An Inconvenient Truth The Corporate Agenda Would Like To Keep Hidden

Their protests notwithstanding, the truth is that raising the minimum wage is good for business. And it isn't just the behemoths depicted above who benefit.

The CEO of a popular fast food chain said this week that he was “stunned” to see profits soar each time California passed minimum wage increases.

In an interview with KQED on Tuesday, Wetzel’s Pretzels CEO Bill Phelps admitted that his investors were worried about how a 2014 wage hike would impact the business.

“Like most business people I was concerned about it,” Phelps said.

For years, opponents of minimum wage increases have argued that wage hikes mean fewer jobs because businesses have to raise prices and cut hours to cover the additional expenses. But Phelps said that his sales skyrocketed after a California law forced businesses to raise wages in 2014.

While business reflexively condemns any wage increases as devastating job-killers, Phelps came to understand a basic economic truth: when people, especially those in the lower echelons of society, have more money in their pocket, they tend to spend it.

Mike Jacobs, owner of a Wetzel’s Pretzels franchise in Concord’s Sunvalley Shopping Center, told KQED that the increased business can be attributed to the fact that his customers are making more money.

“My overall sales were something like 15 percent ahead after the first minimum wage bump, and now they’re about 12 percent ahead this year,” Jacobs explained. “It isn’t because I’m such a great manager or smart guy, but the buying public has more money in their pocket.”

Expect this information to fork no lightning with the neoliberal set, who hew to scare stories that support their greed. And in that pursuit, they have a strong ally in Andrew F. Puzder, Trump's pick for secretary of labour and a staunch opponent of minimum wage increases, who says,

I’m opposed to raising it to the point where lower-skilled workers, working-class Americans, young people, minorities, are losing the jobs they need to get on the ladder of success.”

Try telling that to the employees at places like Wetzel’s Pretzels and In-N-Out Burger, which I wrote about last March after our visit to Southern California.

But of course, I forget myself. We are about to enter, with the Trump presidency, an era where truth and facts mean little.

Enlightened Leadership

Having just returned from Southern California, I have no intention of indulging myself in travel reminisces at the expense of my readers. I'll only say that thanks to my son Matthew, it was one of the best experiences of my life. It also yielded some very interesting insights.

As people who check my blog regularly may know, I tend to be very critical of politicians, police and big business. In their own way, each often massively abuse their authority. Yet I also try to balance my criticisms by acknowledging good practices when I find them. The California chain, In-N-Out Burger, is one business that epitomizes both respect and opportunity for its employees, something that, in an ideal world, would be the norm.

Begun in 1948 by Harry Snyder and his wife Esther, and still a family-run chain today, it is freed from the corporate demands that so often mean treating employees like dispensable and replaceable tools. Like the exceptional corporate-owned Costco, it knows that investing in its workers is key to its success. While all store employees start at the very bottom (cleaning tables, floors, etc. before they can even cook a burger), the job's potential is quite significant. Consider these facts:

In-N-Out starts their employees at $10.50 [now $11] an hour. That's the highest of any fast food chain in the country.

While the median wage for a manager of a fast food store is $48,000 per year, employees at In-N-Out can eventually work themselves up to $120,000. That's otherwise unheard of in the industry.

According to Carl Van Fleet, the current CEO, there are solid reasons behind being an industry leader:

Our founders, Harry and Esther Snyder, started In-N-Out Burger in 1948 and were focused on taking great care of our customers, taking great care of our associates and maintaining an intense focus on quality. That focus remains firmly in place today and paying our associates well helps us maintain it.

We strive to create a working environment that is upbeat, enthusiastic and customer-focused. A higher pay structure is helpful in making that happen but it is only part of our approach. It is equally important to treat our associates well and maintain that positive working environment in all of our restaurants.

So good remuneration is only part of In-N-Out's formula for success. It offers benefits that are indeed rare in so many workplaces today, and almost unheard of in the fast-food industry. The perks for full-time employees and their dependents include

- a package of medical, dental, and vision benefits
- a retirement plan with a Defined Contribution Profit Sharing Plan and 401(k) Plan
- company contributions made into the plan

Many part-time employees also qualify for the above, as well as the accrual of six days cumulative sick-leave days per year, flexible working hours to accommodate people's needs, chain-wide closure on Christmas Day, Easter, and Thanksgiving, and free meals on work days.

Oh, and one more thing. In response to consumer demand, the chain has committed to use only antibiotic-free beef, although no date for implementation has yet been announced.

We ate at one of the stores, and I can tell you four things: It was very busy, despite it being about 3:30 in the afternoon; all the employees were polite and appeared very positive; the food was quite good (everything, including the buns, are fresh and never frozen), and the prices were excellent.

All in all, In-N-Out Burger appears to be an industry leader in a field where so many shameful and demeaning practices abound. Too bad others refuse to acknowledge that healthy profits and respect for employees are not mutually exclusive.

The Struggle For Dignity

All of us have a right to respect and dignity. Many of us do not receive it. Having been 'educated' in the Catholic system at a time when the application of both verbal and physical abuse was regarded as proper corrective methodology, I experienced many times in my younger life situations where respect and dignity were denied. I suspect it was one of those foundational experiences that has made me so acutely aware of various forms of injustice as an adult.

Countless people around the world are denied dignity, many of them within North America, the most prosperous part of our planet. Particularly vulnerable to debasement are minimum wage workers, many of whom toil in the fast food industry about which I have written previous posts.

Yesterday, thousands of fast-food workers in nearly 60 cities across the United States staged strikes to protest poor wages as they call for a doubling of the minimum wage from an average of $7.25 to $15 per hour.

Organizers of the action, Low Pay Is Not Ok, are also calling for the right to unionize without fear of retalaiation; one of the obstacles to unionization is the fact that many work in 'right-to-work-states' that make it optional to join unions and pay dues, even in unionized environments. It is a law that Ontario's would-be premier, the young Tim Hudak, salivates over and promises for those foolish enough to consider voting for him.

I encourage people to educate themselves on this issue, striking as it does at the very heart of respect, dignity, and the capacity to live a life at the very least slightly above the poverty line. Perhaps statistics put into perspective the denialism that is the reflexive reaction of the corporate world whenever there is any discussion of improving the wages of those who make possible their massive profits:

Workers want their hourly pay more than doubled from the minimum wage of $7.25 an hour to a more livable $15 an hour. Organizers of the rally say the top eight fast-food chains — McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Burger King, Taco Bell, KFC, Pizza Hut, Domino’s and Papa John’s — made $7.35 billion in profit last year, yet most of their employees didn’t make more than $11,200.

Seems doable to me and I imagine just about everyone else who believes in a little justice and equity for humanity.


* On a personal note, we are taking our Cuban friends to see Niagara Falls today, after which we will visit my sister-in-law in Niagara-On-The-Lake. If you post comments here, they will not appear until later today, when I have computer access at her place. I hope everyone enjoys the long weekend.

More On The Struggle Of Minimum Wage Workers

We hear it all the time from those who slavishly and unconscionably parrot the corporate line: raising the minimum wage is a job-killer. While that rhetoric may serve the insatiable business appetite for greater and greater profits at the expense of vulnerable workers, it simply isn't true. While I have written several posts recently on American fast-food workers' attempts to double their wages, we would be indeed foolish and willfully ignorant to believe that the American struggle is not also the struggle of their Canadian counterparts.

Even if you only have a few minutes to spare, I would urge you to watch at least part of the following video, and read the accompanying story on Alternet.

UPDATED: Puncturing The Myth That Raising Minimum Wages Will Kill Jobs

The question of minimum wage has been very much a topic of discussion in alternative media of late, and I have written a few posts about the struggle. I am leading off today's consideration of the issue with a well-considered letter from a Star reader, followed by a Real News video that explores the Australian experience with a much higher minimum wage which, despite the right-wing hysteria equating anything that raises the costs of doing business with the killing of jobs, is doing quite nicely, thank you.

Re: Hiking the minimum wage, Letter, Aug. 9

In his letter, Doug Stewart seems to be forgetting one very important thing. The economy depends on people spending money. If someone is paid so little they can’t afford the basics, they not only will not have much to contribute to the economy and taxes, they will also become a burden on the taxpayer. Do those in the Timmy’s drive-through, sitting in their big SUVs, really need the few pennies they save by being served by those earning poverty wages? Why is that person behind the counter also not entitled to be able to buy things? You might also take a look at Walmart. It’s a very large and successful company. Its owners are among the richest people in the U.S. Yet, their employees often have to rely on the state for things like adequate food and health care. In Wisconsin, a Walmart employee is estimated to cost the taxpayer some $5,000 per year in state benefits. California is working on a law to fine Walmart every time an employee has to rely on medicaid. This is that you get when you don’t pay people enough to support themselves. The taxpayer winds up subsidizing the employer. Is that really what you want?

James Knott, Mississauga

By examining the experience of Australia and some European countries, this video offers a useful counterbalance to the propaganda that permeates the mainstream media about minimum wages:



UPDATE: Thom Hartman adds additional facts that show how wrong companies like Walmart are in bleeding their workers while at the same time being subsidized by the taxpayer.

One Thing The Fast food Industry Refuses To 'Super-Size'

“In both of my shops, I look around — There aren’t high schoolers,” ,,, “There are people with families, trying to raise families. And so the whole notion that this is for high schoolers or someone trying to buy their first car or college students trying to get a little extra spending money, that’s all nonsense. We’re raising families. We’re doing hard work. And we deserve to get a living wage for what we do.”
- Terrance Wise, who works at both Pizza Hut and Burger King

While many give little thought to the employees of fast-food joints, others are trying to bring their plight to the public's attention. One of them is Terrance Wise who, in an interview with Amy Goodman, told the Democracy Now host that he sometimes goes days at a time without seeing his fiancee or their three children on account of working 50 to 60 hours a week.

That is, by the way, 50-60 hours of minimum wage work.



If you would like to learn more of this struggle, which is everyone's, including Canadians' despite a slightly higher minimum wage which does not provide a sustainable living, check out this story and the following video:



H/t trapdinawrpool

As well, last night's post may be of interest if you haven't already seen it.