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Fast-Food Workers Strike, Arrested Across America: The Unseen Costs Of The Minimum Wage
"Get up! Get down! Fast-food workers run this town!" were the chants from fast-food workers in over 100 cities across America today, as empowered by President Obama's explanation of 'fairness', they demanded a $15-per-hour minimum wage amid strikes, rallies, and acts of civil disobedience.
"They want $15 an hour and McDonalds Corporation should give it to them immediately" - Protest Organizerr Rev. Charles Williams II
Many fast-food chains and independent restaurants have said that a $15 hourly wage would lead to big price increases on their menus or make it impossible to eke out a profit, adding that they "believe that any minimum wage increase should be implemented over time so that the impact on owners of small and medium-sized businesses." Police arrested 19 workers in NYC and several dozen were placed in handcuffs in Detroit and organizers strongly denied unconfirmed fast-food industry accusations that some workers were being paid $250 to $500 by the union to strike. While the economic reasoning for a minimum-wage hike has been dead-and-buried, we try one more time to explain the hidden costs of the minimum wage.
Fanny Velazquez, 36, said she was participating in the rally to fight for better wages to support her family. A single mother with three children, ages 11, 14 and 16, she said she struggles to make her $9.34-an-hour pay cover all the bills.
The South Los Angeles resident has been working at McDonald's for eight years doing a variety of jobs, usually working 20 hours a week. But lately, Velazquez said, the company has often cut her hours to 15 a week. She also qualifies for welfare and food assistance.
"It's difficult, it's not enough to pay my bills," she said.
A series of protests funded in part by the Service Employees International Union and local activist groups have sought to spotlight the plight of low-wage workers and push for higher pay.
Strikers began to gather in more than 100 cities early Thursday, affecting major chains from McDonald's to Wendy's to Burger King. Shortly after 7 a.m. ET on Thursday, police arrested 19 workers who sat down in the street — and refused to move — outside the bustling McDonald's at New York's Times Square, reports the New York City Police Department. Up to several dozen striking fast-food workers were placed in handcuffs and arrested in Detroit, as well.
...
"There has to be civil disobedience because workers don't see any other way to get $15 an hour and a union," says Kendall Fells, organizing director of the organizing group Fast Food Forward, which is financially backed by the Service Employees International Union. "There's a long history of this, from the civil rights movement to the farm workers movement."
...
Organizers strongly denied unconfirmed fast-food industry accusations that some workers were being paid $250 to $500 by the union to strike. " Workers are not getting paid to strike," says Fells. "It's an age-old tradition in the union movement that workers who are losing pay by going on strike get support from other workers through strike funds. Other workers are supporting strikers through a strike fund, as they have since this movement started."
...
The strike comes just days after President Obama appeared to lend support to the so-called Fight for $15 movement at a Labor Day speech in Milwaukee. "All across the country right now, there's a national movement going on made up of fast-food workers organizing to life wages so they can provide for their families with pride and dignity," Obama said.
In a statement, McDonald's said
"We believe that any minimum wage increase should be implemented over time so that the impact on owners and small and medium-sized businesses — like the ones who own and operate the majority of our restaurants — is manageable."
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And we leave it to Josh Grossman of The Ludwig von Mises Institute blog to explain, The Unseen costs of the minimum wage...
A recent article at US News and World Report by Pat Garofalo quotes Associated Press writer Christopher Rugaber who says that “US states that boosted their minimums at the beginning of the year, the number of jobs grew an average of 0.85 percent from January through June. The average for the other 37 states was 0.61 percent.” However, this appears to be another example of the Broken Window fallacy refuted by Frédéric Bastiat in his famous essay “That Which is Seen and Unseen.” In the introduction Bastiat states that
"in the economy, an act, a habit, an institution, a law, gives birth not only to an effect, but to a series of effects. Of these effects, the first only is immediate; it manifests itself simultaneously with its cause — it is seen. The others unfold in succession — they are not seen: it is well for us if they are foreseen. Between a good and a bad economist this constitutes the whole difference — the one takes account of the visible effect; the other takes account both of the effects which are seen and also of those which it is necessary to foresee."
By raising wage rates, the public can see their states’ minimum-wage earners making more money. This is the factor that is seen. What is unseen is the number of jobs destroyed or citizens who would have been able to obtain jobs if the minimum wage were never raised in these states in the first place.
But even the government statistics do not add nearly as much support as the pro-minimum wage group implies. Florida, for example, was one of the thirteen states that raised its minimum wage to $7.93 per hour as of January 1, 2014. Looking at monthly seasonally-adjusted employment and unemployment data for Florida, comparing January to May 2014, we find that the unemployment rate actually increased from 6.1 percent to 6.3 percent, respectively. The unemployment rate of Florida might be several times larger but for the fact that only those still actively seeking work are considered to be employed, and do not include those who are underemployed or have given up looking for work. In addition, this data clearly demonstrates that the Florida unemployment rate was decreasing every month prior to the minimum wage being raised from 7.4 percent in July 2013 to 5.9 percent in December 2013 before increasing to 6.3 percent upon introduction of the new minimum wage in January. It’s dangerous to draw broad conclusions from a single statistic like this, but it’s clear that we can hardly conclude, as Garofalo has done, that minimum wage hikes “have little to no effect on employment.”
Another weakness behind the claims that minimum wages raise the well-being of workers, is that it does not state what kinds of jobs are being created. An increase in government jobs, for example, does not create added wealth to a state’s economy. In fact, such jobs are a drag because they have to be paid for by imposing higher taxes on the productive sector of the economy.
Even more uncertainty is added if we consider Cantillon effects, which tell us that in response to money-supply inflation, prices (including labor prices) do not change uniformly and at the same speed, so the effect of raising the minimum wage will be different in each of these thirteen states.
Finally, if raising minimum wages does increase the number of jobs in these states, why don’t their governors and legislatures raise the minimum wage to $100 to $1,000 dollars per hour? To ask the question is to answer it as even these interventionist politicians know that no one besides government bureaucrats would still be employed under such as system. Any first-year economics student knows that, all things being equal, as the price of an item increases, demand for that item decreases accordingly. Wage rates are labor’s price. As wage rates increase, employers demand for workers will decrease. By increasing the minimum wage, politicians in these thirteen states are condemning many of their citizens to unemployment.
Murray Rothbard perhaps said it best when he argued that the minimum wage “is compulsory unemployment, period … the minimum wage law provides no jobs; it only outlaws them; and outlawed jobs are the inevitable result.”
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So then the employers should compensate their employees for their poor educations and bad life decisions.
Holy shit, if you have 3 kids and your skillset consists of working fucking fast food, you have made some bad decisions with your life. Can't support a family? Don't breed.
I'm guessing the 'dad' is still around and working hard making $50 an hour to support his kids. NOT!
That's one of my beefs [sorry] with the tax code. People who have more then one kid [they can't afford] should have a disincentive to having 8 more [by 8 different men]. Why reward them with tax credits and more free stuff?
My grandpa played golf with a guy on disability. He like the guy, but was kinda embarrassed being associated with him.
I'd raise the wage to $25 an hour. You only need 2 employees. A Sponge Bob Square Pants and a Squidward. On second thought, Squidward is only worth $15 an hour. His attitude is not so good.
Two 16 year olds on Ritalin or two 20 somethings on meth could probaly keep up at most times.
If they were worth $15 per hour, they'd probably be paid $20 per hour. But, they ain't worth a plug nickel! My baby girl makes about 3K per month waiting tables at a seafood restaurant in Woodstock fucking Georgia working 3 days a week.
She's only 20 years old, she had a scholarship to Savannah College of Art and Design, but declined it. After perusing their online presence, I understand why- It's pretty much a college for gays and lesbians, and while I harbor no ill will for anyone, I'm glad my daughter is a waitress.
I have three children, but this youngest one... I love her so much that my heart hurts. She has artistic talent that few could match, but for some reason, she doesn't want to leverage it.
That's my girl!
scad's koo doo
I haven't the faintest clue what that means. Can you elaborate?
Doubling the wage of a human worker is like having a 50% off sale on robots.
Give it to them, you have many civil servants they don't deserve their salaries... thanks to their unions.
Fast food intellect is the second or third line of least productive. Fast food workers try by showing up somewhere a couple of times a week. Do we want to subsidize them 80% or 100%?
The bottom line, and it stings, we must legally euthanize the unproductive.
I quit my fucking job, sold my house, moved into an apartment in a better neighborhood that cost half of my PITI, started cooking my own meals buying beef tenderloin (filet mignon) at kroger for $9.99/ pound. I've lost 20 pounds and several inches off my waist.
Pay them the $15/hour! It is exactly what Janety Yellen wants! Inflation! Let it begin here. At least they work!
Why be fucking cruel and pay the tribe a billion a year and deny the worker a subsistance wage?
It will be G-d's work when Lloyd Blankfein and Jamie Dimon are tossing my salad for a twenty dollar bill!
Let's not forget Corzine who should also be thrown down with the sodomites.
Wow. Where I am at appartment rents seem to be more expensive than buying a house. What were you living in and what did you move to (sf, # br, ba, etc)?
The house I sold was three blocks from a University campus; the apartment I rented was 500 miles south in a quaint neighborhood in Athens. My rent is only, about, 3 times what my property taxes were on the row house I sold..... on a yearly basis.
No more cutting grass, property taxes, maintenance and annoying neighbors I can't ditch in a year if I find a better place.
I have markets, bottles shops, restaurants, and the Royale with cheese is $8 including fries at the pub 100 yards from my front door.
I can sit at home and play long dated out of the money options and wait for interest rates to go to 20% so I can live on T-Bond interest.
I cook a very spicy vindaloo and eat chorizo sausages at breakfast.
MacDonald's is an extreme last resort. It's garbage.
If rent for you is more than a mortgage then you should buy if you are going to be around for 10+ years. If you rent in Menlo Park then the internet bubble will burst, again, and you will be underwater.
I actually gained from the Bernanke Bubble that burst in 2007. I sold a house for 10x what I paid for it and upgraded to a house near the University then flipped that after 6 years for 3x. Now I am just waiting to do it again when the next bubble pops.
Until then I just buy long dates out of the money calls and puts, gamble basically, and play the long shots.
To bad there isn't a horse track near here. That would be fun!
I suppose you are on the West Coast?
Until then I am in cash and reminbi.
Good deal. I own a house in the midwest. I just pay property tax and insurance. Would probably pay 5 times that amount to rent a nice place. If I had a mortgage it would still be cheaper to own. I am a fan of vindaloo and chorizo as well.
that vindaloo sounds tight, man.
Acetinker, your daughter should keep her artistic talent alive and make it a fun / profitable part time hobby.
Very do-able. Not too hard.
Freelance. The world is at her fingertips through the internet. It does not take a lot of work to keep two hands busy at an international level. Think about it.
"Get up! Get down! Fast-food workers run this town!"
People do love their fast food but at the end of the day there is a price point which make people realize it is just a pile of shit. Fast food is already very close to that price point. Up in the Northeast a typical fast food meal is around $7.50 a person, which is $30 for a family of four. 2 lbs of steak at $7.99/lb is $16 and you can buy sides and drinks for less than $14.
Hmm, throw steaks on the grill, wait a few minutes, flip, a few minutes more, done or wait in line at a fast food place for a sack of shit that probably has the wrong shit in the sack because the "underpaid" worker couldn't select the right pictures on their register screen while you were ordering by numbers.
Obviously you're not in my car..dollar menu/ drink your spit. 10$ feeds my family of four lunch with a bonus fry included.
But yeah/ at home we buy fresh meat in 30# lots and set up ten freezer bags for crock pot dinners. Rootbeer pulled pork sandwiches tonight!
It is hilarious that these Get Up Get Down idiots think that most people want to eat McDonald's shit. The "food" is filled with pink slime, wood pulp and good knows what else.
I used to have their fish sandwiches because it seem like it was something real on the menu. The patties became postage stamped sized and it is various fish parts.
McDonalds is trash. Chick Filet is the only major fast food chain that has anything close to real food.
I don't guess anyone involved is very good at math.
$15 an hour to take an order, walk 6 ft, grab some sorry excuse for food and bring it back to the counter.
Ayup.
I've popped puss out of a zit that was smarter than these morons.
What a crock of corporatist horse shit, Z/H.
I have a message to people who work the line at McDonalds for eight years trying to raise kids:
kill yourself.
Why not raise it to $100 an hour no one eats that shit anymore!! Mcshits stock is going to zero! People are wising up and the ones that are not are dropping like fat fucking fly's.
45 years ago my father told me this is how it works.
Get a job, get a better job, repeat as necessary.
The problem today is the 20 and up jobs are now 35 cent jobs in China.
At 15 bucks a robot will serve and no one will have a job
The outcome of what they're pushing for will result in a ratio of the chemically rendered sawdust product content divided by the total of the meat like product + pink slime that approaches infinity.
Give it to them, raise prices repelling consumers, lay them off, close doors, wipe your ass on the new union contract and sell McDonald's to Germany's Kroger. Bin dere dun dat.
Here's the inevitable solution (ok, the 'happy' solution)
- lay off all the fast food workers and replace them with robots. It's inevitable anyway, so get it over with
- give all the fast food workers who aren't able to get other work (most of them) welfare, EBT cards, 'smart' phones and their favorite gaming console
- fund this with new debt, which will supply much needed 'good collateral' to all the cunts in the .1% getting free money from the Fed. They lever it up in the equity and bond markets or buy collectible cars, art, Greek islands, whatever.
So the super rich get super richer and are happy, laid off fast food workers mind their own business playing games and tweeting each other while they slowly die off eating fast food served by robots, and are happy - but no riots, peace throughout the land, no FEMA camps or wars. Everybody wins.
But they felt it was appropriate to give the McD's CEO a $20M salary package because last year McD's introduced a new salad. That took some ingenuity. Not.
While I'm strongly against raising the minimum wage because it will make America less competitive and slow job growth, I concede the debate is destined to continue until it is raised. I hereby state without a doubt, the minimum wage will go up! Polls show a majority of Americans support this idea.
It is my feeling that many people believe the myth this will put more money into the consumers pocket and create economic growth. They fail to recognize it will also spark inflation while reducing opportunity. New twist and wrinkles are being added by the White House and supporters of this increase every week. Expanding the number of workers eligible for overtime pay is another attempt to push this along. Unfortunately much of the impact and pain will directly fall upon small business the real creator of jobs. More on this subject in the article below.
http://brucewilds.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-minimum-wage-will-go-up-right...
What is wrong with all the assholes who post here? Are you not aware that the price of beef has gone up 50% since last year with nary a whine or yelp from fast food corps or franchisees? So, if they can stand that kind of increase, why not labor going up also? Wake up assholes, think for yourself instead of some reichwingnut from the Nazi Mieses intstitute run by Herr Goebbels!
If the margins are so great on serving hamburgers that all of these greedy bastards are getting filthy rich off of it, then we should all get in on this scam. There isn't a patent on hamburgers is there?
baldski: So, if they can stand that kind of increase, why not labor going up also?
The price of shit food went up. What on Gods green earth has that to do with the price of serving shit food?
Running a business is not your forte' eh?
Once again they fail to mention that even someone who makes $20 an hour currently (and you would be amazed at the skill level and experience of this pay grade), will be very unlikely to accept an economy where they continue to make $20 while fast food workers make $15. This doesn't even consider those from just above minimum wage to $15 who might actually welcome the duties and responbilies of fast food at $15 compared to what they make currently.
This economy sucks. You either get paid slave wages or you have no job. Forget hiking wages, just jack interest rates up so our wages actually buy things.
Used to work in one of these shitholes and I was awesome to get myself a cool manager badge, so I saw the financials and saw it was a license to print money, but it was never enough.
The push was to always send someone home before their shift was over. Basically their ideal scenario was one guy running around the kitchen like Speedy Gonzales. Now it could be done, but not by everyone. The people who could do it actually needed some skill and discipline to operate at a level over an extened period, but there was no financial reward for being in that minority of people who could do it.
I'd tell anyone who was put in that situation to slow the fuck down because there was no reward for their effort and they were only be used to cut someone else out of a job who could reduce their stress.
If they turn to machines that's fine with me because it was poor people who ate there anyway and where does their money come from? The response to machines should be a government welfare spend restriction.
I don't want my tax dollars subsidising these shitholes any further.
I have to say that your comment is very accurate and it tells me that you really did work in a McDonald's or a place equivalent...
That said, I will tell you that I spent years (my work career) in food service and was an upper management in the McDonald's corporation. I worked out of Georgia, USA at the time...
I am actually stunned to see a comment that tells the truth about things in a fast food world. No hate and no vitriol to speak of. The comment brought deja vu and it kinda floored me...
"cool manager badge" made me smile...
It brought back memories of me sitting down with a future shift manager and spieling out the bull and lies about how you are so great...
Then I sealed the deal as I gave you a whopping 25 cent an hour raise and you went home to mommy and showed her your new badge that gave you special rights and privileges, to help abuse the other workers...
But when I look at the wage issue?
Hardly anyone (I did not say everyone!) that worked hourly for me in McDonald's was worth anywhere near what they made (drugs, theft and whatever floated their boat to do) and to raise the wage higher, means that... Oh well enough said, for in Russia McDonald's is being crushed and shut down and in America McDonald's is being, well crushed and shut down a different way. Hell China is slapping McDonald's across the face...
Those few as you say who could succeed and do the job, were always pushed by me to train management and leave McDonald's. I thought they deserved a better life and I worked hard at helping the ones that could help me. I was limited in what I could pay you and many times would have paid, the rocket employee as I called them much more. But McDonald's had a 23% limit on total labor during my time with them...
Sorry so long; It just brought back memories from many years ago...
Good comment...
You missed your own point; the job was a stepping stone to a better life. A minimum wage job was never meant to support a family.
Anyone who has worked fast food (and I have) has to know that there is virtually no upside and to expect your pay to increase enough to support a family is ridiculous. These fast food joints will automate or close, no upside for them to continue if they do not see the return they expect for the risk taken. That is life for everyone - risk/reward.
'The response to machines should be a government welfare spend restriction.'
Good idea - lets include tobacco, alcohol, strippers, cash, big screen TV's, junk food, cable and a myriad of other items someone spending money confiscated from another persons paycheck don't need and should not have.
Why is it that big biz always claims that any attempt to better the situation of their workers will affect mostly "small business", when the issue is actually with them? If big fast food biz can't eke a profit by having less than slave wages, then maybe it shouldn't exist at all. Maybe the hole they leave would give the chance for more small business creation...
'slave wages' - total bullshit.
You do know slaves do not have a choice and they do not get paid.
Get rid of your cell phone, don't buy big screen TV's, get rid of cable, quit smoking (tobacco and weed), quit drinking, stop eating all the fat that has made you fat, go on a diet - this is a good start to taking control of your life and stop being a programmed victim.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slavery
i'm lovin' it :-)
Fucking libertarian crazy talk abolish minimum wage.
I wish they would grow up.
Striking is for children, Real grown ups take action and quit. Period.
Get together and decide that instead of striking you will quit, walk out, just leave and go.
Sure it will close down, sure it will have a huge disruption sure your life will change, but what the fuck are you doing with a life if the only thing you can do with it is hang it all on a fucking job flipping burgers.
If you dont have the balls to quit then you deserve what you get,. You are just as much an animal as the ones used to feed their customers.
your magical thinking will find them all better paying jobs? if they quit? you think any of them will? youre a nutcase
Sometimes I worry about you guys in here.
Minimum wage has to go up. Period end of story.
CEO pay has gone up 700% since the 1970's
The dollar has gone down over 100% since the 1970's
Wages have actually gone down since 2000 thanks to NAFTA and the illegals it brings in.
Not sure what economic planet you big ZH'rs in here claim to be from but base pay has to rise.
Now stop with the tribal whining and help get everyone in this country making bank so we can all advance.
Am not too optimistic. The global corporate elites determined there are too many "excess" American workers who cost too much & want too much. Mechanization, computerization eliminated many jobs or globally outsourced them. HB+ visas import cheaper, compliant workers further up the jobs food chain. Low wage immigrant workers eagerly feed low skill, physical jobs at the low end job sectors.
In the 1990s no one had a clue what Globalization & the new American "service economy" meant. Now we do. The global corporatist & this government knew and were preparing for the major economic transition shift that occurred in 2008. Workers remained clueless at our machines, in our cubes, in the field, on the phones doing the "deal" to pump up profit & productivity. Didn't matter. When everything was in place & the "reset button" was pushed...massive tidal wave layoffs ensued. Reset complete.
Bring back Horn and Hardart. For those of you old enough to remember. It worked just fine and the food was good. I am serious. www.theautomat.com
Some slaves are rebelling against their masters. Master must squash that, lest the small uprising becomes a large uprising and the slaves are actually able to unchain themselves acheive true change. Right.
No one in America is a slave except to their own stupidity.
How many years have you been a slave?
"The QI Elves @qikipedia 47m
People earning over £14,000 a year are among the richest 4% of the world."
"Looking at monthly seasonally-adjusted employment and unemployment data for Florida, comparing January to May 2014, we find that"
If you look at fake figures don't be surprised at what you find
Want to increase employment?
Repeal all "minimum wage" laws.
What about the children?
The marketplace is telling you that the current hourly wage is all your skills are worth. Quit your job and try selling your skills for a higher wage elsewhere. HAHAHAHA!
I want my food prepared by a robot, not by fat ugly women with feces all over their hands.
If you're 36 and been at McD's for 8 years you don't have too much "on the ball."
BTW-where are the sperm donor(s) who sired the three kids and why aren't they paying child support?
It will be interesting to see where the first robotic burger machine is installed-probably in a large city store with the volume to pay for it.
All this drivel. I searched the entire pages of comments and didn't find the one key root cause: inflation. Anyone out there have a clue? The Mises stuff is way wrong on this, Tylers. Minimum wage workers have lost a drastic amount of purchasing power DUE TO INFLATION, and most of that, monetary inflation. And most of that, since 2007, when the Fed bailed out the bazillionaires who ran our banking system into the ground (AGAIN). Sorry, Tylers, you're way out to lunch on this one. The people at the bottom feel the impact of monetary inflation the most. The price of a train or bus ticket to work, the price of a loaf of bread, the price to have a tooth fixed. TELL ME these costs haven't gone up double digit for years, then skip the misquoted Mises drivel about cause and effect, regarding legislating minimum wages. Without a legislated minimum wages, the Koch Industries and similar, would have every American except themselves living in tent cities begging for food scraps, while working 14 hour 7 day weeks. Sorta, kinda, sorta, like the Chinese manufacturing workers have to do.
No shit - we get inflation. The money printing went full retard with Obama - the get up get down idiots hero.
Ahh... I see Koch Brothers in your post. My guess is you voted for Obama. The Koch brothers are scum but as far as I know - they are not involved in the murder of innocents in Syria and Ukriane like Soros is.
I grew up in New Orleans. The famed Audubon zoo houses a large cage of unruly monkeys known for encouraging visitors to give them a snack by sticking their hands through the cage with a sweet sad look much reminiscent of the children on the Unicef commercials with Allyssa Milano.
However, the monkey tone quickly changes when you refuse or don't give more....
they tend to shit in their own little monkey hand and throw it at the patrons.
These behaviors were learned/ taught by the way they were fed in the first place.
the moral of the tale; just like the sign says...
"DON'T FEED THE MONKEYS"
It's all well and good that you consider the more far-reaching effects of a higher wage...yes, of course it will have such effects.
Now how come no one ever does that with other 'situations' that exist in our economy? Like, sending all those jobs overseas? Sure, it has an immediate 'good' effect, in higher profits for companies. (Like workers get an immediate profit out of higher wages.)
But of course it has longer-term negative effects, just like that big boost in the minimum wage...
So why are our financial thinkers never willing to use the same lines of reasoning when it is those at the top making the profit? Why are they only willing to think long-term when it is someone ELSE making the profit? Oh, you can't do THAT, they say...it will cause this-and-that, and that will be bad...
But when it is THEM making the profits, none of those cause/effect arguments are ever brought up...
Like, maybe we wouldn't be FACING this issue if all the decent jobs HADN'T been sent overseas in the first place!
"A single mother with three children, ages 11, 14 and 16, she said she struggles to make her $9.34-an-hour pay cover all the bills."
What I want to know is what sinister persons forced Fanny Velazquez to have three kids she can't afford!? If she's divorced, where's the child support? Or did her POS hubby just abandon her? The only way out of the "it was her bad choices that got her here" conclusion would be if her husband has died, and that further depends upon how and why he died.
BTW, get that $15/hr and say goodbye to your job due to reduced business due to higher prices and the economic viability of increased automation that will replace you.
FAST FOOD WORKER FUTURE: Robots who make 360 burgers per hour... Welcome to the brave new "Jetsons" world of fast food without workers.
Any success in raising minimum wages for fast food workers will speed up the entry of robots into this industry. Orders for transitioning to robotics are in the pipeline. Some already exist.
These strikes will push the robotic transition into maximum overdrive.
Hi-tech, computerized robotics have the potential to eliminate millions of fast food jobs. What happens when these robots go "on-line" in massive numbers? Absolutely no need for face time with a worker. One robot can make 360 on-demand burgers per hour via self-service customer kiosks & debit/credit card purchases. Correcting order errors & monitoring operations will only require one (maybe two) on-site "techs". Surely maintenance robotics to clean tables, floors, bathrooms, restock napkins, cups, straws & replenish soda machines are in the works. There are even "security robots". No human need apply.
Robotics will be "faster, cleaner, safer/healthier & CHEAPER than human labor". A no brainer.
Fast food workers can kiss these jobs good-bye forever when robots take over.
FAST FOOD STRIKERS GAIN MOMENTUM ( & ultimately will lose their jobs)
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/02/business/fast-food-workers-seeking-hig...
http://www.democracynow.org/2014/9/5/hundreds_arrested_as_growing_fast_food
THE FAST FOOD FUTURE IS HERE:
http://momentummachines.com/
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2014/09/fast_food_strikers_meet_your...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/11/fast-food-robot_n_5668600.html
http://www.businessinsider.com/momentum-machines-burger-robot-2014-8
http://singularityhub.com/2014/08/10/burger-robot-poised-to-disrupt-fast...
http://jobs.aol.com/articles/2013/07/17/robots-fast-food-jobs/