Posted on 02/11/2024 10:13:38 AM PST by Salman
Hundreds of fast-food workers met in Los Angeles on Friday to kick off the launch of the California Fast Food Workers Union, a statewide union aimed at organizing cooks and cashiers at fast-food companies across the state.
The new union comes in the wake of a victory at the end of 2023 to boost pay for California’s more than 500,000-strong fast-food workforce to $20 an hour.
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In California, over 80% of fast-food workers are people of color and two-thirds are women. In recent years, workers at fast-food chains throughout the state have held strikes in response to poor workplace conditions including excessive heat exposure in the workplace, sexual harassment and retaliation against workers, child labor violations, and wage theft.
“I’m very proud to say that we’re going to have a union. This is like a dream come true for me to be able to say this,” said Angelica Hernandez, who has worked at McDonald’s for 19 years in Los Angeles, California. “McDonald’s and other brands like Carl’s Jr, Chipotle – they have to listen to us. They’ve been making millions and millions of dollars in profits, and they want to keep their employees working at minimum wage.”
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(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
What will happen is so obvious to anyone with the least bit of common sense, yet they continue on thinking how great things will be when they stick it to these companies.
For a few dollars more you can sit down at a Mom & Pop place and eat fresh food off of real plates.
Point being, if you didn’t have to pay teenagers the prevailing minimum wage, they wouldn’t have to employ scab aliens.
Long before Kalifornia was pushing a $15/hr minimum wage, I read about a hamburger machine that could produce 300 burgers an hour. This, combined with the order kiosk, eliminates humans. Kiosks never call in sick, or try to form a kiosk union.
Here is a cherished memory. Drive up A&W Fast Food, with the waitresses on roller skates. When we had enough money, dad would take mom and us seven kids to the A&W. With all the windows rolled down 3/4, the waitresses would hook the serving trays to the windows. I remember many, many Mama Burgers, Papa Burgers, and hundreds of delicious French fries, everywhere in the car.
They should speak to the laid-off Pizza Hut delivery workers. The true minimum wage is zero. And that is for a 24 hour work day.
80% of the remaining corporeal fast food workers are “people of color.” That 80% is a shrinking quantity as the corporeals are replaced by the metaloids and their AI bosses.
I just checked A&W’s menu and to my surprise they still have Mama Burgers and Papa Burgers. I can’t believe a national brand would still use such traditional gender role affirming product names. I wonder when they phased out the roller skates?
“White teens” seems to be a contradiction in terms. Check the style book.
I’m a pharmacy technician who needs a state license and I barely scrape $20/hr.
Makes me sick.
I would never give away my rights to negotiate for the value I provide.
The only people who make good money from unions are those who organize and run it. Who’s doing the organizing and running of this union? That’s where the money will go...
It’s being done, as is large-scale robotic farming.
Employers be like “Hey, Buddy, I gotcher ‘living wage’ right cheer!” tug-tug.
I predict (IF Pedo Joe doesn’t bring on WW3 in the next 10 months+) advanced robotics/AI will replace HALF the “fast food”/service industry and much of “the trades” by 2030. It will go below 5% the next.
I mean, SOMEOne has to keep those robots supplied with substrate (seed, burger, lumber, brick and mortar, steel, etc.
Probably won’t be able to fire them for spitting on your burger anymore.
RE: In California, over 80% of fast-food workers are people of color and two-thirds are women.
So if a corporation promotes strong diversity in hiring and promotion the reward is still “we are downtrodden victims of the American capitalist exploiters of the underclass and we’re going on strike.”
Not too exciting a reward.
Third world countries don’t have a lot of fast food places do they?
so you get a $4 raise and you get to pass that on through $4 union dues. We can’t trust you to spend for yourself.
I think I’d be much more satisfied with paying the prices IF the food looked like what is on the menu pictures.
As others have noted, of these 90% will be displaced by robots.
Bidenflation has already made fast food an occasional luxury with its prices. Imagine what unions and living wages will add to that.
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