OT: The Robin Hood Policies of Progressives
Papi_Chulo
Miami, FL (or the nearest big-booty club)
As cities across California target grocery stores, demanding they offer “hero pay” to employees in the form of raising their wages $4-$5 an hour, grocery stores are closing in response.
On January 19, the Long Beach City Council approved a measure that would force supermarkets with at least 300 employees nationwide and more than 15 in Long Beach to raise their workers’ wages $4 an hour for the next 120 days. Mayor Robert Garcia said, “These folks that are working at these markets and these grocery stores are heroes. This is nothing new. They have received this type of additional pay in the past and if they deserved it in the past, they deserve it today.”
As the Press-Telegram reported, “The Kroger Co., which owns Ralphs and Food 4 Less, announced Monday, Feb. 1, that it will close a Ralphs in East Long Beach, 3380 N. Los Coyotes Diagonal, and a Food 4 Less in North Long Beach, 2185 E. South St., on April 17.”
Kroger issued a statement: “As a result of the City of Long Beach’s decision to pass an ordinance mandating Extra Pay for grocery workers, we have made the difficult decision to permanently close long-struggling store locations in Long Beach. This misguided action by the Long Beach City Council oversteps the traditional bargaining process and applies to some, but not all, grocery workers in the city.” John Votava, the corporate affairs director for Ralphs, added, “These misguided mandates could put any struggling store in jeopardy of closure.”
On Monday, the California Grocers Association blasted the Long Beach decision. CEO Ron Fong stated, “A $4/hour increase represents about a 28 percent increase in labor costs for grocers. There’s no way grocers can absorb that big of a cost increase without an offset somewhere else, considering grocers operate with razor thin margins and many stores already operate in the red. The Long Beach City Council put politics ahead of families and jobs in the middle of a pandemic. This was entirely avoidable.”
Other California cities have passed measures demanding “hero pay” for grocery workers. On January 27, the Montebello City Council passed a bill that would force large drug and grocery stores to give their employees a $4 per hour raise for the next 180 days despite the possibility the city would be sued. Prior to the unanimous vote by the council, City Attorney Arnold Alvarez-Glasman warned them that the California Grocers Association had already sued Long Beach, as the Whittier Daily News reported.
“A $5-per-hour hazard pay wage increase was approved Tuesday by the Oakland City Council,” Yahoo News noted on Tuesday.
“Last week, Santa Clara County passed a mandate for a five-dollar per hour raise for a variety of essential workers, including grocery clerks. Similar resolutions have been drafted and will likely come up for a vote in Los Angeles, Pomona, Oakland, and San Jose,” Jazz Shaw of HotAir reported on Wednesday.
https://www.dailywire.com/news/hero-pay-…
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Dennis Moore says it all...
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2nrqg…
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Yeah that's right apparently?
I will say it's weird the Union grocery stores are so hated while people love trader joe's and whole foods. Grocery stores aren't a high margin business and most rely on volume and steady demand.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/sageworks/2…
https://smallbusiness.chron.com/industry…
https://thegrocerystoreguy.com/what-is-t…
and rely on economies of scale to make their money. Upset that equation and they have to react accordingly or go out of business. It not corporate greed at work here.
That's pretty narrow minded thinking shows that anyone that would make a statement like that is an idiot
For the record California is one of the largest most geologically diverse states in the country, you don't need to be a fan of Cali's politics to recognize the facts
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_…
Also on the whole "wage hike"... wait to you see what the prices do in other stores.... they wont go down.
CA is a beautiful state.... not everyone thinks beaches are the only thing beautiful... state parks, forest lands, even sandy deserts are beautiful to some.
If Store A in an area can't produce a bottom line of X for profit... they close it down or sell it. So with the wage "hike"... it pushed those stores below the profit bottom line that the said company wants.
Also you have to look at it like this... the corporate or company wants to keep prices at a certain level... if they can't keep those prices low and still reach that bottom line profit margin.... they change the products they sell. Why do you think in grocery stores you see different "value" type products....ie: lower end soup cans, chips, cereals, milks, etc. Those change "brand" all the time.
So now it said stores cant reach the bottom line profits and can't keep prices down to what the "corporate" wants....they close down the Stores or sell them off. This will happen across the board with more people pushing for a "wage" hike. Because they can't just keep raising the price of products.
BTW... you know who is pushing for the raise hikes.... BIG CORPORATIONS.... the reasoning... they can push out the local mom and pop stores and then have people drive to the "super stores" that are over an hour away.
Here is the deal... lets just use those 4 stores in Long Beach that closed. Krogers sets what they want to make profit on each store.... lets say that is $250,000 per each store for the year is target... so $1,000,000 per all of Long Beach is the goal (per the 4 stores). Now if each store employ's 25 people at each store that they have to make the pay increase of $5 an hour, 30 hours a week, 50 weeks a year.... That is an increase in cost of $187,500 PER STORE..... So if each one of the stores in Long Beach before the wage hike were clearing $300,000 profit for Krogers Corporate... now they would only be clearing $112,500 for the year... NOT $300,000. So instead of clearing the $1.2 Million... they are now only getting $450,000. Kind of a big hit.... even if they were only making the $1,000,000 off of those 4 stores... and now making $450,000. Would you want to take a 50% or more hit to your pocket???
I wont even get into the other factors like... COST OF UNEMPLOYMENT/Work Comp INSURANCE... yeah that is based on wages a company pays....
Hell i will do a quick hit on that...
Lets say that the factor the insurance company uses for unemployment/work comp is .05 for every $1000 in wages. So if they pay $1000 in wage they pay $50 in unemployment/work comp insurance. Now if wages increase by $187,500 (like stated above) that is an extra of $9375 they have to pay into an insurance company!!! Just because of a wage increase mandated by the city. AT EACH STORE!!! That is an almost $10,000 hit along with the cost of increases in wages. Also my numbers for the work comp rate might be off...It could be much worse.
And if you think my numbers are wrong.... I am sure Krogers has more that 25 people per store making minimum wage. Also think I am using 30 hours a week.... not 40...and not even thinking any over time... remember that is time and a half!!
====>'I'm going to make a big claim saying that any large retailer (including Kroger) in the US would be able to take the hit on one of their stores and still came out alright."
it's not the large retailers that we need to worry about it's all of the mom and pops hanging on by the skin of their ass that will collapse if the Kroger's, the Walmart's, the Target's, and the Costco's hire all of the available help, the small businesses will not be able to compete, at that point all that will be available to consumers will be those large corporate behemoths, then you will find out that not only will you pay higher prices for everything, but the services and finished products that you want will no longer be available. You'll only be able to buy what they are set up to sell. Variety and price competition will disappear and it will happen very fast.
48 percent of all US employees work for small businesses, down from 52 percent in the early 2000s. 18 percent of all US employees work for businesses with fewer than 20 employees. Small businesses accounted for over half of net job creation in 2014.
If small companies cannot compete in the labor market the problems are just beginning don't you get that ?
"In 2020, the number of small businesses in the US reached 31.7 million, making up nearly all (99.9 percent) US businesses. This is also representative of the sustained growth as it marks a 3.15 percent increase from the previous year and a growth of 7.09 percent over the three-year period from 2017 to 2020."
It's quite difficult to run a small business successfully, all of these woke progressives only think of today, if this country looses its small and start up businesses, more than anything that is happening politically will be the end of our American way of life, the more difficult it gets the less options are going to be available and we will either start to look like a European style republic with very little ability for social mobility.
You are not getting it.... in my example is a loss of about $180,000 per store. So if this goes for the whole country.....krogers would lose $180,000 on over 1000 stores. That is a loss of 180,000,000. Just on wages....that isn't including insurance costs like I mentioned....or cost of things they outsource going up. Any company losing that money per year will go bankrupt.
Here is another little tid bit....let's say in my previous example of the profit they lost was 500,000.....maybe that will keep them for m opening another store in some other location.
Then factor in what twenty-five is saying.
But let's circle back to the 180,000,000 loss like I mentioned....what will that do to the price of goods in the stores???
What do you think other will think...should they get an increase too? If a person now before the increase is making $15 and someone binder them is making $7.25.....now that person below them is making the same amount with less responsibility....do you think that $15 now person wants an increase because they do more???
Yeah – I’m 100% confident it will only be 4-months (sarcasm) – no guarantee the economy will be significantly better in 4-months or w/e months – if the economy is still struggling in 4-months, they are gonna say something like “you can’t cut people’s wages in a bad economy …” – and if the economy is doing great they’ll likely say something along the lines of “hey the economy is doing great and businesses are making a lot of $$$ they surely can afford the higher wages …” – once you give people something, especially via the government, it’s usually impossible to take it back.
Politicians can’t run government correctly/efficiently, now they wanna run the economy (SMH) – all this government intervention is one step closer to central-planning and government control of the economy and the gov picking who the winners and losers are gonna be.
YOu are not getting it. Krogers and other big stores work on margins. So if that store isn't hitting its margin... THEY SHUT THEM DOWN. That $5 hike in employees wages pushed them under that margin goal in LB. So they closed up. Now they will move to another area and put up a store.
I know you think that only $180K per store loss wont hurt them much.... THINK IT THAT WAS NATION WIDE.... STATE WIDE.... That is millions of dollars. And $180,000,000 wont hurt a store... YOU ARE CRAZY... that takes away buying power, takes away improvements they want to do to stores, takes away expansion, etc. If a company goes from making $300,000,000 to making $120,000,000 that is a HUGE HIT. Again... would you want your income to be dropped by over 50%??? Would you be living the same way you are not???
Also the "Increase" wasn't for 4 months.... it was for ever!!!! It wasn't a "pay" increase just for those months.... it would have become perminant.