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

#301

Post by jwommack » Mon, Sep 06, 2021, 2:58 AM UTC

atrus wrote: post #12

Painfully obvious too. My little local Mexcian place will be closing down because of a lack of cooks. Talking to the owner, he was complaining about government benefits, and how they all want $20 an hour. I don't understand it, that you'd either a) be willing to drive your business into the ground serving a limited menu because you won't hire a couple cooks at $20 an hour, or b) have a business so close to the brink…

It’s not an additional $20-50 an hour it’s the doubling of their single biggest expense in a sector known for extremely thin margins at a time where all of their supplies are also shooting up drastically in price.

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

#302

Post by beervirus » Mon, Sep 06, 2021, 3:10 AM UTC

elliekelly wrote: post #51

beervirus wrote: post #7

Or maybe it’s a government-benefits surplus. That’s the only thing that’s actually changed.

The economy has undergone a massive and fundamental shift because of the pandemic. It is disingenuous, at best, to say the increased unemployment insurance is “the only thing that’s actually changed.” Everything has changed. The demand for in-person services. Transportation and how (and even how often) we travel. Childcare. Education. Entertainment. Everything.

Ok. But people still need money. The people who were working fast food jobs a couple years ago and are now choosing not to work… how are they paying rent and eating?

Government handouts are the one thing that has changed for those folks.

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

#303

Post by neltnerb » Mon, Sep 06, 2021, 3:25 AM UTC

josephcsible wrote: post #280

neltnerb wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Oh, no doubt. It's a difficult place to be, with no real margin for serious actual testing of what the price should be. It's too risky.

But I do think that they're subject to the pressure to under-price what they produce because to them it's easier. It's easy to discount your own labor when you think the job is easy.

Usually that perception of whether the job is easy is wrong.

In any case, I can't imagine a small restaurant having any way to seriously or accurately measure what their prices should be better than maybe a dollar. There's just not enough business to tell, and if you hit a bad region the place shuts down.

You can try setting it based off nearby businesses, but even then it's probably not better than a dollar of correct.

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

#304

Post by tayo42 » Mon, Sep 06, 2021, 3:25 AM UTC

prepend wrote: post #263

tayo42 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You dont need to increase prices by 30% to raise the hourly rate from $15 to $20. Pay is like a fixed cost. If your cook makes 100 items an hour and you profit 1$ off each item. Your profit for the hour only goes down by $5 not by 33 cents per item

It’s not just cooks, there are many other workers in a restaurant. I don’t think you raise prices 33%. But labor is about 40% of costs. So a 33% change in labor increases prices quite a bit. And if everyone increases labor costs, then that drives up food and other materials. So you will easily see price increases of 15-25%. If my local Mexican restaurant increases prices by that much, I and many other customers will…

My example was with simple numbers to illustrate a point that employee pay isn't directly tied to price of an item or the profit made. Also not every employee is paid the same. Maybe line cooks are getting a raise. Maybe the hostess doesn't expect one. Managers and what ever are already paid more.

> a National Restaurant Association publication that said the average restaurant runs about a 29.9 percent labor cost without taxes, benefits and insurance, and about 34 percent with taxes,

So your 40% number is way off. Also hourly rate doesn't effect other labor costs

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

#305

Post by lotsofpulp » Mon, Sep 06, 2021, 3:38 AM UTC

boolemancer wrote: post #247

Ericson2314 wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's definitely a welcome development, but it still costs more than cooking your own meals and cleaning up by a whole lot, so something is amiss. (As I wrote before, I don't mean to say it is all the restaurant's fault , it could be rents are simply too high.)

When you say it costs more to eat out, are you factoring in the cost of your time? If I spend an hour and a half prepping and cooking dinner, but I managed to buy that ingredients for $10 less than what I would spend at a restaurant, it's still cheaper to eat at the restaurant if I factor in the time I spent.

You should get multiple meals from cooking and cleaning for 1.5 hours, either as leftovers or for other people.

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

#306

Post by kodah » Mon, Sep 06, 2021, 4:15 AM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #299

kodah wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also a good expression for something that doesn't perscriptively follow UBI but accomplishes the net effect or intended outcome. I'm willing to admit that there's more than one way to accomplish what UBI wants to accomplish.

But you're then using evidence from the not-UBI to claim that a UBI doesn't do something (benefit businesses), when the difference between the UBI and the not-UBI is that the not-UBI wouldn't be expected to do that thing.

Right, because that's the only evidence I have to draw from when UBI in the form you're referencing doesn't exist yet.

I also didn't say it can't, but I think the choice to make it optimal for SMB's, middle class, and upper middle class is an intentional one. I don't think that'll happen just by doing UBI. Hence I said, if you think it will then citation needed.

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

#307

Post by kozd » Mon, Sep 06, 2021, 4:36 AM UTC

anonuser123456 wrote: post #261

karmajunkie wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it’s not magic. there are inputs and outputs. raise prices by a buck a pizza. people will absolutely pay it. problem solved.

Yeah, demand is totally inelastic to price.

Well presumably all restaurants would have similar issues hiring cooks so prices should rise everywhere. I would wager that demand for restaurant food as a category is less elastic than demand for any one particular Mexican restaurant's food.

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

#308

Post by France_is_bacon » Mon, Sep 06, 2021, 5:02 AM UTC

smsm42 wrote: post #52

atrus wrote: post #12

Painfully obvious too. My little local Mexcian place will be closing down because of a lack of cooks. Talking to the owner, he was complaining about government benefits, and how they all want $20 an hour. I don't understand it, that you'd either a) be willing to drive your business into the ground serving a limited menu because you won't hire a couple cooks at $20 an hour, or b) have a business so close to the brink…

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…

Depends on how you look at it. If the owner has 10 restuarants, and is making $750,000 per year, let's say, then he or she does have an unlimited amount of money, compared to the workers, especially if the workers are making the federal minimum wage of $7.25.

If they have a small mom and pop company that cannot pay workers at least $50,000, then they need to go out of business. Then, as more and more shops go out of business, then there will be less of a supply and then the company can demand more money from customers and pay their workers more. Except, the reality is that the owners WILL make more money, but still won't want to pay their employees more, and will give the same line - that that type of labor is unskilled and f-ck them, which means more money for the owner. That's the reality. And if true that the labor is unskilled and the owner shouldn't pay more, then the workers should not come back to work.

All the Wall Street journals and pro-business journals and business videos have mouth noises that people don't have to accept the wages and it is voluntary work. But, when it actually happens, the cry like a bunch of little babies and say that the worker is at fault for not wanting to work for no insurance, shitty wages, and not being able to afford housing. Well, let the business owners do all of the work without workers, and get all the money. Sounds good to me.

You like your Mexican food, but only want to pay .89 cents for it? Good. You go grow the beans, grow the wheat or corn to make your own tortillas. Buy and milk your own damn cow in order to get the beef and milk the cow to make sour cream, and grow an avocado tree to make your own guacamole.

It's ok. Do it yourself. Let all the cheap restaurants go out of business. Deal with it.

And that the story. That's the REAL story, not the one that you are making up.

However, there might be a solution. If a business shows me all their financials, ALL of them, and the personal financial statements, and if I see that they are not making a lot of money, that's fine, maybe I will work for them. But if I see that they have 10 restaurants and make $750,000 per year, well, f the f out of them. But, business owenrs, show me your financials. You don't want to? Fine. Do it yourself. But I'm not going to work for $18,000 with zero benefits, while you're making $750,000. You say your contributions is worth more? Good. Do it yourself. I, and everyone else, don't accept that wage anymore, so do it yourself and go out of business, and you won't get that $750,000 per year anymore anyways.

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

#309

Post by France_is_bacon » Mon, Sep 06, 2021, 5:03 AM UTC

bsagdiyev wrote: post #287

gilbetron wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$5k total, or $5k in addition to their salary? If you dug into it, I'm guessing it would be the latter.

$5k total. That’s his salary. They make maybe $40k before tax on a good year, over the two of them, him and his wife who works as a preschool teacher. They’re both almost at retirement age at this point and are going to work until they die.

Then that dude should legit go out of business and get a job as a janitor for $16,000 per year.

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

#310

Post by birdyrooster » Mon, Sep 06, 2021, 5:06 AM UTC

birdyrooster wrote: post #84

wazoox wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> most of a restaurant's and a coffee shop's labor can be replaced with automated ordering, having the customer collect food themselves when it's ready... Which means "extracting free work from the customers", which is basically Marxism 101, "how to extract value from live work". My answer in such a place is to go straight out. I NEVER use the "automatic cashes", thank you very much. > ... using robots to prepare mor…

So you never order anything from e-commerce websites because you have to enter your own order and payment information manually? Sounds like a stupid way to interpret Marxism.

Shabbat Marxism