No, in fact many are paying higher than the union wage at the big 3 chains. The reason they have so much staffing is because they are getting several times more sales per square foot out of the stores because of the steep decline of the SoCal big 3. Remember that we already established that Ralphs has lost 75% of their sales volume in less than 20 years for example, so union or not you'd expect to see at least a 75% reduction in staffing. That Ralphs closes, Northgate opens and immediately does 4 times the sales volume because of the increasing reality that they better understand the SoCal customer.Bluelightspecial wrote: ↑November 18th, 2023, 5:10 pmIsn't part of the reason they have more labor is that they are non union. There have been previous union operators that tried to do upscale ethnic supermarkets, but the labor is too expensive.storewanderer wrote: ↑November 16th, 2023, 10:27 pm The common denominator in all of these ethnic operators is they have... LABOR. Their stores (especially the hispanic ones) are VERY well staffed. The big chains have been figuring out how to cut labor and fresh offers for years (well except Stater) and look at where it has gotten them. Hundreds of store closures. Meanwhile these ethnic operators with a focus on service, numerous staffed service counters open late into the night, and tons of staffing continue to expand and get better and better at what they do.
You're talking about potentially with benefits a 15 to 20% possible difference in wages between entry level union vs nonunion on lower paying retailers. But then the ethnic operators do 4X the sales volume per square foot, and on top of that they don't have any debt to pay interest on while Kroger and Albertsons have preposterous and absurd levels of debt.
The debt free retailer aspect alone will ensure triple the payroll spend when you look at the staffing levels of debt free chains...
The true #1 problem out there is how much Wall Street has hanging over these stores that have been forced to borrow billions of dollars in high interest debt from the banks, only to be forced to spend it on rebuying their own stocks. This is why you see so many retail liquidations, then go to say Canada and you've got a Toys R Us open next to a Pier 1 and a Bombay Company and on and on and on... And they're a higher regulated and higher paid and higher taxed economy...