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This topic comprises 9 pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
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Author
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Topic: "The Living Wage" (coming soon to a Theatre Near You)
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Dave Bird
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 777
From: Perth, Ontario, Canada
Registered: Jun 2000
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posted 01-23-2018 08:13 PM
Well, there's no question Alexandre, these aren't your daddy's liberals (provincially or federally). They are veering more and more towards "social justice" as the answer to all questions. (Trudeau addressed the World ECONOMIC Forum today with an incoherent speech on gender issues, meantime his comrades seem hell-bent on destroying NAFTA, the only reason anyone still makes anything in Ontario anyway.) Where, oh where are the "left of center" liberals who understood that we have to have some economy left to pay for all this stuff?
I digress. We are changing our entire layout and will be adding some equipment to eliminate a lot of work. I'm going to "shift" some of the pre-opening prep to happen during the first movie when there's often an hour where we aren't doing much, we can prep condiments and cotton candy etc for the NEXT night during that time with a little better planning. I've shaved enough hours to come it at a similar wage cost as last year, but we'll likely tinker with the pricing while we have the opportunity. I'm also hoping to move our box office closer to our snack bar which would allow us to sell tickets to the odd latecomer without leaving a kid out there by the road for 2-3 hours after the show starts.
We'll be doing a lot more of it ourselves as a family as well.
(Still no change to the "Owner's Minimum Wage" I assume.) Some of that is because a lot of our "old-timer kids" have been with us 10 years and are moving on anyway. We'll go from having 10 or 11 on staff to only 3 or 4 "non-family". It's too bad, it really is, I'm not sure how or where high school kids will find jobs anymore. This will certainly be another "hidden cost" to those middle-class families, all pricing for goods is going up and now they'll essentially be subsidizing their kids even more (or the kids won't be doing many activities that they used to pay for themselves).
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Jack Ondracek
Film God
Posts: 2348
From: Port Orchard, WA, USA
Registered: Oct 2002
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posted 01-23-2018 10:35 PM
quote: Steve Guttag
Jack,
You seem to contradict yourself. You don't think kids are "worth" $11, let alone $15/hour yet you also say that a "living wage" is $27/hour. So paying kids $11-$15/hour is really paying them merely half of what you admit they would need to live on their own. Perhaps you are letting what you were paid as a youth back when the cost of living was substantially lower cloud what you think $11-$15/hour is worth in 2018?
Steve, if you read my post as being contradictory, it was not intended.
My point was that we have a ways to go, if ever, before minimum wage work can be considered "livable"... and I'm not convinced it should be.
BTW... when I left home and went out for my first job in the early '70s, minimum wage was a little under $3/hr, and gas was something like 35 or 40 cents a gallon. I "rebelled against the system" and bought a Honda bike when it hit .50, because there was no way I was spending $10 to fill up my old Chevy V8 gas hog. There was nobody out there, agitating for an artificially-inflated wage. Rather, the market dictated that, if you didn't offer enough to attract the person you wanted, you'd likely lose him/her to someone who did. More than once, that influenced my decisions when I was an employee, and I think I appreciated those positions more that way. For the minimum wage I started out at, I was exposed to radio announcing and engineering (before I had yet earned my licenses), and got a job as a "production assistant" at one of the local TV stations. That was basically a "gofer" job to take some of the load off the Production Department (of one). I'd never touched any kind of broadcast or television equipment before getting those jobs, and I'm probably lucky I got those minimum wage positions, because I walked in, not having a clue. On the other hand, that's where I first learned what went on in those places and turned the experience into one of two life-long occupations.
I'd like to think that most reasonable people without a political image to promote wouldn't expect an entry level employee at a theatre or fast-food restaurant to pay his rent or buy a house, run a car, pay insurance and medical expenses, feed a family and put the kids through school with only the skills required to cook fries or pour a Coke. Individually, the value of those positions don't call for that kind of return. By ratio, with the experience and skills you have, what would your job be worth today? Likely, an impossible wage to meet.
My other point is that I consider minimum wage to be a "training wage". We are a part-time, seasonal business and always will be. There are not enough hours in the day (or year) for someone to establish themselves and make any kind of "living" before the season ends, and along with it, their employment.
That makes us a good place for kids, who are usually still living with their parents, to get their employment history started. For the most part, I don't consider their level of experience and productivity to be commensurate with a wage that they could establish an independent, personal economy with. Rather, my place is a reasonably good step in that direction, which in itself has value.
For the lack of opportunity for them to make a career here, the trade-off is what they take with them when they leave. Once they get a season or two under their belts, which is about average before many of them head off to college, the military or other jobs, they're exposed to a range of social skills, food service, money management, light building maintenance, crowd control and teamwork. Most often, they leave here with more confidence and self-respect than when they started, and are better prepared to step into jobs that aren't necessarily related to the theatre business, which is our goal.
But... having been around this business as long as you have, I'm sure you get all of this already.
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Buck Wilson
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 894
From: St. Joseph MO, USA
Registered: Sep 2010
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posted 01-24-2018 07:45 PM
quote: Scott Jentsch
Likewise, the concession people have the opportunity to make people feel like they've made a good decision by being happy and cheerful and willing to engage customers and not make them feel as though they are an interruption in the lives of the workers.
It sounds as though it's very difficult to find workers that can exude that kind of friendliness and cheerful demeanor that speaks well of their employer. It's those people that not only *could* be replaced by automation, but *should* be replaced by automation.
Ideally, a movie theater would be filled with employees that want to be there, and truly strive to deliver the best moviegoing experience possible.
quote: Bobby Henderson
A business gets the kind of employees according to what they're willing to pay. If the theater is going to pay minimum wage or very close to it management probably can't expect such low wage employees to schmooze movie-goers with the level of enthusiasm as that of a sales rep who manages to make good money working on commission. Management should expect a high level of employee turnover too. That's the nature of the McDonald's level pay scale.
...
IMHO, theaters who cut their staff down to nothing will be cutting their own throats in the long run. I sure don't feel like ordering reserve seat tickets online only to have not enough staff around to enforce seating arrangements.
Bobby is right on the money here. When I first started in the biz, as part of the concession crew, pay was minimum wage, but the company was just a midsized chain that, for the most part, let theaters run themselves. I remember being that "bubbly" attendant, because the job was fun and I was allowed to do just that.
Since then, though, many things have changed. A buy-out by the largest theater chain in the country implemented the most change. Rampant micromanagement really impacted morale. No longer was there any freedom. No more employee pre-screenings of movies, no more paid food runs, employees now had weekly hour caps, couldn't trade/pick up/give away shifts freely anymore, cashiers were forced to follow a script, POS systems that were needlessly complex to 'force' suggestive/add on sales querys, quotas to meet with rewards cards AND charity donation requests for all cashiers, staff cuts and much stricter payroll "goals"(that are increasingly impossible, the theater has to beat same day last year indefinitely- someone called in last year? Sucks, you aren't going to hit target today and you'll hear about it), a company that won't invest any money into the 10 year old building that's already going to shit... the list goes on. So yeah, of course that turned the cashiers into lifeless robots. They HAD to say x number of things and by the time they do, the customer is visibly annoyed and just wants to get away from the counter. And call me overly sensitive all you want, but being forced to say all that crap and customers shooting you down while getting visibly annoyed for hours on end.... good god is it ever draining. It sucks. There's no more time for pleasantries or getting to know the customer or suggesting movies after you've signed them up for a rewards card and solicited them for a dollar tax write off. It all just seems that the company doesn't give a flying fuck about the employee, so why should the employee give a fuck about the employer? The employee struggles to "speak well of their employer" because there's not much well to speak of. Turnover is worse than ever, and as I mentioned earlier, it's harder to find employees than ever.
So yes, as Bobby said, theaters(at least big chains) are shooting themselves in the foot. It's all about money today rather than a decent future for the company. Race to the bottom. How cheap can you get?
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 01-25-2018 01:39 PM
quote: Jack Ondracek
My point was that we have a ways to go, if ever, before minimum wage work can be considered "livable"... and I'm not convinced it should be.
If minimum wage jobs should not be livable wage jobs perhaps businesses relying on minimum wage workers should not be open at all during school hours, not be open late at night and certainly not open all night long.
So many people believe that jobs at McDonald's or wherever are just for teenage kids. If I visit a fast food restaurant for lunch during the work week I'm going to see nothing but grown-ass adults at the registers and working in the kitchen. Those people working there during regular business hours are trying to earn a livable wage, and if they're making only $7.25 an hour (minimum wage in OK) they'll have to get one or more additional shit-pay jobs to make up the difference. And then the taxpayers get to provide food stamps and other assistance to make up for how these folk's ends are not meeting.
Lots of movie theaters have matinee shows during the work week while school is still in session. The 12-plex in our mall has its first Monday-Friday shows at 11:00am and the first Monday-Friday shows at the Patriot 13 theater begin at 1:00pm. They need adult employees for those shifts. Our old former Carmike 8-plex is the only one whose early shows begin late enough in the afternoon for student staffers to work.
When I was a kid I remember how just about every retail and service store shut only a couple or so hours after sunset. Very few were open all night. I remember one long distance road trip where my dad was driving through much of the night. We were running low on fuel, but having a hell of a time trying to find a gas station that was still open. Today that's not a problem. There's lots of fast food restaurants, convenience stores and other places (like Walmart) open all night long. The adults working those graveyard shifts are at higher risk of attack by armed robbers, rapists and other criminals. And they're subject to all sorts of odd human behavior that can happen late at night (often drug/alcohol fueled). Some of these workers deserve hazard pay; instead they're getting $7.25 an hour or not much above it.
Over the long term this business model of hiring "kids" on the cheap is going to fall apart if the United States continues its steep, price-gouging trends in housing, health care, education, transportation and more. There won't be enough "kids" to hire. Too many people of child-bearing age are being priced out of parenthood. Few of us seem to be concerned with that or even be concerned about anyone other than ourselves. I see it all the time in my work -customers wanting free design work, not wanting to pay the labor it takes to install a sign. They're always looking for an angle to save themselves money, even if they know it would make us lose money. They don't care.
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Dave Bird
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 777
From: Perth, Ontario, Canada
Registered: Jun 2000
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posted 01-25-2018 02:33 PM
quote: Bobby Henderson
Few of us seem to be concerned with that or even be concerned about anyone other than ourselves. I see it all the time in my work -customers wanting free design work, not wanting to pay the labor it takes to install a sign. They're always looking for an angle to save themselves money, even if they know it would make us lose money. They don't care.
I think you've identified precisely what has to account for at least 50% of the problem. My family lived in a small town. We owned a business that the other people supported and we hired full-time "living wage" (for the area, NOT what far-off politicians said it was) staff, with benefits. We could buy just about whatever we needed in a town of 1,400 from other families who employed other full-time staff. But that wasn't just in small-towns, most of the businesses in the city were the same way. Likely this is how goods and services changed hands for hundreds of years, maybe more. I don't believe any of these families all of a sudden fired their full-timers. We sure didn't, and we weren't open most nights and were the last ones to open Sundays.
The consumer chose cheap a long time ago now, the full-timers retired and were replaced by the only staff anyone could afford and still compete on price (many stores just simply went out of business) and now here we are. But unless people are going to suddenly stop shopping at Wal-Mart (or worse, Amazon), unskilled retail labor is never going to support a family again, ever, whether the minimum wage is $15, 20 or 50 "nominal" dollars.
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 01-25-2018 09:00 PM
quote: Dave Bird
The consumer chose cheap a long time ago now, the full-timers retired and were replaced by the only staff anyone could afford and still compete on price (many stores just simply went out of business) and now here we are. But unless people are going to suddenly stop shopping at Wal-Mart (or worse, Amazon), unskilled retail labor is never going to support a family again, ever, whether the minimum wage is $15, 20 or 50 "nominal" dollars.
I think a great deal of the country is stuck in a negative feedback loop on this. It's race to the bottom economics. Lots of "little people" have no choice but to shop at Walmart or places selling food and other necessities for even less. Here in Lawton we have two Walmart Supercenters and one Walmart Neighborhood Market store, but I swear it seems like there are ten times as many dollar stores. Those things are all over the damned place. Some of the lower income and minority residents here trade a lot of jokes and dark humor about having to shop at the dollar stores.
Big business and globalization is forcing much of this. It's not enough for a publicly traded company to be profitable; the company has to be even more profitable from one quarter to the next. And the easiest way to increase profit is by carving it out of payroll. The Dow Jones may be hitting new record highs, but it is something detached from the economy on "main street" and doesn't say a damned thing about the middle class squeeze or the misery index ratcheting up on the earners at the bottom and near the bottom of the income scale. Wage stagnation is a real problem. There may be claims that wages are now finally rising, but it's a statistic seen through rose colored glasses. The number is going to look good when it averages in the enormous income gains of the top 10% of the income bracket. The wage gains of little people aren't keeping up with the pace of inflation -counting things like food and fuel, which aren't factored in to the government's inflation figures.
Some of what's happening on Wall Street and the rest of our economy feels morbidly similar to the 2005-2006 time frame before America's housing industry and much of the global economy went to hell.
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 01-26-2018 11:44 AM
The baby bust I keep mentioning will be that "big change" if our nation keeps doing what it's doing long enough. The United States is already a few years into this emerging baby bust cycle, and if the trend continues on its current trajectory it will take less than a decade for it to start yielding serious consequences. What happens to a school district if its enrollment is cut in half?
Any industries built around children will be the first to feel the impact. Single people and couples without kids don't need big McMansion homes and big vehicles. They don't have to buy toys, school supplies, pay for day care, pediatric health care, etc. Minimalist living is a growing trend among younger adults. Many young adults are choosing to rent rather than buy homes.
If fertility decline becomes a long term thing, spanning decades like it has in Japan, it will wreak havoc on the government's ability to fund Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other social safety net programs. The government needs lots of young, working age adults paying taxes to keep those programs solvent. I am pretty worried about that. By the time I am eligible to start drawing Social Security the program may no longer exist. All the money I've been paying into it would be gone.
Our military needs a steady supply of young adult recruits. And those recruits most often come from middle income and lower income families -people who are finding it ever more difficult to afford having children or just outright choosing not to have kids in favor of a less complicated, more affordable life. Our nation's security also depends greatly on it being a leader in technology and innovation. But our nation recently dropped out of the top 10 list of world's most innovative countries. This news can't be too surprising since the US already has to import many thousands of doctors, scientists and engineers.
I think it's odd how the press and some policy makers talk about issues like "income inequality." They appear to be looking at issues like this in an isolated way and only in the present tense. They're not looking at the bigger picture, macro-economic view and its push-pull effects over time. Some demographers are already aware of this issue, but I think an American Baby Bust is going to catch everyone else by surprise.
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Harold Hallikainen
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 906
From: Denver, CO, USA
Registered: Aug 2009
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posted 01-26-2018 12:33 PM
As usual here, interesting discussion. On cheap imports, I am reminded of the film Outsourced ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0425326/ ). Though the film will not win a lot of awards (though IMDB shows 5 awards), there's an interesting scene where a customer calls the call center and complains that the product they want to buy was not made in the USA. The person taking the call says that they DO have a similar product, made in the USA, and gives them the price. The customer goes for the imported product. Things are extremely price driven right now. Today, the president called for free FAIR trade. This seems difficult to accomplish. One idea I proposed (to little favorable response) is to apply an import tariff on all imports that would yield half the trade deficit for the previous year. The idea is to not to try to judge whether a country is acting "unfairly" or not, but to, instead, say we want to reduce our borrowing of money through the trade deficit.
On "baby bust," I have seen a lot of stuff over the years on "the earth's carrying capacity," but little on "the optimum human population." It SEEMS there would be an optimum population that ensures species survival and results in the highest overall standard of living. I remember some law from calculus about a maximum existing within an interval, but don't remember what it's called. Anyway, it SEEMS we should be working towards whatever that optimum population is. However, as others have pointed out, the transition needs to be gradual due to likely imbalance between the number of producers and consumers. It is interesting that Congress can't seem to get to Social Security and that the longer they wait, the more drastic the solution will have to be.
As previously mentioned, displacement of workers by automation is the subject of the book "Player Piano" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Player_Piano_(novel) ). An interesting film based on the writings of Kurt Vonnegut is "Between Time and Timbuktu" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Between_Time_and_Timbuktu ). Among the interesting themes in this movie are a character wins a trip to (as I recall) a "space-time warp" by winning a Tang jingle contest. Relevant to this thread is a theme where everyone is given a handicap to make them all equal. Intelligent people have headphones with sounds to distract them. Ballet dancers dance with sandbags to bring them down to the common talent level.
We live in interesting times (as have all those before us).
Harold
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Mike Blakesley
Film God
Posts: 12767
From: Forsyth, Montana
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 01-26-2018 01:15 PM
quote: Buck Wilson
There's a reason everyone started going cheap... they had to. Their pay wasn't keeping up. They couldn't spend like they wanted to.
There's another angle -- the notion that everybody deserves to have everything. The last sentence in the above quote says it all. It's just a societal change.
I remember when color TV was a newfangled thing. According to wikipedia, it was 20 years after color TV was widely available in the U.S. before color sets outsold B&W ones. But when flat screens came out, it was far less than a decade when it seemed like almost every screen in the land was replaced with a flat one, even though the old tube might have been working fine.
Financial situations don't seem to matter when it comes to what's considered a "necessity" today. Most people have a large-screen TV with satellite dish (and a Netflix subscription), smartphones for the whole family, and so on. People going into massive debt at Christmastime is a common story. Concerts with tickets priced at over $100 each are instant sellouts, with "front row" seats going for way over the regular price.
My mom and dad NEVER had a brand-new car in their whole lives. These days some people buy brand-new cars for their kids for high school graduation.
If a typical person commits to foregoing some of the expensive luxuries and makes "I can't afford that" part of their actual vocabulary, maybe they wouldn't have to go cheap in their shopping.
It seems to me the biggest difference between "now" and "then" is that today, people assume they deserve these luxuries in their lives, whereas "then," people would work hard to earn them - or they would just do without. Cripes, our local high school can't even field a set of cheerleaders for our sports teams this year....not enough students want to put in the effort.
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 01-26-2018 01:42 PM
quote: Harold Hallikainen
On "baby bust," I have seen a lot of stuff over the years on "the earth's carrying capacity," but little on "the optimum human population." It SEEMS there would be an optimum population that ensures species survival and results in the highest overall standard of living. I remember some law from calculus about a maximum existing within an interval, but don't remember what it's called. Anyway, it SEEMS we should be working towards whatever that optimum population is.
Some environmentalists like the idea of a baby bust. Fewer people would mean less impact to the environment, right? The problem is this decline in fertility is happening too fast, creating a serious imbalance between generational age groups. Under long term, optimal economic conditions any developed or developing nation would reach the demographic transition, achieving a stable population growth rate, just enough people being born to replace those who die and even numbers of people spread across all age groups.
A disproportionately large retired population and smaller working age population is financially unsustainable. In the US our already large elderly population is swelling each year as Baby Boomers reach retirement age. The imbalance, expense and increasing scarcity of resources can lead to political unrest & upheaval, maybe even war. That wouldn't be good for the enviroment. A shrinking population might mean fewer scientists, biologists, zoologists, geologists, etc. That wouldn't be good for the environment either.
Japan has been suffering long term consequences from its baby bust. Its shrinking work force and rapidly aging population has created tremendous budget problems for its government. Japan has the world's highest national debt to GDP ratio; its debt is 2.2 times larger than its GDP. The United States is in 8th place with a debt to GDP ratio of 106%. Japan's death rate is significantly higher than its birth rate. Many thousands of elderly people in Japan are dying "lonely deaths," not being discovered until someone notices the smell coming from their apartments. Because these people have few, if any visitors their bodies are sometimes not discovered for weeks or even years.
![[Eek!]](eek.gif)
quote: Harold Hallikainen
Things are extremely price driven right now. Today, the president called for free FAIR trade. This seems difficult to accomplish. One idea I proposed (to little favorable response) is to apply an import tariff on all imports that would yield half the trade deficit for the previous year. The idea is to not to try to judge whether a country is acting "unfairly" or not, but to, instead, say we want to reduce our borrowing of money through the trade deficit.
I don't think protectionist rhetoric is going to get very far. Investors don't like it. Lots of American companies do most or all of their manufacturing work overseas and import their products back to American soil. I don't see that changing. If anything companies like Apple might start opening factories in places like Africa to avoid labor cost increases occurring in China and other Asian nations.
quote: Mike Blakesley
I remember when color TV was a newfangled thing. According to wikipedia, it was 20 years after color TV was widely available in the U.S. before color sets outsold B&W ones. But when flat screens came out, it was far less than a decade when it seemed like almost every screen in the land was replaced with a flat one, even though the old tube might have been working fine.
When you factor inflation TV sets these days are significantly cheaper than the old CRT color TV sets and big screen projection TVs from 30 years ago. Hell, the 65" TV in living room cost a lot less than the 52" HDTV I had (that was stolen in a burglary).
Regarding people buying new cars all the time, that's not a luxury enjoyed by everyone. I'm driving a 16 year old pickup that I bought new in 2002. I'm dreading having to buy a different vehicle; when I do I'll probably get something used. New car prices today are absolutely insane.
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 01-26-2018 04:51 PM
I paid $23,000 for my pickup brand new in 2002 (Chevy Silverado LS-1500, Vortec 5300 V8 engine, regular cab, stepside, short bed). The same kind of pickup truck now costs over $20,000 more. Hell, a freaking Chevy Colorado small pickup with a V6 engine is running over $40,000. One of my friends recently bought a used 2013 Chevy Silverado Z71 with 60,000 miles on it, for $30,000. Another guy I know who lives in Stillwater just bought a similar truck brand new and paid nearly $70,000 for that truck. Thankfully he's making good money doing IT work for the university.
Today $20,000 would get you into a base model Honda Civic or a Kia Soul with some extras. My girlfriend drives a Nissan Altima with a V6 engine in it. She paid nearly $30,000 for that seemingly ordinary sedan -and that was with some discounts applied.
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