Amazon (owner of Whole Foods) raises wage to $15, and immediately slashes employee’s hours to compensate, precisely as predicted by every person who knows anything about economics ever.

via theguardian:

An email shared with the Guardian by a Whole Foods employee cites the shift cuts as a ‘direct result of guidance from our regional team’

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.

We are primarily funded by readers. Please subscribe and donate to support us!

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.

An internal email shared by the employee from their department manager cited the across-the-board shift cuts as “the direct result of guidance from our regional team”.

In Maryland, another Whole Foods worker said their regional management is forcing stores to cut full-time employee schedules by four hours, to 36 hours a week. “This hours cut makes that raise pointless as people are losing more than they gained and we rely on working full shifts,” the worker said.

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.”

 

 

AC

 

 

Views:

Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.