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Over the past year, unionized restaurant workers across numerous fast-food chains but mostly at McDonalds, expressed their dissatisfaction with compensation levels by striking at increasingly more frequent intervals - a sentiment that has been facilitated by the president himself and his ever more frequent appeals for a raise in the minimum wage.
Smoothie retailer Jamba Juice, which in order to battle a 4% drop in Q3 same store sales has decided to radically transform its entire retailing strategy by getting rid of labor, cheap, part-time or otherwise, altogether. Presenting the biggest threat to minimum-wage restaurant workers everywhere: the JambaGo self-serve machine that just made the vast majority of Jamba's employees obsolete. Coming soon to a fast-food retailer near you.
Its peers will watch closely and soon decide to roll out their own version of just this: a self-contained dispenser of a la carte prepared fast-food food, either liquid or solid, and in the process let go tens of thousands of their own minimum-wage employees, also known to shareholders as "costs."
What happens after that should be clear to everyone: more unemployment, lower wages for the remaining employees, worse worker morale, but even higher profits to holders of capital.
PlatinumShatinum
Automation is wonderful, as long as you build the machines in the US.
We then export the machines to other countries, which creates higher paying jobs, and the circle continues.
The problem is that the US no longer manufactures much.
Toadmund
Well, that's OK, it will just increase our leisure time by that much more!
Volund
reply to post by interupt42
Hasn't anyone considered that instead of blaming one another the blame should be passed up the ranks? That CEO that makes 476 to 1 versus its employees should take the cost hit, not the consumer. Think twice before blaming price increases on the wrong people. The ones at the top will make the same regardless and therein lies the problem. Decrease their wage to solve the increase at the lower end.
biggest threat to min wage workers?
learning.
i made a sous chef out of my dishwasher. he went on to run his own kitchen. i was very happy for him.
Just admit it, the Luddites were right.