3400 employees fired and rehired at lower rate, even if it saved them as much as $5 an hour per person, that's only $680K. They could save much more than that by firing the ceo and replacing him with somebody cheaper, and that wouldn't have the negative backlash. When you start screwing your employees over, they start to screw the company. Some will resort to taking a few unauthorized perks, like the occasional xbox here and there to make up for the drop in wages, some will think if their wages have been cut by a 1/3 then they are only going to actually work for 2/3 of the time they are at work. Many customers will boycott the stores because they disagree with this immoral practice. It will also be a time for shoplifters to thrive, because the employees will say to themselves, "I don't get paid enough to challenge a potentially dangerous shoplifter, and if somebody else catches the shoplifter I don't get paid enough to remember if I saw anything." What does everyone else think?