NYC restaurants cutting staff hours as minimum wage hits $15

[Grokmaster]

More proof that leftist lawmakers typically HAVE NEVER RAN A SUCCESSFUL BUSINESS.... and are therefore, CLUELESS about how they work:







NYC restaurants cutting staff hours as minimum wage hits $15


The legal minimum wage for New York City employers with 11 or more workers rose more than 15 percent on Dec. 31, 2018, to $15 per hour from $13, giving fast-food, retail and other employees a bump in pay. But some New York City restaurant owners say the latest minimum wage hike is forcing them to cut workers' hours just to stay afloat.

[multiple-restaurant owner Jon Bloostein ]

"We lost control of our largest controllable expense," he told CBS MoneyWatch. "So in order to live with that and stay in business, we're cutting hours."

Bloostein said he has scaled back on employee hours and no longer uses hosts and hostesses during lunch on light traffic days. Customers instead are greeted with a sign that reads, "Kindly select a table." He also staggers employees' start times. "These fewer hours add up to a lot of money in restaurants," he said.






https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nyc-re...rs-to-cope-with-minimum-wage-hike-hitting-15/

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So...ARBITRARILY INCREASING COSTS, AFFECTS PROFITABILITY/VIABILITY of BUSINESSES???


GASP??!!! WHO KNEW ???!!!!


More asinine left moves....

 

[ajn678]

Will be interesting to see if the proposed solution to keep poor people from claiming government assistance will in the end just have them claiming more government assistance since they don't really make any more money, and the costs of things they buy on a daily basis are now increased.

 

[ttwtt78640]

Yep, (up to) $40/week (a tad over 15%) is nice pay raise unless, of course, your hours get cut from 40 hours/week to 34 hours/week - in that case you lost money.

 

[ttwtt78640]

Will be interesting to see if the proposed solution to keep poor people from claiming government assistance will in the end just have them claiming more government assistance since they don't really make any more money, and the costs of things they buy on a daily basis are now increased.

That (bolded above) is already pretty much the case in higher cost of living areas since the federal poverty level (FPL) is the same in 48 states (only AK and HI have special higher FPLs assigned). It's not that they can claim more it's that they end up with less than those in lower cost of living areas.

 

[Skeptic Bob]

Will be interesting to see if the proposed solution to keep poor people from claiming government assistance will in the end just have them claiming more government assistance since they don't really make any more money, and the costs of things they buy on a daily basis are now increased.

For better or worse at least we will learn a lot from these little experiments happening around the country.

 

[Grokmaster]

For better or worse at least we will learn a lot from these little experiments happening around the country.

All the actions of people with ZERO BUSINESS SAVVY.


That should tell you all you need to know about it....

 

[Hawkeye10]

We saw this in Seattle as well......what happens is the best of the best can take on the added workload as restaurants cut staff and they make out like bandits because they are serving a lot of people and because the standard Seattle tip/Service Charge is 20% even though staff gets paid $15 at least plus benefits often times at the best establishments. Everywhere else the service is increasingly lacking as staff buckles under the loads.

 

[OldFatGuy]

This is a nonsense story. Right now, heart of the NY winter, is the slowest season for restaurants which open and close faster than most people change to fresh underwear. Come spring, quality restaurants that don't provide service will wither on the vine. With the financial chaos people are also dining out less. Restauranteurs who are complaining about the wage hike aren't being honest about why they are suffering. All the truly hot restaurants are busy come the weekends, dead during the week.

Last Friday evening we waited 2 hours at the bar, with a reservation, before we got our table. One of the city's finest Italian restaurants. Others waited longer. 60 tables and packed despite the deep freeze.

I personally know many restauranteurs. It is the weak who are complaining. And the fast food joints.

 

[Hawkeye10]

This is a nonsense story. Right now, heart of the NY winter, is the slowest season for restaurants which open and close faster than most people change to fresh underwear. Come spring, quality restaurants that don't provide service will wither on the vine. With the financial chaos people are also dining out less. Restauranteurs who are complaining about the wage hike aren't being honest about why they are suffering. All the truly hot restaurants are busy come the weekends, dead during the week.

Last Friday evening we waited 2 hours at the bar, with a reservation, before we got our table. One of the city's finest Italian restaurants. Others waited longer. 60 tables and packed despite the deep freeze.

I personally know many restauranteurs. It is the weak who are complaining. And the fast food joints.

The best restaurants get the best staff because the best know that they need to work with other best people in order for everything to work when labor hours get cut.....there is even more than before a situation where the haves have and the have nots do not. In the mid and lower quality places where staff both gets worse in quality plus there are fewer of them service goes substantially South. Sometime people refuse to put up with it and dont come back but a lot of times people suck it up, they still go but they expect less and they expect the experience to take longer.

 

[MrPeanut]

We saw this in Seattle as well......what happens is the best of the best can take on the added workload as restaurants cut staff and they make out like bandits because they are serving a lot of people and because the standard Seattle tip/Service Charge is 20% even though staff gets paid $15 at least plus benefits often times at the best establishments. Everywhere else the service is increasingly lacking as staff buckles under the loads.

The studies that came out near the end of 2018 show that the Seattle minimum wage increase worked out well for people. The early naysayers were wrong. What data have you seen that supports your assumptions?

 

[Hawkeye10]

The studies that came out near the end of 2018 show that the Seattle minimum wage increase worked out well for people. The early naysayers were wrong. What data have you seen that supports your assumptions?

I made no comment on how the high min wage works "For people" other than that the best labor make out like bandits and that customers at mid and lower quality places tend to suffer service decline....my claim is based upon personal experience and general expertise in the field, not data.

 

[Mr Person]

What pisses me off about all this: the most sensible move would first to move to the real dollar value of a 1965ish minimum wage - an era when minimum wage let people in poor communities at least get buy. That's about 10.8-11.5/hr. It fluctuates with inflation, obviously.

The problem with jumping to 15 is not so much that 15 is too much. It's that it's being done locally.

Why does this matter? It matters because if your business is in a city and the MW change is in the city, you may well move if you calculate that it would be worthwhile to to relocate. The question becomes can customers afford the pass-on costs. After all, we are not in an era where businesses typically try to do right by customers, but rather do whatever the hell they can get away with. (That may have always been the situation, and people just didn't know any better). It's a money-making enterprise.

But, nationally, the calculus would be far different. Leaving a country is far more expensive than leaving a city (or a state). New laws to comply with, new culture, etc. So a national raise of MW wouldn't have the same disruptive effects. But of course, you're going to have things go wrong in some places with a local raise.




Note: none of this is about a judgment of what the service is "worth". It's a judgment of:
- How much money does it take to survive in a place sufficiently near work for work, even in the cheapest neighborhoods.
- Balancing the cost to consumers of businesses they patronize against the cost we all pay via taxes and welfare programs to those who do work 2 fulltime jobs and still need help, most often because they have to live in areas they would prefer not to to be able to work, sleep, and feed their families.



Naturally, it's complicated. And naturally, people scream and shout based on selective principles. Nobody looks for the pragmatic solution because that's for loser nerds....or something. On top, plenty in this country have adopted a "**** everyone but me and my own" approach.




Extra credit: if you're worried about the raise in prices that results from local MW increases, you need to consider what will happen if any illegal immigration matters are properly dealt with. The wall won't do it. There are things we can do. But we all damn well better be willing to pay a lot more for a lot of things if those workers aren't in the supply chain.

I'm willing, but I suspect a lot of the angriest are not

 

[MrPeanut]

I made no comment on how the high min wage works "For people" other than that the best labor make out like bandits and that customers at mid and lower quality places tend to suffer service decline....my claim is based upon personal experience and general expertise in the field, not data.

Why do you believe that your gut is a better predictor of reality than reality?

 

[Hawkeye10]

Why do you believe that your gut is a better predictor of reality than reality?

My gut is not predicting reality, my report on the reality I find is informing you on what the reality is.

 

[cpwill]

For better or worse at least we will learn a lot from these little experiments happening around the country.

.....That would be nice, but, I think, a bit unrealistically optimistic. Those who don't want this result to occur will, I think, have little problem insisting that it hasn't, or insisting that it doesn't count because [insert whatever post-facto justification allows them to say so].

 

[Skeptic Bob]

.....That would be nice, but, I think, a bit unrealistically optimistic. Those who don't want this result to occur will, I think, have little problem insisting that it hasn't, or insisting that it doesn't count because [insert whatever post-facto justification allows them to say so].

You are certainly right about that. But what I said does apply to me. I am honestly in the fence over whether or not minimum wage hikes have an aggregate positive or negative on the unemployed and low income earners.

 

[Urethra Franklin]

The studies that came out near the end of 2018 show that the Seattle minimum wage increase worked out well for people. The early naysayers were wrong. What data have you seen that supports your assumptions?

Indeed. And that story is repeated manyfold around the world.

Conservatives claimed the introduction of a minimum wage in the UK would lead to disaster. It didn't.

 

[cpwill]

You are certainly right about that. But what I said does apply to me. I am honestly in the fence over whether or not minimum wage hikes have an aggregate positive or negative on the unemployed and low income earners.

I've reviewed the available evidence i-don't-know-how-many-times. As near as I can tell:

1. Where MW is both competing with welfare policies who offer greater rewards and there is a shortage of labor, MW increases can result in an increase in employment.

2. Elsewhere, the effect is generally the opposite.

3. Fiscally, the effect is to transfer income from the poorest among us first to the next-poorest among us (ie: from the guy who would have been a bagger, to the guy who can run 4 of those self-checkout-machines), and then to the much-less-poorest among us (ie: the guy who patented self-checkout-machines).

4. When you point this out to MW-Increase-Advocates, the most common response is to argue that Those Jobs Would Have Eventually Been Lost, Anyway... which doesn't strike me as much of an answer for the unnecessary increase in human poverty now.

 

[Hawkeye10]

We start out with about 14,000 people who we observe in our data working the lowest-paid jobs in Seattle at the beginning of 2015, before the minimum wage started going up,” Vigdor said. “There is a big distinction between the workers putting in more hours on the job and workers putting less hours on the job.”

Workers who put in more hours saw an increase in pay of about $20 a week. Those same workers also saw their hours go down slightly, but not enough to chip away at the minor pay bump.

“The less experienced workers, they more or less broke even,” Vigdor said. “They did see their hourly wages go up, but their hours were cut back enough that, basically, they are making the same amount of money; they are working fewer hours to make that money.”

Study: Young, new workers struggling amid Seattle $15 minimum wage

When it comes to the lower skilled in the restaurant industry not only are they not making more money because their hours have been cut but also their hours are increasingly not pleasant because they tend to be in the weeds more than they used to be and customers are less happy than they used to be.


EDIT: One big problem might be the inability to turn tables in the mid and lower places which have the lower quality labor now more than ever before as well as fewer labor hours overall, resulting in less tip money.