Comments

1
But Seattle didn't raise the minimum wage to $15. It will have raised the minimum wage to $15 in THREE YEARS, and for not even close to all workers. This is a difficult celebration because the THREE YEAR phase in for big businesses remains absolutely ridiculous.
2
True @1
3
Can’t wait until the party ends and everyone realizes that all this will do is eliminate all the jobs that pay less than $15 an hour now as businesses re-design their business models to make more efficient use of higher paid more skilled workers in lieu of lower paid, less skilled workers.

Gone will be dishwashers as restaurants buy more china, let it stack up, and have kitchen staff wash it during slow periods.

And why wouldn’t every hotel in town expect its housekeeping staff to have fluent English at those prices. I expect to see whiter, more educated, housekeepers in Seattle hotels than in any other city in the country. Same with janitorial and grounds keeping staffs.

Also, brace yourself for a huge push to automate what few warehouses remain in Seattle and move what few manufacturing jobs remain out of Seattle.

Fact is, by saying you can’t pay less than $15 an hour, you’re actually saying the minimum skill set to have a job in Seattle is going to go up, and those without those skills will not have jobs.

Employers will absolutely expect a different level of performance from a $15 person than they do today from an $11 person, and $11 people will have no place in this city anymore.
4
"It all sounds like a victory dance, not the beginning of a ballot campaign." - Anna Minard

To be honest I read these signals in exactly the opposite manner.
5
This is why I dislike Swant she is an extremist, you dpn't see Mike O Brien doing this. She needs to be replaced by a liberal Dem in 2015.
6
At $30k a year, there are a lot of more qualified people who will start competing for what were shit jobs at $20k a year. People who were only qualified for those shit jobs, and willing to take them at $20k a year, won’t be able to compete for them at $30k a year and will be soundly screwed out of the Seattle job market.

Oh well!
7
@3,6
I think you're assuming that owners have unlimited capital and inventiveness to change their business model and practices so quickly. Moving to an automated warehouse costs a ton of money up front, and might save you money long term, and thats likely as true today as it will be after $15.
8
@7 Seems likely like at least some businesses will be going "Well Bill and Ted, you were both getting 9 an hour, but now you're fired Ted, and you make 15 Bill. Work hard or I'll fire your ass and get someone who does."

I really don't think such a scenario is unlikely.
9
@7
But they have a much more compelling reason to do so at $15 than now (and it looks like 3 years to do it).

All the business owners I know (who have minimum wage people on the books) are looking at how to eliminate those jobs or change them to make them worth the cost (and in doing so change the skills required to do them).

Did everyone think that business’ would just happily pay more money for the same services and not expect (demand) more for more money?
10
@8 said it better.
11
@8
If Bill could do both his and Ted's work for $15, any purely economical manager would have fired Bill a long time ago. The lowest wages arent where they are because that is what the skills demand, and adequately represent what the worker brings to the company. Wages are where they are because the poor folks have never had the power to negotiate.

@9 That's what businesses do all the time. ALL the time. "How do I get more out productivity out of my workforce? Could we get leaner?" Is basically what a manager does. That's not new, and its never going to change, and it doesn't have to.

Real question. How much do you think unemployment will increase due to this? Will KingCo will stop having the lowest unemployment in the state?
12
Hooray?
13
The increased spending by those making more money will lead to more jobs, more than offsetting the few that are lost for businesses that cut back.
14
@8 That assumes that Bill can pick up Ted's slack. I find it likelier that businesses have already maximized their labor efficiency and they can't lay off any more people without the business suffering.
15
If you fire Bill for Ted that assumes Ted can work all the hours Bill did AND has comparable productivity as both. Highly unlikely. It's not just about the raw bottom line of payroll.
16
a signature collector at folklife pretty much conceded that a ballot initiative would be outspent by business association $$$$, the voter initiative process only works for knee jerk populism like Tim Eyeman tax cuts or monorail.
17
@3 seems to ignore that mechanization of dishwasher work has been going on for a long time
18
@11/14/15

Depends. Are they both cooks? Can Ted work his ass off and still get the food out in a somewhat longer time, but still get the job done? You can come up with a number of similar circumstances in different industries I'm sure. Still doesn't seem unlikely to me.
19
It would be difficult to mechanize or robotize ordering hamburgers at McDonald's, or any small lunch shop. You need to order from an actual person, and another actual person has to put them on the grill, or in the microwave.

Other municipalities have instituted what they call living wages (sometimes lower, sometimes higher than Seattle's start-out wage will be), and somehow civilization hasn't caved in, nor have all small businesses left those cities. But that will be proven in time.
20
@10 & 18 - you guys are neck-deep in hypothetical scenarios that made a whole lot of assumptions about the way all businesses are currently run in Seattle.

Businesses large and small are not a monolithic bloc. Some will have an easier time than others, some will succeed and some will fail, some are going to succeed or fail regardless of what the minimum wage is set at. I would guess the more disparate impact will be along the lines of which businesses will benefit more from increased consumer spending power (due to a higher wage floor).

At any rate, the little guys have years to figure this out and find a way to make it work, which is why I support the council bill over the other options, including "do nothing". It is, like most successful political compromises, the "safest" option.
21
@19

Didn't ecoli in the box have a self-order computer kiosk thing at some of their locations?

@20

Yeah, I'm not saying it will be like that everywhere, or that we'll see 50% job losses. I am expecting something on the order of a 10% job loss, with some shift in the remaining 90 to workers willing and able to meet higher expectations.

The training wage amendment sucks ass. MW jobs are typically very high turnover, and leaving one MW job for another for whatever reason resets the clock even in jobs where you already know how to do it - running the deep frier is pretty much the same everywhere IIRC.
22
Somebody from $15Now needs to tell us whether the ballot is still going forward. $15inaDecade is not $15Now.
23
Some here seem to believe that business owners aren't human. I have more and less productive workers. I pay my more productive workers more but I don't fire my less productive employees. Why, because I can earn a paycheck and have them work - win-win. And before you go all "poverty wages" on me, the folks I'm talking about aren't on assistance or poor. But, this city is going to put my expenses through the roof, so if I still want to earn a paycheck and keep my productive employees rewarded I need to cut loose the less productive.

@20 - true, restaurants can raise their prices, but those who we will see more closures of will include book stores, retail, those without the ability to increase.

We'll likely see a significant decrease in service as well. Notice all those phones in Fred Meyer and Target so you can call someone to get help?

@21 - I don't understand the big concern with training wage? That gives someone a foot in the door to prove themselves. It is a huge risk for a business to hire someone. It isn't just the wage. The problem again is a one size fits all. Does McDonald's need a training wage? No, training takes about 1 hours. For my business we are training for three months and it really is hard to tell who will do well and who won't.
24
@13 "Some here seem to believe that business owners aren't human"

No, we see shitheads like Meinert and "I'm Cool" as not human. Can you do better to represent business owners?

"And before you go all "poverty wages" on me, the folks I'm talking about aren't on assistance or poor."

Well, we'd have to take your word on that, wouldn't we? That is, unless you're willing to give us some detail as to their wages.

As for the rest of your predictions, I could have seen them coming to fruition if we have a large jump in the mw immediately. But, seeing as this is being implemented OVER A DECADE, I don't believe any of those things are going to happen on any catastrophic level.
25
Shitnuggets, meant 23
26
@24
Not every person in business has to open their books on the internet to express an opinion. "ahumanbeing" wasn't using his books as evidence that a rise in the Min Wage will destroy Seattle, so as far as Im concerned, their business is their business. I get how you feel, but he's not saying that "he KNOWS", hes just saying "I bet".
27
@26 They should at least tell us what they're making. But nobody wants to do that.
28
@26

Then there is no way we can actually see if his statements (that his workers aren't poor) are true and their entire point is null and void.

Please wait...

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