JM Family Employees Get Pay Day Bump
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FT LAUDERDALE (CBSMiami) - JM Lexus in Margate, the biggest Lexus dealer in the country is owned by JM Family Enterprises, a South Florida Company that now might come to be known as the company with the biggest heart in the country.
Just ask Unell Beasley, a lobby greeter of twelve years. The company just gave her a 34 percent pay raise.
"I'm always wondering how can they make things better for me, and they always find a way to do that," Beasley said Thursday.
The company has implemented a minimum wage of $16 per hour, nearly twice what the law requires. It applies to 400 employees now making less than $16 dollars per hour. An additional 600 employees, making more than $16 per hour, are also receiving hefty pay hikes.
It means the lowest paid JM Family employee will earn $33,280 per year. It means Oscar de La Torre, a husband and father of a newborn, can give up his second job.
"I'm so happy. I have more time for my family, and that's so good for me," Torre said.
Life is better now, too, for 73-year-old Cristina Hieber who has been serving coffee to customers in the showroom lobby for a decade.
"I have another job, and I get home at like one o'clock in the morning, and then I have to come here to work," Hieber said. But she will now be able to quit that second job, thanks to the generous pay hike she's just received.
Rich Wilson is 70 percent richer now, and can do more for his aging, financially stressed mom.
"My mom, she actually said a prayer the night before, and as soon as I made a phone call and told her, she was like, "Oh my God, the prayers came through,'" Wilson said.
JM Family executives said you have to spend money to make money and that happy employees make for happy, return customers. That philosophy may be a large part of the reason the company has been ranked among Fortune magazine's top 100 companies to work for, for 17 consecutive years.
In the end, the auto behemoth says the generous pay raises were morally driven.
"We're all about doing the right thing, and this initiative was absolutely the right thing to do," said JM Lexus General Manager Jim Dunn.
It is a business culture established by Jim Moran, who founded the still family-owned business nearly seven decades ago. The Jim Moran Foundation has given some $60 million dollars to charitable efforts since his death in 2007.
JM Family joins a small but growing number of companies giving employees significant pay increases. Salaries on a national average have remained largely flat since the Great Recession ended six years ago, even though the economy has been considerable job growth.