See
Atlas Shrugs by Randall Holcombe of the Independent Institute.
"Three months ago, the CEO of Gravity Payments, a Seattle credit card
processing firm, announced that all of the firm’s employees would be
paid a minimum of $70,000 a year, according to this story.
Now, the firm has fallen on hard times, and some of the firm’s “higher
valued” employees have quit. One employee who quit said, “He gave raises
to people who have the least skills and are the least equipped to do
the job, and the ones who were taking on the most didn’t get much of a
bump.” Another who quit said, “Now the people who were just clocking in
and out were making the same as me. It shackles high performers to less
motivated team members.”
The real-world Gravity Payments sounds a lot like the fictional Twentieth Century Motor Company from Ayn Rand’s novel, Atlas Shrugged,
and while the quotations from the real-world employees who left Gravity
Payments do not sound quite as passionate as the fictional John Galt,
the message is the same.
Rand’s novel was first published in 1957 and has been continuously in
print since. I am not the first to observe that many real-world events
since the publication of Rand’s novel closely resemble events in the
fictional world she described. Here is another example."
See also
Seattle CEO who set firm's minimum wage to $70G says he has hit hard times from Fox News. Excerpt:
"Only three months ago Price was generating headlines—and accusations
of being a socialist -- when he announced the new salary minimum for all
120 employees at his Gravity Payments credit card processing firm.
Price said he was doing it, and slashing his $1 million pay package to
pay for it, to address the wealth gap.
“I’m working as hard as I ever worked to make it work,” he told the
Times in a video that shows him sitting on a plastic bucket in the
garage of his house. “I’m renting out my house right now to try and make
ends meet myself.”
The Times article said Price’s decision ended up costing him a few
customers and two of his “most valued” employees, who quit after newer
employees ended up with bigger salary hikes than older ones.
“He gave raises to people who have the least skills and are the least
equipped to do the job, and the ones who were taking on the most didn’t
get much of a bump,” Gravity financial manager Maisey McMaster, 26,
told the paper.
She said when she talked to Price about it, he treated her as if she was being selfish and only thinking about herself.
“That really hurt me,” she said. “I was talking about not only me, but about everyone in my position.”
Approaching burnout, she quit.
Grant Moran, 29, also quit, saying the new pay-scale was disconcerting
“Now the people who were just clocking in and out were making the
same as me,” he told the paper. “It shackles high performers to less
motivated team members.”
Price said McMaster and Moran, or even critic Rush Limbaugh, the talk show host, were not wrong.
“There’s no perfect way to do this and no way to handle complex
workplace issues that doesn’t have any downsides or trade-offs,” he
said.
The Times said customers who left were dismayed at what Price did,
viewing it as a political statement. Others left fearful Gravity would
soon hike fees to pay for salary increases."
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