If only there was a field of study that could have predicted this with 100% accuracy!

These people really think that businesses are just going to absorb those costs and make no changes. It's like the idiots who want to tax businesses more - guess what? Businesses just add that additional tax to the price of their goods or service and the consumers pay it - shocking!

https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/14...tm_source=twbusiness

Target raised wages. But some workers say their hours were cut, leaving them struggling

New York (CNN Business)Two years ago, Target (TGT) said it would raise its minimum wage to $15 an hour by the end of 2020. The move won praise from labor advocates and put pressure on other companies to also move to $15.

But some store workers say the wage increases are not helping because their hours are falling, making it difficult to keep their health insurance and in some cases to pay their bills.

CNN Business interviewed 23 current and former Target employees in recent months, including department managers, who say hours have been scaled back even as Target has increased starting wages. Many of these workers say the cuts, which come as Target's business is in its strongest position in more than a decade, have hurt them financially. CNN Business agreed to withhold the last names of several of the current employees and the city where their store is located so they could speak freely.

"I got that dollar raise but I'm getting $200 less in my paycheck," said one, Heather, who started in November at a Florida store working around 40 hours a week. She's now below 20 some weeks, she said. "I have no idea how I'm going to pay rent or buy food."

Hours for workers in retail are notoriously unpredictable and often depend on the season or how well stores are performing. In the retail industry, the average hourly workweek has dropped for employees this year compared with a year earlier, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Beyond just a drop in earnings that Target workers who spoke with CNN Business have experienced, employees who average fewer than 30 hours of work a week during the year aren't eligible to qualify for health insurance benefits through the company during annual enrollment season in the spring. Target offers health insurance benefits to eligible employees who average more than 30 hours a week, according to the company. Target does not publicly disclose other requirements to qualify for health insurance benefits.

"Target worked me hard from mid-July of 2018 to February 2019, right before my medical coverage was about to kick in," said Caren Morales, a former Target employee in Diamond Bar, California. She was averaging around 35 to 40 hours a week, she said, and got a letter from the company in February with information about how to sign up for health insurance benefits.

"They cut my hours right then, and so I begged for hours and always went above and beyond." She quit in May after her hours plummeted to as little as 15 a week.

"I called in on May 1 and said, 'I can't come in today or ever again because I can't afford my daughter's daycare. You guys cut me really bad,'" Morales said.

A spokesperson for Target would not address specific employee records such as Morales' but did confirm that the store she worked at slightly decreased its payroll and workers' hours from 2018 to 2019.

Michael, a veteran Target worker in Texas, told CNN Business he is "right at the cut off point currently" to qualify for health benefits.

He averages 20 to 30 hours a week, down from up to 40. He found a second job because his hours at Target fell. "I'm hoping going to Christmas will keep me at the average needed [for health insurance], but at this rate who knows?"

In response to this story, a spokesperson for Target said that existing staffers are working this year, on average, "approximately the same number of hours as they were last year" and the year prior and slightly more than they were three years ago. Target also said that the company's mix of full-time and part-time workers has remained consistent over the past few years and the percentage of existing hourly workers eligible for health insurance has remained steady. However, Target declined to provide numbers for each of these points.

'Modernization'
Target workers who say their hours have dropped have been given a variety of reasons why by their supervisors, including that there were not hours available or that their managers couldn't fit additional hours in their budgets.

Others said they received no explanation for why their hours fell.

In some cases, existing Target workers say their hours have declined as their stores brought on new employees or their assignments changed.

Target has overhauled operations at its 1,850 US stores in recent years to create more specialized positions for staffers, who now often focus on a single department, instead of the entire store. Target also eliminated backroom shifts at some stores. Backroom teams used to unload boxes and make sure inventory was in stock, but Target moved some of those employees to the sales floor. The new model is known as "modernization."

Target says it changed its operating procedures in an attempt to improve customer service, make stores capable of fulfilling online orders and improve productivity.

"We knew we couldn't operate the stores anymore in the same fashion we had for the last 20, 30 years," Target COO John Mulligan told CNN Business in an interview for this story. "We needed to change the way we operate in the store to create a better, more inviting experience for our guests."

Target acknowledged that, as part of its store operations overhaul, it has shifted some payroll hours from the mornings and daytime hours to nights and weekends to match customer demand. That has impacted some workers' schedules, Target said, although it said it has added millions of payroll hours in recent years.

However, several Target leaders in stores say workers' hours at their stores are falling.
One former store director in Ohio who oversaw around 130 employees said hours dropped at the store in the past year for several reasons, including the introduction of self-checkout and elimination of backroom shifts.

"Older cashiers were used to getting 30-some hours and they were getting less and less," the former store director said. "They really cut those hours back from them with the introduction of self-checkout."

A department leader at a Target store in Oklahoma who spoke on the condition of anonymity said "we get fewer hours as a store."

Target is cutting payroll hours in his store, despite sales growth at both his store and across the chain, he said. "Most of long-term team members have left," he added.

"Some workers who had open availability were only getting four or six hours," said Jack, a former department leader in Colorado. He said he had never seen hours drop that low for employees with open schedules prior to modernization.

Chelsey, a Target department leader in Washington state, said her department has been adding new employees, cutting into existing workers' hours.

"Hours have been cut because I have to add more people," she said.

Adding staff
Target has been adding workers to help it keep up with growth. It has hired more than 35,000 new workers over the last two years and has approximately 360,000 full-time, part-time and seasonal employees, according to its latest annual securities filing. Those numbers often fluctuate during the course of the year, a spokesperson for Target said.

"The company keeps hiring more and more people part time," said Lee Beecher, a Target staffer in Santa Clarita, California, and a member of United for Respect, a workers' advocacy group. Beecher, who has worked at Target for more than four years, said his average hours have dropped, leading him to look for other work.
"I'm a loyal employee. I'm trying to pick up a second job for the hours I'm not getting at my current job," he said.

Beecher's hours are volatile, he said. He averaged 20 to 30 hours a week in the spring, but his hours have picked up recently in the run-up to the holidays. He expects them to drop again after the holiday rush fades. "They fluctuate a lot. It's not fair."

A spokesperson for Target said the overall payroll hours at Beecher's store have increased more than 7% year-to-date. Target declined to say whether the average hours for employees at the store has increased this year.

Desire, a Target worker in Virginia, said she used to take home around $800 every two weeks from Target when she worked up to 40 hours a week. Today, after her hours were reduced, she's making half that. "It's frustrating because they hired four more people. We're begging for hours."

Target has said it plans to hire more than 130,000 temporary employees for the holidays, around an 8% increase from last year. Target picks up around a third of its revenue during the holiday stretch and needs additional help during peak season, according to the spokesperson.

Retailers often want to have a larger pool of part-time workers making the minimum wage, instead of a smaller group of full-time staffers with benefits and guaranteed hours, said Lonnie Golden, professor of economics and labor relations at Penn State University-Abington.

This strategy gives companies more flexibility to adjust workers' schedules based on store demands and helps them labor costs, Golden said.

It's often cheaper for retailers to employ part-time workers, rather than full-time employees, because health insurance costs are going up, because full-time workers get more paid time off and because, if there is extra work on short notice full-time workers would likely become eligible for overtime premium pay for additional hours they work above 40 a week, Golden said.

A spokesperson for Target said this was not the company's strategy and stressed that Target's mix of full-time and part-time workers has remained consistent over the past few years and the percentage of existing hourly workers eligible for health insurance has remained steady.

Pay raises
Target has gradually increased wages since its 2017 announcement. Target raised its starting wage to $11 an hour in 2017 and then to $12 an hour last year. Target then bumped it to $13 an hour in June.

Yet if Target cuts back hours for some workers as it raises wages, "most workers aren't getting any more of what they really need," noted Heidi Shierholz, who was chief economist at the Labor Department during the Obama administration.

As Tony, a Target worker in Pennsylvania, told CNN Business, a higher hourly wage "really doesn't help much when [I'm] only doing 20 to 30 hours a week."

Damn greedy corporations.

You have to be careful what you ask for, cause you just might get it!

Econ 101. I guess all those “gender/ethnic studies” offered in the various Social Sciences/Philosophy Departments courses have replaced reality.

quote:

Originally posted by 2BobTanner:
Econ 101.

Yep. And those idiots got a crash course.

Not even Economics. Simple understanding of mathematics would help. Most kids learn this in school. Others learn it when they shovel driveways or cut lawns. Raise your lawn service prices and the elderly lady can wait two weeks to have her lawn cut or find someone else. Easier to complain.

I have a co-worker who worked at a McDonald's when he was younger and he just can't get over the injustice of his low pay and the owners obscene profits. I've tried to walk him through basic economics and explain to him that being a fast food employee is not meant to be a living wage job, it's a stepping stone or an income supplement. It doesn't matter though because the employees worked really hard and that greedy owner exploited them and ran off with all the money that should of been theirs.
That's the idea of economics that these people have.

quote:

Originally posted by ZSMICHAEL:
Simple understanding of mathematics would help.

Yup...but our current education system has deprived these individuals of that. They'd rather teach them how to chop off their penis and call themselves a woman. But I digress. Yes...it IS simple math:

$10 x 40 hours/week = $400
$15 x 20 hours/week = $300

quote:

Originally posted by sigspecops:
...money that should of been theirs.

Ahh...the "Entitlement" mentality. I believe that was a graduate level economics course.

I think democrats largely make poor chess players. Or even tic tack toe. Basically any activity that requires foresight beyond three steps.

Econ. Math. Doesn’t matter. They have no concept of logical consequences. They can’t see past their fork.

ain't karma a real bitch

here's a clue

if you want to make more than $10 an hour, have skills that are WORTH more than $10 an hour

anyone can stock shelves or sweep a floor - no skill required, but you can't make a living doing that at a place like Target

quote:

$10 x 40 hours/week = $400
$15 x 20 hours/week = $300

Who works the hours they were working? Another employee making $15 an hour? It was a $1/hr raise, which is quite a bit at that pay grade, but shouldn't make the earth fall off it's axis.
Having said that if you're only getting 15 hours a week, why not get another part time job? pain in the ass but, 20 bucks is 20 bucks.

Seems like if they weren't involved in the insurance scam they wouldn't be worried about having full time employees.

I haven’t graced our local Target since their bathroom confusion.

1. Minimum wage jobs are just that — jobs. They are not careers. We need both, so trying to turn every job into a career is foolish.

2. Never in any of the debates on this issue have I heard anyone try to justify these wage increases based on the productivity of the workers. Ignoring the fact that very few minimum wage jobs generate $30 in productivity per hour (which is a conservative break even point at $15 per hour) is foolish.

Surprise, Surprise /Gomer pyle

The workers are not the idiots in the situation. It's human nature to seek more compensation. It's the politicians who really know better but pander to these low income people just to garner votes. And as usual, it's the people that suffer not the greedy power hungry asses.

After their "bathroom fiasco", I get to target about once every 2 years. The last time I went was in the evening. I was struck by the absolute lack of male shoppers....none! Except me. Quite a few people there, but no men. I never noticed this at Walmart. Strange.

Get woke and then go broke

by odd coincidence, my granddaughter, recent high school grad, had spent her last school year working part time at a local Target just down the street from her home. She could literally walk to work.

They gave her a couple raises, she graduated & asked for full time job. The only one they offered her was across town.... the $1 raise & added 'boss hat' responsibilities in addition to some other issues, she actually quit.

Another coincidence: she decided to go to community college for a couple years....

quote:

After their "bathroom fiasco", I get to target about once every 2 years. The last time I went was in the evening. I was struck by the absolute lack of male shoppers....none! Except me. Quite a few people there, but no men. I never noticed this at Walmart. Strange.

Which I pointed out when the original "bathroom fiasco" occurred. I have never seen anybody in a Target that concerned me when it came to bathrooms. Walmart on the other hand......

quote:

It doesn't matter though because the employees worked really hard and that greedy owner exploited them and ran off with all the money that should of been theirs.

Yet the very same people demanding their "fair share" of the profits are nowhere to be found when it's time for their "fair share" of the investment capital, or their "fair share" of any losses.

Reading the article, the issue doesn't seem to be dealing with the raise in wage rate to $15/hour. It seems much more oriented to keeping employees off their health insurance plan.

quote:

Originally posted by BBMW:
Reading the article, the issue doesn't seem to be dealing with the raise in wage rate to $15/hour. It seems much more oriented to keeping employees off their health insurance plan.

But it’s the increase in hourly wage that has forced Target to cut hours to keep workers below 30 hours/week, which is where the cutoff is for company funded healthcare. It’s much cheaper at the higher hourly rate for them to hire more workers and give them all fewer hours and no healthcare, which is what they’re doing.