Wed 6 Mar 2019 06.07 ESTFirst published on Wed 6 Mar 2019 06.00 EST
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![Whole Foods employees saw their wages increase when parent company Amazon enacted a $15 minimum wage, but hours have slipped.
Whole Foods employees saw their wages increase when parent company Amazon enacted a $15 minimum wage, but hours have slipped. Photograph: Rogelio V. Solis/AP
In response to public pressure and increasing scrutiny over the pay of its warehouse workers, Amazon enacted a $15 minimum wage for all its employees on 1 November, including workers at grocery chain Whole Foods which it purchased in 2017.
All Whole Foods employees paid less than $15 an hour saw their wages increase to at least that, while all other team members received a $1-an-hour wage increase and team leaders received a $2-an-hour increase.
But since the wage increase, Whole Food employees have told the Guardian that they have experienced widespread cuts that have reduced schedule shifts across many stores, often negating wage gains for employees.
“My hours went from 30 to 20 a week,” said one Whole Foods employee in Illinois.
Workers interviewed for this story were reluctant to speak on the record for fear of retaliation.
The Illinois-based worker explained that once the $15 minimum wage was enacted, part-time employee hours at their store were cut from an average of 30 to 21 hours a week, and full-time employees saw average hours reduced from 37.5 hours to 34.5 hours. The worker provided schedules from 1 November to the end of January 2019, showing hours for workers in their department significantly decreased as the department’s percentage of the entire store labor budget stayed relatively the same.
Business only have so much money to spend on wages and benefits then they hav to raise prices which makes them uncompetitive and likely to go out of business.
Perhaps people are just stupid to believe there are no consequences to actions like 15 buck minimum wages.
By and large liberal politicians have not ever run a business. Most have either been career politicians, college professors, or lawyers, and havve a problem thinking past their own narrow worldview.
They can also go out of business by losing customers due to lack of quality. If dropping hours of their workers leads to decreased quality at Whole Foods and this decrease in sales, you can bet your ass they will hire more workers and /or increase the hours of the people already working there.
Even without the minimum wage requirement, Amazon would have changed the operation of Whole Foods. That’s usually what happens after an acquisition. Amazon thrives on efficiency and that is what they require their newly acquired companies to do.
But if they deem that can run the company with fewer man hours, wouldn’t they do it regardless of the wage level? How is it that they are just realizing now that they don’t need so many people I t heir stores?
Btw quality and service st our Whole Foods has been declining steadily since amazon bought them.
Somebody’s being dramatic. This is the same company that reported quarterly profits over $11 billion in 2018 while paying $0 in taxes, yet we’re supposed to believe the minimum wage hike is now killing them? Is everyone also ignoring the fact they did not increase their labor budget even though they anticipated their costs going up? Can’t sacrifice any of those billions in profits for their lowly employees who helped make them successful?