If a business cannot survive paying its employees a liveable wage then it should not exist. Businesses that do not pay a livable wage but can afford to are exploiting its employees.
Imagine thinking the employees are the entitled ones when running a business and feeling entitled to their labor at your price.
I’m sorry, who’s the entitled one? Those businesses should 100% not exist. It’s called having a shitty business model.
I hear this all the time but the reality is probably a third of us work at places that are barely surviving. Imagine if all of those people were suddenly unemployed.
If companies stealing the value of people’s labor shut down, opening the way for new employee owned companies, that would be fantastic
This is great in theory but there are plenty of companies that struggle to succeed in the current realities of real estate costs, labor costs, regulatory compliance expenses etc. Not every organization has people leeching all of the profits, and even many good ones are struggling to stay afloat right now. Just because a company is employee owned doesn’t guarantee profits to share.
Profit by definition is leeching off the labor value of workers
This is a very, very, very antiquated notion of commerce and puts everything into a binary that was already outdated when posited in the mid 19th century. Not all profit is bad and not all labor is good. As an employer, safe profit allows me to hire more employees, increasing the people I can help. As an employee, safe profit that gets reinvested improves equity in my peers or provides me new opportunities to grow.
Here’s a great example that shows the cracks in this model. We’ve got a sales person, a couple of junior software devs, and an architect. Individually, the sales person has nothing to sell, the junior devs are not experienced enough to have or build good tech, and the architect does not have enough time to build everything themselves. Together, they are able to build a product that materially helps some workflow and the sales person gets money coming in. Assuming equitable pay, possibly even equal, if the software can be sold at a profit, whose labor value was stolen? The sales person can’t exist without the code, the devs can’t sell the code, and the architect needs help to implement. Did we steal the labor value of sales? Should they make more because they went out into the market and found customers? Did we steal the labor value of the junior devs? Should they make more because they built most of the software? Did we steal the labor value of the architect? Should they make more because they had the idea and trained folks to get it done?
Kk, cool. I wanna hear the defense for 350-1.
Why would I do that? OP said all profit is stolen labor value. I didn’t even mention grossly overcompensated employees who contribute nothing. You’re gonna have to find someone else for that.
In your simplistic example, the profits would be split between the workers. You’re also pretending businesses don’t have useless owners.
But nice try bootlicker.
The problem you’re describing is capitalism, not profit or commerce.
In my real-world example, who pays for travel? If profit is just stolen labor value, clearly everyone gets all the money for hours worked, right? So who pays for travel? And wait, it actually takes longer for the juniorest dev to write some code because they’re still learning. Do they get a larger slice of the pie? They have the least experience and contributed the least overall. If we go by hourly wages then suddenly Goodhart’s Law kicks in.
This isn’t some hypothetical. This is a real problem real devs go through regularly and something I’ve been a part of off and on for a long time. You can call me a bootlicker all you want; I don’t really think that’s a good faith conversation so you’re not worth my time.
It’s possible for companies to lose money and still stay in business in the short term. I have run a number of small businesses and I have taken pay cuts multiple times, ran at a loss multiple years, and also put up strong profits. I run a nonprofit now and it’s tough. Business isn’t uninterrupted profit continually being stolen from workers. Sometimes investing in good people comes at a loss for awhile.
More resources for better places. It’s not like laid off people just suddenly die.
eliminating employee vacation
Man shut the fuck up, the only employee that got a vacation was you numbnuts
Walberg said he used to offer paid time off to eligible workers. The average worker earned about 48 hours of paid time off, capped at 72 hours a year, he said.
Jesus fucking Christ. Shit like that has been illegal for a century where I live
America is a dystopia unlike any other, where we smile and fuck each other over and then say “hey this is just the way it is!”
I hate it here.
Wait, what?
Americans only get 3 days off a year? What?
48 hrs / 8 hrs/day = 6 days Americans get what their employees give them, in this case he is saying it is going to be zero.
I myself get ~~8.3 hrs / pay period (2x month) so around 24 days per year. That is considered high. Would be even better if I could really use them without feeling guilty.
Lmao 24 days over here is mandated by law, and some people get even more.
A lot of Americans get 3-4 weeks. Few get more, some get less. Vacation isn’t a guaranteed benefit many places.
Many get none. This is why you see so much “capitalism bad” on Lemmy.
They really offered 2 possible outcomes:
- Increase prices
- Fire people
Why not just . . . make less money?
The increase was $4. The article kept using percentages to make it seem like some big scary change, but the increase is 1 meal per hour per worker. I’m pretty sure any half decent restaurant can handle that extra $4 per worker hourly.
But no, the solution is clearly to just nuke your vacation policy so you can save $1000 per worker per year. Yeah okay.
American notions of profit and loss are fucked up.
It doesn’t matter if you’re profitable. Let me say that again. It does not matter if you’re profitable.
You have to be making MORE profit than you did same time last year, last quarter, last month.
If you don’t keep making more profit, you are somehow “losing money”. Money that’s “rightfully owed” to you. Money that should and would have otherwise been yours.
And if you’re a publicly held company and you miss that profit goal, the stock market will PUNISH you.
Hell, you could make more profit and STILL get punished if you didn’t “beat expectations”.
That’s because investors only make money when the value goes up. The pressure to always make more money than before is baked into the public ownership system we created. I think we should make all companies employee owned instead of investor owned and then you’d fix the broken incentive structure.
You bring up a great point. Once I applied for a mortgage and showed that I had a part time job and a small business. I had made some changes in my financial structure so it looked like on paper that year my company was failing even tho personally I made more money consistently over the years. Didn’t matter, my loan got rejected cuz technically the business was making less money.
Can you link to someone or some document or something that exhibits this point of view?
I think this is neat. I prompted chatGPT-4 with your question about the above comment. This was the result:
Your perspective on the issues with the current focus on continual profit growth in American businesses is indeed echoed in various discussions and criticisms in the business and academic world.
A significant point of critique is the heavy emphasis on shareholder value, often at the expense of other stakeholders. This shareholder-centric view has been dominant for some time, with the primary objective seen as maximizing profits for shareholders. However, this perspective often disregards the broader responsibilities and long-term vision of companies. Recently, there has been a shift towards “stakeholder capitalism,” where companies are increasingly recognizing the importance of considering the interests of all stakeholders, including society at large, and not just focusing on short-term financial performance. This approach aims to foster a more sustainable balance between short-term pressures and long-term value creation, and helps restore trust in companies as vital contributors to society [❞].
The pursuit of continual growth and the pressure to exceed previous profit margins has also been critiqued for leading to other detrimental effects. For instance, unchecked business growth can result in increased workload, higher competition, a deviation from the original business vision, lower-quality customer relationships, and faster team member turnover. These factors can contribute to a loss of the unique qualities that made a business successful in the first place and may ultimately lead to less success in the long term [❞].
Furthermore, in the realm of stock prices and corporate valuation, the relationship between growth expectations and stock performance is more complex than often portrayed. Research suggests that growth expectations might have less impact on asset prices than traditional models suggest. This indicates that the market’s demand doesn’t react strongly to changes in expected returns, challenging the common belief that consistently higher profits directly lead to higher stock prices [❞].
These critiques highlight the complexities and potential pitfalls of the current American business model, which prioritizes constant profit growth and shareholder value, often at the expense of broader, long-term goals and responsibilities.
You know how I know it hallucinated part of that answer? It said companies are now considering their affect on society. Lol yeah, ok.
1 meal per hour per worker
Fat Burger in LA is charging $17.29 for their most basic meal. That comes out to one extra meal per hour, per every 4 employees.
That franchise owner is really just a cheapskate asshole.
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Could? Yeah. Will? Unlikely. If other restaurants are getting away with a certain level of exploitation then there’s not a significant monetary incentive for a newcomer to exploit less.
That’s part of the issue.
The only incentive that apparently matters to most people is monetary.
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Why do so many fast food places only pay minimum wage and throw a hissy fit whenever someone proposes raising it? Why don’t they simply pay their workers more?
Cause the workers are expendable and their exploitation has been normalized to the point that there is no monetary incentive to pay more. Yes, there are restaurants that do pay more, but it’s often driven from some other ideology, not just trying to make the most money, and most consumers honestly don’t care. The same consumer will sometimes visit McDonald’s, Chik fil a, or In n Out regardless of workers pay, hell I even know a few gay people that turn a blind eye to owner politics when visiting restaurants. 'Cause at the end of the day people are turning up for convenience or to satiate a particular craving, not because one company pays more.
There’s a difference between economic theory and economic reality. People aren’t exactly rational when it comes to emotional things like “I’m earning less right now.” Even if the end result could be more income later, they refuse to accept that and say “well they’re charging x and paying y so I can get away with that too! Leaving money on the table is stupid!”
I think a not insignificant portion of business owners/CEOs all fail the marshmallow test.
In N Out in California pays $20 or more an hour starting wages, their burgers are (IIRC) less than $5, and they still make a shit ton of money.
Lol, 48 hours of paid time off. I don’t even work full time and get 120 hours, by law. Fuck the US.
Do you mind sharing roughly where that is? Obviously don’t dox yourself completely lol
I’ve been at my company for 7 years this August and will just now hit that 120 hours vacation time, naturally just as I’m looking to quit lol
Companies here start at 0 hours vacation for the first year, and then slightly increase it for the 2nd year. I’m considered “lucky” for the time I get now…
In civilized nations 120 hours would be far below the legal minimum for a full time position. Here in the Netherlands the legal minimum is 4 weeks (20 days or 160 hours) but pretty much every company offers at least 25.
In a previous job I had 57 paid days off.
Australia has 20 days annual leave for full time employees mandated by law, and it carries over year on year so you can build up a significant chunk of time if you work somewhere for a long time. Also those hours belong to you, not the company, so you get it paid out if you quit.
We also have a Long Service Leave program where if you work somewhere for 7 year you get roughly a week off for every year of employment with a company, it does vary slightly state by state.
The construction industry has made an arrangment that as long as you are working construction in some way, your long service leave entitlement carry over between employers and jobs.Lot of companies also add carers leave on top of this, which may not carry over year on year, and sick leave can be fairly variable between everywhere I’ve ever worked has been pretty casual about it, if you call in sick a day here or there then they don’t hassle you, but for longer periods you might need a doctor’s certificate.
It’s pretty good.
Defending scamming as a business model isn’t a business model.
He eliminated employee vacation and then used it as a flex. Greed is gross y’all.
I’ve never once heard of fast food workers getting vacation or any sort of paid time off
Shouldn’t be, though. Humans deserve rest.
Ok, then show us your books or I’ll assume you are full of shit
Notice how he wouldn’t be tightening his belt so that workers can have a better wage.
You can look at his picture and the background to get a sense of the REAL problem.
He should try pulling harder on his bootstraps.
And cut out the avocado toast.
That’s what he’s doing though isn’t he?
Where does the owners say that the owner is making sacrifices? I read the article, but the title actually tells most of it, for once: I’m a California restaurant operator preparing for the $20-an-hour fast-food wage by trimming hours, eliminating employee vacation, and raising menu prices.
Nothing in there about the owner trying harder or making sacrifices, just passing the cost to his workers (eliminating PTO) or customers (increasing menu prices). Who knows, maybe he is…but the article does not say it.
He’s pulling himself up by the bootstraps, how he’s doing it is irelevant.
I like how you said “the bootstraps” because it sure ain’t his bootstraps that he’s pulling lol
He’s mistaking the bootstraps of his workers for his own.
How much you think there is to tighten? Restaurants run on thin margins. Let’s play with numbers.
Say this guy profits $1,000,000/yr., ALL profit. And he gives up every penny of that to make payroll. Let’s say his labor and risk are worth nothing. I’m OK with that. Hell, you’re lucky to take a loss, for years, starting a business, let alone break even.
At $20/hr., that’s 50,000 manhours he can employ. But not really. An employee pocketing $20 probably costs his employer $40. OK, 25,000 manhours. That’s about 480 hours of work per week he’s able to use. So 12 employees? Spread over 4 restaurants?
And notice the part where he said $20 was rock-bottom? And higher-level employees will need more to keep them on?
So instead of saying fuck it and pulling the plug and selling his assets, he’s trying to tighten up, keep those people on the payroll. And gets demonized for it.
Thank you for coming to my TED Talk. In our next Talk we’ll be bitching about sky-high fast-food prices.
tl;dr: Y’all seeing billionaires and megacorps raiding the economy and conflating them with guys like this.
IIT: Buncha people who have never worked payroll and have no clue how it works.
Restaurants run on thin margins.
Not anywhere near as thin as you think. The official numbers are AFTER artificially deflating their profits for tax avoidance reasons.
he gives up every penny of that to make payroll.
Ridiculously unrealistic.
An employee pocketing $20 probably costs his employer $40
What have you been smoking?? In the real world, workers produce a hell of a lot more value than they’re given in return. That’s how companies profit.
he’s trying to tighten up, keep those people on the payroll.
No, he’s trying to recoup the profits lost from paying his workers a living wage by making it less livable for them. He’s protecting his profits, not workers.
And gets demonized for it.
And rightly so. He’s acting like the put upon victim when in reality he’s complaining about having to pull other exploitation levers now that one is fixed at a lower setting.
Your numbers are wildly off. The raise amounts to 4$, your going from 20$ and jumping to 40$ is irrelevant because the employees are already employees, the only cost increase here is the 4$ extra per hour.
So you’re looking at closer to 200k manhours based off your calculations or around 100 employees.
He runs 4 restaurants, and with that million dollars in profit he could cover the raises of 100 employees, and I highly highly doubt he’s running anywhere near 25 employees per restaurant.
You have just calculated that he can hire 12 more people from the current profits (with made up numbers). That’s not what’s in question here. He’s already got the people and needs to pay them marginally more.
If he had left it at “I’m raising prices”, then no one would have an issue with what he said.
The rest of it is just him being a giant asshole
Everyone except dumbasses with no critical thinking skills understands that in order to pay people a living wage, prices have to adjust accordingly
Good, pay a livable wage and ditch tips
“Eliminating employee vacation”
His workers had an average 48 hours of yearly vacation time. That is not vacation time.
What trash
I’m shocked they had any vacation time at all! I’ve never heard of anyone in the food industry (besides managers) that get any PTO. I’m also surprised how much PTO they get! Teachers only get 40 hours a year.
At $20 that’s less than a thousand dollars a year.
My guess with guys like this is they’re so mad because they’re living beyond their means. How can someone with 4 restaurants be living about their means? Cuz they’re dreaming of being obscenely wealthy rather than just moderately and buy to live like they are. Multiple homes when they should reasonably (as in percentage of wealth, not that it’s actually reasonable) have 1 summer cottage, a Lambo when maybe he should drive a Lexus. Stuff like that
If the minimum wage goes up, he might suffer from a restaurant going under, and the debt from that might just sink his entire paper yatch.
“how will I buy my next four franchises if I have to pay my employees a living wage?”
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You should change your username to intensely_stupid@jackass.me
I doubt $20 is a living wage, but the idea is that you can support yourself working full time.
If you’re in L.A. Make sure to boycott Fatburger.
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Oh no!
Probably shouldn’t have gotten rid of slavery as now the slaves don’t have a job anymore either.
Won’t somebody think of upholding the problem?!
Hope this dude goes under and never recovers.
Friendly reminder that the “restaurants have razor thin margins!” is a lie. Their margins might seem slim, but doing huge amounts of sales means big money.
You’ve got to be wildly popular for that to work though. I’ve run about two dozen restaurants. The ones that are always packed make good margins. Many are razor thin.
The risk in running a restaurant is exactly this. Sometimes good businesses just can’t support themselves. Their employees need to earn enough to live and the owners need to earn enough to keep the business afloat. You can’t have the latter without the former so if your costs are too high, you have to close. No one deserves to run a business and the food world is full of the absolute best ideas and people that totally bomb.
This line always bothers me. When I worked broiler I realized that a NY strip steak retailed at 23 bucks. I made 14/hr and would make dozens of steaks an hour on average with most happening Friday night. The NY strip at cost was just under 7 bucks. It took me less then one hour on that busy shift to pay my entire weekly salary with the revenue I generated in steaks alone, but almost 2 hours of work to afford one for myself. Steamed vegetables, soda, pasta, anything with minimal prep had even better margins.
That particular store went under but not before the owner literally bought three yachts. THREE. That experience alone would radicalize any reasonable person
