I don't understand something. Why do they have to make employees work so much overtime? The allegedly bad working conditions were a common talking point for the strike. Seems like if Kellogg's just hired more workers they wouldn't be paying such a premium in OT, and there'd be less complaints on the workers side as well? And if the response is there's a shortage of workers, why not open another plant elsewhere and move some of the production lines?
This is an odd, but interesting, argument in favour of socialized healthcare. It is like the opposite extreme of companies that only hire people for just under full time hours in order to dodge healthcare costs.
It is a huge argument in favor of socialized healthcare.
However, if you want to leave it to "the market", the proper solution to both sides of the equation is that companies should be required by law to pay one "person unit of benefits" for every 40 hours worked (healthcare, vacation, pension/401K) no matter whether those hours are done by 4 people or a single person.
You can either pay it to a person or it goes into a government fund to help cover the people being shortchanged (ie. food stamps and healthcare for WalMart employees).
This would immediately stop all the stupidity around "just under full time hours" as well as "too much overtime".
>companies should be required by law to pay one "person unit of benefits" for every 40 hours worked
Yes, the government could levy this "fee" on all employer-employee relationships and put it into some "government fund".. Wait a second! That sounds suspiciously familiar.
The point is that once you make it revenue neutral, most companies would rather pay it out to an employee rather than pay it out to the government.
Yes, there would likely be a few obtuse companies (maybe make paying it to the government 10% more expensive than paying it directly to the company), but most would simply grant their existing benefits directly to the employee once they couldn't make any money off of not doing so.
Getting rid of the employer from non cash/equity compensation (especially tax advantaged) completely would be even easier and more effective for making markets transparent.
It could also just be an argument for letting people purchase health insurance in healthcare.gov with pre tax income, currently a benefit only for employees employed by employers offering it.
I would even go so far as to limit businesses’ ability to compensate people in cash or equity only. That would help foster far more transparency on what wages really are and help sellers of labor easily compare offers from employers. All tax incentives should be decoupled from employers and offered directly to all taxpayers equally.
I do not know how much this is contributes but Nebraska has very low unemployment rates (<2% currently). Can be hard to recruit for difficult / manual labor jobs even if it pays well
If they have to mandate time and a half overtime because they can’t find people, it tells me they aren’t paying enough for their employees or charging enough for Frosted Flakes. (Welcome to inflation)
Except it doesn’t pay well. $120k/y normally is $60/h. With 80 hr weeks, assuming 1.5x for overtime, that’s $24/h. Frankly, any job that requires overtime better pay investment banker rates.
Assuming that overtime is paid time and a half, that usually works out to the cost of hiring new employees (depending on benefits, employees typically cosy between 133-160% of their salary, iirc).
If employees argue these are bad working conditions, then it should be reflected in staff turnover, which would be additional incentive for the company to hire more to alleviate the problem.
There is definitely something else at play than simple cost effectiveness.
A lot of the current strikes are over the two-tiered systems and companies are using the two tiered systems to slowly push out the unions.
Two-tiered systems allow some workers to be full union members, but new hires not with the promise that one day they may become union members. Non-union members are mostly making way below those of union counter parts doing the same job. Then what happens, someone from the union retires, so a lot comes open for a non-union member, but the company never fills it. They can meet their promise with the union of "we have 5,000 union jobs on paper," but they don't actually have 5,000 union workers because they are not filling them.
We do not have enough information about the pay the come to any conclusions. Is there a defined benefit pension component? Is it already included in the quoted wages? What is the value of the health insurance subsidies? Etc.
