Free Republic

Consumer demand has come roaring back for restaurant meals, but the workforce has been slower to return, pushing eateries to sweeten the deal. In May, the leisure and hospitality industries added 292,000 jobs, but employment in those fields is still down by 2.5 million compared with pre-pandemic levels, according to the Department of Labor. In May, Chipotle said that it would raise hourly wages for its restaurant workers to reach an average of $15 an hour by the end of June. Company executives said at the Baird Global Consumer, Technology & Services Conference that they would be passing along the...

GOP Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky on Friday came out swinging against President Joe Biden, saying that the Democratic president's push for a $15 minimum wage would hurt Black youth. During an interview with Fox host Sean Hannity, Paul alleged that a minimum wage increase would put 4 million people out of work. "The people who lose their jobs first when you hike up the minimum wage are Black teenagers," Paul said. "So, you know, 'Why does Joe Biden hate Black teenagers?' should be the question. Why does Joe Biden want to destroy all of these jobs?" He added: "Even...

If your job is working at a restaurant flipping burgers you may soon find yourself replaced by a robot that works for only $3 an hour. The new robot named Flippy developed by Miso Robotics costs less to employ than a minimum-wage worker. Currently, Miso Robotics charges an up-front fee of between $20,000 and $30,000 to install Flippy into restaurants. The LA Times reports: “As a result, Miso can offer Flippys to fast-food restaurant owners for an estimated $2,000 per month on a subscription basis, breaking down to about $3 per hour. (The actual cost will depend on customers’ specific...

Floridians will vote next year on whether to raise the state’s minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2026, an amendment initiative led by Orlando attorney John Morgan that’s already drawing opposition from Republican leaders and the business community. The initiative that will be called Amendment 2 made the November ballot after its wording was approved by the Florida Supreme Court in a decision released Thursday. Court review was the last obstacle to getting the measure on the ballot after Morgan’s Florida For A Fair Wage collected more than 770,000 of the required 766,200 signatures. The amendment would raise the...

Cierra Brown is trying to do all she can on her own, but it rarely feels like she’s doing enough. Cierra Brown estimates her commute to work would only take about 25 minutes if she had a car. That’s part of the reason she returned to McDonald’s in January: Her car had broken down and she needed money. But at McDonald’s, Brown only earns $9.50 per hour as a cashier, which barely helps cover rent and is far from enough to solve her vehicular woes. Without a car, one of Brown’s main headaches is getting to work. Her typical bus...

Four Democrats vying for their party’s presidential nomination honed in on the economic concerns of the black community during a forum Saturday in South Carolina, a state where nonwhite voters will play a major role in next year’s primary election. Appearing on stage one at a time, Sens. Cory Booker of New Jersey and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, and former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke all stressed the need to increase access to capital for black business owners as part of a broader effort to address wealth inequality. Warren expounded on what she’s called...

California residents working for companies like Lyft and Uber would get the rights of employees entitled to a minimum wage and workers compensation under a law the state Assembly passed on Wednesday. The sweeping bill, which now goes to the Senate, carries new standards defining whether workers are employees or independent contractors, upending how workers are treated in industries from trucking to the burgeoning gig economy. Under those standards, for example, workers could only be classified as independent contractors if they are free from the control or direction of an employer and they do work outside a company’s usual course...

Democratic presidential contender Julian Castro joined a march to a McDonald’s restaurant in North Carolina on Thursday to draw attention to workers’ efforts to raise the minimum wage and secure other protections. Nearly all the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates have expressed support for the idea that the federal minimum wage should be more than doubled, to $15 an hour, and several were joining actions around the country Thursday. The McDonald’s annual shareholder meeting is also Thursday in Dallas. Striking cooks and cashiers planned to travel to the shareholder meeting, where they’ll attend a video town hall hosted by Sen. Bernie...

In recent years, the Big Apple's fast food industry has trailblazed for employee protections and higher wages, particularly as the driving force behind the "Fight for 15." It's a battle they won with the passage of New York's $15 minimum wage law. Now they're setting their sights on eliminating unfair firings. "Workers have told me they've been fired for no reason at all," Democratic City Councilman Brad Lander, who introduced a bill to ban the practice in the fast food industry, told The Guardian. "Should employers have the right to fire people for any reason, including the most trivial reasons?...

Democrat Sherrod Brown brought a pro-worker message Saturday to Las Vegas casino workers who are members of what’s considered Nevada’s most powerful labor union, declaring that if he decides to run for president, he will be “the most pro-union candidate.” Brown, a U.S. senator from Ohio, said he’s going to make a decision about 2020 in the next month. He addressed workers in the union hall of the Culinary Union as he kicked off a trip to the early Western caucus state, which is seen as a key test of a candidate’s appeal to diverse demographics. Brown is the first...

Illinois legislators moved quickly Thursday to deliver one of new Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s top campaign promises, a gradual hike in the statewide minimum wage from $8.25 to $15 an hour — more than double the pay floor that most of its Midwestern neighbors require. The state House voted 69-41 to send the Senate-approved plan to Pritzker, who watched the roll call from the House floor. He’d urged lawmakers to send him the legislation before next Wednesday, when he announces his first budget plan. Republicans lashed out at Democrats for refusing to compromise and pushing too fast, particularly because the...

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D.-Minn.) said in a Thursday morning hearing of the House Education and Labor Committee that the Chief Executive Officer of McDonald’s gets paid $21.8 million a year while the median earnings for workers at the restaurant chain “who put in 40 hours a day” is $7,000 per year.The hearing was examining the possibility of lifting the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour. On Thursday evening, Omar tweeted out a video clip of her talking at the hearing about McDonald’s workers who put in “40 hours a day.” Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D.-Mich.) then retweeted Omar’s tweet. …

Democratic presidential contender Julian Castro launched his campaign by pledging support for “Medicare for All,” free universal preschool, a large public investment in renewable energy and two years of free college for all Americans. That wasn’t enough for some of his party’s most liberal members. […] Welcome to the 2020 presidential primary. Almost no policy is too liberal for Democrats fighting to win over their party’s base, which is demanding a presidential nominee dedicated to pursuing bold action on America’s most pressing challenges. Among two dozen possible candidates, virtually all have embraced universal health care in one form or another....

Another official at the Service Employees International Union has been ousted following accusations of sexual assault. Pedro Malave was first fired from a local Boston-area SEIU chapter in 2014, only to be later rehired at two other local chapters in California, the labor website Payday Report reported last week. Politico‘s Morning Shift newsletter flagged the report on Monday and confirmed that the locals dismissed Malave after they learned of his past alleged conduct. In the summer of 2014, the Boston-area 32BJ SEIU Local 615 investigated Malave, then the assistant director, after a co-worker, Daria Alladio, accused him of sexual assault....

While not on a par with what is happening in Hollywood, the SEIU has its own sexual harassment scandal going on. Buzzfeed reports that one union leader has been fired and another resigned after complaints about their interactions with female staffers..... More than a dozen current and former staffers interviewed by BuzzFeed News said complaints about top-level staff on the Fight for 15 were an open secret, and that complaints about abusive behavior by organizers who reported to top strategist Courtney led to no action. In October, the union suspended Courtney, following his marriage to a union employee. Sources said...

Scott Courtney, an executive vice president at Service Employees International Union, has resigned, according to a statement Monday from SEIU spokesperson Sahar Wali. "This morning, President Mary Kay Henry accepted Scott Courtney's resignation as an elected officer and member of SEIU. This comes a week after she suspended him from his assigned duties based on preliminary information that surfaced through an internal investigation launched to look into questions about to potential violations of our union's anti-nepotism policy, efforts to evade our code of ethics and subsequent complaints related to sexual misconduct and abusive behavior towards union staff," the statement reads....

At Granny Shaffer’s restaurant in Joplin, Missouri, owner Mike Wiggins is reprinting the menus to reflect the 5¢, 10¢ or 20¢ added to each item. A two-egg breakfast will cost an extra dime, at $7.39. The price of a three-piece fried chicken dinner will go up 20¢, to $8.78. The reason: Missouri’s minimum wage is rising. Wiggins said the price hikes are necessary to help offset an estimated $10,000 to $12,000 in additional annual pay to his staff as a result of a new minimum wage law taking effect Tuesday. […] New minimum wage requirements will take effect in 20...

Officials say San Francisco will become the first major U.S. city to increase its minimum wage to $15 an hour Sunday under a ballot measure approved by voters in 2014. City Administrator Naomi Kelly says it will be the first to hit the milestone for all workers. But it won’t be the last. California lawmakers approved a plan two years ago to increase the state’s $10 minimum to $15 by 2022. […] Advocates have been urging a $15 minimum, saying workers need a “living wage” to survive. …

A day after promising to give its store workers raises and bonuses, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE:WMT) is preparing to hand out pink slips at its headquarters. The giant retailer, which is based in Bentonville, Ark., and employs more than 1.5 million people in the U.S., plans to cut more than 1,000 corporate jobs ..... < snip > ..... The job cuts are expected to be broad based, focused on workers primarily at the company's headquarters ..... < snip >

Eighteen states raised their minimum wages at the start of 2018, but increasing labor costs are strangling the dining industry so much that restaurants could soon face the same fate as shopping malls. "I think you're going to see thousands of restaurants close their doors," Willie Degel, "Restaurant Stakeout" host and CEO of Uncle Jack's Steakhouse, told FOX Business. "Fine dining is going to go by the wayside." The downward cycle seems daunting to Degel and other industry insiders. As costs rise, only so much of the burden can be passed along to consumers in the form of price hikes...