Company making gazillions of dollars firing $9.50/hour employees. How low.
Enjoying your iToys much?
Imagine being a business owner.
You have a retail store full of employees. You have been pressured to boost wages and salaries. Your business is dependent on heavy swings in market demand based on product release and time of year. You have made improvements to customer buying effieciency (i.e. the apple store app) which literally requires no employee to complete a purchase. This results in faster customer turnover and more employees dusting the already clean shelves. Will you retain the same number of employees just because you have already hired them?
It is a business decision. Yes, it sucks for those in need of work, but we are in a recession. Europe is crashing and burning. Sales will be influenced and overhead is not going to change by itself.
Those that are wealthy are wealthy for a reason and successful business's won't be a grandfather to the world just because they have a cash surplus because that is an inefficient way to run a business. There is a difference between being a philanthropist and correctly running a business.
I apologize if I'm coming off harsh, but as a business owner this topic hits a sweet spot for me
Edit: Even take out the recession and poor world economy - This is how the world of business works, everywhere, especially within retail.