasing power will change. If people making above minimum wage do not get a proportional increase in wage, they will effectively be receiving a pay-cut (relative to the minimum wage).

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Realistically not everyone gets a pay raise - perhaps all the drones earning under $200k or whatever - but there's always a point it peaks.

There's a reason the CEO in the article gutted his own pay to do it for example.

Vaclav_sl said:

Realistically not everyone gets a pay raise - perhaps all the drones earning under $200k or whatever - but there's always a point it peaks.

There's a reason the CEO in the article gutted his own pay to do it for example.

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Sure, and that might work for a company/industry like that, but most of the places that actually employ minimum wage workers are in very low margin industries and an increase to a $15 an hour minimum wage is not sustainable under that model. McDonald's might be able to whether those cost increases due to economies of scale but for your local mom and pops they wouldn't be able to just gut their own pay to accommodate. Pricing is an option but generally leads to a drop in traffic and again, more easily accomplished by large companies with high volumes.

Quineloe_sl said:

Pretty tired old argument there, Pal.

If you want people to work their asses off, you have to pay them a bit more than $15/h.

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There's a lot of people doens't matter what minimum wage is are never going to work their ass off. Look at minimum wage now they'll put X number of people in a house rather rather than work harder or get a skill to increase their pay.

A couple making $15/hour full time make $62k a year which isn't great but not bad at all for the bottom of the pay scale.