Higher minimum wages are an unstoppable trend that businesses must address to stay competitive with gaining and retaining valued employees.

This week JPMorgan Chase and Starbucks announced they were raising the minimum pay of many hourly employees. For about 168,000 lowly paid employees, this is really good news. And both companies played up the planned pay increases as benefiting not only the employees, but society at large. The JPMC CEO, Jamie Dimon, went so far as to say this was a response to a national tragedy of low pay and insufficient skills training now being addressed by the enormous bank.

However, both actions look a lot more like reacting to undeniable trends in an effort to simply keep their organizations functioning than any sort of corporate altruism.

by Adam Hartung

Read The Full Article » JPMorgan Chase And Starbucks Minimum Wage Increases — Just Following Trends