Well, it's not just the minimum wage, of course.
Practically every "executive order" the new president has signed is designed to destroy some group that voted for Trump in November. Jobs? Schmobs? The Democrats don't give a crap about creating jobs. They care about the hardline leftist agenda being pushed out by the weak and feeble new president's freakin' job-destroy anti-capitalist handlers.
Farm labor from Mexico has been on the decline in California, and farmers are having trouble finding U.S.-born workers to make up the difference https://t.co/B8lcJDmfG3
— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) January 5, 2018
Nicholas Andrew Flores swatted at the flies orbiting his sweat-drenched face as he picked alongside a crew of immigrants through a cantaloupe field in California's Central Valley.
The 21-year-old didn't speak Spanish, but he understood the essential words the foreman barked out: Puro amarillo. And rapido, rapido! Quickly, Flores picked only yellow melons and flung them onto a moving platform.
It was hard and repetitive work, and there were days under the searing sun that Flores regretted not going to a four-year college. But he liked that to get the job he just had to "show up." And at $12 an hour, it paid better than slinging fast food.
For Joe Del Bosque of Del Bosque Farms in the San Joaquin Valley, American-born pickers like Flores, though rare, are always welcome.
For generations, rural Mexico has been the primary source of hired farm labor in the U.S. According to a federal survey, nine out of 10 agricultural workers in places like California are foreign-born, and more than half are in the U.S. illegally.
But farm labor from Mexico has been on the decline in California. And under the Trump administration, many in the agricultural industry worry that deportations — and the fear of them — could further cut the supply of workers.
But try as they have to entice workers with better salaries and benefits, companies have found it impossible to attract enough U.S.-born workers to make up for a shortage from south of the border.
Del Bosque said he'll hire anyone who shows up ready to work. But that rarely means someone born in the U.S.
"Americans will say, 'You can't pay me enough to do this kind of work,'" Del Bosque said. "They won't do it. They'll look for something easier."
For some immigrants working the fields, people like Flores are a puzzle — their sweating next to them represents a kind of squandering of an American birthright.
"It's hard to be here under the sun. It's a waste of time and their talents in the fields," said Norma Felix, 58, a Mexican picker for almost three decades. "They don't take advantage of their privilege and benefit of being born here. They could easily work in an office."
Most don't last long, she said.
"There is always one or two who show up every season," Felix said. "They show up for three or four days and turn around and leave."
Agriculture's reliance on immigrant labor, especially in the American West, goes back to the late 1800s, after the completion of the First Transcontinental Railroad, said J. Edward Taylor, a UC Davis rural economist.
"The domestic farm workforce was simply not big enough to support the growth of labor-intensive fruit and vegetable crops," he said...
Wendy’s (WEN) said that self-service ordering kiosks will be made available across its 6,000-plus restaurants in the second half of the year as minimum wage hikes and a tight labor market push up wages.More.
It will be up to franchisees whether to deploy the labor-saving technology, but Wendy’s President Todd Penegor did note that some franchise locations have been raising prices to offset wage hikes.
McDonald’s (MCD) has been testing self-service kiosks. But Wendy’s, which has been vocal about embracing labor-saving technology, is launching the biggest potential expansion.
Wendy’s Penegor said company-operated stores, only about 10% of the total, are seeing wage inflation of 5% to 6%, driven both by the minimum wage and some by the need to offer a competitive wage “to access good labor.”
It’s not surprising that some franchisees might face more of a labor-cost squeeze than company restaurants. All 258 Wendy’s restaurants in California, where the minimum wage rose to $10 an hour this year and will gradually rise to $15, are franchise-operated. Likewise, about 75% of 200-plus restaurants in New York are run by franchisees. New York’s fast-food industry wage rose to $10.50 in New York City and $9.75 in the rest of the state at the start of 2016, also on the way to $15.
Wendy’s plans to cut company-owned stores to just 5% of the total.
Still, Penegor said that increased customer counts more than price hikes drove the chain’s 3.6% same-store sales increase in the first quarter.
Although profit exceeded Wall Street estimates, Wendy’s shares dived nearly 9% Wednesday because of weak second-quarter sales.
“We are seeing a bit of a softer overall category in April” relative to the past two quarters, Penegor said on an earnings call, implying more of an industrywide trend than an issue specific to Wendy’s...
Restaurants race to robots as minimum wages rise http://t.co/A9iTECmWM0
— Washington Post (@washingtonpost) August 17, 2015There are times when Dan Price feels as if he stumbled into the middle of the street with a flag and found himself at the head of a parade.Corporate socialism doesn't work, obviously, to say nothing of state socialism.
Three months ago, Mr. Price, 31, announced he was setting a new minimum salary of $70,000 at his Seattle credit card processing firm, Gravity Payments, and slashing his own million-dollar pay package to do it. He wasn’t thinking about the current political clamor over low wages or the growing gap between rich and poor, he said. He was just thinking of the 120 people who worked for him and, let’s be honest, a bit of free publicity. The idea struck him when a friend shared her worries about paying both her rent and student loans on a $40,000 salary. He realized a lot of his own employees earned that or less.
Yet almost overnight, a decision by one small-business man in the northwestern corner of the country became a swashbuckling blow against income inequality.
The move drew attention from around the world — including from some outspoken skeptics and conservatives like Rush Limbaugh, who smelled a socialist agenda — but most were enthusiastic. Talk show hosts lined up to interview Mr. Price. Job seekers by the thousands sent in résumés. He was called a “thought leader.” Harvard business professors flew out to conduct a case study. Third graders wrote him thank-you notes. Single women wanted to date him.
What few outsiders realized, however, was how much turmoil all the hoopla was causing at the company itself. To begin with, Gravity was simply unprepared for the onslaught of emails, Facebook posts and phone calls. The attention was thrilling, but it was also exhausting and distracting. And with so many eyes focused on the firm, some hoping to witness failure, the pressure has been intense.
More troubling, a few customers, dismayed by what they viewed as a political statement, withdrew their business. Others, anticipating a fee increase — despite repeated assurances to the contrary — also left. While dozens of new clients, inspired by Mr. Price’s announcement, were signing up, those accounts will not start paying off for at least another year. To handle the flood, he has already had to hire a dozen additional employees — now at a significantly higher cost — and is struggling to figure out whether more are needed without knowing for certain how long the bonanza will last.
Two of Mr. Price’s most valued employees quit, spurred in part by their view it was unfair to double the pay of some new hires while the longest-serving staff members got small or no raises. Some friends and associates in Seattle’s close-knit entrepreneurial network were also piqued that Mr. Price’s action made them look stingy in front of their own employees.
Then potentially the worst blow of all: Less than two weeks after the announcement, Mr. Price’s older brother and Gravity co-founder, Lucas Price, citing longstanding differences, filed a lawsuit that potentially threatened the company’s very existence. With legal bills quickly mounting and most of his own paycheck and last year’s $2.2 million in profits plowed into the salary increases, Dan Price said, “We don’t have a margin of error to pay those legal fees.”
As Mr. Price spoke in the Gravity conference room, he could see a handful of employees setting up beach chairs in the parking lot for an impromptu meeting. The office is in Ballard, a fast-gentrifying neighborhood of Seattle that reflects the wealth gap that Mr. Price says he wants to address. Downstairs is a yoga studio, and across the street is a coffee bar where customers can sip velvet soy lattes on Adirondack-style chairs. But around the corner, beneath the elevated roadway, a homeless woman silently appeals to drivers stopped at the red light with a cardboard sign: “Plz Help.”
In his own way, Mr. Price is trying to respond to that request.
“Income inequality has been racing in the wrong direction,” he said. “I want to fight for the idea that if someone is intelligent, hard-working and does a good job, then they are entitled to live a middle-class lifestyle.”
The reaction to his salary pledge has led him to think that if his business continues to prosper, his actions could have far-reaching consequences. “The cause has expanded,” he said. “Whether I like it or not, the stakes are higher.”
Change in employment since 2000:
Puerto Rico -7%
U.S. mainland +11%
http://t.co/esa6mjBor4 pic.twitter.com/HNWl76UJtQ
— Nick Timiraos (@NickTimiraos) July 1, 2015Puerto Rico’s long-simmering debt crisis owes much to an economy that has been shedding jobs for years. And blame for that, economists say, stems in part from how the island operates under the same wage rules as the more prosperous 50 states.Continue reading.
The commonwealth is subject to the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, even though local income and productivity are significantly lower than in Mississippi, the poorest American state. The minimum wage in Puerto Rico is equal to 77% of per capita income, compared with 28% in the U.S. overall.
Roughly one-third of workers earned the minimum wage on the island in 2010, compared with just 16% for the U.S. mainland, according to a 2012 report by the New York Federal Reserve Bank. That report concluded the minimum wage contributed to a lack of jobs for lower-skilled workers, in part because businesses can relocate to lower-wage nearby countries.
These problems are laid bare in a report Puerto Rico’s government released Monday by Anne Krueger, a former top official at the International Monetary Fund. Puerto Rico’s economy, which has been in recession for nine years, has struggled to create jobs and has compensated by offering generous tax breaks to companies and income support to residents.
The upshot is Puerto Rico, with a debt load of more than $72 billion, is running short of cash to repay lenders and keep basic services operating.
The island’s lack of competitiveness can be seen in the scant growth of its low-skill and low-wage industries, such as tourism. The number of hotel beds on the island has changed little from the 1970s, and tourist arrivals are down over the past decade, according to the Krueger report.
“They have all the traits of a welfare state gone wrong,” said Arturo Porzecanski, professor of international economics at American University in Washington, D.C.
The minimum wage is also high relative to average worker productivity. A 2012 World Bank study judged that the ratio of Puerto Rico’s minimum wage to the value added per worker was nearly twice that for the Bahamas and Jamaica, and three times that of the U.S. mainland.
The Krueger report recommends that Congress allow Puerto Rico to set its wage below the federal minimum, which is now allowed for a handful of employers. The New York Fed, in its report, separately advised creating a separate “sub-minimum” wage for workers under the age of 25 that gradually increases to match the federal minimum after several years...
