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The CEO of the restaurant & pizza chain says there is no shortage of labor, only a shortage of wages.
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He’s been paying employees $ 16 / hour since before the pandemic and says he’s full.
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He said he had received more than 100 applications for each job this year.
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See more stories on the Insider business page.
Business owners say they are struggling to find staff. Not so with the CEO of & pizza, a restaurant chain in Washington, DC, who claims he has been bombarded with job applications.
Michael Lastoria told Insider that business is booming at the pizza chain’s 51 stores and all are fully staffed. He said the secret was to pay the staff a decent salary.
The crippling labor shortage in the United States has been felt across all sectors of the economy, including hospitality and ridesharing. This has caused some companies to cut opening hours, cut production, and raise prices. Nearly half of American restaurateurs said they struggled to pay their rent in May because staff shortages were hurting their income.
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But he didn’t hit & pizza, Lastoria said.
When opening 12 new locations this year, Lastoria said it had received over 100 applications for each job. “Our new locations are fully staffed and we plan to open 15 more by the end of the year,” he said.
Lastoria said he was able to sidestep the labor shortage by leveraging an employee-centric business model that involves paying staff $ 16 an hour on average, among other benefits.
“We are living proof that the claims of business owners about not being able to pay people enough money to live is false,” Lastoria said. The claims were meant to protect the old corporate mindset that allows shocking executive compensation and exploitation of staff, he said.
Employees working at & pizza are entitled to benefits such as paid time off for activism and health care, Lastoria said. “We built this company around taking care of workers because without them we wouldn’t exist,” he said.
The fact that the average minimum wage worker has to work 79 hours a week to pay rent for a one-bedroom apartment is the real crisis, Lastoria said. “There is no shortage of manpower, there is a shortage of business owners willing to pay a living wage.
“The idea that wages could not increase once in the past 12 years as prices rose, while inflation rose and the cost of living rose, led to the ‘shortage.’ [business owners] live today.
“Higher wages lead to increased consumer spending and greater labor productivity, things that every business benefits from.”
A competitive labor market has led workers to “quit” their jobs in protest against poor pay and working conditions. A former Dollar General employee recently told Insider how she furiously quit her job in the spring of 2021 due to the busy work environment. Similar incidents have occurred at McDonald’s, Chipotle, Hardee’s and Wendy’s establishments in the United States.
Lastoria said: “If you don’t pay your employees enough to cover basic survival costs, what possible incentive could a person have to take on this job?
Read the original article on Business Insider
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