Raising the minimum wage is the only way to end the "Great Recession".

I don't think people realize that businesses are all about making money, period. No they don't really care about you.

Morality and fairness out the window. If the minimum wage was raised to more than what a business feels like dishing out in payroll then guess what? They are just going to cut hours. So what difference does it really make? $15 bucks an hour for 20 hours or $7.50 for 40?

Bottom line is that a business is going to spend X amount of money per month on payroll. Heres a simple equation.

Hours X Wage = Payroll.

Guess which of the above will remain constant...Doesn't matter how much they pay people, "payroll" isn't going to change, all they are going to do is figure out a different combo of the other two to make the numbers work.

Only way to combat that is to make it mandatory that employers give each employee a minimum of X hours AND a minimum wage of X. But that's overstepping bounds that only a few people would support.

 

Oh yes it will.
I worked at a varity of different restaurants growing up and I can tell you first hand that most places are not going to let you get away with making more money than they want to pay you.

I was a line cook for years and me and my fellow cooks would always trade hours or this and that to try to get 40+ a week. Guess what happened when one of us hit 40 hours? You went home, no if ands or buts about it. It could be a Saturday night during rush hour and they would literally send 2 out of 4 cooks home and make the others bust their ass to keep up because they absolutely refused to pay anybody overtime.

They routinely sent the dishwashers home and made us wash dishes and cook. They got away with this because they knew all of us pretty much needed these jobs. It was BS but it worked. We couldn't quit nobody else paid what they paid (a couple bucks more than other places) and most people there had families to feed. And those who did quit were actually doing them a service because they could then hire on somebody else who they could start off paying less than they had to pay you who had been working there for years. Sure you could try to do a crappy job then they would just hire some fresh guy who "really needs this decent paying job" who will bust his ass until he is burned out then quits and the cycle continues.

Bottom line is that businesses are only going to pay employees X amount from the overall budget each payroll. Whatever combo of hours and wages they have to do to keep that number at or below X they will do it.

 

They are just going to cut hours. I've worked fast food as well. It was always the running gag at work because they would literally give you an automatic raise after your 90 day trial period then take hours from you. You had to pretty much be buddy buddy with management to get hours.

Fast food is worse because they can literally hire damn near anybody from a 16 year old high school kid to a 70 year old. They don't "need" you and they have hundreds who will replace you if you quit.

When I say cut hours I don't mean cut the operating hours I mean they are going to cut the employee hours. All of these places are the same I've seen them all. They will cut one persons hours and make the others pick up the slack. You either deal with it or quit. Usually you deal with it because you are fighting for hours. And if you quit they just replace you. Take a half a day max to train somebody to work there.

I ended up becoming a supervisor at one of the places I worked and I was amazed at just how this machine worked. Manager literally said this is the maximum amount of employee hours we can have for this week. I would make the schedule and he would always come back and say no no no during this shift put the 11 dollar an hour guy on by himself its cheaper than having both the 8 dollar an hour guys working at the same time, etc.

Hell it was almost better for you if you weren't one of the ones who made more money. The only person who actually made money and got hours was this 10 year veteran supervisor who was the highest paid guy we had on timeclock who was best friends with the district manager and was able to make his own schedule which literally screwed the rest of us even worse.

These places are cutthroat, they aren't going to pay anymore then they want to. Raising minimum wage too much is only going to screw these people even more. Trust me. I've been through a couple mandatory minimum wage increases and I saw exactly what happened. We got paid a bit more, but ended up working harder because they cut staff hours and we actually made less money because they cut our hours.

 

This "new society" is like that bad kid you'd see at the store. The kid throws a huge ass temper tantrum kicking and screaming and carrying on because he wants that toy. You can't pop them because that's illegal. The kid knows this so the kid keeps carrying on. Eventually you just get tired of it and give him the toy so he will shut the (*)(*)(*)(*) up.

That is exactly what is happening in our country right now.

 

I would hope so. I just have personally been through 3 minimum wage increases at 3 different places and Ive seen exactly what happened each time. Never took home any more money because our hours were cut and in some cases we lost money. We had employees trying to come in on the weekends to do odd jobs around the establishment to get a few more hours.

Only way to fix that is to unionize like you said. But see the problem here is that its hard to bargain with a restaurant whose "rush hour: fluctuates. That was the main argument used against us every time we tried to complain about being purposefully understaffed. Almost all of the employees talked to the district manager during one of our mandatory monthly meetings and told him about the hours. His response was that the restaurant is self sufficient and if it's not busy then they can't afford to keep people on the time clock doing "nothing". Their definition of "nothing" was if you had a steady flow of customers and it would be a relaxed day if 2 people were cooking. So instead of making it a normal day for 2 cooks they sent one home and made it hell on the other. Their belief was that unless you were so busy to where you didn't have time to take a bathroom break then you weren't working hard enough and we had too many people working. So somebody was going home.

I actually believed them until I became friends with one of the assistant managers. She told me flat out that they are lying through their teeth. Even showed me that this place was making record profits that year due to some new marketing campaign. The reason they didn't want too many people working was because they wanted to make even MORE profit. It wasn't that they were in the red or even remotely close, it was the philosophy of why should be let 2 peope work comfortably when we can just kill one for less money knowing he wont quit because he has a wife and 2 kids and we pay him more than the place across the street will.