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[ Food industry]Striking for the friars
King Riptor
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So this morning I found an article about Fast food workers striking for a wage increase and it struck a chord with me as my union is gearing up to threaten a strike next year.
http://m.yahoo.com/w/ygo-frontpage/lp/story/3436788/coke.bp?.tsrc=tmobustoday&.intl=us&.lang=en-us
Now I think anyone who works in food service will agree we are on a whole not paid very well for the work we do( unless you're a " chef" then you're paid more to be a cock and belittle your crew) and the distinguished Fryer Jockey is probably the biggest offender of this generally forced to do a bit of everything including cleaning restrooms.
Sanitary.
So yeah Im in agreement with these strikes lets focus on the companies though . Ilove the threats being thrown around that paying someone a wage they can live on will force layoffs and automation ie our execs wont make that extra billion this year .
Do they have a leg to stand on? Fast food is up there with oil companies for being truly vile on the whole and milking people for every penny they have. If they paid employees a better wage would they be adversely affected?
Perhaps more importantly would this cause other minimum wage jobs to up their wages? I mean why work at Target for 9 bucks and maybe a 50 cent raise in a year when you could go to burgerking and get 15?
And of course would the customer who is still gladly paying a dollar more for a big mac every two years notice if( by which I mean when) prices went up to compensate?
http://m.yahoo.com/w/ygo-frontpage/lp/story/3436788/coke.bp?.tsrc=tmobustoday&.intl=us&.lang=en-us
Seeking to increase pressure on McDonald’s, Wendy’s and other fast-food restaurants, organizers of a movement demanding a $15-an-hour wage for fast-food workers say they will sponsor one-day strikes in 100 cities on Thursday and protest activities in 100 additional cities.
As the movement struggles to find pressure points in its quest for substantially higher wages for workers, organizers said strikes were planned for the first time in cities like Charleston, S.C.; Providence, R.I.; and Pittsburgh.
The protests have expanded greatly since November 2012, when 200 fast-food workers engaged in a one-day strike at more than 20 restaurants in New York City, the first such walkout in the history of the nation’s fast-food industry.
“There’s been pretty huge growth in one year,” said Kendall Fells, one of the movement’s main organizers. “People understand that a one-day strike is not going to get them there. They understand that this needs to continue to grow.”
The movement, which includes the groups Fast Food Forward and Fight for 15 , is part of a growing union-backed effort by low-paid workers — including many Walmart workers and workers for federal contractors — that seeks to focus attention on what the groups say are inadequate wages.
The fast-food effort is backed by the Service Employees International Union and is also demanding that restaurants allow workers to unionize without the threat of retaliation.
Officials with the National Restaurant Association have said the one-day strikes are publicity stunts. They warn that increasing pay to $15 an hour when the federal minimum wage is $7.25 would cause restaurants to rely more on automation and hire fewer workers.
Industry officials say that only a small percentage of fast-food jobs pay the minimum wage and that those are largely entry-level jobs for workers under 25.
Backers of the movement for higher pay point to studies saying that the average age of fast-food workers is 29 and that more than one-fourth are parents raising children.
Simon Rojas, who earns $8.07 an hour working at a McDonald’s in South Central Los Angeles, said he would join Thursday’s one-day strike.
“It’s very difficult to live off $8.07 an hour,” said Mr. Rojas, 23, noting that he is often assigned just 20 or 25 hours of work a week. “I have to live with my parents. I would like to be able to afford a car and an apartment.”
Mr. Rojas said he had studied for a pharmacy technician’s certificate, but he had been unable to save the $100 needed to apply for a license.
On Aug. 29, fast-food strikes took place in more than 50 cities. This week’s expanded protests will be joined by numerous community, faith and student groups, including USAction and United Students against Sweatshops.
Now I think anyone who works in food service will agree we are on a whole not paid very well for the work we do( unless you're a " chef" then you're paid more to be a cock and belittle your crew) and the distinguished Fryer Jockey is probably the biggest offender of this generally forced to do a bit of everything including cleaning restrooms.
Sanitary.
So yeah Im in agreement with these strikes lets focus on the companies though . Ilove the threats being thrown around that paying someone a wage they can live on will force layoffs and automation ie our execs wont make that extra billion this year .
Do they have a leg to stand on? Fast food is up there with oil companies for being truly vile on the whole and milking people for every penny they have. If they paid employees a better wage would they be adversely affected?
Perhaps more importantly would this cause other minimum wage jobs to up their wages? I mean why work at Target for 9 bucks and maybe a 50 cent raise in a year when you could go to burgerking and get 15?
And of course would the customer who is still gladly paying a dollar more for a big mac every two years notice if( by which I mean when) prices went up to compensate?
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King Riptor on
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Also, their biggest threat sounds fine to me. Replace low skill, deadend jobs with high turnover rates with high skill, good paying jobs.
I can't find the video I actually want but I know either Dominos or Pizza Hut use a very similar automated machines for their pizzas. For some reason people squick out over the above but the only difference between it and the food they get at most fast food places is it definitely hasn't been dropped on the ground by some trainee.
I mean even $15 an hour isn't that much, it's just the difference between being below the poverty line and slightly above it.
The cynic in me can't see this gaining momentum though, McDonalds and Walmart have their employees far too scared to lose their pittance of a wage to risk industrial action. I mean no one works at McDonalds or Walmart because they want to.
Not if they're effectively disenfranchised!
Can you say voter ID anyone?
I really wish these strikes were organized in places like where I live. Our unemployment rate is so low that we can't even get fully staffed, so a strike would force some real discussion.
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Yes they do. McDonalds was great for me during high school. Sure as hell beat agricultural labour, which was all that my small rural area offered.
I really don't like the ideal of a union in fast food or retail I know you get paid shit to begin with and it does not get any better and there seems to be a sigma by working at such a place for so long when you apply for a far better job you are qualified for they pass over you because of that
I don't like the ideal of a Union because many of the perks of joining one are pretty much a perk of the job itself and there is the fees and those that really should not be working in that place because of their attitude or rather unsafe work practices but there is little you can do to get rid of them
Voter Id is both a good thing and bad thing I am for it and agianist it because in this state anyone can get a driver's licence.
Some of the grocery stores here unionized a couple of years ago and don't seem that great of a place to work at since
Really I can ramble on and on about why being poor is insulting and why there is little I can do about it
So, are you saying that the great opportunities, pay and quality of life involved in working at McDonalds made you leap out of bed in the morning, or are you saying you worked there because your other options were unemployment or picking fruit at illegal immigrant wages?
Because if it's the latter I think my point stands.
I do see that working for the Hell Known to Men is not that great but my only other option is really bad things or the street
I was at school and luckily didn't need to work to provide for myself, but I did need to work for pocket money or to save for uni. So I had the choice of not working.
Not being an employment lawyer while at school I cannot be sure they were breaking the law, but since my potential agricultural employers were friends of my family or family, I think they probably were on the level. In any case, my part of rural NZ was not know for illegal immigrants then (not sure now). NZ dairy and sheep farming used to employ locals then, it wasn't like we recruited Mexicans as day labour.
I worked at MCDonalds as it was better paid, easier work and flexible enough to let me work after school and weekends.
Not because I was living in some sort of Dickensian nightmare world.
I would have certainly joined a union if we had one. I think unions have spent a lot of time recruiting in fast food since I left. Which is good.
yes
But I do not view them as an improvement in this
Problem is we're comparing apples and oranges here to start with, like the OP stated the average worker in fast food in the US is 29, not 16. People are trying to raise families on these wages. Secondly the US is probably the most union unfriendly place in the western world thanks to a combination of the hangover from red terror and the infamous mob corruption of the few existing unions, so I'm not sure how that compares to NZ.
Out of curiosity....what were you paid? Right now NZ's minimum wage is about 50% higher than the US minimum, which is what or nearly most fast food workers are making.
They are not an improvement as the threat of automation is real
It's more of a side step in the long run to join a union
I worked there for 18 months or so, last year and a half of school. Initially we were about a dollar over minimum wage, then the latter was adjusted upwards and we ended up a few cents over.
Casual will be able to affirm however that cost of living is pretty high in NZ, so perhaps minimum wage difference is less important.
While I absolutely believe that would be true for where I live I doubt that cost of living in NZ tops NYC, which is one of the epicenters of this movement to raise fast food wages.
Until the fast food industry can replace all of the unionized employees, overnight, with automated systems AND is willing to suffer the negative publicity, picketing / protests, boycotts, and possible ill will with suppliers, automation alone doesn't make a union impotent.
Considering that the fast food industry doesn't / won't have the ability to do the above globally (or at least nationwide) for decades, the benefits to their current employees and the next few generations of employees granted by unionization are very real. A national fast-food union also has the ability to delay or even prevent widespread automation that would make all of the current workers obsolete.
Automation also isn't a silver bullet. A simple regulation that say, all meat products, must be prepared and served by a human being for 'safety and hygiene reasons' could easily prove an intractable problem or significantly change the value of automation to the fast food chains. The type of regulation that a large union - such as one employing tens of millions of fast food workers, as well as a significant number of mid-tier restaurants that don't want their business further undercut by fast food - could lobby to have passed.
Yeah it's true. Importing things is more expensive so stuff you take for granted like cheap groceries isn't really a thing there.
In the United States, it might as well be a private helicopter and a doctor on retainer. Just as depressingly, it's 200% or more what many people earn anywhere the state local wage is lower than the federal one.
Granted, you could still be working poor at $15 an hour, especially if they cut your hours, but you'd still be head-and-shoulders above the vast majority of the working poor. If you adjust for inflation, $15 barely matches the worth of the minimum wage thirty years ago, never mind what it was supposed to rise to.
To each their own.
Personally, I think if a company or industry shows no interest in the welfare of their employees, and privatizes profits while socializing costs, the proper role of the government is to look out for their own citizens.
I don't see why companies using the threat of automation / mass unemployment as a bludgeon to force their employees to comply in the interests of profits - which does a real harm to our society today - is perfectly acceptable, while labor potentially using law / regulation to serve their own interests (which align with the interests of society, in general) is so reprehensible.
Yes being poor is insulting but this to me does not seem like a positive
People are already doing that anyway, without the benefits.
And most unions help all employees to some extent, not just the old ones.
At least in sweden.
They can lobby for a pointless-hell counter productive- regulation to keep their featherbed...and unionization is something we should be in favor of???
On a fundamental level any job that can be done by the most stonerest of HS students is not going to pay well. The pool of labor that can do it is too large. The amount invested in training is basically nil.
And just like in the target/walmart etc version of this thread, no one looks at the actual numbers.
2012 Net profit $4.46b
Number of Employees ~1.8m
Profit per employee: $2477
Wage increase available from profit assuming 25 hours per week: $1.90 an hour.
In order to support the $15 an hour wage organizers are pointing to, McDonald's would spend an additional 18b in wages, or roughly 2/3s of its total revenue, 167% of its gross profit, or 320% its operating income, or 330% of its net income
The money they are after just does not exist. On the simplest level in order to find it, they would need to sell the same amount of stuff, while roughly doubling the cost of every item they sell. No one is going to buy a $10 BigMac or the $15 value meal.
I have full benefits from my union after 2 years I dont have a clue where youre getting 20. Getting a wage and job protection that may allow you to get schooling for a better job is the main benefit of a union in the fast food industry
Its nice for the seniors these companies employ too
Aside from that last sentence I can agree with this post. I do think that corporations should have some civic responsibility and a duty to their workers. The imbalance between corporate profits and employee compensation are ridiculous. Using force of law to create inefficiencies is just silly, I would much rather just pay people a guaranteed minimum income at that point.
A Union through the force of work stoppages should be able to negotiate or a larger slice of the profit pie without having to resort to creating market inefficiencies. If we really have twenty year vets manning the counter they should be able to kick the shit out of scab workers replacing them just by pure profit creation.
Staying there is really a trap you cannot escape from
I really do not like Job Protection as there are people who do not deserve this from their working ethic to how they treat everyone else
I was putting 20 years as most people end up staying that long with a company that uses a union
There is a reason I call it the badge of shame at work. I earned my badge for 5 years at the Hell Known to Men because I cannot find a better job without moving here
I cannot afford to move
I do not see how a union will improve this
I am for a $15 an hour an hour wage really more of a $10.
Unions are not job protection, they are unethical treatment protection. The job of the union is to represent the employees and ensure that management is acting fairly. No picking on specific employees, no fights about one employee having the rules pushed on them more than another, just across the board representation. People who are not working to the job requirements (the bad work ethic you mention) can be weeded out by a good manager by following the rules for discipline agreed upon.
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First and foremost, McDonalds runs a franchise model. You're conflating the corporate numbers with the numbers for the individual franchises. Since we don't have the detailed data on individual franchises, we should stick to discussing corporate numbers.
The McDonalds corporation itself employs 400,000 employees worldwide. At least, as reported to the SEC.
Quite a few of those 400,000 employees are executives, managers, or working outside the United States, and aren't particularly relevant to a discussion of unionization in the United States. Payroll and benefit expenses make up $4.1 billion dollars, which means McDonalds could (roughly) triple their payroll and remain profitable. It's actually more when you start accounting for tax benefits, but I'll be generous and say triple.
At an individual franchise level, it's quite possible that paying $15.00 / hour would force large increases in prices or force some locations out of business. That's what happens when you are trying to run an unsustainable business model. There are currently locations that are unsustainable at minimum wage, so we can't use 'no locations go out of business' as our gold standard unless you want to be disingenuous.
I'll also point out that if you want to refer to a fast food job as a 'featherbed', you're crazy. I'm not a fan of lobbying government to enact specific policies that protect jobs in that fashion. There ARE legitimate hygiene / public health issues involved with food preparation that may make automated food preparation without human oversight something to be highly regulated or forbidden - independent of labor. There are also other interests that may align with labor in enacting regulations as well. Which is just part of the real world.
Now, I'm a much bigger fan of letting that be determined between capital and labor in negotiations. But, when someone says 'automation', there - that's why unionization is just a waste of time, I'm pointing out that automation isn't the 'nuclear option' or bludgeon it's made out to be. There are also options available to labor...probably not the best option, but options none the less.
Also, I'll note that currently McDonalds employees receive roughly 1.2 billion dollars annually in government aid. This is the definition of a socialized cost. McDonalds privatizes the profits by paying shit wages / benefits, and we (the tax payers) have to pick up the cost.
I'll note that while I'm picking on McDonalds here, they aren't unique and the same could be said of pretty much any fast food chain.
Part of the reason I love the touchscreen kiosks at some fast food restaurants is because there is rarely a line.
Why is there rarely a line? Because most people, from what I've seen, tend to ignore the touchscreen kiosks and give their order to a cashier.
In other words, there is still a demand for human interaction, even in a task as mundane as taking a burger order. Consequently, I don't see automated ordering overtaking human cashiers completely.
In the kitchen, even in the absence of overt regulation, I suspect we're still pretty far away from automation that can handle order customization. It's one thing to program a robot to build a burger, it's another thing to program a robot to build a burger with light sauce, no pickles, and grilled onions. Obviously the technology exists, these are just subroutines that can tie into a menu, but the technology also has to be cheap enough to deploy in a hundred thousand restaurants nationwide, for an industry that is notoriously low-margin.
Ordering kiosks were a no-brainer - it's more or less the same technology that the cashier uses, only facing the customer with some extra UI polish. You don't have to overhaul an entire restaurant to install an ordering kiosk.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Also, not all corporate employees of McDonalds (or franchise employees) make less than $15/hr. An increase in minimum wage would not affect executives at all, and would have a minimal effect on managers.
That said, franchises run on tighter margins than the corporate parent. The parent company draws revenue from the franchises, not the other way around. (The franchisees are effectively purchasing brand name and supply chain rights from the parent.)
We'd also need to take into account training, turnover, and spoilage. A better-paid workforce is less likely to quit, which reduces turnover and training costs, which in turn reduces the amount of product lost to cooking & storage mistakes.
I'm not saying that an increase in wages would have zero effect on prices; I am saying that most armchair analyses ('doubling the minimum wage would double McDonalds's labor costs!') are just flat wrong, and they're usually wrong on the side of overestimating the impact.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.