A netizen posted a rant about an unspecified “clothing” company, revealing that they increased their employees’ salaries by 20-30% in order to retain them.
They then passed on that salary increase to their customers by increasing the prices of their products as well, by about 20-30%.
Here is what the netizen said
Question, is it fair to increase employees’ salary by 20-30% to retain them and pass of that increase to consumers by raising prices of clothing by the same % once you have established yourself as the dominant clothing brand in Singapore?
I’m pretty sure your profits are so high that you can afford to raise prices less – which is what attracted people to buy from you in the first place.
Something that used to cost $20 before June now suddenly has the prices raised to $30, and $30 to $40, etc.
Guess I’ll be buying less from you in the future to save the environment more, or taking my business elsewhere.
Netizens’ comments
- flipping the question back to you: would you be happy if your employer chose to reduce/ freeze your pay increment just so they could keep their products “affordable”?
- Is it fair to reduce the price by 20-30% to retain customers and pass the reduction to employees by reducing their salaries by the same %?
- Don’t buy if you not happy lah. How do u judge whether it’s fair or not? Maybe they underpaid their staff for the longest time so it’s fair to raise their salary to market rate now?