[yellowapple]

Laying people off when you don't need to do so to stay profitable, however, is absolutely punitive. The restaurant industry's margins may be thin, but they ain't that thin - and I can guarantee you there's plenty fat to be trimmed from the managerial and executive pay structures long before needing to sack the minimum-wage employees.

[db48x]

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/punitive

The owner of a restaurant who lays off waiters in order to spend less on salaries is not punishing the waiters. Nobody thinks that the waiters have broken any rules. The definition of “punitive” is that it is a punishment for breaking the rules. The waiters might think it’s unfair or niggardly, of course, but that’s not what “punitive” means. Pick a more appropriate word.

[yellowapple]

> The owner of a restaurant who lays off waiters in order to spend less on salaries is not punishing the waiters.

It's punishment for demanding better pay. That makes it punitive, whether the mechanism for negotiating that better pay is "we voted for (people who will vote for) a minimum wage increase" or "we formed a union so we can collectively bargain for a wage increase" or what have you.

> Pick a more appropriate word.

Okay, then:

- Retaliatory

- Self-serving

- Douchebaggish

Do those work better for you? Or are you going to find some other excuse to nitpick and distract from the core issue of employers being full of shit when they blame wage increases for "needing" to lay people off?