Papa John's Pizza Obamacare Hypocrisy — Page 2

WOW! Not a good week for Republicans. Exposing hypocrisy I guess really is the last straw.LOL!

We get trolls like Abby(or whatever your name is) and even a new one. All outraged that their greed is all on full display. We are laughing at your childish greedy meltdowns.

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Abby, you are a proven liar and you are crazy. Why waste your time here? Seriously. EVERYONE thinks you are nuts,you've been caught in lies,you are a joke,You are known to have multiple accounts and screen names here, your politics are one sided,you are a hypocrite and you can not explain most the things you say. When challenged you ignore the hard questions and ramble on and on.How do we know you have not created a new user name because you are tired of being the minority here?

You are a conservative Republican attempting to make sense and sell your propaganda on a Broadway message board (LOL) You and your party think we are pretty bad people (I mean, we all voted for Obama for Christs sake!) Go lie somewhere else and sell it to a more gullible crowd. We never did buy your crap and after the American People spoke on Tuesday, why the F*** would we listen to a nut like you now?

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Updated On: 11/11/12 at 04:11 PM

Not everything is about "fighting the man" and big business. This is simply how the world spins and capitalism works. And to go a step further, I don't think employer should be obligated to provide their employees with health insurance. Just like I don't think employees should be obligated to work for any particular employer. It's a free system and it should stay that way but it's good for the government to provide fail safes for those of us who are less fortunate.

Why shouldn't employers take care of their employees? What good is an employee if he isn't healthy enough to work?

I'm so glad I live in San Francisco, where we have a form of universal health care. It's not perfect, but it's better than most.

I also work for Bath and Body Works, and they paid for our flu shots. I don't know how much that cost, but it came from the corporate offices.

And guys, this is what I mean about not being educated. TheatreDiva, you uploaded a poster on this thread identifying Zane Tankel as the CEO of Applebee's. HE'S NOT.

Zane Tankel is the CEO of Apple-Metro which is Applebee's franchisee for the New York area. Why is there so much anger at the reality of our economic system where we're making posters not even knowing who we're actually attacking?

And in regards to Papa John's giving away 2 million pizzas as part of an NFL promo, that's the parent company not individual franchisees (who the CEO of Papa John's was referring to). And companies can't take their marketing budgets and reallocate them to employee benefits or they'll go out of business. Guys, if we're all want to have respectable opinions we need to demonstrate we understand how ethical businesses operate (and reallocating their marketing budgets thereby killing sales isn't one way).

Papa John's was struggling before the election. Locations near me closed. It has nothing to do with Obamacare but that's a convenient excuse to cover a CEO who's taking for himself instead of reinvesting in the company.

Many of the other companies listed at that link have been struggling with issues for some time and no unionized company (e.g. Boeing) is going to be affected by Obamacare.

Wasn't 14 cents per pizza the number being bandied about when the CEO first made this threat? That prices would have to go up 14 cents per pizza to cover the company's employees?

And at any rate, per ABC News: "Large businesses, those with more than 50 employees, are the only ones on the hook for providing health insurance under the health reform law. While Papa John's as a whole employs 16,500 people, 80 percent of the company's restaurants are independently owned franchises. As long as a franchise owner does not employ more than 50 people, he or she does not have to pay for employee health insurance."

So why the threat of all these layoffs? I admit I'm fairly ignorant about things like this, but what am I not getting?

I own a small business. I don't claim to know anything about the financial details of the fast-food industry, but I do know a great deal about finding, training and keeping employees. I also understand the stress of seeing costs rise without a simultaneous increase in income.

My partner and I have always understood our business as an engine to create profit for everyone who works for the firm. I have always paid my employees more than my competitors and provided a wide range of benefits--insurance, personal leave, retirement contributions, flexible hours, canvas tote bags--not because (or not JUST because) I am a Good Person, but because it has always seemed like basic common sense and enlightened self-interest. What kind of commitment and respect can I reasonably expect from people whom I am treating without commitment and respect? Personality conflicts may arise, but I have RARELY had the experience of walking over to an employee's desk to find them minimizing a window on which they are editing their resume--an activity that was almost a permanent state of affairs for me in the years that I spent working for selfish, bottom-line obsessed employers.

Providing insurance and other benefits for my employees has cost me a lot of money--money that came directly off my bottom line and out of my pocket. While I don't have any hard research data to support my belief, I am confident that my employees--who stay with me for years and years and years, saving me the enormous costs inherent in high turnover--are working damned hard and are making my firm far more profitable and successful than it would be if it were staffed by a bunch of disgruntled, antagonistic, exploited workers. Plus--the canvas totes are good advertising.

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Reginald Tresilian: I'm going to give the best answer I believe to be accurate, though having not done the math myself I'm making an educated guess based on the CEO's $5 - $8 million estimate.

As you said 80% of Papa John's are independently owned franchises, meaning the other 20% are owned by the PJ parent company presumably. Many franchisees own multiple locations under an umbrella company (which is controlled by the franchisee and independent from the main Papa John's parent company). Let's say me and you start PJ NY Pizza LLC and acquire 20 Papa John's in the New York area, we're surely going to have over 50 employers.

Usually with franchises, they encourage multiple unit ownership instead of selling each one by one. So it's possible a decent # of the 80% of PJ independently owned franchises would have to pay their employees healthcare (who work 30 hours) as those locations are owned by a company which employees a minimum of 50 people.

Sorry if this was a bit confusing, I tried to be clear. Does this make sense?

Also Addison D, I completely agree with your mentality and applaud your efforts (if that means anything to you). The only point I was trying to make is everyone has their own school of thought and should be entitled to follow it. And in some cases, certain companies aren't as financially stable as yours sounds.

Losing, not loosing

Addison D, yes in an ideal world if you can't pay your employee a good salary and good benefits your model should be discarded. However in the real world where some Papa John's franchisees are completely middle class and have a 200k bank loan on their location, having to now spend 20-30k extra a year on healthcare is a big hit when they're just making enough money to support their current lifestyle.