Because corporations are, apparently, perfect?
Madanthonywayne said:
So that should really help improve the quality of life for these employees. Instead of one full time job, now they get to work multiple part time jobs or take a pay cut as a result of working fewer hours. Thanks, Obamacare!
When did 29.5 hours constitute a full-time job? When I worked food-service, the magic number was thirty-five hours; the company didn't want you accidentally treading onto thirty-seven. When the hell did we cut seven to eight hours from our expectation of full-time employment? (No, really, that's not sarcasm—I missed the transition.) And according to the article you provided, they're trying to avoid hitting thirty hours a week. Really?
That is full time? I wish I could have had that standard when I was working retail.
And one thing I would like to know is how you can honestly push this stuff and never stop to consider the companies themselves? As we've seen over and over again, when executives make bad decisions, the consequences are often laid on the workers. DRI's stock is doing better under Obama than it did under Bush.
It's always easy to blame politicians, but one has to be incredibly naïve to take company executives at face value.
Furthermore, the article you provided also notes that a company statement explained that they "simply do not have enough information to make any decisions at this time". Furthermore, the article notes that Darden "has been aggressively keeping labor costs down". This makes perfect sense to me; I worked for a couple chain restaurants once upon a time. A drop in labor costs from 33.1% to 30.8%? Okay. When I was with Pizza Hut, our franchise owner pitched a fit if you approached 30%; our target was 25%.
And when I worked for Hollywood Video—you know, one of those chains that absolutely did not see the internet coming, and thus had no backup plan?—was opening
four hundred stores a year in '95 and '96. They got into a labor fight with the state of Washington, saying the requirement to compensate employees for mandatory uniforms was an unfair financial burden. Really? I mean, is a business model that revolves entirely around expansion, and not product and service delivery, exempt from criticism?
Once upon a time, the general capitalist business model was to find a need in the marketplace, fulfill that need, and make a profit while doing so. These days it seems more and more like fulfilling the needs, delivering products and services, is just an annoying burden that companies must suffer in order to collect revenue. (This was a huge problem among the dotcoms, who tried to
create a need; the business model up here in the Pacific northwest tech corridor was to devise a gimmick, pitch for investment capital, and hold out long enough to be bought out, so that whatever problems profitability faced became the new parent company's headache.)
But in your view, it seems, the problem is a policy plan devised by conservatives, advocated by Republicans, and implemented by a Republican. Now that a Democrat has followed that route, everything is his fault. You know, because a company's business model can't possibly be problematic.
And while Darden may be the world's largest casual dining outfit, I think it would probably help profitability if their restaurants didn't absolutely suck. No, really. I don't think I know anyone who has eaten at a Red Lobster or Olive Garden in the last five years without being dragged there for some other reason, like a company lunch. If we want casual seafood in this area, you don't go to Red Lobster. You go to McGrath's, where the food isn't downright horrible. If you want casual Italian food, you don't go to Olive Garden. I mean, sure, there's the Old Spaghetti Factory, but it doesn't really matter—Olive Garden is
terrible. Perhaps the best thing that can be said about Darden is that there are only about thirty Bahama Breeze restaurants.
But, hey, when they want to pinch labor costs in order to boost their bottom line, it's fair to blame politicians, but their business model and execution are off limits?
Horsepucky. The reality is that Darden is just being another stupid, greedy corporation. We see this all the time. When the economy is good, corporations pinch labor in order to "stay competitive". When the economy is rough, corporations pinch labor because the politicians are so unfair. You know, for all we hear about American exceptionalism, it astounds me how fragile our American businesses are—how much help they need from the government in order to (
ahem!) stand on their own two feet. It's kind of like gun owners in that respect; it's striking to me how frightened firearms advocates are of the world.
And, you know, if you don't like employer-based healthcare, or the Heritage Foundation plan, then get out of the way so we can build a responsible single-payer plan. I know, I know. Trillions on a war we didn't need to fight is all well and fine because Iraq is sitting on an ocean of oil. But a healthy society? Oh, God help us!
And, hey, that reminds me of another point. I mean, I recognize that you're not a Christian or anything like that, but as a conservative, can you help me understand this weird relationship between evangelical Christianity and the absolute lack of compassion about the Republican economic agenda? Honestly, I can't figure it out. It's never made sense to me, and all these years later I
still can't figure it out.
This may be an "unintended consequence" of the law, but it was as predictable as the sun rising.
Well, of course it was predictable. Companies large and small routinely blame the government for their own failures. That's one of those points that is filed under, "Duh".
