(09-14-2019 06:07 PM)RiceLad15 Wrote:  

(09-14-2019 04:28 PM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  I am not sure where we had the MW discussion, but I wanted to let people know this anecdote.

I used to have a 50% interest in a food processing company. I sold my interest to the other main stockholder long ago. I was talking to his widow, who runs the company now.

She complained about the difficulty of getting and keeping good help. I jokingly said the $15 MW would take care of that. She said they were already offering more than that, and she cannot get most of her hires to even show up for work the first day, much less come back the second day.

What’s the problem, I asked.

“Nobody wants to work hard. They’ve never had to work hard before. They want to sit around in air conditioning and get paid for it.”

The work involves working in the heat, and occasionally lifting boxes of up to 60 pounds.

We hear a bunch about a “living wage”. Maybe those wanting a living wage should be prepared to work for it.

What wage has she been offering? Most of the guys I work with that do work hard and are willing to break their backs get paid closer to $40 an hour because that is what it will take to get someone to bust their ass.

But there definitely is a shortage of people willing to do hard manual labor for low pay.

I don’t know what they pay now but it is more than 15.

I doubt we are talking about the same hard physical labor. When I was an owner half the crew were women.

It is hot though, in the summer. You are in an unairconditioned building where cooking is being done in 500 gallon vats.