Ralphs and Food 4 Less Closing in Long Beach over $4 per hour additional required "Hero Pay"

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Re: Ralphs and Food 4 Less Closing in Long Beach over $4 per hour additional required "Hero Pay"

Post by veteran+ »

Kroger is simply using this as an excuse (political) to close the stores.

Here's an idea...............that hazard pay way too much for these guys to handle?

How about slightly reducing Executive and shareholder pay? How about that?

Oh that's right................not gonna happen.

Payroll is always used as the scapegoat to increase prices for the customers.

LOL..................so funny and an ancient practice of excuses.
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Re: Ralphs and Food 4 Less Closing in Long Beach over $4 per hour additional required "Hero Pay"

Post by storewanderer »

veteran+ wrote: February 3rd, 2021, 8:01 am Kroger is simply using this as an excuse (political) to close the stores.

Here's an idea...............that hazard pay way too much for these guys to handle?

How about slightly reducing Executive and shareholder pay? How about that?

Oh that's right................not gonna happen.

Payroll is always used as the scapegoat to increase prices for the customers.

LOL..................so funny and an ancient practice of excuses.
We all know reducing executive and shareholder pay is not likely to happen under this specific scenario so I didn't even bring it up. The consumer will always pay for this type of thing. There may be some other chain or some privately held retailer or some co-op that decides to "eat" the cost increase and accept less profit, and as a result they would be more competitive to the customer and ideally capture additional market share over time, but for a publicly traded retailer where executives and shareholders are #1 the customer will always be the one who pays for this type of overhead increase.

Yeah and what bothers me here is it is like- Long Beach passed this rather early. So Kroger immediately comes out and says they are closing stores because of it. Then at the same time other cities (Los Angeles, Oakland) move quickly to pass the similar thing, and multiple other cities are in rapid discussions to implement this hazard pay order for the grocery/drug store employees.

I think this was Kroger's way of trying to scare other cities into not implementing this- if you do this, we will close some stores (not all of the stores... maybe not any of the stores... just some).

These things are moving forward quickly enough in other cities that it appears those city councils do not care about the threat of closing a store as a result of this.
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Re: Ralphs and Food 4 Less Closing in Long Beach over $4 per hour additional required "Hero Pay"

Post by klkla »

In Kroger's most recent quarter net earnings were up 51% compared to last year. Comp sales were up 10.9% excluding fuel. They are making a killing off this situation.

They can afford to share some love with the employees that put their health on the line everyday by going to work.
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Re: Ralphs and Food 4 Less Closing in Long Beach over $4 per hour additional required "Hero Pay"

Post by storewanderer »

klkla wrote: February 3rd, 2021, 2:32 pm In Kroger's most recent quarter net earnings were up 51% compared to last year. Comp sales were up 10.9% excluding fuel. They are making a killing off this situation.

They can afford to share some love with the employees that put their health on the line everyday by going to work.
Well I guess they will do that in the 6 Long Beach Stores they are keeping open... along with the other dozens of stores they operate in cities that will be implementing these rules in the coming weeks. Had they done the right thing and extended this to begin with we would not be having this discussion right now. And they probably could have extended $2 or $3 an hour on their own and been left alone by these city councils. Due to their failure to act, now they get hit with $4 or $5 an hour.

Sadly from a money perspective it may be cheaper for them to pay the extra $4 or $5 now in limited locations, than it would have been to extend the extra $2-$3 across all stores for a longer time period.
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Re: Ralphs and Food 4 Less Closing in Long Beach over $4 per hour additional required "Hero Pay"

Post by pseudo3d »

klkla wrote: February 3rd, 2021, 2:32 pm In Kroger's most recent quarter net earnings were up 51% compared to last year. Comp sales were up 10.9% excluding fuel. They are making a killing off this situation.

They can afford to share some love with the employees that put their health on the line everyday by going to work.
Despite what politicians think, rhetoric isn't a reason for policy change. At the beginning of the pandemic, there wasn't much protection for employees (no masks required for customers, etc.) but grocery worker-related outbreaks were rare. I think most of the general public is past the "people who didn't lose their job are heroes" phase, as many other food service workers and everyone else who has to deal with the public aren't getting extra pay for doing their jobs.
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Re: Ralphs and Food 4 Less Closing in Long Beach over $4 per hour additional required "Hero Pay"

Post by storewanderer »

pseudo3d wrote: February 3rd, 2021, 7:12 pm Despite what politicians think, rhetoric isn't a reason for policy change. At the beginning of the pandemic, there wasn't much protection for employees (no masks required for customers, etc.) but grocery worker-related outbreaks were rare. I think most of the general public is past the "people who didn't lose their job are heroes" phase, as many other food service workers and everyone else who has to deal with the public aren't getting extra pay for doing their jobs.
Some of the bills proposed by other city councils do encompass more workers and some include restaurant workers. Many of the cities proposing these rules already have the $15/hr minimum wage, etc. Bottom line is businesses in these cities need to understand they are operating with politicians that are very comfortable dictating various orders about how the businesses are to operate in those cities, now even dictating specific wage increases to specific business types for a specific time period. These cities already have a high cost of doing business (rent, utilities, etc.). These businesses have learned how to operate in that environment (you increase the prices, period). There is still a demand for these businesses in the city and customers who are perfectly willing to shop in these cities and pay the higher prices that come with the higher overhead.

So let the employees celebrate their pay increase. Perhaps it will help keep the stores staffed. Many stores had a lot of trouble with staffing last summer as folks displaced from other jobs did not want to work in stores due to concerns over getting sick, and were being paid more to stay on unemployment with the extra $600/week pandemic unemployment assistance benefit from April through 7/31 on top of regular unemployment.
Last edited by storewanderer on February 4th, 2021, 10:14 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Ralphs and Food 4 Less Closing in Long Beach over $4 per hour additional required "Hero Pay"

Post by veteran+ »

I thought we were talking about retail..............not politicians.

Just sayin............... :roll:
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Re: Ralphs and Food 4 Less Closing in Long Beach over $4 per hour additional required "Hero Pay"

Post by klkla »

pseudo3d wrote: February 3rd, 2021, 7:12 pm I think most of the general public is past the "people who didn't lose their job are heroes" phase, as many other food service workers and everyone else who has to deal with the public aren't getting extra pay for doing their jobs.
I disagree. The people working at jobs such as supermarkets and restaurants are still much more at risk because they spend more than 15 minutes in closed environments. As mentioned up thread if the chain stores had maintained the $2 an hour hazard pay until the end of the pandemic they would still have seen a dramatic increase in earnings and wouldn't have to deal with cities such as Long Beach legislating that they do the right thing.

Also, it's shameful that Kroger is using this as an excuse to close stores that they would likely have closed anyways. They know this pandemic is a temporary situation. If these stores were performing well before the pandemic they would have waited it out. Instead they moved up these closures to make a political statement.
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Re: Ralphs and Food 4 Less Closing in Long Beach over $4 per hour additional required "Hero Pay"

Post by pseudo3d »

klkla wrote: February 4th, 2021, 11:20 am
Also, it's shameful that Kroger is using this as an excuse to close stores that they would likely have closed anyways. They know this pandemic is a temporary situation. If these stores were performing well before the pandemic they would have waited it out. Instead they moved up these closures to make a political statement.
Kroger has threatened to pull the plug on entire divisions when they didn't like the labor situation. If they were going to strong-arm the government into backing down or changing terms, that would be the way to do it.

But their excuse is bizarre for a large, well-funded company (it's not like a small chain with a dozen locations, all of which are leased), which brings me back to my belief about the suspicious excuse given for that Houston closure (okay, so the new H-E-B sapped a lot of business, but don't tell me it's been a money-loser for years and how you tried every available avenue) and that there's something about Kroger itself that is not as healthy as it appears.

Just my two cents on the issue.
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Re: Ralphs and Food 4 Less Closing in Long Beach over $4 per hour additional required "Hero Pay"

Post by Bagels »

Shockingly, Irvine just matched Long Beach. Will be interesting to see if Kroger threatens to close one or more of its locations...
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