EXCLUSIVE: Rock, Roll ‘n Wage Raises: Guitar Center Announces Pay Hike Following Employee Organizing

[Omaha Steve]

http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/16601/guitar_center

THURSDAY, APR 24, 2014, 12:13 PM

BY SPENCER WOODMAN


Starting this fall, all employees at the nation's largest retailer of musical instruments will be paid at least minimum wage. (Mike Prosser / Wikimedia Commons / Creative Commons)


After a year of fierce opposition to a union campaign seeking a fairer pay structure for workers, In These Times has learned that the private equity-owned retailer Guitar Center plans to implement a radical shift in the way it compensates its workers: It will replace its much-reviled sales commission system with a far more straightforward protocol of hourly pay. Guitar Center, the country’s largest retailer of musical instruments, says that the shift will not only clarify payment for its more than five thousand sales associates, but also includes a commitment that every single Guitar Center employee will earn above minimum wage beginning this September.

The Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU) calls the policy shift a major victory for its organizing effort, focusing on Guitar Center stores. The union believes that the company is seeking to appease frustrated workers in order to keep more of its stores away from union organizers.

After Bain Capital acquired Guitar Center in 2007, workers began complaining of declining standards, including lower commissions from one year to the next. Since last May, employees at three Guitar Center stores around the country voted in favor of union representation with RWDSU.

The union’s efforts met fierce opposition from Guitar Center management, which insists that its workers would be better off without the involvement of labor groups. The union also accused Bain Capital of deploying excessive aggression, even illegal tactics, in its past efforts to thwart union organizing. In one successful Chicago union drive employees accused Guitar Center management of threatening to shutter their entire store if the union won, an potential violation of federal labor law. Guitar Center rejected the claim, and intimated that the union had disabled one of its supporters’ vehicles on the day of the union vote.

FULL story at link.

[JaneyVee]

1. Fucking Bain Capital. Thank God for unions.

[Initech]

3. Bain Capital: the vultures of capitalism.

Vultures Of Capitalism by the way added to this year's Austin City Limits.

[kysrsoze]

2. Nice. Now I don't feel so guilty about shopping there. And FUCK YOU, Bain Capital!

I had no idea those shitheads had acquired Guitar Center.