Restaurant labor shortages.

[ackmondual]

Originally Posted by City Guy997S

Just about the dumbest video on youtube. I don't care for Trevor Noah, I don't even find him funny when he is trying to be funny. Businesses are essentially a math equation, income (sales) minus costs = profits or in some cases a loss. There are plenty of businesses that I would never venture into (restaurants are in that category). The rents are huge, the food costs (including shrinkage) are astronomical and with the online sites making "everyone an expert food critic" you can literally go down in flames in a week after you get trashed online.

For him to say "business owners can pay more" is simply wrong. I know a salon owner that borrowed 40K on her house to pay staff before the paycheck loans came in. Salon was closed, ZERO revenue yet she borrowed 40K to make sure the staff had money. What was her solution in the end? She sold both salons, put her house up for sale and is simply retiring to a cheaper location. She simply cashed out and moved on.

If the business pays more, the owner might not be able to make it run anymore then EVERYONE is out of a job. So before you pay your dishwashers $40 an hour because you feel that should be the new living wage (yeah $1600 a week, 83K a year) think about the bigger math equation. McDonald's can't sell 79 cent burgers if everyone in the building is making $600+ a week. Also consider if the assistant manager is making $600 a week now and suddenly the minimum wage is $600 then they will be upset and demand $800+ a week. Then the manager that was making $1000 a week will feel if the assistant is making $800 then they should be making $1200+.......can't give everyone extra money if the business doesn't have the "extra" revenue. Again, its basic math that guys like Trevor Noah know NOTHING about.

Don't believe me?

Google major US companies that were bled dry by unions. You know, organizations that force companies to pay more and subsequently force them to close or better yet relocate to cheaper labor locations.

Whether you like Trevor Noah or not.. he's right. For all of your examples of business operators getting hosed, there are plenty more where upping their wages have solved the issue of getting the help they needed. If your business was relying on old MW rates, that's the equivalent of "living paycheck to paycheck".

Time and time again, these MW are told "if you don't like your pay, then do something about it". They did. They're leaving these low paid, restaurant jobs in droves, and pursuing better paying jobs, and getting training and education for better paying jobs. If they want to continue to pay those low wages, then it's their funeral.

You don't have to pay $40 an hour, but it's gotta be something that can pay _their_ bills and the rent. Restaurant operators have figured out how much to price their food (it's not $1 for a hamburger ). They should look at wages in the same light.

[ackmondual]

Originally Posted by mathjak107

Except it is not constrained to minimum wage .

The problem is companies raising wages on new hires has to increase wages on their existing work force too or have a pisssed off work force .

You can’t pay the same thing to a worker who has learned more and does more over the years and then pay the unproven newcomer more or the same money for doing less .

So it really effects pay all up and down the scale

So let's just keep things the same, so that new hires will be pissed off? Yeah, that's not really a solution either.

Originally Posted by redguard57

We're taking for granted that we cancelled half the economy. It's been 14 months and people just didn't stay frozen in carbonite, to come back exactly the same way they were before. A lot of people took taht time to re-think their lives. They may not want their old jobs back because of all kinds of reasons, not least of which is maybe they don't want THAT job anymore. I never lost my job but I came very close to quitting it circa early February because the pandemic version of it SUCKED.

Some people I know who worked in the restaurant industry liked the energy. The pandemic made the energy go away.

Couldn't have said it better myself!

[Malloric]

Originally Posted by galaxyhi

And apparently you haven't gotten the memo: those extra bennies are going to run out, and sooner than those who stay "cushy at home" would like.

Just like those who don't or haven't paid rent "because they don't HAVE to pay", will get a shock, in my state...eviction restrictions..that's been pushed to Aug 31.

So there's going to be a "come uppance" for those who are trying to "fleece the system".

But there are still those who NEED to be home.. until the kids are firmly back in school before they can really go back to work.

And, those paying wages...sub par wages may STILL find a lack of qualified application s... especially if all they offer is the "anyone can flip burgers" jobs, because those "anyone's" might still go elsewhere to get paid more, if a neighboring business is offering more pay than you are.

Just because the jobless benefits run out... still doesn't mean you'll get qualified applicants...or, maybe application s will improve for you, we won't actually know until then, will we?

And if all the jobs you offer are "subpar anyone can do that' starter jobs'...you've got to expect that the 'quality of applications' IS going to be "subpar" and "anyone who THINKS they can do that" type application s.

Well, there's two lines of thought on that. One is that unskilled labor really doesn't think much so they've just been sitting around collecting the welfare and when that dries up they'll all rush out to find burger flipping jobs again. I'm sure that to some extent that's true. There are people like that, but I think it's a fairly small number. A lot of those mindless, unskilled laborers probably aren't so mindless. It just wasn't so easy to learn an employable skill while working two part-time burger flipper jobs and raise a family. They may very well have moved on in that year and learned an employable skill or just found a better job. There's a lot of young cashiers at the grocery store I shop at. It's union and it was a mostly older workforce and it looks like at least half of them decided working retail at 50-60 when they've got a decent pension from 20, 25, 30 years on the job just wasn't worth the risks. Assuming you were flipping burgers at the burger shack and jumped over to roping carts at a supermarket in April or May of last year you could move up pretty quickly. The pay isn't really that much better. The working conditions, however, are.