Biggest Threat To Minimum Wage Restaurant Workers

With poverty level minimum wage workers demanding increased wages what are the multi million / billion dollar companies to do? Looks like they have an idea, get rid of the employees.

Biggest Threat To Minimum Wage Restaurant Workers

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.

Not sure how this would work out for McDonald's and Burger King type outlets but you can be certain they're looking into it. Anyone think this idea will work?

Relax it's all good.

Obama will just raise premiums on ACA for middle class folks to support the lower wage guys who lose there jobs.

Yep, spreading the wealth it's fool proof...

reply to post by Bassago


Our country has been turned into a service driven economy, versus our once strong manufacturing economy. We have been turned into consumers whom end up working in jobs that pay a measly pittance compared to what our parents made in the manufacturing sector!

Where do we go from here?

All I can see is that big swirl of water that flushes our waste down the toilet!

Corporations are raking in the dough at the expense of our way of life in this country. Look at the banks and Wall Street! Stronger than ever, yet the people suffer...................Doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that Feudalism has made a HUGE comeback in our so called evolved state as human beings does it?

reply to post by Bassago


Also a large threat to the middle class. Raising the minimum wage is not an answer but a political move.

Minimum wage goes up, cost of doing business goes up, buying power of the dollar decreases, middle class wages aren't compensated by the same ratio as the minimum wage salaries, the gap between minimum wage employees and the middle class decreases, the wealthy don't get effected .

The real losers are the minimum wagers whos buying power stays the same at best and the middle class who actually lose their buying power.

But the poor only see the good. Yeah we get an extra dollar, oh wait why does a burger now cost 2 dollars more?

Well, that's OK, it will just increase our leisure time by that much more!

Just like they predicted in the 1950's - 1960's what it would be like today when we are all enjoying our fruit smoothies in out back yard hammocks while robots did all the work we don't want to do.
A glorious future in the space age!

The only thought they left out was when the robots did work, the humans did not get paid.

So there is more leisure, but no money to enjoy it, plus bills and the cost to exist in this world.

Blinded by lofty thoughts.

reply to post by Bassago


Machines of this type are coming regardless of whether or not there is an increase in minimum wage, it's called automation. Three years ago, I saw a machine in a hospital that made mini pizzas to order while you wait. Oh yeah, you could watch through a little window on the front of the machine too.

Companies are always looking to reduce their labor cost regardless of what they are and this is no different. To pretend that it's happening just because of a possible minimum wage increase is absurd.

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.

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.

reply to post by Bassago


Well, the smart employees will switch from being flippers and squeezers and learn how to clean and maintain and stock these contraptions. At least those ones will still be employed.

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.

Very true on all counts.

Maybe we need to get Americans in gear again and start manufacturing the auto-robot food making machines before Asia buries us under them.

Toadmund
Well, that's OK, it will just increase our leisure time by that much more!

Careful, now you sound like Pelosi: Death of 40-hour work week means freedom to ‘follow your passion’

Great thread OP, S&F. I agree wholeheartedly. I have been flabbergasted at the amount of strikes and demands for higher wages in the past few years. It's clearly not the right time. Remember the Hostess Bakers union? They went on strike and had no job to come back to, the company went under. Unless you're irreplaceable and your company is stable, get off the high horse. Even though fast food restaurants are chains, the locations are individually owned. Some owners may own only 1 or 2, others many more and you KNOW they're not going to have less so guess who is. I just read an article though about the McDonalds chains not doing so well because people are waking up and choosing healthy eating choices and it's anybody's guess as to other reasons. I haven't heard anything positive about the recent fast food strikes and I wonder how many of those people still have their jobs.

Between the poor economy and the effects of the ACA, I fear the number of people on the government assist programs may easily go up to 65% and that is scary.

reply to post by Bassago

Just as it is the American Citizen's responsibility to make more intelligent choices at the election polls (despite the poor choices available...), it is also our responsibility to make choices where we make purchases.

Support locally owned small businesses. Support more responsible corporations. Their concern is the bottom line, and if no one wants to buy their product because it comes out of a machine rather than made by people, and in a way you can watch them make it, then they will be forced to accommodate the buyer, as the "free market" rules suggest.

Personally, I don't believe the free market does exist as much as some people believe, as the giant corporations and political donors have warped the rules in their favor through the bribery of politicians, more or less, but it does exist in some form. Anyway, consider who you buy from to make an impact on their bottom line. When profits sink, they get nervous. How many of you get receipts with surveys and chances to win something or get a discount the next time you shop when you buy something? Let them know what we, the buyers, want.

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.

they will not make as much money they will make more money...similar to atm machines that were sold to us as cheaper for the banks so cheaper for the consumer,so once implemented the price of the electronic transfer increased.......capitalism has gone mad and the people pay the ultimate price

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.

reply to post by tsingtao

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.

I'm happy for your chef but the rest is too pat of an answer.

In the past it was very easy to continue your education and get a better job. Today it is not and most people simply are not business owner material. They can improve themselves but there are few to no jobs for them to get.

Add that to the change in training / educational requirements and many hit a blank wall. The are tens of thousands if not millions (I'll look numbers up if I must)of college graduates that cannot now find a job.

What possible hope is there for moderate or low educated workers? The automation is going to crush them if it comes about.

I vow to never use self service for any fast food chain or restaurant. People need those #, low paid, high stress, dead end jobs so they can make it safely to the grave.

reply to post by Bassago


So the same technology that people enjoy at home (at the cost of other labor, might I add) to save money should not be leveraged in industry?

Maybe in the late 1800's the equine breeders should have thrown a fit about the automobile displacing all those horse shoers and saddle makers.

You cannot spend your entire cultures energy catering to the lowest common denominator (in our case, the lowest tiers of income). Instead, demand more from your countrymen than their productivity amounting to serving frozen yogurt to people.

reply to post by bigfatfurrytexan


Except that most things are a scam and if you try to get what/where you want, you just end up getting scammed.

Just admit it, the Luddites were right.
We're being replaced by machines.
We're being shut out of the economic system where we all become criminals for being poor.

reply to post by Asktheanimals

Just admit it, the Luddites were right.

OK, the Luddites we right.

Whats a Luddite? Is it like that guy who came back in time to save Sarah Connor's from the terminator?

(Just kidding) Down with the Machine!