We’re not sure why people were shocked by the predictable outcome of Long Beach’s decision to dramatically boost the hourly pay of grocery workers during the pandemic. After the vote, Kroger announced the shuttering of “long-struggling” Ralphs and Food 4 Less locations.
That mandate ends up hurting hourly workers and the customers who relied on those stores to buy groceries.
Long Beach is one of several California cities to pass “hero pay” ordinances that temporarily boost wages by at least $4 an hour for frontline workers. Even as the state loosens its COVID-19 stay-at-home restrictions, city councils are adopting these measures on an emergency basis. They mainly are union-backed efforts to circumvent minimum-wage laws.
Oakland officials argued that the pay rules are necessary to protect the vital food-supply chain by ensuring a stable work force. This may be news to Oakland officials, but the pandemic has been raging for nearly a year. Despite early supply chain problems with toilet paper and few other staples, grocery stores and their workers have handled the crisis with remarkable acumen.
Indeed, Kroger explains that it immediately boosted pay by $2 an hour and spent $1.3 billion on coronavirus-related safety measures so that stores could stay up and running. Local officials, who often struggle to handle their basic tasks, are the last people Californians should want to manage something as important as our food supply.
The biggest current threat to the supply chain comes from these proposals. Not many industries can endure a government-imposed labor increase of as much as 33%. A study commissioned by the California Grocers Association (CGA) found that Los Angeles’ $5-an-hour proposal “would be twice the size of the 2020 industry profit margin and three times historical grocery profit margins.” Grocers can’t stay in business if they’re losing money.
Everyone appreciates that grocery store workers have been showing up at their jobs despite the spreading pandemic, but it makes no sense to reward them with unaffordable wage boosts that will only precipitate stores’ move toward automation. That trend already has rapidly been taking place following California’s latest minimum-wage surges.
By the way, the CGA study found that Los Angeles’ $5-an-hour hero pay measure could eliminate 7,000 jobs, while Long Beach’s $4-an-hour boost is likely to eliminate 775 grocery jobs. Real jobs are at risk. And if stores don’t eliminate positions, they could be forced to cut hours by 22% — or increase the price of groceries by 4.5%. The latter amounts to a hefty tax on Californians, and will particularly harm those with low incomes.
These ordinances target large national or regional grocery store and drug chains with hundreds of employees. Union activists don’t always understand economics, but they should recognize that imposing a wage burden on stores where their members work will incentivize consumers to shop at smaller, independent markets that are non-unionized.
After Kroger announced its Long Beach closures, the head of a local activist group blasted the company for “attempting to deny their workers the compensation they deserve,” as KTLA reported. Sorry, but the public deserves to know that there’s no such thing as a free lunch. These “hero” pay proposals will only destroy profit margins, which will shutter grocery stores, obliterate jobs and drive up food prices.
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Why would ANYBODY want the deranged, control freak Democrats in charge of their city. their State or their country?
We have all seen the disastrous outcome of every place that the Democrat Party reigns. The Democrat Party history is “Rule and Ruin”.
Now watch what damage and destruction the Democrat Party does now that they rule the country. 🙁 🙁 🙁
Eliminating jobs, was imo THEIR GOAL, of doing this. NOT to get more pay for ‘we peons’.. Ever notice, damn Near EVERY BILL they push to “benefit the workers’, HAS EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE bloody effect!?!??!
Yep, Hero Pay and the resulting disaster as a result of communism. How did Hero Pay work out for you fool politicians in Long Beach? Answer: People lost their jobs. The beauty of California, a total failure!
The Founding Fathers are spinning in their graves that local or federal governments today have a right to dictate wages and prices and control wealth crating private companies that end up where both labor and Capital lose. Socialism is only the equal distribution of poverty except for the socialist leaders who get rich in the failed redistribution via riots or government mandates. The day this country started downhill is when the government started telling people who owned businesses who they could hire, fire or even let in the door as a customer. Private business means PRIVATE. No Shirt, no Shoes, No Sense , No Service.
The new title of Comrade Hero guarantees that, after you starve, your cardboard coffin is draped with a recycled Red ribbon and the likeness of an organic juice box is placed inside.
Exactly. I remember hearing a story about one apartment manager who used a ROULETTE wheel like method to pick prospective applicants for openings in one of the apartment complexes he ran.. AS that would be the MOST fair method (totally random). YET someone whined that he DID that, and the local govt (this was in CA of course), told him he had to ‘select based on xyz criteria, where RACE was given a big bit of weight..
So you can’t be racist, but you HAVE TO BE RACIST…
“They mainly are union-backed efforts to circumvent minimum-wage laws.”
Unions. With friends like those who needs enemas?