Pay threshold for managers to rise to 50K

[cranberry]

You mean President Obama's Labor Secretary thinks this action by President Obama is a good thing?

Wow, I am gobsmacked! That changes everything!

The labor department projection does tend to make you seem clueless when you suggest employers will cut jobs, adjust and net out even.

 

[steveu]

That's my big question: How many companies will simply do more layoffs and job cuts? Or, as many have suggested, more part-time workers? That's the last thing we need is more part-timers.

 

[doctorquant]

The labor department projection does tend to make you seem clueless when you suggest employers will cut jobs, adjust and net out even.

Stipulating $1.3 billion, spread over 5 million workers, comes out to be about ... $260 a worker a year.

Just off the top of my little ole clueless head ...

How easy would it be to trim $260 a year in benefits for a worker?

How much will those workers who have to take on a second job spend in additional gas and other transportation costs a year?

 

[cranberry]

Again, employers are free to adjust in whatever way they deem appropriate and, again, workers will net out far better, overall. That's exactly how this rule will play out in the real world.

 

[doctorquant]

You use "far better" very, very expansively ...

 

[cranberry]

Yes, I'm not even a tiny bit concerned that this will have a net negative affect on workers.

 

[doctorquant]

Yes, I'm not even a tiny bit concerned that this will have a net negative affect on workers.

Of course you're not. It manifested itself through "democratic processes." That's the gold standard (pace Ragu) baby!

 

[cranberry]

I can't wait to see your reaction when Obama institutes the 30-hour work week and Baron's drinking-on-the-job protections.

 

[Baron Scicluna]

So you have a manager, effectively earning $8 an hour, who could make $9 an hour somewhere else. And rather than making that somewhere else his/her full-time job, he/she simply works there on a part-time basis.

He/she sounds like one of my C- (after the curve) students.

Wouldn't the $9 an hour job already have their full-time manager, meaning that job isn't available? Otherwise, if it was available before, the "manager" would have gone for it and made$27K a year for their 60-hour week.

 

[Baron Scicluna]

Here's my expectation ...

Some of these workers will walk away with overtime, so they'll make more money. They'll also wind up working under less-desirable (for them) conditions -- say, crazier "fractional" shifts, etc. -- and whatever benefits they have will be trimmed back.

Many more of these jobs that would have been filled with "managers" will now be filled with part-timers who don't get benefits. The people holding these jobs will be compensated less because they'll be, on the margin, less valuable. Further, as many of them will now have to piece together a living in multiple locations, their net earnings will be even lower.

And, finally, as the effects of this all play out -- some of them seen, some of them unseen -- you, or somebody like you, will be clamoring even more loudly about how we "need to do something for the working poor!" And some politician will give you a chubby by signing some other document, and the cycle will repeat itself.

I'm 99% confident about my first two points. That third one? That's a lead-pipe cinch, baby!

Who is going to manage these new part timers? And what prevented businesses from either implementing fractional shifts before? Plus, instead of working 12 straight hours, now they may work 4 and 4, or 5 and 3, meaning they'll get time off in the middle of the day.

 

[Baron Scicluna]

Stipulating $1.3 billion, spread over 5 million workers, comes out to be about ... $260 a worker a year.

Just off the top of my little ole clueless head ...

How easy would it be to trim $260 a year in benefits for a worker?

How much will those workers who have to take on a second job spend in additional gas and other transportation costs a year?

So employers are going to cut a job just because they don't want to pay $260 a year per worker? That's what the corporate backers are saying.

 

[LongTimeListener]

Just look at how badly the unemployment rate has spiked and the economy has cratered since Obamacare was introduced.