Arrivederci Sanfilippo's

A local institution, Sanfilippo’s Pizza, is closing their doors after forty years. This hits very close to home for me, because I have eaten there. The Village in La Mesa is practically walking distance from my house.

And my other other other job is working at a very similar pizzeria. Family run, generations of customers. People start working there as teenagers, go on to raise families of their own, and their kids come in and work or eat.

Owner Anna Sanfilippo says her operating expenses are too high, specifically the rising costs of minimum wage pay and sick leave. I've already written about California's state law mandating paid sick leave for all hourly workers.

Sanfilippo's closing should be the canary in the coal mine, but it won't be.

On January 1, 2016 (less than four months away) the minimum wage in California is going to ten dollars an hour. If you are a pizzeria, you need probably five employees as minimum staff. Couple of waitresses, a cook, a dishwasher, and a manager. Counting benefits, the business is spending about eighty dollars an hour in labor just to open the doors. That's not counting food costs and overhead.

Sometimes I hear about a business closing, and people will claim that it was an "unintended consequence" of mostly benign policy. Really sick of that. After awhile, the consequences are so predictable as to imply intention.

It might be fair to wonder if anyone paid Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez to sponsor a bill like AB 1522. Sanfilippo's is an independent operation, and at the mercy of busybody lawmakers. Lawmakers who should get out of the way.

But if anyone benefits from mandatory higher wages and mandatory paid sick leave, it is a large operation that can absorb the higher costs better, enjoy watching their competitors exit the market, and sleep comfortably knowing that new competitors won't enter the market. Cronyism at its best.

And the unions. Can't forget about the unions. Unions peg their negotiated wage to the minimum wage.

It's a win for everybody, except the two dozen employees that will lose their jobs, and the gentle customers who just want a familiar face to welcome them to dine.