‘Fair-Wage’ Pizza Shop Can’t Make Enough Money to Pay Fair Wages, Closes
And, once again, the cruel reality of math crushes another social justice dream.
According to IJR.com, reporting on an article that appeared in The Boston Globe, Dudley Dough, a pizza parlor in Boston that was opened, in part, to provide higher-than-average area wages to employees as a means to help realize “economic justice,” is closing its doors after just two years because…it cannot stay solvent.
We know – you’re stunned.
Bing Broderick, executive director for the nonprofit Haley House, which oversees the shop, issued maybe the least surprising assessment of the situation, saying, “The challenge for Dudley Dough was to support itself.”
No kidding.
As noted in IJR.com, The Boston Globe details that “three other restaurants opened in the area around the same time as Dudley Dough and are still operating.” The three are reportedly paying market wages, rather than contrived, higher wages in accordance with a false economic reality, and thus are still here. IJR.com notes the distinct irony of how things played out for Dudley Dough, something that opponents of higher minimum wages have been pointing out for years: that with the closing of the restaurant in the face of stark economic reality, not only is the business no longer able to pay a “fair wage,” it is now, of course, no longer paying any wages at all, and its employees are now out of work.
By Robert G. Yetman, Jr. Editor At Large