It’s good to be king.
What could be more gratifying and delightful than roaming across the landscape, pointing at people who are working for somebody else and declaring, “I decree that you deserve a raise! And you shall have it!”
Anyone could be elected Homecoming King with that kind of power.
Sadly or happily, Americans don’t live under the rule of a king, not even a homecoming king. So it’s starting to attract attention that politicians are acting as if they have the power to wave a scepter and make some private companies pay higher wages to some of their workers.
Kroger just announced that it would close three underperforming stores in L.A. following the city’s order to pay all hourly, non-managerial employees an additional $5 an hour in wages for four months.
“Reprehensible,” declared the king of Los Angeles, Mayor Eric Garcetti, upon hearing the news.
Shrinking the kingdom by three stores is not what the City Council intended when Council President Nury Martinez and Councilman Mitch O’Farrell introduced the motion for the wage hike. The edict imposed the “hero pay” requirement on grocery and pharmacy retailers with 10 or more employees on site and at least 300 employees nationally.
Kroger issued a terse statement explaining that the company’s stores operate on razor-thin profit margins and the pay mandate, a 28% average increase in labor costs, had made it “financially unsustainable” to keep the three stores open.
Kroger earlier announced that two stores in the city of Long Beach will close on April 17 after that city adopted a similar ordinance requiring “hero pay” raises of $4 per hour.
Long Beach recently won a Pyrrhic victory in federal court, persuading a judge to reject a request from the California Grocers Association for a preliminary injunction to block the pay-raise ordinance. The case continues; another hearing is set for March 22.
“We remain confident that these extra pay ordinances will not withstand legal scrutiny,” said Ron Fong, president and CEO of the California Grocers Association. The CGA is appealing the denial of the preliminary injunction to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Andrea Zinder, president of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 324, said grocery workers “would have never thought that their jobs would be considered life-threatening” until a year ago. “Their sacrifice deserves compensation,” she said, adding that she hoped “other cities” would also recognize the work that essential grocery workers are doing.
As a matter of fact, politicians in other cities are similarly decreeing pay raises for the members of this politically powerful union. Pay raises for grocery workers have been mandated by the San Jose City Council as well as the local governments running Oakland, Montebello, West Hollywood, and Daly City. The Grocers Association is suing all of them.
The CGA argues that the “hero pay” ordinances are unconstitutional and violate the National Labor Relations Act.
Even if federal courts ultimately uphold the measures, local laws that increase a retailer’s cost of operation result in higher prices, and that hurts the consumers who need the essential goods these stores provide. Families who are in the worst financial straits will be the most injured by the increase in prices and the loss of neighborhood stores.
Fear not. Surely the local kings will share their bountiful campaign contributions with the little people.
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What the idiot politicians do not realize, if these stores stay in the area and they give substantial raises to their employees, since there are razor thin margins, the stores will have to raise prices, which means it only hurts the poor and middle class. But what does one expect, when one has communists running California.
Actually what happens when a store raises prices is that people shop where the prices are lower. This puts the store in a death spiral between a rock and a hard place: The store needs to raise prices even more to cover the additional lost profits as customers leave or the store decides to lower the prices back down to keep the customers the higher prices were chasing away. Either way, the store goes out of business. Kroger knows this and also knows that the monetary loss will be the smallest by quickly closing the stores.
Packer. I ACTUALLY DO THINK they realize that fact, and WANT these evil “white person owned stores” to shut down.. Thereby giving more of a “Food Desert feel” to the poo blacks, so they can riot some more etc..
If politicians want to run private sector businesses they should create their own business and run it, they might, although being politicians they might NOT, gain some respect for what it takes to operate a business while complying with rules made by people who have no concept of business in general or business finances other than considering them cash cows! Politicians raise taxes to cover increased costs and the people have no choice but pay because it’s the law, a business raises prices to cover increasing costs and consumers either go elsewhere of buy less. I suppose this is why Democrats are politicians exclusively while Republicans become politicians after being succcessful elsewhere.
They’d more likely use the power of their office, to forcably TAKE OVER a business, and ‘privatize it’..
The left has such disdain for our men and women in our military and law enforcement but believes a store clerk deserves hazard pay. What a joke.
YET the military upper echelon, KISSES the dems *****, like they were god/kings…
Dems think businesses should operate like they run the government, at a permanent loss!
The whole problem with this is that those areas these stores are in will become food deserts and in some areas prescription deserts. They will hurt the very people who need them most. That doesn’t even take into account the lose of jobs both at the stores but in the supply chain also. Those that voted this in will also see a lose of revenue in the public coffers. What a great idea?
Andrea Zinder, president of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 324, said grocery workers “would have never thought that their jobs would be considered life-threatening” until a year ago. “Their sacrifice deserves compensation,” she said, adding that she hoped “other cities” would also recognize the work that essential grocery workers are doing.
Here’s an idea, Ms. Zinder. If you think they need more money, refund their union dues. Put your money where your mouth is.
The only stores i’d say workers were in a ‘life threatening position’, are shoe/electronic stores around black friday!
Why are there no longer stores in the ghettos? The major culprit was shoplifting – the profits going out the doors under shopper’s clothing or in purses. Now these people have to travel to the stores or pay for deliveries and the same will happen with these stores closing due to mandated pay increases. I had thought the retailers were paying bonuses and giving perks to those “front line” employees who are considered “essential” to keep people in groceries, pharmaceuticals, hardware items, etc. – is that something that quietly ended with the Covid death rate percentage falling?