Posted on 04/01/2024 10:55:16 AM PDT by Red Badger
Thousands of jobs have already been eliminated by California’s law to raise the minimum wage to $20 for restaurant workers, which goes into effect April 1.
For eight years, Michael Ojeda delivered food for a Pizza Hut in Ontario, California, using the income he received to support his family.
In December, the 29-year-old received a letter from the pizza franchise informing him that his employment was being terminated in February. The news shook him.
“Pizza Hut was my career for nearly a decade and with little to no notice it was taken away,” Ojeda said, whose story was recently highlighted by the Wall Street Journal.
Ojeda appears to be just one of the thousands of casualties of a new California law that will raise the minimum wage for fast-food workers to $20 an hour on April 1 for all restaurant chains that have at least 60 locations nationally.
Making $20 instead of $15 sounds like a win, but economics shows there’s no such thing as a free lunch. California lawmakers just proved it.
My first ‘real job’ at age 15, after being a paper boy for years, was at fast food places. It was never supposed to be a ‘career’.
I’ve noticed that you NEVER SEE TEENAGERS IN FAST FOOD JOBS ANY MORE.
Fast food was the exclusive domain of teenagers when I was a teenager in the late 60’s early 70’s.................
Delivery/assistant manager/ manager / district manager /regional manager. i can see it. There is a path.
“there are no free lunches” was a favorite expression of my faculty advisor, and economics professor at Gonzaga. He convinced me to change my major to Accounting from Management my sophomore year.
The owners sunk their life savings into them, from 500k for a quiznoes to $2mil for a McD’s, for the privilege of selling the branded food with the national marketing.
Those owners won't give up overnight. It'll take a little while as they try to cut other costs, reduce employee #’s, raise prices [to the extent permitted], demand food price / subscription changes from the franchiser, etc.. They'll do all of it and stretch out the demise for as long as they can. The alternative is to walk away from your investment - few can or will do willingly.
But reality will catch up. Few remaining stores and $20 big macs will be the norm. Not a fast food eater, but many are. And they do employ many otherwise useless workers.
So, yay? Thanks leftists?
What is likely going to happen is that the franchises are going to be snapped up at bargain prices by owners with large extended families. The majority, if not all of the employees, will be related family members so that they can keep the labor revenues withing their family money circle.
Correct. Slow food pays less.
I don't know, because I rarely go to fast food places. But yes, I have noticed workers seem older (or simply old). I rarely see teenagers working at anything.
Like you, as a young teen I sold newspapers either at busy street corners, or substituting for friends in delivering papers. Also mowing lawns or washing cars for neighbors. As well as sweeping floors for shops. After that, my first check-earning job was at 16 working part-time after school at a sign-making shop, learning machine skills like operating bandsaws, routers, torches etc. Those skills have served me well over the years.
Teenagers now seem lazy and uninterested in learning a blue-collar career. They want a fast buck but won't stick to working more than a few days. All this has gotten worse over the last 30 years. Mostly due to liberal Democrat policies that encourage gimme-dat thinking.
All they want to do is become ‘RAP STARS’ or play basketball, football, or whatever sport. American Idol has helped ruin this country’s youth.
Or sell drugs.................
“I’ve noticed that you NEVER SEE TEENAGERS IN FAST FOOD JOBS ANY MORE.”
I’m in a McDonald’s right now and could take photos of four teenagers in McD uniforms to show you but they’d probably arrest me...
And it is typical for all quick service restaurants around here...
except he’s been there TEN years... i suppose it could happen the the next ten or twenty
I hate to be harsh, but any one of these workers who lost their gig AND voted for democrats, YOU GOT WHAT YOU ASKED FOR!! Your bleeding heart lawmakers decided that your job was worth “the greater good” You should feel great that your livelihood saw sacrificed to help the downtrodden.
Now they will almost certainly find any hot mike that can and whine that the business owners’ personal GREED was the reason, because as we all know small business owners are all bathing in genuine alabaster bathing vessels while stroking their armpits with string of jewels (with apologies to Dom DeLuise) and can easily afford to ratchet up their employees wages by 25%
This will be followed next year by more tax increases to fund “emergency safety net programs to assist those made jobless by the benefits for the greater good.
Practically all the FF restaurants here employ middle aged and older workers. And there’s signs all over town, “NOW HIRING, ALL SHIFTS”.
When I was a teen, it was difficult to find a job because they were all snapped up by other teens. I finally snagged one when I got a heads up from another teen that was leaving his job for a better one.
Nowadays they are all old folks like me!....................
In the late 1990’s, a friend of mine delivered pizzas for Papa John’s in a town that had a medical and law school. She worked M-F, 11-2 and only delivered pizzas, mostly to the schools and functions. Her husband was the assistant manager there and they were saving for their first home. They had a separate bank account that they used for her salary/tips only. At the end of one year, she had banked $20,000 and they used that for their down payment.
raise prices [to the extent permitted]
That’s the buried reality. California, faced with the $20 big macs, will then enact fast food maximum pricing....for, you know, the greater good.
My favorite story, I think I read it here, was the employee who was giddy at being given a huge raise. The next day there was a letter informing her that her hours were cut to basically earning what she was before the raise - less hours+more pay = the same paycheck she had before the raise.
Unless you own the place it is NOT a CAREER!
There are many more legal restrictions that closed off jobs to teenagers since the 50/60/70s.
Do gooders protected the kids right ought of opportunity.
Who are you to judge and criticize his job history? At least he had a job and wasn't complaining about it until Newsom put an end to it.
There's nothing worse than an elitist snob who ridicules and looks down on anyone working in a job they wouldn't touch.
Per the article, the $20/hr is mandated for any company that has more than 60 outlets in the state. That qualification bracket is almost exclusively populated by fast food franchise outlets.
Mon-food related?
Pizza Hut is NOT ‘fast food’.
smh
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