One American CEO is making what most only dream about a reality, having a minimum wage put in place in the workplace.
Gravity CEO, Dan Price, who implemented a minimum salary
While reading Helen Liu’s blog post, I learned about the Seattle based company that has put this to the test. The idea comes from the company’s CEO who was making a seven figure salary and decided to cut his own salary to $70,000 a year and divide the rest among his employees. The idea behind this was that it would cover basic physiological needs, as outlined in the hierarchy of needs in chapter 5. Thus allowing for employees to worry less about financial struggles, therefore reducing stress. Workers who are more stressed showed a higher number of absences, lower engagement in the workplace, and multiple other negative characteristics according to this article written by Forbes.
Continuing off of my previous blog post, this piece furthers the idea of the importance of employee wellness in the workplace. In the article the company almost doubled their profits in 2015, and had a drop in their turnover rate from -4.8% to -18.8%. These are both major improvements and proof that employee health is company wealth.
Implementing a standardized income in the workplace could be a further addition to the standards put in place during the industrial revolution, as discussed in chapter 1. A fair distribution of wealth also helps to combat inequality and wage gaps within society, ensuring that an elite 1% do not control majority of the wealth.
References
Article
Cohen, Patricia. “One Company’s New Minimum Wage: $70,000 a Year.” The New York Times. N.p., 13 Apr. 2015. Web.
Liu, Helen. A Company with the $70K Minimum Wage. Helen Liu’s Blog. https://blogs.ubc.ca/helenl/2017/02/05/a-company-with-the-70k-minimum-wage/ . Date Accessed: Feb. 5, 2017.
Pictures
Turner, Nathanael. Dan Price. Bloomberg Businessweek. https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2015-gravity-ceo-dan-price/ . Date Accessed: Feb. 5, 2017.
n.a. Money-tumblr-mqqj96ax.jpg. Degrassi Wiki. http://degrassi.wikia.com/wiki/File:Money-tumblr-mqqj96ax.jpg . Date Accessed: Feb. 5, 2017.