Posted on 12/05/2013 9:00:21 AM PST by Jim Robinson
Hourly wage increases advocated by labor groups could kill more than 450,000 jobs, according to a new report.
Union-backed labor groups, including Fast Food Forward and Fight for 15, are staging nationwide walk-outs and demonstrations at fast food chains across the country calling for starting wages of $15 per hour.
Their success could spell economic disaster for nearly 20 percent of the nation’s 2.5 million fast food workers, according to an analysis from the Employment Policies Institute.
“We find that roughly 460,000 jobs would be lost in the fast food industry as a consequence of a $15 minimum wage,” the EPI report found. “This is a conservative estimate because it only includes employment loss among those who hold a fast food job as their primary employment. Including those who work in the industry as a second job would increase the estimates.”
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Most are paid more than they are worth from my experience.”
My daddy, whom I considered to be a very wise man, always told me that I was worth what someone would pay me.
We used to eat out three times a week for lunch. When the $1 menu disappeared, we cut it to twice per week. Come January 1, we have decided to reduce it to once a week or once every other week because slowly but surely prices keep creeping up.
The pay per hour is only a small part of the issue. For everyone that quits eating out, that’s one less burger and bun and lots of businesses involved in the food chain are going to start really feeling the pinch.
Thanks! The recovery is coming along nicely. Thank God.
And I think doubling labor costs would definitely have a big impact on the bottom line of any labor intensive business. It’d be hard to raise prices, so they’d have to reduce costs by consolidating and laying off workers wherever possible. Would be a huge shakeout to the fast food industry and many others. This would be a huge destructive overreach by our fascist government.
In San Antonio, I have been to two different Jack In The Cracks which had automated ordering kiosks which allowed you to order your food without ever dealing with an employee until they brought out your food.
It is only a matter of time before there will be only two or three people running an entire shift at the local Mickey D’s! And we, the customer, probably will never actually, directly interact with them!
I am willing to drive up to an hour to purchase fast food at any place that is currently on the strike list. I just don’t know which places are being targeted. can anyone in the FR world provide this information?
That'd be my guess.....
the gas chain "Sheetz" down here has automated order-taking. You then take the slip to the counter to pay (a step that could be EASILY eliminated) and one or two people in the back make the food.
It wouldn't be a stretch to eliminate a large number of the people that work behind the counter in a Fast Food Joint. If this "living wage" nonsense comes off, it'll happen in a New York Minute.
Gee, the Yutes are going to be thrilled when their dollar burger now costs 3....
Dr. Williams understands and has been teaching, speaking, and writing about the tragic consequences of the so-called "progressive" policies which Democrats have inflicted upon Americans--all in the name of "helping" them.
Slavery to government is no better than slavery to individual masters. Yet, the "regressives" continue to buy power and influence by promoting policies that destroy opportunity, prosperity, and freedom for our own and future generations.
If fast food pays $15 an hour, I may have to quit my office job and flip burgers to get an increase in pay!
What makes my wife mad is when we go to a high priced grocery store and they close the human registers at 10pm and you have to use the automated check out.
They should at least give you a discount for working as a cashier for them
Order takers will be the first to be replaced. Anyone who has patronized a Buc-ees store knows how easy it is to place and pay for a food order, the the order always comes out right.
I am sorry, but you just made me laugh at the thought of someone actually driving an hour to buy…..”fast food”. LOL
Up the road here in DFW some of the Applebee’s have put a touchscreen device on the tables. You order electronically, call the waiter by pushing a button, pay when you’re ready, and it prints out a receipt.
The order is usually right and I get out of dodge when I’m ready, not when they’re ready. Love it.
Gee....pay double for a spit burger or don’t....not a hard question to answer.
Unsolicited email just received from moveon.org re: “The struggle for food justice:”
Subject: The most important fight in the struggle for food justice
Dear Jim,
I’m Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, In Defense of Food, and Cooked. For many years now, I’ve been passionately outspoken about the food justice movement, and low-wage workers represent a key front in the fight for fair and just food.
That’s why I hope you’ll join me and millions of MoveOn members across the country in expressing solidarity with the fast-food workers going on strike for fair wages today.
Those of us working in the food movement often speak of our economy’s unhealthy reliance on “cheap food.” But cheap food only seems cheap because the real costs of its production are hidden from us: the exploitation of food and farm workers, the brutalization of animals, and the undermining of the health of the soil, the water, and the atmosphere.
As a society, we’ve trapped ourselves in a kind of reverse Fordism. Instead of paying workers well enough so that they can afford good, honestly-priced products—as Henry Ford endeavored to do so that his workers might afford to buy his cars—we pay them so little that the only food they can afford is junk food destructive of their health and the environment’s.
If we are ever to right this wrong, to produce food sustainably and justly and sell it at an honest price, we will first have to pay people a living wage so that they can afford to buy it. Let’s start with the people who work so hard to feed us.
That would only constitute the first blow to such businesses.
The eventual closing of thousands of franchises would follow-—and then even more would be out of work.
For many, this is the highest point of employment they are skilled to do.
Yep. I can’t stand fast food (except Chick-fil-a spicy chicken) but because of the strike, I’ll have to go support businesses/employers
Exactly! People are so ignorant of economics that it doesn’t occur to them that prices, wages, etc. have a basis in reality. The reason a pro athlete is paid millions and a school teacher paid thousands is that there aren’t any school teachers who can hit a 90-mile-an-hour fastball, but most people can teach a first grader to read.
Government can’t just wave a magic wand and fix wages and prices or create wealth or jobs. It’s insane to believe otherwise.
I realize the irony of fast food an hour away. however, it may not be necessary for me to say this but the point was not to acquire any fast food at any distance but to provide financial and moral support for a merchant faced with unionization thugs.
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