Walmart raising minimum wage, citing tax reform

Any manager that thinks his employees aren't discussing it, isn't a very good manager. It will bite him in the rear.
 
Federal employees got a 1.4% base raise. Higher than any year under Obama.

Thanks, Trump!
 
rah said:
Any manager that thinks his employees aren't discussing it, isn't a very good manager. It will bite him in the rear.
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Coincidentally, when I was a chef a guy I worked with told me and another guy how much he made which was more than both of us.

I went to the owner and presented the reasons why I deserved a pay raise and got one. Then the other guy went to the owner and complained about the first guy making more than him and got a pay raise. We then both got a stern talking to and the guy who told us how much he made was fired.

None of us were aware of our rights in the matter and did not report it to the government. I've since been educated but restaurants in my experience are the scum of the earth as far as employers go and they do get away with murder because their work force is scared, poor and uneducated.
 
Well I may exaggerate to make a point, but I'm not really that off with what I'm saying here.

I live in Michigan, the most expensive state for auto insurance. I was paying about $85 a month per car for two cars, 6 month term. These premiums typically rose $30-50 every 6 months causing me to switch insurers every 2-3 years. That's around 10% annually. It sucks but seemed to be only way to get a better rate was switching. Every explanation I got was it was related to medical costs on the pip part of coverage. This year my premiums jumped from ~$1100 for 2 cars, 6 months, to $1375. Apparently my credit score dropped 5 points putting me a whole level down on their mysterious credit scoring chart increasing my rate. It's ridiculous, I think all of it is a scam.

Medical premiums went up 13% this year from $225 for a high deductible hsa plan to $255.

We don't get cola raises. I don't know any salary firm that gives out cola raises. We do get annual raises. An entire department gets a 2% increase to their personnel budget every year. I know this cus managers have told me when asking for pay increases. I guess you could call this bucket of money cola, but it's not based on any metric, it's just 2% company wide and they're supposed to divvy it up based on performance. Since I am a high performer I usually get 3-4%.

Maybe that sounds awesome to you, I don't see it as being a very good raise imo. Managers can request special salary reviews but HR always shoots them down or corporate does.

I have in the past gotten large raises. One year I got 20%. But I had to literally go get an offer letter from another company and tell them I was walking if they didn't match. Last year I got 6% but I asked for 10 and my manager would've approved but hr wouldn't. I know I could get 10-20% on the open market but I like my job for the most part and love the flexible hours. I've definitely come out ahead of inflation.

The only companies I know of offhand that don't do compensation this way are really forward thinking tech firms, guys like google and facebook cus they know what it takes to retain talent. Everyone else has really strict hr policies regarding compensation limits.
 
2% company-wide pay increases are COLA.

I'm not saying 2-4% is an awesome raise, I'm just saying COLA raises are standard even if they don't explicitly tell you that it is for COLA. You say yourself you're a high performer that gets 3-4% but everyone else gets 2%. That 2% is COLA.
 
The majority of firms in the US, even including the Amazons and Apples, tend to underpay current employees in yearly raises and you do have to jump ship to get a fair, market-consistent pay increase. I suspect that the promised 'massive' pay raise at my old job was in the 10% range. By switching companies I jumped over 30%. That's really high and I don't think I could do it again but the point is that yeah, firms are not fair about pay raises for current employees and much more generous with outside hires. 2% at my old firm was considered normal and lots of people didn't even get that.

But that doesn't mean COLA is rare in the salaried world. Edit: It does mean that my old employer was bottom-rung on the payscales.

Also HR-mandated pay policies are obnoxious. I've never seen them do anything but attempt to suppress wages and breed ill-will with employees.
 
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rah said:
Any manager that thinks his employees aren't discussing it, isn't a very good manager. It will bite him in the rear.
Click to expand...

Man, I am developing selective eyesight that blocks out letters. I read that, then reread it, and somehow both times I saw "I will bite him in the ear." I thought you were so offended by such a poor performing manager that you were ready to go all Tyson on him or something.
 
Classic. I'm glad I'm not the only one that sometimes reads something and thinks something totally different.
 
civvver said:
I live in Michigan, the most expensive state for auto insurance. I was paying about $85 a month per car for two cars, 6 month term. These premiums typically rose $30-50 every 6 months causing me to switch insurers every 2-3 years. That's around 10% annually. It sucks but seemed to be only way to get a better rate was switching. Every explanation I got was it was related to medical costs on the pip part of coverage. This year my premiums jumped from ~$1100 for 2 cars, 6 months, to $1375. Apparently my credit score dropped 5 points putting me a whole level down on their mysterious credit scoring chart increasing my rate. It's ridiculous, I think all of it is a scam.

Medical premiums went up 13% this year from $225 for a high deductible hsa plan to $255.
Click to expand...

Yeah, big difference, I'm a well off old man in Illinois (not living in CHICAGO) so (as mentioned by others) my auto rates go down as I get older.
 
Hygro said:
hmm that would fit the demo and the motive but what mechanism makes them inflation vulnerable? Most of their savings is in the inflation proof house and maybe a 401k...
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That's the point, their relatively tiny cash savings are what they're concerned with.
 
hobbsyoyo said:
2% company-wide pay increases are COLA.

I'm not saying 2-4% is an awesome raise, I'm just saying COLA raises are standard even if they don't explicitly tell you that it is for COLA. You say yourself you're a high performer that gets 3-4% but everyone else gets 2%. That 2% is COLA.
Click to expand...

Except it's not, some people do actually get no raise at all. They must if you want to pay someone else more than the department wide allotment. I see your point, it's an expected annual raise, but it is still tied to performance somewhat.

hobbsyoyo said:
The majority of firms in the US, even including the Amazons and Apples, tend to underpay current employees in yearly raises and you do have to jump ship to get a fair, market-consistent pay increase. I suspect that the promised 'massive' pay raise at my old job was in the 10% range. By switching companies I jumped over 30%. That's really high and I don't think I could do it again but the point is that yeah, firms are not fair about pay raises for current employees and much more generous with outside hires. 2% at my old firm was considered normal and lots of people didn't even get that.

But that doesn't mean COLA is rare in the salaried world. Edit: It does mean that my old employer was bottom-rung on the payscales.

Also HR-mandated pay policies are obnoxious. I've never seen them do anything but attempt to suppress wages and breed ill-will with employees.
Click to expand...

Just the idea that someone is on payroll to decide how much they can afford to pay employees seems like a huge waste of money that could be used to pay other employees more.
 
I mean that still sounds like COLA with the added twist that they use performance as a pretext to give people effective pay cuts. Then they get the added benefit of making people think a 4% raise is awesome when really it's 2% COLA + 2% performance.

I agree, COLA should be automatic and universal. Your company is just kind of crappy in this regard.
 
Well one good thing. When my wife bought a new car recently there was actually a discount for Sam's club members so the dealer signed her up for membership and applied a generous discount. We never shopped there but yesterday we got a letter from Sam's saying that since they're closing the one in our neighborhood, that they're going to refund her entire membership fee. WIN WIN.
 
Berzerker said:
There's a couple problems with blaming Amazon for closing down brick and mortar stores - btw, brick and mortar stores are where Amazon usually gets its stuff - for a while Amazon was exempt from sales taxes but the big problem I have with eg Walmart is they typically carry crap. I wouldn't mind paying a couple extra bucks for an item locally if it was what I wanted.

edit typo
Click to expand...

If selling 'cheap stuff' was the reason for Walmart closing it's stores, those would have been closed in the 80's. That's been a critique of Walmart since forever. And, as you note, Amazon sells the same stuff (yeah, if you are willing to pay higher you can find more expensive, better quality stuff on Amazon as well, and why Walmart is expanding to include higher quality stuff as well).

Trust me, wal-mart has been in full-panic mode over Amazon passing Walmart as the #1 retailer.
 
Cassius Critzer said:
The best solution is finding better real jobs for Americans and not trying to penalize Walmart nor insist that it is anything more than a transitional job.
Which means we have to make things in America again.
Click to expand...

US is manufactoring more then Ever before, Manufactoring is increasing and more things are being made in record numbers in the US
Maybe you should just ban robots and science.

In Japan they alread have factories that run without humans, and are checked once every three weeks. What are you going to do ?
 
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Yeah, really, globalization is just a microcosm for roboticisation. There will be to be solutions created for this coming wave of unemployment, especially for those who continually insist on giving tax breaks to 'the rich' to increase their purchasing power of productive assets.

The problem with moving to an increasingly service-based economy is that productivity is HARD to increase. Really hard. Which means that as the price of productive assets spiral upwards as well as the cost of essentials, the average wage really has no choice but to go downwards ever-increasingly.

Trump fans think that production capacity is the issue. It certainly is for national security reasons, but certainly not for employment reasons. They intuitively know this, which is why they want subsidies and protections.
 
Well, because things like travel time and minimum wage gets in the way. For example, house-cleaning. It's very hard to clean your house in a way that's more efficient than you just doing it yourself. Getting comparative advantage isn't easy, where it's cheaper for you to work more hours so that you can hire the house-cleaner to work for you instead. The more efficient the housecleaner gets, the more time they spend traveling between houses.

Except for services that involve information (which have their own trendlines), gaining comparative advantage in services is HARD. So many of the services we purchase are because we actually cannot afford the time ourselves, and not because it's cheaper to hire a specialist than to do it yourself.
 
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