- Target shares fell 2% early Monday morning as investors worried about how much the wage hike would hurt the bottom line. Target reiterated its third-quarter and full-year profit guidance but said that it would update investors early next year about how higher wages would affect long-term profits.
Fuck investors.
Target employee here. While I'm happy for the pay increase, I just hope this incentivizes management to fire bad employees. I'm on the flow team (truck unload followed by stocking), and a third of the team could be fired tomorrow and I wouldn't even notice. The only shitty part about the pay increase is anyone making under $11.00/hour loses any yearly pay increases they have received in the past. So my coworkers who started last month will be making the same amount as I am even though I've been there over a year. I'm not too disgruntled about it, but I'm am mildly annoyed. Also, fuck investors.
So... as an employee, I am curious about how much you care what others are getting paid, vs whether you are getting a living wage, or not...? Are you happy to get a raise? Are you happy that your coworkers are going to have it easier now? Does it really matter what someone is making in contrast to your pay level? A credit card processor here in Seattle tried flattening their pay scale - everyone gets $70k/year - and the results were interesting. But this was a couple years ago. Culture is changing quickly. I'm interested to see how you weigh your value against your coworkers...? It seems that seniority would not significantly improve someone's skills, when working in a "flow" job at Target. Yeah, some people pick up on things faster than others, but after a few months, isn't everyone pretty much equally skilled at the tasks involved in the "flow"? (BTW - I love the idea of the "flow" group... moving stuff from trucks, into the store, in a flow... that's a cool concept.)
I don't care that much about pay differences on the team. It's only mildly annoying to me because a third of the team doesn't really do much. If seeing them get a pay bump means I get a pay bump as well (even if it's smaller) so be it. But yes, I'm happy to see all my coworkers getting a pay increase as well (I'm not that much of an asshole). Some of them have families they're supporting and quite a few (myself included) are college students who need all the money we can get. As for how I value myself against my coworkers, I guess it comes down to how management treats me. I'm part-time, but I routinely get 35-40 hours per week. Only 2-3 others on flow get those kind of hours. When shit hits the fan, we're the people management asks to stay past our scheduled time and help (or come in on our days off). Management has a limited number of hours to give out each month, they give them to those of us who are reliable, hard workers. As you say, it doesn't take long to learn the skills that flow requires, but the one thing no company can train you for is a work ethic. As I told my boss, I'm not there to have fun or enjoy myself, I'm there to earn a paycheck. I stay focused, keep the chit chat to a minimum, and work as fast as I can. It's not that a third of the team doesn't know the skills, it's that they get distracted, begin talking with one another, or smoke weed while on their break.
I’ve read a similar thing about how walmart could potentially pay all they minimum wage employees 12$ if they only increased their prices by 1 cent on the dollar (or something like that, don’t remember the specifics). And what that didn’t take into account was all the pay raises and insatisfaction upstream of the manager that is paid 12.50. Or the dude that worked his way up to 11$. Or the guy in the office with a bachelor that started at 13$. I mean, I guess good for target. They might just fire those 1/3 peeps that you could do without to calm down the investors. And then you’ll be at the same place you were before, but with more work... yeah fuck investors
Well, fuck the mono-focus on investor happiness, really. Investors buying stock is a large part of a company's valuation, which allows the company to borrow against that value, and use the borrowed funds to to invest in improving the company. Thereby increasing the value of the company, raising the stock price, and giving the investors a bigger return. It's like home equity, roughly speaking. You can borrow against the amount of equity you have in your home, to make improvements, thereby raising the value of your home. (Ok, your home value is way more stable than the stock market, but the analogy is broadly applicable.) So increasing stock value is good for business, because it keeps investors invested, and bolsters the "equity" your business has. Target is doing something non-traditional, so investors get wiggly, because a lot of these investors are institutions that are investing people's pensions and retirement funds, in the hope of giving their customers more money to live on when they retire. So the investors' concern is warranted. "Do we leave the money in here and hope it pans out, or move it over to Blackwater, which always gives us a big return, but are a buncha assholes who kill people for a living?" The reason investors have so much pull, is because companies have leveraged themselves so hard against their stock price. A drop in the stock price basically places them "underwater", like a homeowner who suddenly owes more money on their home than it is worth on the market. Know why Apple has $5bn in cash stored in bank accounts around the world? Because fuck investors, that's why. Apple needs to be a public company, but they can't be beholden to the whims of investors, like Carl Icahn, who has been on Apple since the late 1980's, to make stupid business decisions to raise stock value. So Apple keeps this big huge stick in the closet - $5bn in cash - so they can weather any problem, and still give the finger to the investors. (Failures like the sapphire plant in TX that tanked.) It's also a defensive tool. If anyone wants to acquire Apple, they have to come up with $1 to match every $1 Apple has in the bank, and then make an offer for the business that takes into account the brand value, product line, worldwide customer base, real estate, assets, etc, etc, etc. In effect, keeping that $5bn in the back ensures that there is no dollar amount that makes sense to buy Apple - via hostile takeover, or any other method. Bringing this back around to Target, if they can raise wages and maintain their value, the stock price will SHOOT up. This will give them a huge boost of cash to go on a massive growth campaign... just at the time all these Sears stores are closing down. Plus they get all the feel-good publicity of raising wages and being a "good guy" employer, and maybe even move in to old communities abandoned by WalMart. Who knows? Target is a vibrant retailer in a market that is distinctly retailer unfriendly... and that's a pretty good recipe for setting up a solid monopoly. (Especially when you can steal the entire WalMart workforce because you pay better.) It's an interesting play. And yeah... fuck being too focused on Investors. It's worked for Apple, despite all of Icahn's efforts, Apple has won.
FUCK INVESTORS Because they push cash into a company and expect more cash out, they fuck things up on all ends. It's all about short term profits and bottom lines. Wanna know why public companies worry more about stock values and dividends instead of substantially re-investing into their own work force and product in a meaningful way? Cause investors demand it, cause it's about the bottom line. Wanna know why people in retail have such shit options for health insurance? Cause investors demand it, cause it's about the bottom line. Wanna know why hours get cut, people get layed off, and the work spreads thinner and thinner? Cause investors demand it, cause it's about the bottom line. Basically, if a company makes a decision and it doesn't make money tomorrow, investors get pissed. So companies stop worrying about what's right and financially healthy and then you get shit like this. Seriously, as an investor, if you're getting antsy because Target is raising its wages because it can be good for employees on the short end and hopefully lead to competitive retention and help the company in the long run, you're an asshole who doesn't give a shit about the company you're investing in or the people who work for it and you deserve every last heap of scorn you get. THE FACT THAT THIS IS THE CASE IS LITERALLY INSANE AND GOES TO SHOW HOW UNHEALTHY BEING A PUBLICLY TRADED COMPANY CAN BE!!! FUCK APPLE AND COMPANIES LIKE THEM IN PARTICULAR! I'm so glad you brought them up. Fuck them and their investors and their bottom line. Fucking story time. Way back when, in the '50s and '60s and even somewhat into the '70s, companies invested in each and every employee they had. From the janitors to the engineers to the fucking CEO. It was good. People were doing good. Then somewhere, someone got the idea to hire third party companies to take care of grunt work, because it was good for the bottom line. So instead of the janitors working for the company, they work for some third party company, for worse pay and worse benefits. People saw this was good for the bottom line, so this trend started to spread. It's been getting worse every decade. Now IT is outsourced to India. Now people are getting hired as "temps" or for "individual projects" then let go. This shit affects people's short term happiness and long term financial security and it's one of the mechanisms that's literally eroding the middle class. Know who fucking clamors for these business practices? Investors. Investors. Investors. FUCK 'EM My fucking social class are working our hands to the bones and are getting less and less for it each year while investors sit on their asses and reap the real rewards of our hard work just because they have the money to basically buy our rewards from us. I said it yesterday, I'm saying it now, and I'll say it again tomorrow. FUCK INVESTORSThe reason investors have so much pull, is because companies have leveraged themselves so hard against their stock price. A drop in the stock price basically places them "underwater", like a homeowner who suddenly owes more money on their home than it is worth on the market.
As a potential customer, this frustrates me to no end. The idea that everyone is replaceable has left these places with employees who don't care. Maybe Amazon would have destroyed retail hell anyway, but my opinion is these places did it to themselves by making the customer experience terrible. The only retail place I like is REI. And I'm pretty sure they treat their employees pretty well.Wanna know why public companies worry more about stock values and dividends instead of substantially re-investing into their own work force and product in a meaningful way? Cause investors demand it, cause it's about the bottom line. Wanna know why people in retail have such shit options for health insurance? Cause investors demand it, cause it's about the bottom line. Wanna know why hours get cut, people get layed off, and the work spreads thinner and thinner? Cause investors demand it, cause it's about the bottom line.
Ah yes. Benevolent luminaries like William Randolph Hearst, Andrew Carnegie, the Phillip Morris company, Bugsy Siegel and Las Vegas, Bayer and Dow Chemical, Henry-the-Nazi-Ford and every one of his progeny at Ford Motors, Martin-Marietta and Lockheed and Hughes Aircraft - hell, Howard Hughes himself - and... shall I go on? I'm not gonna defend the companies who kowtow to investor whims, and the bottom-line feeding frenzy. But calling out the 50's-70's as some sort of Leave It To Beaver nirvana of worker enchantment and equality is missing the core salient fact that we were the ONLY first-world country with a surviving manufacturing sector, who basically resupplied all of Europe after WWII. And as soon as the barons of industry had raped the workers for every drop of sweat and blood they could, and OSHA standards came into effect (1970, by the way), they closed those production lines and moved them overseas. NOT due to investor demands, by the way. They had to do it because their key market - Europe - was now saturated and self-sustaining, and no longer needed American products. They needed a cheaper workforce, so they could drop their prices and compete in a world market, and lose their sole-source position. Short-sighted gains, once again, sabotaged the long-term health of the business and their employees. So - getting back to our primary point - yay for Target for breaking this cycle, in a big and visible way. Maybe their rudimentary effort will be the first pebble in the lake, and the rings will spread out and finally get companies - and investors - to embrace the Triple Bottom Line that is the only way to build a sustainable business, professionally, ecologically, and for the workers, as well. "Way back when, in the '50s and '60s and even somewhat into the '70s, companies invested in each and every employee they had. From the janitors to the engineers to the fucking CEO. It was good. People were doing good."