[HN Gopher] Pizza Hut to lay off California workers after minimu...
___________________________________________________________________
Pizza Hut to lay off California workers after minimum wage increase
Author : bratao
Score : 17 points
Date : 2023-12-27 17:39 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cbsnews.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cbsnews.com)
| bell-cot wrote:
| First 2 sentences make the situation far more clear:
|
| > Pizza Hut is set to lay off more than 1,200 delivery drivers in
| Los Angeles, Orange and Riverside counties in the coming year,
| ahead of a new state law that boosts the fast-food minimum wage
| by $4 to $20 per hour.
|
| > Pizza Hut franchises are preparing to pivot toward third-party
| apps like DoorDash, GrubHub and UberEats for pizza and food
| deliveries.
|
| And if you know how "minimum wage" works for DoorDash, etc.
| drivers in CA...
| k33n wrote:
| Amazingly, none of the "experts" that keep pushing for these
| state-sanctioned wage controls saw this coming. Even though they
| were told by their opposition that this was the only possibly
| outcome repeatedly.
|
| They'll slink away to make their next series of insane proposals
| that would only work in a movie.
| bdcravens wrote:
| I suspect they're well aware that this could happen. A business
| that can't function with reasonably paid workers probably
| doesn't have much of a legitimate business plan to begin with.
| After all, razor-thin margins mean minimal income to pay taxes
| on, so they're of little value to the state and should be
| replaced by more profitable ventures.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| "After all, razor-thin margins mean minimal income to pay
| taxes on"
|
| Not really. In San Francisco, if you're selling burritos for
| $10+tax, the government gets $0.86 in sales tax for each
| burrito, even you make nothing or make a loss.
| gruez wrote:
| >After all, razor-thin margins mean minimal income to pay
| taxes on, so they're of little value to the state and should
| be replaced by more profitable ventures.
|
| 1. Sales tax/gross receipt taxes are a thing in most
| jurisdictions
|
| 2. Low margins are a good thing. It means there's healthy
| competition driving prices (and thus profits) down.
|
| 3. Supermarkets are pretty low margin as well. Should we get
| rid of them and replace them with GPT wrapper startups?
| oh_sigh wrote:
| I suspect what will happen is the laid off drivers will still be
| delivering pizzas for Pizza Hut, but will be paid by Doordash et
| al instead of Pizza Hut, and will ultimately have reduced
| compensation.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| Perhaps, or they might have the same compensation overall but
| less idle time, i.e. work harder for the same pay.
| brianwawok wrote:
| How do you work harder delivering pizzas? Break the speed
| limit?
| frankhorrigan wrote:
| You deliver more pizzas.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| AIUI California minimum wages:
|
| A) fast food employee: $20/hour
|
| B) other employee: $16/hour
|
| C) delivery gig worker: $19.20/hour plus $0.30/mile (but only for
| the time you're actively on a job)
|
| I guess they did the math and figured out that C is cheaper than
| A. If the demand for pizza delivery workers is spiky, perhaps it
| makes more sense to link the costs to the actual output (#
| deliveries).
| blahyawnblah wrote:
| Why do fast food workers get to make more than other employee
| types?
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| According to this article, it's the result of union strategy:
|
| https://calmatters.org/economy/2023/12/minimum-wage-2024/
|
| I don't know much about it.
| qgin wrote:
| Think of how many employees you could have if you didn't have to
| pay them at all.
| gruez wrote:
| But they won't be employees. They'll be contractors. Also, you
| still have to pay them, it's just that rather than paying them
| by the hour you're paying per delivery.
| qgin wrote:
| Whether that's fair and livable is a separate issue to
| consider. If it's not fair and livable, it doesn't mean that
| setting a lower minimum wage is the answer.
| gruez wrote:
| Barring them from working unless they can find a job that
| pays them a "living wage" isn't the answer either.
| jiveturkey wrote:
| keeping it specific to this article, pizza hut does NOT have
| to pay them. the consumers bears the cost directly. because
| of the way food is priced, this will likely be net zero or
| slightly more expensive for the consumer, but because of the
| way they perceive price it's better than pizza hut simply
| raising prices.
|
| for the same reason that restaurants keep the price the same
| but in small print charge a mandatory fee of some kind for
| benefits of what have you.
| gruez wrote:
| >but because of the way they perceive price it's better
| than pizza hut simply raising prices.
|
| But wouldn't the typical consumer go to grubhub or
| whatever, see the inflated price, and then grumble about
| grubhub and/or pizza hut? Also, aren't delivery fees
| typically not included in the list price? I'm not sure how
| being slapped with grubhub delivery fees at checkout is any
| different than being slapped with pizza hut delivery fees
| at checkout.
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| My domino's here in Germany, Aachen, charges extra 20%
| for orders with the delivery,
| Guvante wrote:
| This will not be neutral on Pizza Hut. The delivered price
| is their price.
| hamandcheese wrote:
| Why does fast food in particular have a higher minimum wage?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Its part of large package of additional protections and
| controls adopted as a means of addressing the way that the
| industry, specifically large fast food chains, have,
| particularly, via the franchise structure, systemically evaded
| and been unresponsive to preexisting accountability measures
| for labor and worker-safety rules (which particularly came to a
| head during the COVID-19 pandemic).
|
| The specific law is actually a government-industry-labor
| compromise passed this year that replaces the more expansive
| set that was initially adopted last year and challenged by the
| industry.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-12-27 23:01 UTC)