Fast food workers strikes

[opebo]

http://news.yahoo.com/fast-food-workers-detroit-walk-off-job-disrupt-233240858.html

[DC Al Fine]

Why are they trying to unionise in Detroit? They'll get replaced before anyone even blinks. If I were a unionist I'd try to find a prosperous town in a union friendly state to try something like this.

[pbrower2a]

Why are they trying to unionise in Detroit? They'll get replaced before anyone even blinks. If I were a unionist I'd try to find a prosperous town in a union friendly state to try something like this.

Michigan is the first strong union state in which the state legislature foisted a Right to Work law, and this is a test of where the union support is. People with union jobs are still paid well enough that they can dine elsewhere, as at sit-down restaurants. They are not going to cross picket lines to get cheap burgers. 

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Why are they trying to unionise in Detroit? They'll get replaced before anyone even blinks. If I were a unionist I'd try to find a prosperous town in a union friendly state to try something like this.

Why?

Because in most places, a fast food job is primarily a job one expects to hold for only a few years while getting the education needed to hold a better job that can afford to pay a living wage for a head of household.  Detroit doesn't have enough of those better jobs.

Perhaps we should try to get some young upstart company to move there.  One that would take advantage of the unique opportunities there.  For instance, some propose that Detroit could serve as a laboratory to try out new methods of urban farming.  I've heard things about a startup by the name of Soylent.  It's said they've got an unique take on producing protein rich foods in an urban environment.  Also, rather than being a soulless corporation, Soylent realizes that people are its greatest asset. Indeed, using people rather than machines contributes to its excellent environmental record.  It's people that make Soylent green. (link)

Of course, Detroit does have a security problem.  OmniCorp is said to be working on a project to help cities with a security problem engage in a delta sharp enough to change their course, but apparently we won't know the full details until next year. (link)

[Starbucks Union Thug HokeyPuck]

Glorious freedom fighters. 

[Bandit3 the Worker]

This strike needs to come to Cincinnati. I fully support this strike.

[memphis]

Why are they trying to unionise in Detroit? They'll get replaced before anyone even blinks. If I were a unionist I'd try to find a prosperous town in a union friendly state to try something like this.

Why?

Because in most places, a fast food job is primarily a job one expects to hold for only a few years while getting the education needed to hold a better job that can afford to pay a living wage for a head of household.  Detroit doesn't have enough of those better jobs.

Perhaps we should try to get some young upstart company to move there.  One that would take advantage of the unique opportunities there.  For instance, some propose that Detroit could serve as a laboratory to try out new methods of urban farming.  I've heard things about a startup by the name of Soylent.  It's said they've got an unique take on producing protein rich foods in an urban environment.  Also, rather than being a soulless corporation, Soylent realizes that people are its greatest asset. Indeed, using people rather than machines contributes to its excellent environmental record.  It's people that make Soylent green. (link)

Of course, Detroit does have a security problem.  OmniCorp is said to be working on a project to help cities with a security problem engage in a delta sharp enough to change their course, but apparently we won't know the full details until next year. (link)

At the risk of stereotyping, I very much doubt many fast food workers are in school and working toward a bright future. Somebody is, I'm sure, but not everybody can be an architect or engineer. Many millions of people work these crap jobs with no prospect of upward mobility. Whether we should support unionization is a different issue, but let's not pretend that most of these folks are a few years of hard work away from a professional career because by and large, they're not.

[DC Al Fine]

@ True Federalist

I loved that movie

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

At the risk of stereotyping, I very much doubt many fast food workers are in school and working toward a bright future. Somebody is, I'm sure, but not everybody can be an architect or engineer. Many millions of people work these crap jobs with no prospect of upward mobility. Whether we should support unionization is a different issue, but let's not pretend that most of these folks are a few years of hard work away from a professional career because by and large, they're not.

Depends on the location.  Around here, most fast food jobs are held by teenagers/college age students.   Also, I wasn't taking about necessarily a bachelor's degree or higher when I was talking about education.

[Indy Texas]

Because in most places, a fast food job is primarily a job one expects to hold for only a few years while getting the education needed to hold a better job that can afford to pay a living wage for a head of household.

The problem is that for many people it's not. I was in my parents' part of town the other day and was shopping at Target; the woman who rang up my items has been doing that same job at that location for at least 8 years or so. Why don't you ask her why she hasn't gotten a better education? She probably couldn't afford to on what they pay her. Maybe she isn't that bright (not literally mentally handicapped but someone who simply isn't going to succeed in a college-level academic setting).

Target, like most businesses these days, hires vertically from without rather than horizontally from within. The old "I worked my way up from the mailroom" stories don't happen anymore. When companies want to hire a manager, they don't promote a regular. They hire someone who went from college straight into that role and who simply rotates around different companies over the course of his career. That Target cashier is in what we call a dead-end job.

If your only response to people in that situation is that they need an "opportunity" to move into better-paying work, where does that leave the people who never will? Not everyone gets to be a manager or a supervisor. Not everyone gets to work in the corner office. In fact, most people never will. And it's not even a matter of ability, it's just the fact that there are only so many of those positions out there.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Because in most places, a fast food job is primarily a job one expects to hold for only a few years while getting the education needed to hold a better job that can afford to pay a living wage for a head of household.

The problem is that for many people it's not.

That still leaves the question of whether the minimum wage is the best way to help them.  I don't think so.  At $15/hour, Target is going to have considerable incentive to find new ways to automate jobs.  Might well make it cost effective to place RFID tags on all its merchandise so that all a customer need do for self-checkout is bag the products, swipe their card, and go without having to even bother with the hassle of scanning barcodes.

In the strike mentioned in the OP, at $15/hr, it makes it even more feasible to offshore the drive thru window as is already being done. (There are already restaurants where the person who takes the order at the drive thru isn't even at the restaurant.)

Government benefits as well as a better educational system to help keep people from getting stuck in low wage jobs in the first place are both better responses to the problem than the minimum wage.

[pbrower2a]

Because in most places, a fast food job is primarily a job one expects to hold for only a few years while getting the education needed to hold a better job that can afford to pay a living wage for a head of household.

The problem is that for many people it's not.

That still leaves the question of whether the minimum wage is the best way to help them.  I don't think so.  At $15/hour, Target is going to have considerable incentive to find new ways to automate jobs.  Might well make it cost effective to place RFID tags on all its merchandise so that all a customer need do for self-checkout is bag the products, swipe their card, and go without having to even bother with the hassle of scanning barcodes.

In the strike mentioned in the OP, at $15/hr, it makes it even more feasible to offshore the drive thru window as is already being done. (There are already restaurants where the person who takes the order at the drive thru isn't even at the restaurant.)

Government benefits as well as a better educational system to help keep people from getting stuck in low wage jobs in the first place are both better responses to the problem than the minimum wage.

Also worth noting -- college education has become fiendishly expensive. Retailers generally disapprove of employees doing anything that would compromise the flexibility of employees' schedules such as taking college-level classes. Industrial labor may have been numbing, but at least with a union contract one could expect some rigidity in a schedule that allowed one to attend college courses.

...I am well aware of some of the techniques in place. Bar-codes have become a substitute for price tags, and a company like Dollar General might have the price printed on boxed objects. 

[bballrox4717]

Glorious freedom fighters. 

Patriots as well.

[opebo]

Glorious freedom fighters. 

Patriots as well.

Well, they're only a hint of what we need - as we can see, these 'restaurants' are still standing.

[Indy Texas]

Because in most places, a fast food job is primarily a job one expects to hold for only a few years while getting the education needed to hold a better job that can afford to pay a living wage for a head of household.

The problem is that for many people it's not.

That still leaves the question of whether the minimum wage is the best way to help them.  I don't think so.  At $15/hour, Target is going to have considerable incentive to find new ways to automate jobs.  Might well make it cost effective to place RFID tags on all its merchandise so that all a customer need do for self-checkout is bag the products, swipe their card, and go without having to even bother with the hassle of scanning barcodes.

In the strike mentioned in the OP, at $15/hr, it makes it even more feasible to offshore the drive thru window as is already being done. (There are already restaurants where the person who takes the order at the drive thru isn't even at the restaurant.)

Government benefits as well as a better educational system to help keep people from getting stuck in low wage jobs in the first place are both better responses to the problem than the minimum wage.

Most politicians and most laymen prefer the idea of people getting their money from work than from having a government check mailed to them. The difference between liberals and conservatives in this regard is how much influence the government should have in determining how much money they're getting from work. If Wal-Mart were allowed to pay its workers $2 an hour, you are essentially asking taxpayers to make up the difference. Now, instead of placing the burden on the businesses who benefit from these low wages, you're placing the burden on the great mass of middle-income people who do not benefit from them. All of the gains from those $2 an hour wages will go to shareholders who will pay a much lower tax rate on their dividends and capital gains than everyone else who earns their money through wages. A Romney-Ryan style income tax regime would shift even more of the burden away from the beneficiaries of all this.