Figment2005
Well-Known Member
Pretty much. For most roles now full time is a minimum of 32 hours.
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Workers want pay boost
- Thread starter Figaro928
- Start date
Club34
Well-Known Member
If pay were based on productivity of the current American workforce the minimum wage would be approximately $18/hour. We can continue to starve out a large portion of our society if you like, but I don't think it will fare well for greater good. I know the greater good is a dirty word these days but if you're a champion of thunderdome-type ideals when it comes to society you are likely one of the ones making out well. Now I realize there are many who are down on their luck primarily due to their own, likely poor, choices but there are way too many people who have done things the right way and are still behind the curve. This is a new and growing trend. But again, we can ignore this trajectory of stagnant salaries over the past 40 years [you cannot tell me this phenomenon is simply supply/demand when the top is making all the rules] or take steps to make sure people can support themselves with some effort. One way or another we will all pay a bill on this. The question is do you want to pay big or pay small?
CRO-Magnum
Active Member
We need to make one tweak and then let the market work it out. We need to make it illegal (collusion) for any company to share or allow to be shared compensation information with other companies. Why? What many don't know is there is a $1B+ business in compensation management. Firms collect compensation data and report it back to their subscribers so companies can manage compensation, and there is only one direction in which they want compensation to go: down. This collusion has had a dramatic impact on wages and thwarts the market mechanism of setting compensation based on the scarcity of skills required. If it's illegal for companies to share what they're willing to pay for a raw material (oil, milk, wheat, lumber, etc.), and it's illegal for companies to share what they charge for their finished products, both over concerns of collusion as proven time and time again, why should they be allowed to share compensation information? Make them use the same mechanism to determine a reasonable wage as they do the cost of raw materials and product/service prices. And don't try to argue market efficiency because it doesn't apply.
TubaGeek
God bless the "Ignore" button.
If you look, historically, at minimum wage vs inflation, you'll find that one is climbing much faster than the other. I'm not a 99% protester who drinks Starbucks while sitting on the street yelling for a better life, I'm working more than 40 hours a week trying to climb a ladder so I can do more than scrape by. So are most CMs.
And if you're happy paying CMs minimum wage, oh my lord, I had better never hear you even START to complain about the service you receive from a frontline employee.
McDonalds should not have better service than WDW. WDW should have the best frontline service of all other companies.
It basically boils down to this. If there is a sufficient size work force that will do a job for "X" then a business isn't going to pay "X + 1" the majority of the time.
Likewise, if there is a sufficient customer base that will pay "X" for a product, then a business has no reason to charge "X-1" for said product.
If change is to be affected it has to come from the workforce or customer base.
Likewise, if there is a sufficient customer base that will pay "X" for a product, then a business has no reason to charge "X-1" for said product.
If change is to be affected it has to come from the workforce or customer base.
jaklgreen
Well-Known Member
The wage scale is off. 20 years ago when I was young and single I worked as a grocery store clerk/cashier making $8/hour. I was able to rent a nice 1 bdrm apartment for $295/month and things like groceries, cars, and gas where much much cheaper so I could live alone. Now, 20 years later the clerks are still getting $8/hour but the cost of living has at least doubled. That same 1 bdrm apartment that I lived in is not only 20 years older but also now goes for $610/month. Not to mention food and gas prices. There needs to be more of a balance between cost of living and minimum wages. It is an unlivable wage and today's young people should be able to do what we did, work and live and be able to support themselves while going to school (even part time school).
slappy magoo
Well-Known Member
If you're in your early 20s, no kids, maybe you don't mind sharing an apartment with 3 or more people and taking advantage of those awesome discounts.
If you're a working single mom, those discounts are a poor substitute for nutritious meals, a roof over your head in a safe neighborhood with a decent school system, or savings for your kids' college.
I know, I know, no one says you have to work there and it's very easy to just up and quit one job and go look for another one. Which is why nobody who is currently unemployed has been so for years. Oh, wait, chronic unemployment is such a thing some politicians are suggesting incentives to businesses to hire people who've been out of work longer than 1 or 2 years, especially if those unemployed are also veterans.
roj2323
Well-Known Member
It's an understandable request but it is also a double edged sword. For some the idea is a consistent 40 hours equals a guaranteed pay check of $XX per week with additional hours being overtime (=good). For others who like to take a day off once in a while this would make it nearly impossible. Additionally from disney's perspective this makes scheduling more difficult as the parks are open longer than 8hrs a day and overlapping labor isn't always necessary. Ultimately this change would lead to changes for better and worse property wide and as we all know "change is scary". The more interesting aspect of this would be part timers and how disney currently holds them under the hours threshold for Insurance yet with changes to the full timers schedules changes will also come to part timers schedules.
It should be interesting.
Personally I would prefer the minimum wage increase over the Minimum hours increase, But i'm part time and don't depend on the income to pay bills.
xdan0920
Think for yourselfer
If you don't like it quit. Just pull yourself up by your bootstraps, and apply for a job with 3 openings and 300 applicants. I am sure those other 297 will get great jobs too. And if you don't get it, do it again, and again, and again. And in the meantime, just, I dunno, make money appear from thin air.
I fall on both sides of this argument. I think a forced min wage hike is counter productive. Some jobs just don't deserve $10 per hour.
Disney should probably take a page out of Costcos book though. Just cause min wage is $8 doesn't mean a place like WDW should be paying that. Guest facing CMs charged with providing a magical experience for guests paying in the thousands for that experience, should be of a higher quality and should be paid as such.
maxairmike
Well-Known Member
Or you can continue working while you apply, continuing to scrape by and combine it with the waiting and rejection multiplied by the number of jobs you apply for. That sounds like a sure-fire way to a happy existence (also, been there, done that). Your financial condition doesn't improve, and your mental condition deteriorates. Sounds like a winning combo to me.
slappy magoo
Well-Known Member
Well that's a sort of circuitous logic. We demand people look for work if they're out of work. No one gets a free lunch! Any work is good work! Why should my taxes pay for your laziness? But if the job they can get doesn't pay them enough money to live on? Hey, find another job! Get TWO jobs! No one said you HAD to work at that low-paying job! Why should my taxes go to pay for your inability to stretch a buck? So you get two jobs, and you're never home. Hey! Take care of your kids! They're falling behind in school and causing rouble in the neighborhood like they're being raised by animals, and if you don't straighten them out, MY taxes are going to pay for their prison sentences! And then you're so stressed out that you never get a day off and you're so worried about kids and you eat so poorly because crap food is what you can afford, you have a heart attack or develop some other life threatening illness. Hey, you should have taken better care of yourself. Why should MY taxes pay to subsidize your health insurance? Then your health is so bad, you lose your job. Hey! No one gets a free lunch! any work is god work! Why should MY taxes pay for your laziness?
You're essentially argruing against the dignity of The Worker, the notion that someone willing to work a full time job should be allowed to work in poverty if the employer won't pay them a livable wage and if The Worker agrees to it, it's his or her fault (see rant above)
All research into raising the minimum wage proves contrary to your "simple business logic." If it did, we'd have never raised the minimum wage from the time it was created. Economists have studied states that raised the minimum wage higher than the federal M.W and compared them to nearby communities in states that haven't (e.g. the eastern-most communities in one state close to the western-most communities in another state with comparable demographics) and they've found the increase in the minimum wage does nothing to increase unemployment in the state that increased the wage, and a decrease in federal aid like SNAP. If you were to increase the minimum wage to say $20-25 an hour (as doomsayers keep rhetorically suggesting) then you probably would. Which is probably why no one is suggesting that (except rhetorical doomsayers).
Again, we're talking about paying people enough to live on without government assistance, not enough to retire on in 3 years. If workers are paid so low they can't survive, they get federal assistance that you and I pay for. If they get a livable wage, then by and large who pays for that increase are people who use the business or service those workers help provide or produce. Which might not be you.
They'd lose repeat business, so you can bet that increase in salary will not prevent them from building additional attractions to the parks. They'll just add it to the ticket increase they tend to do at least once a year anyway. If WDW had 60,000 employees and they all got an extra 6 bucks an hour and averaged 40 hours a week, that'd be nearly an additional 750 million dollars a year. Roughly 14 million people visit the parks each year. If they just added that 750 to ticket prices, your average ticket would be an extra $53.48. But of course, they could add it incrementally across all manners of service, food, souvenirs, lodging, mini-golf, spa treatments. They could also choose, unlikely as it is, to only pass some of those cost to their consumers, pass a little of it on to their profit margin, then ride the public relations train with a "we care more about people than profits" shpiel that makes consumers have the warm and fuzzies about Disney and makes them think about going back to the parks as a way of "giving back" to a multibillion dollar corporation.
Animaniac93-98
Well-Known Member
Who needs real service when you can just comp a guest later for whatever mistakes you or your superiors made and have a whole stock of cloying catch phrases to say ("Have a magical day!")?
Also, @hakunamatata, dat avatar
slappy magoo
Well-Known Member
That's where you and I disagree. If you're willing to show up at a job and do the job and work 40-50 hours a week at the job, you shouldn't then have to go apply for assistance during your lunch break. You should be able to, at the very very least, survive. That's what the minimum wage was designed to be, the bare-bones livable wage so people didn't live in poverty. If a business' long-term plan for profit and growth involves paying their workers so little they have to be subsidized by other taxpayers to live, they're doing capitalism wrong.
rael ramone
Well-Known Member
I don't think anything that isn't 'free' to the CM is attainable for purchase w/o $$$ help from the parents. A burger & drink at Cosmic Rays, even if the discount was 50%, is probably not in the budget...
To those who are 'pro management':
Think of all that cast members do, both for your enjoyment of the resort as well as your personal safety (and that of our families). Check you in. Take your bags. Valet park your car. Clean your room (and the bathrooms you use in the park). Cook your food (both QS and TS). Hug your kids in costume. Operate the rides you go on. And provide security.
Do we want those people to be paid as little as possible? The one place the savings is *certainly* not going to go is into our pocket.
Yep. One of the Disney villains that gets no loveAlso, @hakunamatata, dat avatar
Those benefits are utterly USELESS
You really think you can afford to buy merchandises or get on a cruise when you make $8 an hour, let alone go on vacation?
And how about C) reduced profits but still a very profitable business with better better performing employes with a higher morale thus a lower turnaround.
WDWDad13
Well-Known Member
what's your point? inflation will happen regardless....some people will get a raise or make more, some won't... just because inflation rises doesn't mean employees should automatically receive more in their paycheck and companies should be "required" to pay them more...if that happened we're gonna have a lot more problems than complaining about MM+
maxairmike
Well-Known Member
You are absolutely right, but unfortunately that's not how things would work in the larger picture with the way corporations react and pursue profits these days. It may not be immediate, and the wage increase may be great for those folks for a few years, but you can be sure that everything will price adjust as quickly as they think they can push it. The increase would mean more money flowing, but we all know companies don't really like to let it flow freely, they like to capture it and direct it to the profit line and C-level compensation. It may work on the local scale, and maybe even state scale, where companies may be weary of price increases in a certain region in our current online shopping world where the only real reason you need to visit a store is for groceries (and in some large cities, that isn't even a necessity), but put it on a national scale, and now they have an "excuse" to raise the price level all together.
xdan0920
Think for yourselfer
Maybe a blanket minimum wage isn't the answer. I'm not an economist, so I don't know what the answer is. But I'm fairly sure paying 17 year old part time cart gatherers at the supermarket $10 per hour isn't it.
I think we actually agree though. Someone busting their hump 40-50 hours per week should not be making total crap money.