Posted on 12/02/2013 4:42:55 AM PST by Biggirl
Seeking to increase pressure on McDonalds, Wendys and other fast-food restaurants, organizers of a movement demanding a $15-an-hour wage for fast-food workers say they will sponsor one-day strikes in 100 cities on Thursday and protest activities in 100 additional cities.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
This is going to backfire. Why not simply make it self serve like everything else?
You are correct. The picketers are mostly “community organizers” paid by unions.
The corporate office might, but that doesn't mean the individual franchise owners do.
That's the biggest problem with the news and how they represent this story. The guy who owns a McDonald's franchise in Hicktown, USA isn't making nearly the profit margin of the corporate office, nor is he making anywhere near the same amount as the lucky SOB who happens to have the territory that allows them to put one outside the front gate of a military base either.
The MSM clumps all of this together when in fact they are two separate entities when it comes to profit. Yes, it might cost $.25 (actual) for a Big Mack, but tell that to your local franchise owner and watch him bust out laughing. That is the corporate office's cost, sure as hell not what he has to pay for all of the ingredients combined including logistics, yet that part of it is glossed over completely by the reporters.
If they are making so much money then why is Wendy's and Arby's both on the short list for declaring bankruptcy this year also?
What, and LOSE the “personal touch” of having some surly employee ask “...youwanfrieswifdat?”
Can you imagine the person that called 911 because they were out of McNuggets being faced with an impersonal video screen saying “sorry, that product is not available, please choose something else”?
What, and LOSE the personal touch of having some surly employee ask ...youwanfrieswifdat?
(Sorry for the re-post, but I seem to have mistakenly posted it to myself at first)
It’s pretty crappy now.
A few weeks ago, I was involved in an on-line discussion on capitalism with a liberal who actually said maybe she (a school teacher) should just “Go Galt”. After I stopped laughing, I told her and we would all respond with “Who Cares?”
Fast food is already approaching full service prices. I don’t care what anyone says...the person standing behind a fast food counter is not a waiter and can be replaced at the drop of a pin.
Er, we called it the Automat back in the 1950s.
Actually, I will do my very best to drive out of my way to go get some fast food & walk thru such a protest line.
It isn’t the actual workers who are doing this. It is PAID SEIU union members.
SEIU is in a full court press to unionize all fast food companies.
Hard to do, since they are mostly franchises.
In the late 50’s, I worked at American Motors in Kenosha, Wis.
We got our lunches out of HOT vending machines every day.
A fresh HOT Polish Sausage on a bun cost me 50 cents. Condiments were on a table nearby. Of course, I also made about $2 an hour in those days.
We owned our own house trailer & had 2 cars. One was a brand new Pontiac.
The Automat wasn’t fully automated. It was just a giant vending machine, and the food was still prepared in the kitchen in the back by people. I’m talking “no human hands” preparation of sandwiches, fries, and drinks.
There is, ultimately, a problem here, one not caused by union goons, the Obama administration, the Democrats, RINOs or even the slackers who vote them in time and again, but by the advance of technology: How will we organize society when every job that can be done reliably by a person of average or below average intelligence can be done more cheaply by a robot? Or even when the number of full-time positions in such jobs drops below the supply of such people?
Quite frankly, we conservatives had better come up with an answer that preserves liberty and individual responsibility, or the left and the professional managerial class (they're the same folks in big business, big government, big academe, big NGOs) will come up with one for us that will look like the worst aspects of 1984 and Brave New World rolled into one.
I agree that $15/hr is pretty steep for fry cooks, but your statement is pure hyperbole.
You forget all the Gibsmedats who don't even know how to cook food at home nor do they care if the fast food charges they put on their SNAP/EBT cards add up.
When their free credit card runs short, they will just agitate the politicians for more because they "need" it for their "survival". The politicians, naturally, will cave and keep buying them off with our money.
Someone’s not paying attention to the buttons with the pictures those people are paid to push at the register. The customer could do it just as easily. We’re already using the soda fountains and swiping cards ourselves without the world ending. It could almost all be automated within a year or two if the cost benefit comes out right...
you don’t agree that being forced to raise the salaries of their workers wouldn’t translate into higher prices?
No! The Automat had workers?!
The NYT, nor the two linked websites, are stating EXACTLY WHICH fast food chains they are choosing to strike. The strike websites use the term, “LIKE McDonald’s”, but do NOT say which ones.
So, they want to strike, good.
They don’t want my money, which pays their check, good.
In my location, all the burger joints are across town. That means a minimum 30 minute bus ride to get there, and half a price for just a burger, before I get to order a burger.
I can go to the local supermarket, and pay for a nice lunch and two sides, for a little more than the price of a single burger. I can get a 24 ounce bottled soda for a half dollar, where in comparison a McD coffee costs more than a buck. And the best part, they are already SEIU-paying members.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.