$0.14 per hour raise? When we worked at McDonalds in 1972 that was a decent raise, but that was a long long time ago.

Whatever the size of the raise, Jim, it’s still additional cost to the business that has to be able to be recovered in price. Or the business is out of business, and its employees are unemployed. And that cost won’t be just the 14 cents or 30 cents an hour or whatever the figure this dispute is finally settled at. There’ll be substantial other additional costs to the employer, and all of these, too, have to flow through and be recovered from prices.

All of us, I’m sure, wherever our sympathies lie politically, would like to see everyone be able to earn a ‘living wage’. But unfortunately simply raising wages when the costs of those raises only flow through into prices, raising them, too, and MORE, is hardly the sanest way to try to achieve the desired objective.

Why don’t Unions as a whole, and this is not an anti-union rant, take a good hard look at the way the present financial system currently operates? Instead of thinking that employers are making huge profits, and could well afford to share more of them with their employees?

This WAS definitely ONCE the case, way back when. But it’s hardly the case any more today. In most businesses, the vast majority of those that provide the very real things we need and desire, profits are in decline when taken as a percentage of sales. Those businesses continually have to ‘grow’ just to survive. And when they can’t, they’re gone ~ big and small alike ~ just like that.

Well that is half the problem these days Socredible. Business philosophy of using cheep credit to buy out competitor, consolidate operations under the guise of production efficiencies, then close smaller operations and send profit gains to off shore shareholders.

Take media for example. Once independent locally owned daily newspapers have all been consolidated under one corporate owned banner, newsrooms consolidated and even editorials now come from corporate offices. The first cuts come to investigative journalism and short term profits rise increasing share prices as the consolidators sell out and all that is left is a gutted out click bait for selling advertising. Advertisers don’t see the local connection anymore and find other more cost effective ways of reaching their market makers. It all ends in failure of the whole industry over the long term.

Where as if Free Enterprise values had been protected by the government we would likely all still have healthy locally owned media providing a true 5th estate for democracy.

It’s the same pattern in all the consolidation industries. Consolidation is the enemy of free enterprise and the middle class democracy.

True raise should be in the 1.5% range if it’s to be $.30 across the board. If payroll is say half the operating cost and the hotel has 150 rooms… It’s not a lot of money in question. At capacity it’s only a hotel room extra every second night, to say nothing of all the other services offered.

Problem with most foreign owned businesses is its just numbers. How many go to their employees to see if they have ways they can contributing to the growth of the business to increase the revenue pie for all involved… as partners rather than adversaries. How many unions approach their employers with their suggestions to increase revenues to pay for their wants… It never happens as far as I can see.

Posted on Sunday, February 7, 2016 @ 10:54 AM by socredible with a score of 0

Why don’t Unions as a whole, and this is not an anti-union rant, take a good hard look at the way the present financial system currently operates? Instead of thinking that employers are making huge profits, and could well afford to share more of them with their employees?

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This can only work if the company stays in check with inflation. Unions can’t control inflation.

If people have money they will spend it. I thought the more money we spend the better the economy will be? That’s what those evonomy guys on tv always say? So wouldn’t it make sense to pay people a decent wage?? Then you know maybe some of those hotel workers could like afford to stay in a hotel or something??

Boudicca, this is true to a certain extent. But in the economy as a whole, current labor costs which are incomes to consumers ~ the only incomes most consumers get, in fact~ are only a PART, and despite individual wages increases paid to various types of workers, overall an ever declining PART of ALL the costs that currently go to make up prices.
This is because ever more jobs are being displaced by advancing technology. Previously in the production of goods only, but now increasingly also in the provision of services. Now if ALL costs flow through into prices, but only a PART of those costs are now someone’s current income, how are those prices ever going to be paid? And they HAVE TO be paid, or the business that incurred them is out of business. What’s needed is a raise in incomes relative to prices, but it can’t be accomplished so long as the raise has to be costed into future prices. Or everyone’s just working with bigger figures, and actually going further behind when they believe they’re going ahead. Unless there’s some great virtue in everyone getting further and further into debt.

Eagleone wrote:-“Where as if Free Enterprise values had been protected by the government we would likely all still have healthy locally owned media providing a true 5th estate for democracy.

It’s the same pattern in all the consolidation industries. Consolidation is the enemy of free enterprise and the middle class democracy.”
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The ONLY way ‘Free Enterprise values’ can be protected by the government is to institute a system where business profits are NOT falling when taken as a percentage of their sales. You see business consolidation as evidence of corporate greed. More likely than not, it’s instead a failing attempt at corporate survival. Failing, because long term it still won’t work.

To institute such a system means that consumers have to be provided with incomes which augment the incomes they earn. Or replace those they can no longer earn, because of their displacement by technological advancement. The way it sits right now, all of us as consumers are charged in prices of all the things we need and want with amounts representing Capital Depreciation. This is perfectly right and proper from a cost accounting perspective. But we are never subsequently CREDITED fully for Capital Appreciation. Which is, overall, always greater.

With technological advancement and ongoing labor displacement prices should be progressively FALLING. Not Rising, as is currently more often the case. In effect, whenever we buy any product we’re not only paying for the product itself, but also the factory, or plant, etc., that made it. We pay for both, plant and product, but we only get the product. And we’re to do this out of money that can only currently come from making some OTHER Capital Goods, which also subsequently have to be paid for as their costs are included in future prices, whether we need or want them or not. It is not sustainable, and long term it can’t work.

8 wrote:-“This can only work if the company stays in check with inflation. Unions can’t control inflation. ”
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Neither can companies. And governments, when they try, often create more problems than they solve. They don’t currently use the kind of accounting needed to eliminate inflation. There’s no pressure on them to adopt such accounting because too many people still think they can somehow profit from inflation. They can’t, not really. It’s a phenomenon where everyone looses. Where they work with ever larger figures that have ever smaller purchasing power.

Whatever the size of the raise, Jim, it’s still additional cost to the business
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Well, there comes a time when your labour costs have to climb the same as your insurance costs, the same as your hydro bills, the same as the expense for your business license…..you cannot continually pad your profit margins by cheaping out on wages. At some point you have to adjust your room rates.

Will these wage increases cause financial hardship for the hotel? If so, maybe the hotel should look at the wages/salaries paid to the executives and management. Alot of these organizations that chronically complain about raising workers wages are in fact, overpaying their management.
If this is the case, then maybe they could take the workers raises out of the managements pockets.
This is just my opinion (blue collar worker that I am). Now the white collar extremists can spend their efforts to defend their 6 figure overpaid/underworked difficult lives.

“Well, there comes a time when your labour costs have to climb the same as your insurance costs, the same as your hydro bills, the same as the expense for your business license…..you cannot continually pad your profit margins by cheaping out on wages. At some point you have to adjust your room rates. ”
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There WERE two hotels where we are that faced this same issue, and the argument above you’re making. Both are no longer hotels. They both had attached full scale restaurants that served decent meals at what most people must’ve considered to be reasonable prices, since they both did a good business. The full time staffs at both unionised, and the union promised they’d get them a contract that would pay them “…what they were worth”. Within a year, both ceased to be hotels. And both restaurants closed. One later opened under lease to another operator, first a Greek family, and then an East Indian one, who opened eateries serving food respective to their original homelands. They only opened limited hours, and the serving staff were mostly from their own families, augmented occasionally with minimum wage, part-time, outside help. I doubt very much whether the original hotel owners were trying to “…pad their profit margins by cheapening out on wages”. I think they both paid more than minimum, and staff turnover was minimal. More so the case that the ‘profit margins’ went from marginal to sub-marginal, with no way to improve the situation.

Socredible@Are the names of those hotels a secret?

Talk,talk,talk–Why has the Union not served strike notice?