Dear Dirty America

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ObamaCare Woes: Papa John’s Can’t Lower Wages Any Further

November 16
20:07 2012
DDA

Since President Obama’s Affordable Care Act passed, Applebee’s and Papa Johns have been vocal about firing employees or freezing their hiring. Obamacare mandates any company with 50 employees or more to offer healthcare coverage by 2014.

Some companies might threaten to pay their employees less. Others might complain that they won’t be able to hire new workers. And yet others, like Papa Johns, who pay their pizza slaves the bare minimum, poverty level wages, are out of options. They will be forced to raise their prices. Of course, this isn’t as bad as it sounds for American businesses.

As it is written:

Martin, a part owner of Ian’s Pizza, a pizza shop with four locations in Wisconsin, said his business has offered full heath care coverage to its 50 full-time employees for years, making it all the more difficult to compete with national chains like Papa John’s that pay workers low wages without health benefits.
“This may level the playing field for us,” Martin said of the Papa John’s price hike. “If they have to pay for benefits, and that pushes their prices up closer to ours, it will justify what we’ve been paying for and what we’ve been fighting to do the past few years.”

This is the crux of the American problem. We’ve become used to pathetically cheap prices from our staple restaurants and box stores, yet we don’t connect how those cheap prices have played a role in suppressing our wages and getting our jobs shipped overseas.

How could stores like Walmart sell their items for so cheap if the manufacturers of these goods didn’t have their products made in countries like China and Singapore? How could a pizza be so cheap if it weren’t made by workers who weren’t getting healthcare insurance options, and who are making wages that fall well below the poverty level line?

How can small American businesses like Ian’s Pizza keep up with these mega corporations?

We want good paying jobs. We want cheap shit all the time. We want Mitt Romney to pull open his butt cheeks and let 12 million high-paying jobs roll out and become available throughout the nation. But that’s bullshit. The model will never sustain itself.

So tell Papa John’s to go to hell. Tell the CEO to choke on a roll of pepperoni, or get buried in an enormous basket of shredded cheese. You pay your employees shit, you don’t offer them healthcare. You threaten workers in every other local pizza shop that has to have realistic prices to properly pay their employees. It’s time we support true American businesses, like Ian’s Pizza, who have been trying to run an upstart company from the beginning.

SEE ALSO

Capitalistic savagery

Koch sucking the sap of political liberty

Nothing can be won from beggars

On job creation

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1 Comment

  1. Tomás Hradcky
    Tomás Hradcky November 17, 15:26

    So that is where the jobs are!

    Reply to this comment

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