Tag Archives: Glassdoor

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Dear Sen. Wyden: If you want $15 an hour, then walk the talk.

If Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) really believes the minimum wage across the United States should be $15 an hour, he and his wife should start in their own back yard.

The Strand Bookstore in New York City, which is owned by Sen. Wyden’s wife, Nancy Bass Wyden, doesn’t even pay all of its employees at least $15 an hour.

NOTE (Added 3/1/21): I’ve discovered that the general hourly minimum wage in New York City has been $15 since Dec. 31, 2019. I don’t understand how Glassdoor can show employee wages reported by employees as less than that. This suggests that either the employees are not being truthful in reporting their wages or the Strand is breaking the law)

The Strand’s main site is a massive store, “home of 18 miles of books,” at 828 Broadway in Manhattan.

Based on salary data shared by Strand employees with Glassdoor, a website where current and former employees anonymously review companies and submit their salaries, multiple job categories pay less than an average of $15 an hour. This includes booksellers (ave. hourly pay: $14), visual merchandisers (ave. hourly pay: $14 – $16), sales staff (ave. hourly pay: $12 – $13), sales associates (ave. hourly pay: $12), booksellers (ave. hourly pay: $11 – $12), and web fulfillment staff (ave. hourly pay: $13 – $14). Indeed.com, another website with salary postings, says only 47% or employees who have reported on the site think they are paid fairly by Strand and reviewers give the company a rating of only 2.9 on a scale of 5 in Pay and Benefits.

And these are average hourly wages, meaning some employees probably earn less, even though the hourly workers are unionized, affiliated with UAW Local 2179.

Even with the wages the Strand already pays, in Oct. 2020 Nancy Bass Wyden pleaded for public support in light of the business lost because of the pandemic, saying, “…we are now at a turning point where our business is unsustainable.”

Her employees don’t seem to be behind her. In July 2020, one employee commented on Glassdoor “The Strand brand markets as progressive, but its mere marketing. The business is profitable, but in one of the most expensive cities in the world, the business owner (Nancy Bass-Wyden, wife of Sen. Ron Wyden, who owns the building and rents sections of it out) pays her workers the bare minimum. Equality isn’t overcharging people for pink-totes and rainbow pins. Salaries should live up to slogans. Pay better, be better, do better. Micromanage less.”

All this in a city that has the highest cost of living in the United States, 35% higher than in Portland, OR. In other words, if Sen. Wyden thinks workers across America should be earning a minimum of $15 an hour, workers in New York City should be making quite a bit more.

In the same context, for example, workers earning $15 an hour in Hawaii are in quite a different position than workers earning $15 in Mississippi. That’s because an income of $47,520 in Hawaii has the equivalent purchasing power of an income of $36,480 in Mississippi.

Similar disparities occur when looking at Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs). As the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis pointed out in a recent blog post, a dollar in one city isn’t necessarily the same as a dollar in another: Average per capita personal income nationwide is about $43,996. In terms of purchasing power, the equivalent income in St. Louis, Missouri, is below $40,000 due to the relatively low cost of living. Meanwhile, in comparatively expensive New York, New York, the equivalent income is almost $54,000. In other words, as the cost of living goes up, it takes more dollars to buy the same basket of goods and services.

That’s part of the problem with all this talk from Wyden, other Democrats and some big companies, such as Amazon, about raising the federal minimum wage across the U.S. to $15. “Companies listed on Wall Street may support a much higher minimum wage because it would give them a competitive advantage, but a hike would make it that much harder for Main Street to even continue to exist,” Kevin Kuhlman, vice president of federal government relations for the National Federation of Independent Business, told Roll Call. 

Of course, if Sen. Wyden wants to set a wage of $15 an hour for members of Congress, we could talk about that.

Satire from The Borowitz ReportAmericans Favor Fifteen Dollars an Hour for CongressAcross the nation, service employees demonstrated their conviction that Congress deserves a maximum hourly wage of fifteen dollars.By Andy Borowitz

Photograph by Pablo Martinez/AP
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The union campaign at Burgerville: a quixotic quest

burgervillestrike

Local news is replete with stories about the failure of contract negotiations between Burgerville and the Burgerville Workers Union ands the threat of a worker strike, but most are failing to point out a critical fact — only 111 Burgerville employees at a total of five of the company’s 47 locations have even voted to form a union.

Furthermore, of the 142 employees who were working in those five locations during their respective votes, only 94 of them were still employed at Burgerville as of mid-2019 and the lead organizers of the unionizing effort at three of the five restaurants no longer worked at the company

It’s also likely that most of  the employees now threatening an “imminent” strike will not be at Burgerville long-term because the fast-food industry is grappling with record employee turnover.

According to MIT Technology Review, the turnover rate in the fast-food industry is 150%. In other words, the typical fast food restaurant is seeing its entire workforce, plus half of its new hires, replaced in 12 months.

Burgerville is doing better, perhaps because of its expansive benefits, including health insurance, vacation pay and financial wellness training. Still, the annual turnover rate across all its restaurants in 2018 was 83% (up from 71% in 2017), according to the company.

The union has reportedly asked for a $5 hourly increase for all unionized workers; Burgerville has offered a $1 an hour increase for all workers, which would put them 6 months ahead of a state-mandated minimum-wage increase.

The union says Burgerville’s proposed pay raise is “miserly.” Is it?

According to Glassdoor, a website where current and former employees anonymously review companies and anonymously submit and view salaries, average base pay for hourly crew members is currently $12.  When factoring in bonuses and additional compensation, a crew member at Burgerville can expect to make an average annual salary of $25,298.

For comparison, the typical McDonald’s crew member makes $9 per hour, according to Glassdoor. When factoring in bonuses and additional compensation, a crew member at McDonald’s can expect to make an average annual salary of $19,242.

The typical Wendy’s Crew Member makes $9 per hour., Glassdoor says.  When factoring in bonuses and additional compensation, a Crew Member at Wendy’s can expect to make an average annual salary of $18,738.

In other words, the average hourly pay of Burgerville crew members is already higher than at key competitors.

Could Burgerville afford to pay its employees more? It’s a private company owned by The Holland Inc., so it doesn’t make its financials public. The economy is strong, however, and the fast-food, or quick service restaurant (QSR), industry in the United States, has been doing well, particularly in 2018 and 2019. Workers have reason to believe Burgerville has benefited.

I understand workers’ desire to share in America’s prosperity, but any increase in wages crunches the bottom line and in a highly competitive marketplace only some of additional labor costs can be passed on to price sensitive consumers. The preferred solution for many fast-food businesses is reducing, not increasing, labor costs, largely by leveraging technology to employ fewer people.

Then, of course, there’s the question of whether the union’s demand for “a living wage” at Burgerville is even realistic.

According to a Living Wage Calculator developed by MIT, A living wage is the hourly rate that an individual in a household must earn to support his or herself and their family. The assumption is that the sole provider is working full-time (2080 hours per year).

The Calculator says a living wage for two adults, with one working, and one child in Multnomah County is $26.06 an hour or $54,205 a year. It is delusional to think Burgerville will pay that much to an easily replaceable crew member with limited skills and an expected short tenure.

The fact is, rather than pushing for unattainable wages at Burgerville, current crew members would be better off enhancing their job skills and/or education to qualify for higher paying employment elsewhere.