It's not a labor shortage – it's a wage and workers rights shortage • Hacker News Board

Re: It's not a labor shortage – it's a wage and workers rights shortage

#271

Post by smsm42 » Sun, Sep 05, 2021, 10:00 PM UTC

ljm wrote: post #269

smsm42 wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you're saying the proper response for the employer acting to raise pay to the line workers by raising prices is for you, as a customer, to act to lower pay to the line workers by stopping the tips? That'd show the greedy owner! Surely in some world that must make sense... but it's not our world.

I'm obviously not in the US, but this is a patently absurd perspective as it would then dictate that I am lowering pay to a lineworker by no longer being a customer. Where is the actual business's culpability in that twisted transaction? I've just impoverished one barista at Starbucks because today I went to Cafe Nero instead! And I'm no longer a regular at my local Italian joint, so I've just deprived a few more peo…

> I am lowering pay to a lineworker by no longer being a customer

As an individual customer, not likely since line workers' pay does not directly depend on the number of customers served (at least until it's so low that the business goes under and they have to move to unemployment benefits instead). Tips depend on each customer though, so if you chose Starbucks over Cafe Nero, and Starbucks barristas don't get tips, but Cafe Nero's ones customarily do, then yes, your choice had influence on the income of Cafe Nero's barrista. Probably a small one, but it's there. If neither barrista gets tips (I've never seen anybody to tip a Starbucks barrista but in smaller shops it happens sometimes, though much less frequent than with waiters) then there's not much difference from a single individual action.

Re: It's not a labor shortage – it's a wage and workers rights shortage

#272

Post by odessacubbage » Sun, Sep 05, 2021, 10:05 PM UTC

bsagdiyev wrote: post #218

smsm42 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're presenting it as he has an infinite money supply and just of pure stupidity and greed doesn't want to pay $20 or $50 per hour. Maybe his supply is not unlimited, and maybe nobody would buy a taco for $50 and he knows it, and he made the calculation and decided there's no way to pay all his costs, charge the price that people would be willing to pay, and make a profit. Now, if you know how to do it, there's a b…

Christ, people here and their taller than standard horses. My girlfriends dad owns a pizza place and walked away with $5k last year, after paying rent, supply and wages. Where do they magically pull this money from? They aren’t evil banker types with bags marked “$$$” full of money like people here seem to think and it is disgusting they’re considered cheap instead of just “people will absolutely not pay the increase…

another trend i've noticed around here at least is that many of these legacy restaurants are owned by boomers who are well past retirement age but basically just kept going because it gives them something to do. when the economics shift too rapidly and hurt their ability to break even, they're far more likely to simply close up shop than try to take on risk and hope things work out.

Re: It's not a labor shortage – it's a wage and workers rights shortage

#273

Post by iaw » Sun, Sep 05, 2021, 10:09 PM UTC

smsm42 wrote: post #266

karmajunkie wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is a ridiculously disingenuous argument. it doesn’t take a $50 taco to pay a living wage, no matter what the size of the business is.

"living wage" is an emotional political term - there's no objective definition of it and instead of appealing to rational argument it appeals to irrational notion that somehow you can live on $20/hr but would die if you received $19/hr, and so it's somehow a moral imperative to pay $20/hr (and in a year it turns out it's already $25 that is a moral imperative because somehow, out of nowhere, prices have risen!). I'm…

A living wage is defined in the dictionary as "a wage that is high enough to maintain a normal standard of living." Now we could argue about what a normal standard of living qualifies as but I think we can agree that it includes at minimum room & board for the individual.

By that meager definition a lot of restaurants don't pay a 'living wage'

Re: It's not a labor shortage – it's a wage and workers rights shortage

#274

Post by yourapostasy » Sun, Sep 05, 2021, 10:13 PM UTC

lotsofpulp wrote: post #88

prepend wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s easy to understand. If your customers won’t buy Mexican food at a high enough price to pay $20/hour, it’s better to close than to stay open and lose money. Labor is the highest cost for a restaurant (higher than rent) so bumping wages from $15 to $20 may not be possible if you can’t also raise prices by 30%. This may be hard to understand for us rich programmers. But it’s quite simple for companies that have rea…

> It’s easy to understand. If your customers won’t buy Mexican food at a high enough price to pay $20/hour, it’s better to close than to stay open and lose money. I think the root problem is that most restaurant dining experiences are not worth the $30+ per person for enough people compared to cooking and eating at home. I would like to see more places where you order at a register and bus your own food with minimal…

> ...more places where you order at a register and bus your own food with minimal overheard and maximum investment in the quality of the food rather than the whole waiter and ambiance schtick.

This is currently a cultural non-starter except for niche markets, but once an economic crisis of sufficiently large and long duration is established, that model might work. Maybe. Look up any number of formerly-wealthy-now-poor nations, and I'm hard-pressed to recall any that adopted this model in the mainstream restaurant industry in that nation. Human culture changes are slow to arrive, and carry immense inertia.

I suspect the hyper-rationalization of markets is leading to continuous spectrum K-selection strategies that ultimately prove adverse to the overall market. All the monetization optimization (aided by the gradual incremental gains our industry delivers, however somnambulantly) is attaching a price to every factor that is priced, but under-pricing all non-priced factors (generally those on a long timeline like sustained incentives for young families to support future demographics, pollution, energy, etc.).

This optimization is blunted by currently-stronger cultural norms, especially those tangential or central to mating. It remains to be seen which force remains stronger over the long run (my personal bet is on the cultural norms).

Having said all that, I wouldn't mind at all patronizing a "meal plan" model-based co-op that lets me select 2-4 months in advance how many breakfast/lunch/dinner/brunch I want for a month, in a setting like you describe, a 1-3 minute walk from where I live, with online seating reservations, that operates 24x7x365, serving the locality's "home style" cuisine plus lots of greens. The business only lets in a dynamically-selected number of walk-ins, based upon seating availability and ML-projected food waste at that moment. The value proposition is trade off the customer-skin-in-the-game, fixed commitments for fresh ingredients freshly-prepared at near-home-prepared prices, with aggressively-amortized costs of running the co-op and its costs, thus able to pay fair wages for bare bones staff.

But I would be very surprised if there are enough potential customers like me in sufficient densities in even major metropolitan urban cores to make such a model feasible.

Re: It's not a labor shortage – it's a wage and workers rights shortage

#275

Post by josephcsible » Sun, Sep 05, 2021, 10:18 PM UTC

88913527 wrote: post #243

listless wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that it IS a purely economic problem. It's just math - supply, demand and competition. Small business in particular is captured by these forces. It cannot increase prices because people will go to the competition. And it has no margin to absorb people's desire to earn enough to live a middle-class life doing a job that you can hire anyone to do. All of that said, what you could reasonably hope would ha…

Economics is the junction of mathematics and human behavior. I'm not going to travel half a mile to a different taco shop if the closest to me increases burrito prices $1-2 (in an area that reliably has at least 1 taco shop every half mile). In some sense, I'm a captive audience. I'm hungry and I don't want to walk an additional 15 minutes to save a few dollars.

People on HN tend to be way less price sensitive than average. People living paycheck-to-paycheck would totally walk an extra 0.5 mile to save $2 per meal.

Re: It's not a labor shortage – it's a wage and workers rights shortage

#276

Post by belltaco » Sun, Sep 05, 2021, 10:19 PM UTC

smsm42 wrote: post #266

karmajunkie wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is a ridiculously disingenuous argument. it doesn’t take a $50 taco to pay a living wage, no matter what the size of the business is.

"living wage" is an emotional political term - there's no objective definition of it and instead of appealing to rational argument it appeals to irrational notion that somehow you can live on $20/hr but would die if you received $19/hr, and so it's somehow a moral imperative to pay $20/hr (and in a year it turns out it's already $25 that is a moral imperative because somehow, out of nowhere, prices have risen!). I'm…

Are there a lot of anecdotal stories of "I raised prices and I had to close shop because of drop in demand" ? All I see are people just shutting down and giving up.

Re: It's not a labor shortage – it's a wage and workers rights shortage

#277

Post by nomaxx117 » Sun, Sep 05, 2021, 10:25 PM UTC

notanzaiiswear wrote: post #219

MattGaiser wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is when said person whines that people are too lazy to work for them for that wage.

Obviously for that kind of person it would be a problem if nobody wants to work for that wage. He has to live with his unclean apartment. In any case, here we have an article whining about unfair employers. Are there really that many articles whining about lazy workers?

I know a lot of small business owners who do nothing but whine about this in my hometown. However, I think that their issue really is not offering wages as high as the competition. An old friend of mine is doing pretty well with his recently established restaurant, as he has one of the only dinners at full staff in the area. He is paying about $25 per hour, and it seems to be working quite well, as he not only has a full staff, but people are pretty motivated when paid decently.

Re: It's not a labor shortage – it's a wage and workers rights shortage

#278

Post by prepend » Sun, Sep 05, 2021, 10:26 PM UTC

cableshaft wrote: post #180

prepend wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not my experience. Watching Starbucks and my other local coffee places implement app/cashier less ordering it seems like more customers and more purchases. Ordering on my phone while I’m the way is easier than talking with a human. And easier to add stuff on. I’ve never considered buying an espresso machine and bypassing my local coffee place. Similarly, I wish all fast food went cashierless. The cashier is t…

I had a daily Starbucks habit before the pandemic. During the pandemic I just made pourover coffee at home with some half & half, and even now, eighteen months later and I'm doing more out in the world again, I only get Starbucks about once or twice a month. It's not like it's hard to make okay coffee, it was mainly part of me being out and about.

So you replacing Starbucks had nothing to do with them automating their cashiers.

Rationally, we should all make coffee at home rather than spend $2-7 per day on coffee.

My point was that Starbucks can help with their labor shortage by eliminating cashiers and just having a kiosk or app.

Re: It's not a labor shortage – it's a wage and workers rights shortage

#279

Post by prepend » Sun, Sep 05, 2021, 10:27 PM UTC

kennywinker wrote: post #265

prepend wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Benefits ended a few weeks ago, I don’t think these studies are very useful at this point. Let’s see how it goes in a year to see what happens.

Benefits in some states expired last year, while other states renewed them - which makes for a perfect set of comparative data. Them ending completely now is going to change the landscape but it’s near impossible to say anything about how it changes the landscape since there’s no replication

Federal benefits expired in June. So while state benefits ended, there were still federal benefits available.

Re: It's not a labor shortage – it's a wage and workers rights shortage

#280

Post by josephcsible » Sun, Sep 05, 2021, 10:29 PM UTC

neltnerb wrote: post #213

jzb wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe? Maybe not. I'm not certain that restaurant owners know to the penny what people will or won't pay for this or that on a menu. It depends a lot on how cost conscious the customers are and other factors. Try bumping up the wages and advertising the fact that you do pay a living wage, that might have some impact. My fiance and I try to choose restaurants that are locally owned and are known to treat staff well. (…

I think that most small restaurants tend to undervalue their food and service. Part of it is people's expectations, but even beyond that I believe they are so worried about going out of business that they try to run on the thinnest margins possible rather than raising prices by 50 cents and having some room for error. There's also a lot of... this is how much it costs for me to make, so I should charge a little bit m…

> There's also a lot of... this is how much it costs for me to make, so I should charge a little bit more. Where I think it should be... this is how much it would cost my customers to make in groceries and time.

Your competitors would love it if you set your prices like that.