Whole Foods Cuts Employee Hours Following The Implementation Of A $15 Minimum Wage

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Watch: Minimum Wage Raise Not Going According To Plan At Amazon

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If you’re shocked by this, it’s probably because you haven’t taken the time to think this through. Or you’re a screaming lib who is incapable of using common sense. Either or.

According to the Guardian, Whole Foods has cut down on existing employee hours, and some employees are saying it’s the direct result of Amazon’s decision to raise the minimum wage to $15.

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.

It’s not hard to believe. We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again. When a company is forced (either by government or public pressure) to raise the wage before it’s truly prepared to do so, employees end up paying in some other way. They are either laid off or have their existing hours slashed. Why? Because the business doesn’t want to lose profits. It makes up for the increased cost in the form of laying off employees and reducing existing employee hours. It’s really quite simple.

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.

“We just have to work faster to meet the same goals in less time,” the worker said.

Another Whole Foods worker from Maryland said, “This hours cut makes that raise pointless as people are losing more than they gained and we rely on working full shifts.”

Another Whole Foods employee in Oregon noted: “At my store all full-time team members are 36 to 38 hours per week now. So what workers do if they want a full 40 hours is take a little bit of their paid time off each week to fill their hours to 40. Doing the same thing myself.”

Doesn’t sound like an ideal situation, does it?

But again. This is what happens. No one should be shocked. This is the direct result of virtue-signaling from those higher up. Let’s be real.

h/t The Guardian

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