I owned and operated a pizza shop for many years. Almost 100% of my hires were kids getting their first job. Most of these kids needed to learn things like how to show up on time, how to work with others, not to get high before coming to work (I kid you not), and how to produce enough each hour to be worth any wage at all. In many cases it took months for them to rise to this level. And those who could not get up to that level quickly had to be let go. This was not out of greed or cruelty, this was a simple necessity if one wished to stay in business.
Unlike government, a small business either makes ends meet or goes bankrupt. If an employee cannot produce more than you are paying him or her, you can’t keep them. It’s literally that simple.
Once an employee had learned how to produce more than they were being paid, the minimum wage no longer applied to them. Since they can work anywhere they wish, it was in my best interests to pay them more so they would stay. And you can bet your butt I did; hiring and training are expensive and I had no desire to be a “training center” for my competitors! But if a person did not rise to that level quickly, I had no choice but to let them go. And the higher the wage, the higher the level of productivity has to be in order to hire and keep them.
Despite all of the posturing and claims of “helping the working poor,” minimum-wage laws hurt the very people they were designed to help: those at the bottom of the productivity and wage scale.
-John Bianchi
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