Posted on 08/05/2013 7:24:31 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Thousands of urban fast-food workers across America walked off the job last week to stage protests for higher wages. They want a minimum of $15, or about twice the current minimum wage, and a whopping $6 higher than President Obama’s suggested $9.
Unions and their allies are marketing their efforts as a grassroots push to secure a living wage, but such ongoing one-day strikes are backed by Big Labor, which has an ulterior motive. With union membership dramatically on the decline nationwide, labor leaders are seeking new members wherever they can. Fast-food workers aren’t unionized, partially because the high turnover rate makes unionization difficult. But Big Labor is getting desperate enough to make a serious effort to gain support among this group.
The strike in Detroit was particularly notable. Late last year, Michigan, long a bastion of organized labor, became a right-to-work state, a development met with much rage from the unions. Michigan’s organized-labor movement is fighting for its life, and its influence in last Wednesday’s strike was obvious. Fast-food workers used well-worn union slogans — “hey, hey, ho, ho, [fill in the blank] has got to go” — and were joined in their picketing by members of Detroit unions. Earning minimum wage at a restaurant does make for a miserable subsistence. When I was in college, I worked for a while as a hostess at a Chili’s, putting in long hours to pay for my car, insurance, and gas. I lived with my parents and didn’t have to worry about rent or food, but money was still tight. The job was boring, I left reeking of fajitas, and my feet and legs ached from hours of standing.
But as difficult as that work is, and as unrewarding the pay, Detroit’s fast-food workers are playing a risky game. True, they know they won’t get the $15 minimum wage they’re requesting — that’s merely their opening salvo — but even more modest wage hikes would have devastating consequences for Detroit’s restaurant workers.
Already, Detroit has an unemployment rate of 16 percent, more than double the national rate of 7.4 percent. A bleak Washington Post article recently reported that the job-placement agency Michigan Works! was able to find jobs for a mere 2,300 workers in 2012, “a tiny fraction of those who walked through its doors seeking help.”
Part of the problem is that many of Detroit’s job applicants are very low-skilled. The city has a functional-illiteracy rate of around 47 percent, and almost all jobs require basic reading proficiency. And the new generation’s prospects don’t look much better: Last year, the Detroit Public Schools graduation rate was only 64 percent, which was an improvement over the previous year. Simply put, a lot of Detroiters don’t have the skills they need to find better, more remunerative work.
In that context, the fast-food industry begins to look like a bright spot in the Motor City’s employment portfolio. A 2010 survey by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine found that Detroit has 73 fast-food restaurants, more per square mile than many cities with comparable populations. The Huffington Post reported in May that fast-food jobs outnumber automotive jobs in Detroit by nearly two to one.
Fast food is a labor-intensive industry, the jobs don’t require advanced skills, and the number of available jobs is on the rise. The Bureau of Labor Statistics has projected that employment within the food-and-beverage industry will grow 12 percent between 2010 and 2020.
But it’s a well-documented fact that when wages increase, employment decreases. The Employment Policies Institute has found that labor already costs the typical fast-food restaurant about a third of its income. If those labor expenses increase further, it will put Detroit’s much-needed fast-food jobs in jeopardy.
A Ball State University study, for example, found that when the federal minimum wage increased by 40 percent between 2007 and 2009, it cost 550,000 part-time jobs. And the Employment Policies Institute has reported that when the minimum wage increases by 10 percent, small businesses cut teen employment by between 4.6 percent and 9 percent. And minority youths suffer the most from such cuts.
Big Labor has marketed the fast-food strikes as a chance to fight for the well-being of Detroit’s poorest residents. And protesters are right: A minimum-wage fast-food job is hardly ideal. But having no job at all is even worse.
— Jillian Kay Melchior is a Thomas L. Rhodes Fellow for the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity.
It's already here: extensive regulation and convoluted taxation.
It's already been done: American Fascism was started around 1900 IIRC. [See Wickard v. Filburn; a USSC decision made unjustly justifying Congress's regulation of everything, even intrastate affairs because they were afraid of losing what power they did have via a court-packing scheme.]
I accept the clearly stated message in Genesis 3:4-5. But it is mind-boggling how many self-professed Christians refuse to do so.
IMO what we are seeing is analogous to a steam boiler that has had its relief valve plugged.
In the past pressure to raise wages in these positions was blunted by the fact that it was much easier for the average worker to pursue some education or career training and just leave to move to a better paying job.
But five years into the Obama Economy those outlets are drying up. These workers are increasingly seeing themselves stuck in fast food for the long haul. Hence that pent-up energy has got to go into something. And it is going into union organizing and agitation for a living wage.
Isn't that how we got into business supplied "health care?"
I did an entire message on how the lies in Gen 3 are still with us in the form of the Humanist worldview today. The more I examined it, the more I was amazed how much the leftist ideology lines up exactly with and derives from those couple of simple verses.
You are correct. No minimum wage increase push has anything to do with people making minimum wage. The unions want their wage contracts (and subsequent dues) inflated and the minimum wage is the baseline. If it were up to them, these fast food workers would all become union apprentices or unemployed- not making $15 an hour!
Not only do minimum wage laws lead to higher unemployment, but the extent to which they do so depends on the extent of union activity in the economic system. The more the unions close off employment opportunities, the greater is the number of workers forced to seek employment elsewhere, and thus the greater in the downward pressure on wage rates elsewhere.
They also deny many people the opportunity of acquiring work experience, knowledge, and skills they might have acquired by means of working. The least-skilled, most-disadvantaged members of society will be less able to compete. Thus, they tend to exert a lifelong depressing effect on people. It both stops them from working and prevents them from becoming qualified for anything better than the kind of low-skilled jobs to which a minimum-wage law tends to apply. Many blacks will be condemned to a life of poverty and parasitism on the welfare rolls.
I think union boses want fewer members so they can control the pension funds without those pesky members.
Why does anybody go to fast food places anyway? I can understand doing that when you’re traveling, but otherwise you can make your own burger and fries for a buck and a half. Making your own takes less time (~20 minutes) than driving to McDonalds, standing in line, and waiting for your order. You also get more meat, real cheese, and the results tastes way better. Eating out just seems ridiculous to me.
To pay a worker $15 an hour that worker must generate at least $15 per hour worked in revenue just to pay their wage. Consider that in a typical fast food joint there is a least one worker flipping burgers, one making fries and another taking and filling orders...that’s $45 per hour worked just to pay the wages. Taking into account the cost of the food, the building costs, utility costs, management costs, taxes, licenses etc. each burger served might only produce a few cents to pay the wages of the three employees making them. So how many burgers per hour would have to be produced...you do the math. Raise the price of burgers...fewer burgers will be sold. It’s not sustainable.
In-N-Out Burger employees average 14hr. Not bad, and throw in medical and dental.
McD's and others have a business model of 'low' wages and high turnover for workers.
Wages for all Americans has been stagnant for years. Crying about minimum wage won't matter, but lower wages fro ALL will continue.
I understand the math, but not the logic. If you can cut your employee's hours from 40 to 20, why did you have them on the payroll for 40 hours in the first place. I would suppose you hire someone because you have work to be done, not because you want to insure they only receive a certain amount of money. Capitalism works, but we have to accept that labor is part of that system. If the laborer sets his price above what the market will bear, he will be priced out of the market just as will the businessman who overprices his product. Neither wage or price controls ever work but we keep trying.
But the point is that the owner of the business is going to have to make changes that would be detrimental to his employees and customers.
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