Higher Minimum Wages Will Not Guarantee Better Customer Service

I read this opinion piece from Forbes and something about it caught my attention.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/shephyk...arantee-better-customer-service/#275cb142435c

In just the three simple words "properly train them" Shep Hyken hit the nail on the head. The difference between the $7.25/hr employee and the $15/hr employee is TRAINING that the owner or manager is responsible for providing. The problem is not low performance by the employee but instead it's low performance because the owner/manager didn't train the employee so they could provide high performance.

So many people are of the opinion that the $7.25/hr employee isn't worth more but the employee is only doing what they were trained to do. If the owner/manager trains them to do tasks where their labor is worth $15/hr they won't hesitate to do that. There are those that always want to blame the employee when it's the owner/manager's responsibility to run the business and that includes training and using the employee in a manner that generates the income to pay them a good wage.

 

you can't train a genuine smile, only the dignity that comes from a living wage can do that.

i think you are putting the cart before the horse, there are illegal immigrants who get no training for low skilled work yet are productive, because they see low wages in America as a better life when compared to third world wages.

you shouldn't try to get the same profits from cheap labor with unfair trade and illegal immigration using the bosses whip on Americans, because it is UnAmerican.

 

If you think a wage gives you dignity the problem is with you not the wage a job well do is what gives you dignity no matter the pay

I will give you my best no mater the pay you will get the same effort from me if you paid me 5 per hour 10 per hour or hell nothing at all that is what is called dignity and self respect

 

that is how they slowly outsourced manufacturing and left Americans in the service sector competing with illegal immigrants for slave wages.

they even got away with stealing wages from high skilled work the same way with H1B visas, where educated Americans are suppose to be more intellectual and enlightened than the uneducated working class.

 

How much do they pay people down at the DMV? If it's over 15 an hour, then we can dispense with that argument. How much did we pay Obama to go golfing or lie? Over 15 an hour?

 

"Higher Minimum Wages Will Not Guarantee Better Customer Service"

It's not about better customer service. It's about a proper minimum wage and not needing public assistance to get by.

 

So on top of a pay raise, the employer must now provide the training necessary to try and make that person worth $15? What a strange sense of morality you have.

The truth is, there are lots of people out there that will never be desirable employees, no matter how much training they receive. I really believe this starts at home with your upbringing. If your parents raised you to be a piece of (*)(*)(*)(*) with a bad attitude, then you will always be a piece of (*)(*)(*)(*) with a bad attitude. No amount of training or degrees will fix that, and they will always make minimum wage. However, if you were raised to have a good attitude, and a strong work ethic, you will be noticed and rise in whatever job you do. I think these are attributes that make a rare and elite employee.

 

I submit that anyone who thinks a minimum-wage job is a career, should have considered opening at least one of those books they carried to and from school.

 

Firms pay based on it's needs, not the other way around.

 

Pay peanuts and you get monkeys.

 

I've never been on a day of welfare in my life. But guess what. We don't let people starve in this country. An individual is eligible for food stamps, with an income of $20-22 K, depending on the state. Multiply the minimum wage out 40 hours/ 52 weeks, and you get $14K. Thus there is an income gap. So many complain about welfare. The majority of the recipients are food stamp recipients. The next largest group on welfare are disabled veterans.

Whether or not this country uses an elevated minimum wage, or continues to use tax dollars, we pay. The alternative is that we let people starve in this country. Is this the preference?

 

Superior management gives the worker a reason to smile and that smile is very genuine.

In my career in manufacturing I've had the opportunity to work with untrained workers, including "undocumented" workers, and without exception they always wanted to learn more and become more valuable to the enterprise. I always helped to train them, and they trained very well, and they became more valuable generating more "dollars" for the company in the process, and we (the company) increased their wages because their value to the business increased their worth. Any manager/owner that doesn't take advantage of this is basically hurting their own business in the long run.

Training is a responsibility of management, period, and it has absolutely nothing to do with whether the employee is a low paid immigrant worker or a low paid American worker. Both respond positively when you're willing to take the time to teach them how they can be more valuable to the enterprise and then increase their compensation as their value increases.

My partner and I, in a small manufacturing company we started a few years back, had a starting wage of $20/hr for an untrained worker and we also had the tasks laid out where with minimal training of just a couple of hours they could earn that $20/hr by the end of their first day on the job. Top managers can do that in any industry because they know how. It's simply a matter of identifying the necessary tasks required to generate the revenue and then providing the training required for the person to perform the tasks.

It's always the owner/manager that defines the tasks to be done, that markets the product and/or service, that creates the business plan, follows it and modifies it, to ensure the business is generating the revenue to fund the labor costs and other expenditures. The worker does the tasks they're assigned and there's always training to a greater or lesser degree related to those tasks. It's the employers responsibility to ensure the revenue to fund the wages, not the employee's job to do that. If they employer defines the right tasks, teaches the employee to perform them, and the employee performs the tasks then the employer can pay the employee what the employee requires to live on.

It's not rocket science.

 

if the poor earn 20 dollars an hour in an area with no high cost of living then the training would serve as a stepping stone.

however the poor are threatened with poverty and underfunded welfare programs if they don't accept training for busy work at minimum wage.

manufacturing work can afford to pay living wages, but they are all outsourced and need President Trump's tariffs to return. the service sector can also pay living wages in the meantime after a huge wall is erected to prevent the cheap labor of illegal immigrants.

i fear the huge wall won't be enough however, the labor market would need lawful government force to raise wages commensurate to the higher cost of living created by the rich from income inequality.

lastly those who cannot afford to pay a living wage after the huge wall, tariffs, and a mandated living wage through lawful government force, should invest in automation or not be in business.

 

Let me focus on this one statement, "manufacturing work can afford to pay living wages" because manufacturing can also pay below living wages as well and there are manufacturing companies that don't pay a living wage. The service sector can also "afford to pay living wages" and in some cases it does and in some case it doesn't.

I mentioned this somewhere recently but it warrants mentioning again.

Republicans point to the higher wages in manufacturing but refuse to acknowledge that those higher wages are because of the past power of unions to increase compensation through collective bargaining.. Republicans are opposed to organized labor because union are able to negotiate higher worker compensation. Republican economic policies are designed to reduce compensation in manufacturing until the manufacturing jobs are also paying less than the cost of living so that the owners make more money.

So how will manufacturing jobs benefit the United States after Republican economic policies that oppose organized labor eventually result in manufacturing jobs paying no better than the service sector jobs?

 

unions can't raise wages when all of the manufacturing jobs are outsourced, both republicans and democrats support selling out poor Americans for the rich who give them money.

when President Trump uses his authority of tariffs on the rich they will have to create manufacturing jobs in America, and if the wealth does not trickle down to poor Americans as the capitalists promised then organized labor would return to raise wages through lawful force.

a free market closed off from cheap labor onshore from illegal immigration, and offshore from tariffs, should create enough wealth at the top to trickle down to the peasants. this will fulfill the founding fathers wishes for the peasants to labor fruitfully and be free landowners and capitalists themselves.

 

Organized labor was never limited to just manufacturing. The Teamsters were once a very powerful union that represented workers in many service sector professions. The Teamsters are just a shell of what they used to be because of the anti-union legislation that's literally gutted the power of the unions.

Tariffs don't result in anything except higher prices for Americans and fewer jobs as other countries reciprocate the tariffs making the US less competitive with other foreign companies dramatically reducing US exports. For example if China were to reciprocate a 35% tariff then Boeing would be unable to compete with Airbus for China commercial aircraft sales that make up 11% of Boeing sales. That would mean major job cuts at Boeing of very high paying manufacturing jobs.

Studies indicate that for every dollar of protectionism (and tariffs are protectionism) the GDP loses $0.66 while not realizing any economic benefit. If the price goes up on an import like a flat panel TV, even by 35%, there won't be a US company that will start manufacturing TV's. The foreign manufacturer will just keep making them, they'll be taxed, and then the US consumer will pay 35% more for the TV. This belief that a tariff will shift manufacturing from a foreign country is delusional because it won't happen.

But what if it did? The price is still going to be 35% more for the product made in the USA. Because it would be a new product like the maximum state of the art automation would be used so virtually not jobs would be created. The wages wouldn't increase for anyone and so the American consumer takes it in the rear and the only people making any money are the investors that take their cut from everything regardless of where it's made.

Think about this. Trump made a big point of "saving" 800 our of 2100 manufacturing jobs at Carrier and United Technologies and it cost $9 million to do that. 300 of the jobs "saved" weren't going to Mexico anyway and UT is going to invest something like $14-18 million in automation to replace most of the 500 jobs that remain.

As noted the unions can't do crap now because they no longer have any significant power to negotiate anymore. Congress would need to re-empower the unions and even then it would take 20-30 years before organized labor would have a significant impact.

The founding fathers, comprise of a very limited number of intellectuals, did not advocate what you suggest.

That was what the "conservatives" desired that had the money and the political control to resist the actual changes that the founders established by the ideology they created. We did not, for example, change our Laws of Property to reflect the Natural Right "Of Property" where "Title is a recognition of the right to possess" and instead retained "Title of Ownership that allows possession with out a right to possess" the property.

Nothing trickles down and it doesn't matter if the person is an immigrant or an American when the only job is a low paying job which is what Republicans want all jobs to be.

 

If the minimum wage was increased, a large number of people would be able to afford to become consumers.
More people being able to afford goods/services means more customers.
More customers means more transactions.
More transactions means more people needed to process those transactions (ie: more jobs).

It's really not that complicated. Concentrating wealth in the hands of a small segment of society does the opposite of improving the economy.

 

If the minimum wage increased then less people would become consumers because firms will hire less people.
Hiring less people creates a surplus of labor means more unemployed people.
More unemployed people means less transactions
Less transactions means less economic growth.

It's really complicated: it's called economics. Understanding that resources are finite and increasing th price floor doesn't make firms better off. Firms only increase wages when it's in their own economic interests to do so.

 

Wrong. Firms don't just decide to hire people to soak up a paycheck, they only hire when there's additional work to do. Additional work is driven by transactional growth. Transactional growth comes from more people spending money on products/services. More people spending money is not enabled unless more people CAN spend money.

 

It is truly American to shove your morals down the throats of others.

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That money has to come from somewhere. Either it's spent on end products or it's spent on investments. Money itself is not wealth, as you seem to imply. Are you familiar with the broken window fallacy, because you've just provided a fine example of it.

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Somehow, the law of supply and demand can be overcome by moral outrage and subsequent legislation.

 

If the marginal benefits (additional productivity) < marginal cost (wages), then firms won't hire additional work. Regardless of whether there is additional work to do or not, employees are an expense and firms hire on whether or not they can meet expenses. For firms to justify higher expenses, the productivity needs to justify it.

Highly productive industries pay more on average than low productive industries. There is a reason for that, and it isn't something we just came up with overnight. Rather, this is a phenomenon we discovered based on decades of microeconomic observations and research; research that seems to be above your comprehension.

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How are you going to accomplish that? You're going to start legislating demand into existence? That always works.

 

the law of supply and demand is a moral forced upon the poorer half of America who are unable or unwilling to compete in the crony market of the immoral rich.

 

the wealth isn't trickling down because the rich are investing it in foreign countries, it has to stay here in America where it is backed by the military force of Americans.

if tariffs lead to a trade war then we stop trading and make our own stuff, the peasants will demand higher wages in return for protecting the wealth of the rich with their military.

if the rich decide to leave America we will wage war to destabilize the world economy, and invade weaker countries to seize their talent and natural resources for America.

President Trump has good relations with mother Russia, so the countries who have the military force to defend themselves we can negotiate fair trade deals with.

the only reason the wealth isn't being redistributed equitably to the peasants is because we have been helping weaker countries, and poorer immigrants, at the expense of the poorer half of America.

 

You realize that the chief executive officers of America’s largest firms earn three times more than they did 20 years ago and at least 10 times more than 30 years ago, big gains even relative to other very-high-wage earners.

"That money has to come from somewhere", right?

How does THAT not represent the glazier's fallacy?

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Please demonstrate how CEOs are 10x more productive today than they were 30 years ago.

 

More likely they would lower customer service . Why work hard when you can get by and slack off and still get decent pay ?