House votes to raise minimum wage...

[Poietes]

That would be ok if it was a starting wage. Ask Walmart employees what they are making ten years later. I wrote in my other post that corporations like Walmart can afford to pay living wages. The Waltons would take a pay cut and make $5 billion a year instead of $7.5 billion per year.

As someone who worked there for 8 years. Who worked their way from a cashier to dept mgr and was asked to go into the management program(which I didn’t want to). As long as you work hard the pay is plenty livable. They have a fantastic healthcare and dental plan. Profit sharing and stock matching programs. It really wasn’t a bad place to work at all and I have many many friends that are still there. Many of them went into management and are well off. You do as good as you want to do there. If people aren’t getting good raises or getting promotions it’s their own fault. Although many people’s experiences have to do with the store manager. Get a bad manager then it will change your experience drastically.

Walmart has 50% part time workers so that they don’t pay them any benefits. And your statement “as long as they work hard the pay is plenty livable” makes no sense. A cashier is going to be paid what a cashier is paid. No bonus for moving faster. Not everyone wants to or is able to be a manager.

Walmart is well known on assisting their employees in getting government benefits rather than hire them at 40 hours per week or pay them a livable wage. At the same time as raking in $7.5 billion dollars per year after all expenses paid.

Ok, so I'm only going to talk about the stores in my area because that is what I have experience with. Yes there are quite a few part time workers here, but with unemployment being ridiculously low the part time workers are either students (college or high school), people who are nights and weekends of whom Walmart is their second job, or elderly who just want to make a bit of money or pass the time. And yes, there is a thing called IPH (items per hour), I don't know if they still use it or not but when I was there your IPH would have an impact on your yearly raise. Not everyone gets the same raise every year, you get a percentage raise based on your performance, everyone does from the greeters to the support managers, so the harder you work the more pay you get.

No not everyone is able to be a manager but if you are perfectly happy doing low skill work and have no desire to move up then you need to be perfectly happy with the low skill wage. Again, that is life here where I live, where if you have any drive, desire or work ethic at all you don't have to settle for being low skilled labor. I know and have worked with hundreds of people who raise families very comfortably without any assistance.

I have also done interviewing for one of my stores, there are so many people who have zero work ethic whom I would never dream of hiring. People who absolutely don't deserve $15 an hour.

[Carpy]

They will always find a way not to pay a decent living wage. That's why minimum wage was established in the 1st place is because stores refused to pay their employees a livable wage. Corporations become too greedy, that is something that has been a thing since the beginning of time and is a bigger thing now.

Minimum wage was never meant to be a living wage. It was meant to be starting pay for new employees and for part time employees.

That would be ok if it was a starting wage. Ask Walmart employees what they are making ten years later. I wrote in my other post that corporations like Walmart can afford to pay living wages. The Waltons would take a pay cut and make $5 billion a year instead of $7.5 billion per year.

Our local Walmart starts at 12. 00 hr. Most of the people I know there are at 18.00 hr.

[Lemons]

As someone who worked there for 8 years. Who worked their way from a cashier to dept mgr and was asked to go into the management program(which I didn’t want to). As long as you work hard the pay is plenty livable. They have a fantastic healthcare and dental plan. Profit sharing and stock matching programs. It really wasn’t a bad place to work at all and I have many many friends that are still there. Many of them went into management and are well off. You do as good as you want to do there. If people aren’t getting good raises or getting promotions it’s their own fault. Although many people’s experiences have to do with the store manager. Get a bad manager then it will change your experience drastically.

Walmart has 50% part time workers so that they don’t pay them any benefits. And your statement “as long as they work hard the pay is plenty livable” makes no sense. A cashier is going to be paid what a cashier is paid. No bonus for moving faster. Not everyone wants to or is able to be a manager.

Walmart is well known on assisting their employees in getting government benefits rather than hire them at 40 hours per week or pay them a livable wage. At the same time as raking in $7.5 billion dollars per year after all expenses paid.

No not everyone is able to be a manager but if you are perfectly happy doing low skill work and have no desire to move up then you need to be perfectly happy with the low skill wage.

Low skill work deserves a livable wage. We aren't talking about a life as a homeowner, two cars and vacations. We are talking about paying rent, food, clothing, medicine without government assistance if you're working a full time job.

I won't even ask you how you came to be a cashier at Walmart.

[Lemons]

Minimum wage was never meant to be a living wage. It was meant to be starting pay for new employees and for part time employees.

That would be ok if it was a starting wage. Ask Walmart employees what they are making ten years later. I wrote in my other post that corporations like Walmart can afford to pay living wages. The Waltons would take a pay cut and make $5 billion a year instead of $7.5 billion per year.

Our local Walmart starts at 12. 00 hr. Most of the people I know there are at 18.00 hr.

If the bill passes then they will need to increase that to $15 per hour. If that's the case, based on their net income from last year the Waltons might only make $7 billion for the year. They can cut back somehow I'm sure.

[carterscutie85]

I can definitely see it causing inflation other places, but the company I work for raised starting wages to $11 an hour last year and no one has seen a decrease in hours or increase in product prices.

I definitely don't support $15 an hour for the fast food workers here who don't give 2 craps about their jobs and can't even make my food right though. I mean it's not hard to not add one ingredient.

[Carpy]

The only real cost control a business has is hourly payroll. That's who gets hit.

[Della]

Uh....I’m sorry, but we’re there no small businesses 30-40 years ago when minimum wage was proportional to cost of living? I don’t remember hearing about that....

Stop being an uneducated corporate cocksucker and place blame where blame is due- megacorporations and the laziness of the American consumer. It has JACK SHIT to do with Americans being allowed to afford life on only one full time job.

Big box retailers absorbed them or bankrupted many of them. Although, if I recall correctly, about half of most American workers are employed by small businesses.

[Poietes]

Walmart has 50% part time workers so that they don’t pay them any benefits. And your statement “as long as they work hard the pay is plenty livable” makes no sense. A cashier is going to be paid what a cashier is paid. No bonus for moving faster. Not everyone wants to or is able to be a manager.

Walmart is well known on assisting their employees in getting government benefits rather than hire them at 40 hours per week or pay them a livable wage. At the same time as raking in $7.5 billion dollars per year after all expenses paid.

No not everyone is able to be a manager but if you are perfectly happy doing low skill work and have no desire to move up then you need to be perfectly happy with the low skill wage.

Low skill work deserves a livable wage. We aren't talking about a life as a homeowner, two cars and vacations. We are talking about paying rent, food, clothing, medicine without government assistance if you're working a full time job.

I won't even ask you how you came to be a cashier at Walmart.

Yes, so am I. As I said, I know hundreds of people personally who do it every day. I even know families where both mom and dad work at Walmart and have 4-5 kids and do just fine.

You can ask, I don't care. You say that like it's a bad thing. I started there my sophomore year of college. Oh and I was only a cashier for a few months before I started moving up. I continued working there because I was going to school to be a teacher and decided teaching wasn't what I wanted to do. So I kept working there after college while getting married and having two kids. I decided I didn't want to miss nearly every holiday with my children so dh and I decided I could stay at home to raise our kids.

Oh and I will also add that dh and I are now small business owners. So we know both aspects of big and small business.

[SouthernIslander]

There are always bad workers, they're are bad managers and bad CEOs still on the payroll simply because they're not bad enough to fire. Since a few bad employees are enough to warrant paying shit wages, then those few bad higher ups are enough to lower the wages of those, right?

What about the good ones? What about the ones who consistently provide excellent customer service, should they be paid shit wages? Because that's basically what you're saying. You're also saying those with disabilities that are unable to increase their skillset deserve to be paid less than a living wage.

And seriously stop with the inflation story. It's a bullshit excuse that corporations use to make the average American citizen look either greedy or stupid. From 1981 to 1989 (it increased April 1990) minimum wage did not increase, however inflation occured at almost 5% per year, that means that inflation will occur even if they do nothing with minimum wage.

https://www.payscale.com/data-packages/ ... /full-list

This is what CEOs currently make and how much more they're making vs their workers.

Exactly.
And usually the CEO’s are not doing much and they’re delegating and spending their time at useless meetings and cocktail parties and golfing with other CEO’s who are all doing a lot less actual work for their companies. Must be nice.

Have you ever met a CEO? I worked with one for an airline at their corporate office. For the amount of responsibility they have they are paid for it. You have no clue.

Yeah it’s a myth that CEOs (or any executive management) just sit on their asses and don’t do anything. A company won’t turn a profit and everyone would lose their jobs if they didn’t.

I can understand some may feel they get paid too much but they have a ridiculous amount of pressure/responsibility.

More money, more problems applies here. Lol.

[jas]

Exactly.
And usually the CEO’s are not doing much and they’re delegating and spending their time at useless meetings and cocktail parties and golfing with other CEO’s who are all doing a lot less actual work for their companies. Must be nice.

Have you ever met a CEO? I worked with one for an airline at their corporate office. For the amount of responsibility they have they are paid for it. You have no clue.

Yeah it’s a myth that CEOs (or any executive management) just sit on their asses and don’t do anything. A company won’t turn a profit and everyone would lose their jobs if they didn’t.

I can understand some may feel they get paid too much but they have a ridiculous amount of pressure/responsibility.

More money, more problems applies here. Lol.

Absolutely!