5 ms·

Yes, they did raise the minimum wage at that company. The expression "minimum wage" gets applied to different contexts. National minimum wage is the minimum w

by blunte 5y ago

Yes, they did raise the minimum wage at that company. The expression "minimum wage" gets applied to different contexts. National minimum wage is the minimum wage specified by (presumably) a national law. Likewise some states have higher state minimum wages. But every company has a minimum wage - that is the lowest wage paid to an employee of the company. Or it can be more broadly used to describe the minimum hourly wage paid to anyone who does work for the company (temp worker, contractor, etc.). It seems you're really missing the point of the article. Some political forces have been pushing the argument that raising the minimum wage will have many negative side effects, especially for the businesses themselves. This one example seems to show the opposite. But it's not a market force; it's a (contrarian) business decision which was made with a long term goal in mind. It seems the company decided that retaining skilled talent was worth paying more for and would result in better long term profits.

legostormtroopr 5y ago
Minimum wage has never meant “the minimum wage of a single employer”. The key factor of the minimum wage is that, if they wanted the employer could reduce their wages back down to the actual minimum wage.
- Corinthian 5y ago
  > "On Monday, the company announced the rollout of a new wage structure, including a minimum wage of $15.25 per hour and increases for its skilled workers, bringing the average salary to $20 per hour." It seems obvious to me that it is referring it the minimum wage within the company's wage structure, and not a national minimum wage. I don't understand your point, "the company announced the rollout of a new wage structure, including a minimum wage of $15.25 per hour", means exactly that.
  - throwawaylinux 5y ago
    That's not the part being taken issue with, this is: > What Winston Plywood is doing defies almost everything we have been told about wages in Mississippi — that raising the minimum wage would cripple profits, throw company pay structures into chaos, create inflation and ultimately wreck the economy. The minimum wage of that debate is a government legislated minimum wage, obviously. They took a story of interest and lied about it to mislead people to put a favorable spin on a political issue. I.e., modern journalism.
    - mattzito 5y ago
      It’s not a lie though - the sawmill did indeed raise its minimum wage. The author posits that the experience of this sawmill defies what “we” have been told about wages across the state, because this company raised their wages and didn’t experience the negative effects that were asserted.
      - agent327 5y ago
        The lie is in the conclusion: "because a single company raised its minimum wage and was successful, this implies all companies can raise their minimum wage and be successful". If you accept the premise that some work is more valuable than others, then you must also accept that having a minimum wage will rule out certain types of work as being not sufficiently valuable to actually be worth paying for. Thus, having a minimum wage law means that some jobs will disappear (or become much more expensive). Whether this trade-off is worth it or not is a political choice with arguments to be made on both sides.
        mattzito 5y ago
        You can’t call a conclusion a lie because you don’t agree with it. A lie implies falsehood, where you’re just saying, “I don’t agree that this situation where raising the minimum wage of a small towns core business didn’t have negative impacts can translate to a larger scope of a whole state, because I don’t believe that’s how it works”. It’s on you to show the opposite.
        agent327 5y ago
        So a conclusion that uses a false generalisation must be accepted at face value despite its faulty logic? This has nothing to do with opinion, mine or otherwise; the article is pushing a policy on the basis of broken logic. And yes, I can damn well call that a lie.
      - throwawaylinux 5y ago
        It is a lie. The company does not "defy" anything about the opposing side of the minimum-wage debate. It is a deliberate and calculated lie about the characterization of the minimum wage debate. Unless there happens to be a major group I've never heard of in that state which opposes legal minimum wages and also wants legislation to outlaw companies giving pay rises to their lowest paid workers.
- nosianu 5y ago
  They are just words. It's the minimum wage at that company. There is no law "Thou shalt only use [Minimum Wage](TM) and forget about that those are just regular words".
imtringued 5y ago
>But every company has a minimum wage - that is the lowest wage paid to an employee of the company. Or it can be more broadly used to describe the minimum hourly wage paid to anyone who does work for the company (temp worker, contractor, etc.). You're just playing with words. The point of a government mandated minimum wage is that work that pays less than this wage is banned. A company can decide to set the lowest wage to $15/h and when economic conditions worsen it can set them even lower to $10/h. With a minimum wage of $15 the company would just fire the employees. Right now businesses are doing well so raising wages won't hurt the economy.
- pnutjam 5y ago
  I see the FUD crowd is still out... Minimum wage increase do not increase unemployment. We have almost a century of data. It's always trumpeted by the wealthy, but never happens.
  - opo 5y ago
    >...Minimum wage increase do not increase unemployment. We have almost a century of data. It's always trumpeted by the wealthy, but never happens. Small changes in the minimum wage will have minimal changes in short term total unemployment - less productive workers will have a harder time competing as more desirable workers will now compete with them and longer term there will be a bigger incentive to switch to automation to remove workers. Larger increases in the minimum wage though will obviously effect total unemployment as the law of supply of demand still holds. As one example, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimated a national $15 minimum would cause employment to be reduced by 1.4 million workers. https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2021-02/56975-Minimum-Wage.pdf https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2021-02/56975-Minimum-Wage....
    - pnutjam 5y ago
      They only obvious thing is how wrong you are, but you're in good company. Many want people to be wrong. https://apnews.com/article/nobel-prizes-business-europe-3cbc672f994ae6f4f486a68b52c2bb32 https://apnews.com/article/nobel-prizes-business-europe-3cbc...
Noos 5y ago
No, its kind of obvious they are trying to make the compairson: "What Winston Plywood is doing defies almost everything we have been told about wages in Mississippi — that raising the minimum wage would cripple profits, throw company pay structures into chaos, create inflation and ultimately wreck the economy. Besides, we are told, Mississippi’s low cost of living makes a raise in the minimum wage unnecessary. Yet a recent study provided to Congress on hearing about raising the federal minimum wage showed half of Mississippians are ALICE (Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed) and that a minimum wage that would cover essential costs of living would need to be $10.94 per hour for a single person and $14 per hour for two-income families with two children. That a sawmill in a rural Mississippi town would go far beyond that is startling — and definitely something to keep an eye on."
kwhitefoot 5y ago
I know what you mean by contrarian but shouldn't this way of operating a business be normal? Isn't it disruptive to any business to have to continually train and acclimatise new workers?
- blunte 5y ago
  I believe it should be normal, and that the proper balance of pay and perks is much different from what is common now and what certain “business friendly” folks believe. These days, paying more than required is contrarian unless you’re a big tech company.

by blunte 5y ago

legostormtroopr 5y ago

Minimum wage has never meant “the minimum wage of a single employer”. The key factor of the minimum wage is that, if they wanted the employer could reduce their wages back down to the actual minimum wage.

Corinthian 5y ago
> "On Monday, the company announced the rollout of a new wage structure, including a minimum wage of $15.25 per hour and increases for its skilled workers, bringing the average salary to $20 per hour." It seems obvious to me that it is referring it the minimum wage within the company's wage structure, and not a national minimum wage. I don't understand your point, "the company announced the rollout of a new wage structure, including a minimum wage of $15.25 per hour", means exactly that.
- throwawaylinux 5y ago
  That's not the part being taken issue with, this is: > What Winston Plywood is doing defies almost everything we have been told about wages in Mississippi — that raising the minimum wage would cripple profits, throw company pay structures into chaos, create inflation and ultimately wreck the economy. The minimum wage of that debate is a government legislated minimum wage, obviously. They took a story of interest and lied about it to mislead people to put a favorable spin on a political issue. I.e., modern journalism.
  - mattzito 5y ago
    It’s not a lie though - the sawmill did indeed raise its minimum wage. The author posits that the experience of this sawmill defies what “we” have been told about wages across the state, because this company raised their wages and didn’t experience the negative effects that were asserted.
    - agent327 5y ago
      The lie is in the conclusion: "because a single company raised its minimum wage and was successful, this implies all companies can raise their minimum wage and be successful". If you accept the premise that some work is more valuable than others, then you must also accept that having a minimum wage will rule out certain types of work as being not sufficiently valuable to actually be worth paying for. Thus, having a minimum wage law means that some jobs will disappear (or become much more expensive). Whether this trade-off is worth it or not is a political choice with arguments to be made on both sides.
      - mattzito 5y ago
        You can’t call a conclusion a lie because you don’t agree with it. A lie implies falsehood, where you’re just saying, “I don’t agree that this situation where raising the minimum wage of a small towns core business didn’t have negative impacts can translate to a larger scope of a whole state, because I don’t believe that’s how it works”. It’s on you to show the opposite.
        agent327 5y ago
        So a conclusion that uses a false generalisation must be accepted at face value despite its faulty logic? This has nothing to do with opinion, mine or otherwise; the article is pushing a policy on the basis of broken logic. And yes, I can damn well call that a lie.
    - throwawaylinux 5y ago
      It is a lie. The company does not "defy" anything about the opposing side of the minimum-wage debate. It is a deliberate and calculated lie about the characterization of the minimum wage debate. Unless there happens to be a major group I've never heard of in that state which opposes legal minimum wages and also wants legislation to outlaw companies giving pay rises to their lowest paid workers.
nosianu 5y ago
They are just words. It's the minimum wage at that company. There is no law "Thou shalt only use [Minimum Wage](TM) and forget about that those are just regular words".

imtringued 5y ago

>But every company has a minimum wage - that is the lowest wage paid to an employee of the company. Or it can be more broadly used to describe the minimum hourly wage paid to anyone who does work for the company (temp worker, contractor, etc.). You're just playing with words. The point of a government mandated minimum wage is that work that pays less than this wage is banned. A company can decide to set the lowest wage to $15/h and when economic conditions worsen it can set them even lower to $10/h. With a minimum wage of $15 the company would just fire the employees. Right now businesses are doing well so raising wages won't hurt the economy.

pnutjam 5y ago
I see the FUD crowd is still out... Minimum wage increase do not increase unemployment. We have almost a century of data. It's always trumpeted by the wealthy, but never happens.
- opo 5y ago
  >...Minimum wage increase do not increase unemployment. We have almost a century of data. It's always trumpeted by the wealthy, but never happens. Small changes in the minimum wage will have minimal changes in short term total unemployment - less productive workers will have a harder time competing as more desirable workers will now compete with them and longer term there will be a bigger incentive to switch to automation to remove workers. Larger increases in the minimum wage though will obviously effect total unemployment as the law of supply of demand still holds. As one example, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimated a national $15 minimum would cause employment to be reduced by 1.4 million workers. https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2021-02/56975-Minimum-Wage.pdf https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2021-02/56975-Minimum-Wage....
  - pnutjam 5y ago
    They only obvious thing is how wrong you are, but you're in good company. Many want people to be wrong. https://apnews.com/article/nobel-prizes-business-europe-3cbc672f994ae6f4f486a68b52c2bb32 https://apnews.com/article/nobel-prizes-business-europe-3cbc...

Noos 5y ago

No, its kind of obvious they are trying to make the compairson: "What Winston Plywood is doing defies almost everything we have been told about wages in Mississippi — that raising the minimum wage would cripple profits, throw company pay structures into chaos, create inflation and ultimately wreck the economy. Besides, we are told, Mississippi’s low cost of living makes a raise in the minimum wage unnecessary. Yet a recent study provided to Congress on hearing about raising the federal minimum wage showed half of Mississippians are ALICE (Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed) and that a minimum wage that would cover essential costs of living would need to be $10.94 per hour for a single person and $14 per hour for two-income families with two children. That a sawmill in a rural Mississippi town would go far beyond that is startling — and definitely something to keep an eye on."

kwhitefoot 5y ago

I know what you mean by contrarian but shouldn't this way of operating a business be normal? Isn't it disruptive to any business to have to continually train and acclimatise new workers?

blunte 5y ago
I believe it should be normal, and that the proper balance of pay and perks is much different from what is common now and what certain “business friendly” folks believe. These days, paying more than required is contrarian unless you’re a big tech company.