If one cashier can do the job of 3 and you can get away with paying them 1.5x the salary because you are paying them 1 salary + "commission" why wouldn't you?

I'd say a large bottle neck here is the employee base. If they factored in throughout into bonuses then they could get rid of many employees AND look good while doing it.

"New incentive to allow workers to make more then minimum wake"

I could already imagine the native ads!

Problem is management doesn't go for it. It was many years ago in a startup kind of situation. I recommended that instead of hiring 10 people to handle a modest workload, it would be better to employ 5 superior workers, give them twice the workload and 1.5 times the original proposed pay.

I was very confident this idea would give better outcomes as I knew potential workers who could easily handle the higher load and do a better job at that.

Regrettably my idea was not used, and true to form, the leisurely pace of work was a drag on productivity. Twenty years later, long after I'd left that workplace, the outfit was essentially bankrupt and called out for mishandling funds.

I still think I was right, but even good ideas can be hard to sell.

Playing Devil's advocate, their choice does have some advantages; for example, when a superior worker is sick, the loss of productivity is higher, especially if in the regular workers model they could get the other nine to work just 10% faster for a few days. Likewise, if one quits, not only there's more work per day not being done, as it might be harder to hire a superior worker.

Their model is probably less efficient during regular operation, but the variance when problems arise also seems lower.

Yes unfortunately human biases can override even simple logic. Perhaps your idea would cause workers to earn more their supervisors which may be a cultural no no

It was quite a long time ago so I don't remember all the details. I have a recollection that the managers paid themselves pretty generously, but I can't say explicitly.

As it was expressed to me the basis for the decision was that the "leaders" didn't believe the workers could handle the load as I suggested, so they went with their original plan.

At the time I attributed it to their rigidity but it could have been about relative salaries. Here I thought doing it my way would actually cost less when all added up.