A sad task

This post is just to correct some stats that have been floated on another blog about 7-Eleven wages. [To avoid embarrassing him in public, I emailed the blogger indicating where his errors lay, but he's intransigent. Since I don't want misleading information floating out there, I'm posting now.] 

The blogger claims the average weekly wage of a 7-Eleven clerk is $472.64 compared with a local independent restaurant's average weekly wage is $250. 

He gives the hourly 7-Eleven wage as $8.44. But instead of figuring a 40-hour week full time week, he divides the total hours of labor in the store by the number of personnel based on 7-Eleven's "7-10 employees per store."

As a result, his figure is for 56 hours per worker, not a 40 hour full time position (full time as defined by law).

But 56 hours would require overtime, which he didn't include. Correct sum should be:

(40hrs x $8.44) + (16hrs x $12.66) = $337.60 + $202.56 = $540.16

for 56 hours with overtime.

Obviously the franchisee isn't going to pay all that overtime. It's a 60% increase in his payroll! In fact, he doesn't have to pay any overtime. He can hire part-timers instead to take him through the week.

How many part-timers at a 7-Eleven? My guess: all the employees are part-time. If the franchisee uses only full timers, and a shift has to be covered for, say, an illness, the franchisee might have to pay expensive overtime to an employee. If all the employees are part-time, it's unlikely that any overtime will ever be necessary.

When 7-Eleven says it has 7-10 personnel per store, clearly they mean full time equivalences, not 7-10 individual bodies. To compare FTE's:

$337.60 full time at 7-Eleven (7-10 FTE's)
$400.00 full time at the restaurant (20 FTE's)

Perhaps more important, the total payroll of the independent is $8,000 per week if the $10/hr is correct; a 7-Eleven, $4,726.40 (unless the franchisee is an imbecile or a crook). A 7-Eleven occupies about twice the space of this particular independent restaurant, so the indie funnels $8,000 into its labor for a single storefront store, 7-Eleven only about $2,363.20 per single storefront store size. 7-Eleven provides less than a third (29%) of the wages of the independent. 

$16,000.00   per 25 ft wide storefront (independent restaurant)
  $4,726.40   per 25 ft wide storefront (7-Eleven)

At this point the blogger asks whether the independent, providing more than 3 times as much labor value, is sustainable. That question feeds directly to the justification for the NO711 program, since it's the chain stores like 7-Eleven that are raising commercial rents, closing down the indies. His question justifies NO711's program.

(NB -- The restaurant is busy. The 7-Eleven on Bowery looks deserted. The restaurant is staffed with twenty/thirty-somethings -- actors? film workers? students? -- 7-Elevens are staffed with 18-year-olds (?) in orange uniforms. Where are we headed if global capital wins? Everyone working in uniforms eating bad food? The one thing that I like about 7-Eleven is that they do employ a lot of non white employees. It's a shame they have to wear uniforms and work at such low wages with so little advancement.)

Now, I want to be very clear about the following. The blogger's very first comments about NO711 were derisive and smug, describing NO711 as full of "ridiculous claims." He's called us a variety of names that are false and derogatory. Now he has posted an animation that tells us "numbers are not your strong point." He brought a lot of derisive, ugly rhetoric into the space. I really don't want to be in that space, but here I am stuck in it. 

$4,726.40 published as the weekly average for a 7-Eleven clerk?

56 hrs/wk with no overtime?

At this point, NO711 deserves an honest apology. 

Here are the mistaken calculations on his blog:

Honestly, I shouldn't have to deal with this

The blogger who purveys misinformation about NO711 has taken to harassing me. On his blog, he posted graffiti he found somewhere with my name, implying that it was by me or about me. When I mentioned this on another popular local blog, he quickly deleted the graffiti post without leaving a notice or trace -- pretending that he never posted it. Worse, anyone who now goes looking for the post I publicly mentioned would get the impression that I was making it all up maliciously! Fortunately, I had already made a couple of screen caps of the post. 

So, just to prove I'm not making up this insanity, here's the graffiti he posted on his blog. 

He posted the graffiti again a few days later in another post:

Both the graffiti post and the photo in the later post have disappeared on his blog with no notice or trace. Here's the text now without the graffiti photo:

The photo had been at the paragraph break.

Honestly, I shouldn't have to deal with this.