Gravity Payments CEO Dan Price, who gained worldwide fame and attention after boosting salaries of employees to a minimum of ,000, now says he's struggling to make ends meet.
Price, according to a report on Fox News, is renting out his own house in an attempt to make ends meet. He admitted he was doing it to address the wealth gap.
"I'm working as hard as I ever worked to make it work", he said, The Times reported Friday. "I am renting out my house right now to try to make ends meet myself".
Price said the decision to boost salaries also cost him a few customers and two of his "most valued" employees, who quit after newer and less skilled workers ended up with bigger salary hikes than those who had spent more time with the company. "That really hurt me". "It shackles high performers to less motivated team members". Stephanie Brooks, a 23-year-old administrative assistant hired right before the wage increase told the Times, "I didn't earn it".
"There's no flawless way to do this and no way to handle complex workplace issues that doesn't have any downsides or trade-offs", Mr Price said.
Price was being branded as a socialist for his stance, even while he was taking some of the money from his own $ 1 million pay package to help finance the move.
The video – which accompanies the Times' piece and is titled Love Letters to the Gravity Boss – shows Price reading from the hundreds of letters he received after making the wage announcement.
Then potentially the worst blow of all: Less than two weeks after the announcement, Mr. Price's older brother and Gravity co-founder, Lucas Price, citing longstanding differences, filed a lawsuit that potentially threatened the company's very existence.
Brian Canlis, co-owner of a family restaurant, already anxious about how to deal with Seattle's new minimum wage, told Price the pay raise at Gravity "makes it harder for the rest of us".
The company has generated business from dozens of other clients that were inspired by the plan, but won't reap the benefits of the new business until at least next year. With legal bills quickly mounting and most of his own paycheck and last year's $ 2.2 million in profits plowed into the salary increases, Dan Price said, "We don't have a margin of error to pay those legal fees".
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