Get used to it, this is gonna be more and more common.
One of the many tricks. In AT&T before the split-up they published the org chart upside down to out the customer on top - which led a guy in my group to note that the latest fired exec got promoted to customer.
QFT. In the Times article about WalMart’s and retail in general disappointing earnings, they figured it must all be the tax increase - never mentioning how they screw their employees and set a ceiling on wages in general.
I don’t think it starts at the top though. Yes, top execs want everything they can get.
But the buyers are squeezing down profit margins to nothing by demanding instant pricematching and so on.
People get pissed off when you tell them you can’t price match with Amazon.com.
The more people scrimp on pennies, the less slack they leave for marginal employees like minimum wage mall kids.
And that lack of work experience is going to hurt today’s kids as they go forward in life, compounding badly.
I’ve seen companies doing this since the 80s when I first joined the job market. Back then, it was to prevent having to give people full-benefits packages. I worked one part-time job where they had attendance problems and was asked to work a lot of extra hours. At the beginning of September my first year, the boss called me in and said I was restricted to just my scheduled hours, as my average hours/week were closing in on full-time (over 35) for the year and they’d have to retro-actively give me full bennies if that happened. The hilarious thing was - I knew it was a part-time job! I was helping them, but didn’t mind a bit getting to go home on time or take all my days off.
A couple years later, they went whole hog and made everyone non-mgmt in the unit part-time.
geez…
Why blame the executives? Why not blame yourself?
The problem is what you want from a company and what you want for the world.
You want the lowest prices. (i.e. the brick-and-mortar store should somehow magically be able to match the price you saw on Amazon.)
But you also want the company to pay good wages.
Now do you see the disconnect?
So do the executives.
This is nothing new. Target was that way when I worked there in the early 1980s.
But isn’t that how capitalism should work? Both consumer and producer act in their own self-interest. If someone else offers a cheaper/better product, your business goes under. You demote employees to cover the cost. Survival of the fittest and all that.
Should work, yes. But in the Electronic Age it’s all happening at the speed of light and we aren’t prepared for it as an economy.
The theoretical ideal of pure capitalism will be offset by the starving masses of rioters seizing control.
I think we’ve missed something so far. There are about 11 bazillion clothing stores out there, and most of them sell pretty much the same stuff. If you go to your local mall, you can probably find at least a half-dozen stores exactly like Forever 21.
Maybe Forever 21 was cool a few years ago, but if the the shine has faded, now they’re just another generic, interchangeable place to buy t-shirts and jeans.
An even bigger problem is that the jobs that used to go to minimum wage mall kids are now being taken by adults with families who can’t get anything else. So the kids don’t have any job record at all.
Then everyone does it an no one in your low income target market has any money to buy your stuff, and you go under anyway. Ain’t life grand?
The solution is for government to force higher wages and thus more money, so that the playing field is level, and not every company has to be as with it as Costco. Prices go up, sure, but low income people can afford them better and higher income people can also without feeling much pain.
The retailer I work for is making pretty much the same move. Mainly it’s due to the ACA.
Except that it’s been happening nationally and across industries since long before the ACA.
Disagree. I don’t know the solution, but that ain’t it. (imho)
Yeah, but that’s because smaller companies didn’t need to use this strategy to short employees on benefits. The ACA has made the practice spread.