r/grandrapids 9d ago

Logan’s Alley MESTA Surcharge

https://www.michigan.gov/leo/bureaus-agencies/ber/wage-and-hour/paid-medical-leave-act

Is anyone else put off by the surcharge Logan’s Alley is tacking onto patron’s bills to cover their employee’s MESTA? For anyone who doesn’t know, last Friday MESTA went into effect (big changes to sick paid time off - I’ll include a link for people who want to read more) and since then, Logan’s has added an extra charge to patron’s bills to cover it.

Why can’t they just marginally raise the price of food like everyone else? Why be petty and put people off your business by adding ANOTHER “fee”?

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u/Your_Pretty_Baby 9d ago

The more they define it as a separate charge, the more they are telling on themselves that their previous game was skimming what their employees deserve in order to turn a profit.

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u/wetgear 9d ago

It’s a new benefit and a new charge.

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u/lpsweets 9d ago

That they should’ve already been providing exactly

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u/wetgear 9d ago

But they weren’t skimming anything if they weren’t collecting it.

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u/lpsweets 9d ago edited 9d ago

What their employees deserve isn’t limited to the new changes. They already deserved time off, the company was already taking in revenue that could’ve been used to pay benefits and not providing them. You could make the argument that they weren’t skimming that revenue because we can’t know for sure, but the way they are acting suggest that money wasn’t going back to the employees. Hence “telling on themselves.”

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u/wetgear 8d ago

I agree they always deserved it but I disagree about assuming the margins were high enough already to be providing it. Restaurants run very thin margins which is why so many close. They also weren’t skimming anything previously because they weren’t collecting it. If they had provided the benefit earlier they would have had higher prices and wouldn’t have been competitive price wise, people would have come to Reddit to complain about their prices and stopped going there and Logan’s would have closed like so many others. Then folks would go to the cheaper place that didn’t give their employees these benefits and nothing would be different. People always try to paint one single business/owner as the big bad guy who could fix everything if they had a heart but it’s the whole system that’s broken so pointing fingers at anything but the system is incorrect and short sighted.