Minimum wage

‘Death by a thousand cuts’: Government-mandated wage, benefits hurting small businesses

Business owners say the government-mandated minimum wage of $15 an hour is hurting New York City businesses, including popular eateries with years of history like Gabriela’s Restaurant and Tequila Bar. Gabriela’s, which opened 25 years ago according to The New York Post, invited customers to eat and drink for the restaurant’s final weekend before closing at the end of September. Owners Liz and Nat Milner told The New York Post that the minimum wage hike basically killed their business. They’re not the only ones making difficult decisions. The New York City Hospitality Alliance surveyed 324 full-service restaurants at the end of 2018 and found that 75% of respondents will cut hours for employees and 47% will cut jobs in 2019 because of the minimum wage hike that went into effect on Dec. 31, 2018. The wage hike affected employees at corporations like McDonald’s and small businesses alike. “It’s death by a thousand cuts,” the alliance’s executive director Andrew Rigie said. “The minimum wage increases put pressure on small businesses. They are well-intended but unsustainable. There’s only so many times you can increase the price of a burger and a bowl of pasta.” That’s what Gabriela’s experienced. The Milners said they had to lay off cleaners, middle managers, their general manager and extra servers. “I’m not against people making more money,” Nat Milner told The New York Post. “These people have worked for me for 20 years. But taxes, groceries, everything is going up and people have a little less money to spend on guacamole and tequila.” Other small business owners are feeling the pinch, too. Wage hikes have led to less hours and education seminars for Philippe Massoud’s staff at Lebanese restaurants Ilili and Ilili Box, the CEO and executive chef said. “I can’t even train or educate my staff the way I want to anymore,” Massoud told The New York Post. The Post editorial board cited the plight of Gabriela’s owners in an op-ed slamming the $15-an-hour minimum wage hike on Monday night. “Just as predicted, the $15 minimum wage is killing vulnerable city small businesses, with the low-margin restaurant industry one of the hardest-hit as it also faces a separate mandatory wage hike for tipped staffers,” the board wrote. “All this is fine with the union organizers behind the ‘fight for $15’ and the elimination of the tipped-wages system: They don’t care about any job, or any business, that doesn’t play ball with organized labor. Mom-and-pop shops can go to hell,” the board added. “Plainly, Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the Legislature, who are passing the laws the unions want, don’t care much, either.”

Study: Maryland County Would Lose 47,000 Jobs by 2022 if It Raises Minimum Wage to $15

A Maryland county could lose an estimated 47,000 jobs by 2022 if it chooses to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour, according to a new study released Tuesday evening. The Washington Post reports that the study, which Montgomery County Executive Isiah Leggett (D) commissioned, found that the majority of positions that would be eliminated were low-wage jobs. Leggett decided to move forward with the study after he vetoed a minimum wage increase in January. In explaining his decision to veto the minimum wage increase, he said the wage hike would devastate the economy in Montgomery County. PFM, the Philadelphia-based consulting group that carried out the study, found that a minimum wage hike to $15 would lead to a $396.5 million loss of income in Montgomery County by 2022. The loss of income would come from businesses deciding to lay off employees, cut hours and benefits for those that remain, and nix plans to hire new workers and open new locations. “We can’t minimize some of the impacts outlined here,” said Leggett, responding to the study’s results. “Even if it’s not 47,000 jobs lost, even if it’s half that, those are some startling numbers. You can’t discount ­it all.” County council member Marc Elrich, however, remains unconvinced of the study’s findings. Elrich proposed a bill that would raise the minimum wage in Montgomery County to $15 by 2022 a week before the study was due. He called the PFM study “nonsense,” saying it was impossible to predict how a wage increase would impact the future. Elrich also claimed that the study was biased because employers would be more likely to respond negatively. PFM’s study was conducted from April to June using electronic surveys, phone, and in-person interviews with business and nonprofit owners and community leaders. Several studies on minimum wage hikes conclude that they are bad for business — both for employers and employees. A Harvard Business School study from April found that minimum wage laws increase the chance that non-elite restaurants will go out of business. A June study from the University of Washington found that Seattle’s minimum wage hike is cutting employees’ salaries by $125 a month.

Raising the minimum wage arbitrarily is a foolish thing.  But, it’s trendy and popular in big cities and blue states where Dems are in control.   So, kudos to Mr. Leggett (D) in Montgomery County, Maryland for putting common sense ahead of a failed liberal Democrat agenda item.  Wages should be determined by the free marketplace; NOT some politician or silly, however popular, ballot initiative.

Seattle’s minimum wage hike hurting low-level workers, study says

Seattle’s first-in-the-nation $15 per hour minimum wage law is hurting the workers it aimed to help, a new study has found. The working poor are making more per hour but taking home less pay. The University of Washington paper asserts the new wages boosted worker pay by 3 percent, but also resulted in a 9-percent reduction in hours and a $125 cut to the monthly paychecks. The law also cost the city 5,000 jobs, the report said. Seattle’s minimum wage ordinance, passed by the Seattle City Council and signed by Mayor Ed Murray in 2014, was sold as a way to close the income inequality gap and help those struggling at the bottom of the economic ladder. More than a dozen cities and counties, mostly in California and New York, followed suit. “This is a two-edged sword,” said Jacob Vigdor, one of the team of researchers studying the issues for Seattle. “And if you raise this minimum wage the way Seattle did you run the risk of actually taking money away from the people you are trying to help.” The study was published as a “working paper” on Monday by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

 

Colorado minimum-wage campaign demanding $12 can’t bother to pay their workers that much

In a move of ultimate hypocrisy, a Colorado group trying to get $12 minimum wage on the state ballot was found to be paying its signature gathers less than $12 an hour. According to a circulator and wage report filed with the Colorado Secretary of State’s office by proponents of increasing the minimum wage, 24 of the workers collecting signatures to get on the ballot were paid less than $12 an hour. The report was obtained Keep Colorado Working, the opposition campaign, in an open records request. Colorado Families for a Fair Wage, the group looking to increase the state’s minimum wage, is funded largely with union money. It hired Fieldworks, a Washington D.C.-based firm that collects signatures, to get the 98,492 valid signatures needed to make the Colorado State ballot. “The irony of paying someone less than $12 an hour to stand on a street corner to mandate a minimum wage increase to that amount is dripping off this story,” said Kelly Maher, executive director of Compass Colorado, a free-market advocacy group in a statement. “Unions are trying to force small businesses already operating on razor thin margins to increase pay just so they can line their pockets, and they aren’t even paying their own workers that. The hypocrisy is palpable.” On top of not paying its own workers minimum wage, Fieldworks was found to have forged some of the signatures. According to a local ABC news station, Denver7, a man who’s signature was included in the petition, told the news station not only had he not signed the petition, he actively turned down the opportunity when approached at the grocery store. Although some of the signatures were forged, based on a sampling of 5 percent of all that were turned in, Colorado’s secretary of state determined that enough were valid to make the state’s ballot. After the controversy broke, FieldWorks submitted an amended report to the secretary of state’s office showing all its workers were paid at least $12 an hour. The firm claimed its initial report had “clerical errors” in calculating pay for workers who were working multiple initiatives. “Upon a re-review of the previous circulator report, we discovered that wages for some circulators were mis-reported on the report that we pulled from our payroll company,” FieldWorks wrote to the secretary of state’s office, the Durango Herald reported. “This is because we had multiple projects in Colorado, and when some staff moved between projects in the middle of a payroll period, their wages were incorrectly applied to one project or another.” How convenient. If you ask me, it’s nothing more than a tired excuse after being caught red-handed not practicing what they preach. Despite the corruption and hypocrisy, the minimum-wage hike made the Colorado ballot, threatening thousands of Colorado jobs.

Indeed..  Thanks to Kelly Riddell for bringing us that great piece.  Hopefully this initiative fails.  It would be a disaster for those of us living in Colorado, and Colorado’s economy.

Dunkin’ Donuts franchisee closing 100 stores

Looks like America will run a little less on Dunkin’. Dunkin’ Brands, the parent company of Dunkin’ Donuts and the Baskin-Robbins ice cream chain, announced Thursday that one of its franchisees it will be shutting 100 stores across the country in the next 15 months, reports Forbes. The restaurants to be closed in 2015 and 2016 are run by convenience store chain Speedway LLC, Dunkin’ said. Speedway will continue to remain a franchisee of Dunkin’ Brands. Dunkin’ said a spike in the cost of eggs due to the recent avian flu outbreak in the U.S. was a reason along with concerns with the rise in minimum wage laws in cities across the country. Last month, New York became the first state to raise the minimum wage for fast-food workers to $15 an hour. Speaking at an investor presentation in New York, Dunkin’ CEO Nigel Travis said that the wage hike would have far reaching implications. “It’s going to affect small businesses and franchises,” and he noted that it might mean mass layoffs. Despite the outlet closures, the company reiterated its 2015 plan to have 410 to 440 net new Dunkin’ Donuts restaurants in the U.S. and to build its “coffee culture” with hot coffee and iced coffee. But competition is stiff as the retail sector continues to contract despite claims that the economy is doing better. Just last week, Dunkin’ Donuts announced a new seasonal drink to compete against Starbucks’ popular Pumpkin Spice Latte-­called Pumpkin Macchiato–available both hot or iced. The chain also unveiled a new delivery system starting in 2016 where doughnut lovers can get their breakfast items right on their doorstep.

Take a good hard look at WHY Dunkin’ Donuts is shutting down 100 stores, and why the CEO predicts “mass layoffs”..  It’s because of Democrats foolishly, and arbitrarily, raising the minimum wage to $15/hr in some places like New York and other major metropolitan areas. The minimum wage should be determined by the work place; NOT arbitrarily by some Democrat politicians who want to make their uneducated constituents “feel better.”  I wonder how they’ll feel when they get laid off, or their company folds because they can’t pay the wages their required to pay by law.  Who loses then?  EVERYONE!  After all, who is gonna pay $20 for a Big Mac?  NOBODY.  Yeah..  These morons don’t think through those inconvenient details/facts.  They just pull $15/hr out of their liberal butts and when they hear it got passed they all cheer….until they get let go.  I’m becoming more and more convinced that the reason that The Walking Dead and other such silly zombie nonsense is so popular…is because many people see themselves in those zombies.  They relate!  It certainly explains some tool like Obama getting elected…twice.  But, I digress..  Again, read this article, twice if need be, and pass it along to your friends who all think that a hike in the minimum wage is such a great idea.  It’s not.  It SOUNDS good..  But, in reality, it causes far more harm than good..FAR more.

Study Claims Minimum Wage Increase Cost Americans 1.4 Million US Jobs

Hikes in the minimum wage have other effects besides just giving low-income workers a raise. Important new research suggests that minimum wage increases in the late 2000s resulted in the loss of some 1.4 million American jobs and hurt unskilled workers most of all.

Of course..  That’s why socialism fails wherever its tried.  Its a matter of supply and demand; Econ 101.  When government artificially, and arbitrarily, mandates some wage that they deem to be “fair,” but has NO bearing on the economic value of the service provided, the only person it ultimately hurts are those looking for jobs, or wanting to keep their jobs.  If McDonald’s were to suddenly be forced to pay their employees $15/hr, who the heck would buy that $20+ Big Mac?  Exactly..   NOBODY.  So, ultimately, that McDonald’s business would tank, the employees would be let go, and that franchise would go out of business.  EVERYONE would lose.  Supply and demand.  And yet, most Democrats, and liberals in general, either are too stupid to know this basic law of economics, OR they’re disingenuously just buying votes from the low-information crowd; their voter base.