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How Many Grocery Stores Will Be Leaving Seattle?
The Seattle City Council is about to pass “hazard pay” legislation, mandating an additional $4-per-hour for grocery store workers, lasting “for the duration of the Covid-19 pandemic.” The main sponsor of said legislation is, of course, the grocery-store workers union.
Prediction 1: Grocery store workers will lose hours, and/or lose their jobs entirely if their employers are forced to pay them an additional $4-per-hour on top of their already-inflated Seattle-mandated wages.
Prediction 2: Small grocery stores will leave Seattle for the suburbs, given that grocery stores already operate on razor-thin margins.
Prediction 3: The “Covid-19 Pandemic” will never end.
What do you think?
Published in Economics
you can also, quite easily, just overlook something in your shopping cart – especially something underneath (‘course, personed or unpersoned, this can happen). Trust me on this one.
“Physics bats last.”
and:
“People and their chimpanzee hierarchies will always get in the way of sound technical decisions. Politics trumps physics, usually.
But Nature bats last, to mix metaphors. We can fool ourselves, but not Her.”
–Gregory Benford, musing on the causes of the 1999 failure of the Mars Climate Orbiter
It is in NY.
That’s why I mentioned the “beep”
You forgot to mention that in about 12 months they will declare that the city is now a food “desert” and seek some government solution to the crisis
I recognize this. I suggest holding the bag above the bagging shelf, insert the first item into the bag and put both on the shelf. The shelf weigher cannot differentiate the weight difference of the bag once the first item is placed with bag.
The good news is all those who become unemployed d/t the increases in min wage will become eligible for unemployment benefits and we all know how well run that program is:
https://www.aei.org/poverty-studies/unemployment-fraud-in-california-may-reach-27-percent/
additionally, the Biden administration is heavily staffed with people from California who will no doubt maintain the level of bureaucratic skill that is the norm now in California- Biden will MACA- make American California-all inclusive package of a third world one party state complete with brownouts and poverty and a wealthy ruling class
The first cuts always go to the courtesy clerks. Unfortunately the bulk of these workers are entry level workers and special needs people.
We now have at least one data point.
Long Beach, California instituted a mandatory $4 per hour extra pay for grocery store workers.
https://abc7.com/long-beach-hero-pay-grocery-workers-coronavirus/9854498/
Kroger responded by closing two of its grocery stores in Long Beach (a Ralphs and a Food 4 Less).
https://the-honolulu.com/2021/02/01/long-beachs-grocery-worker-wage-bump-spurs-closure-of-ralphs-food-4-less-sites-in-city-daily-news/
[The more local news sources that are reporting Kroger’s actions put the story behind a paywall. And I find it interesting that so many news sources report the wage action but do not mention the resulting store closures.]
Ralphs is a traditional full service supermarket. Food 4 Less is a no frills store that operates on even thinner profit margins than most supermarkets, and typically serves residents of lower income neighborhoods. Another virtue signal from wealthy liberals that leads to fewer choices for poor people.
And don’t get me started on the idiocy of calling grocery store workers “heroes” as the Long Beach ordinance does.
Yep, I saw that story. The Seattle mayor will sign the bill when it reaches her desk, and we will see what happens. I hope the same thing as in Long Beach.
I see today that Seattle did adopt the mandatory additional pay for grocery store workers, and that Kroger is responding by closing a couple of stores.
https://www.dailywire.com/news/kroger-closing-more-stores-due-to-seattles-mandated-hazard-pay-for-workers
Actions have consequences. Stupid actions have stupid consequences.
The stores closing are their upscale brand, QFC. One is in the infamous Capitol Hill neighborhood where all the riots took place last summer. The other one is in northeast Seattle a few miles from where I grew up. Both stores had been losing money for years.
And all it took was a little nudge….
All those woke hipsters downtown will have to take the bus to a lesser Kroger.
It would, as Oscar Wilde said, take a heart of stone not to laugh out loud.
About a month ago, the same was happening in the Bay Area. I haven’t kept up with it, but Target and WalMart said they would be closing stores too.
It’s interesting that its their upscale brand, as in the Long Beach, California episode it was their low price store that serves low income residents and their mainstream middle of the road brand. So, wage increases affect stores serving all economic segments.