I realize that. I was curious whether this happened recently or a long time ago. And coming out fine is different from being stressed. I survived a bunch of layoffs also, though my company mostly did it when a project got cancelled, so the work that needed to be done decreased.
I’ll try to find some unbiased news and statistics at the time. Negative conditions in my OP indicate me being right. We can debate the scope of negative outcomes at the time. If things remain generally the same I’ll concede to being overly pessimistic when I started this thread.
This thread is intended to be about how the new minimum wage will affect the fast food industry. Why it’s not being applied universally is a valid discussion, just not in a thread about fast food.
20 years and change now since I was last laid off as part of a payroll reduction plan. It was seniority based so there were three of us let go with 90 days notice. There was one junior to me rockstar with specialized knowledge that was kept on. No severance package other than paying out unused PTO. Plenty of notice to line up a new position so it was as stress free as it could be all things considered.
While I don’t expect many places just up an telling employees not to come in next week, I do expect there to be a surge of unemployed people looking for “unskilled” positions. Fortunately for them, remote positions are more common, but it’s a crap shoot whether they can get a CSR position that doesn’t suck. My wife loves hers, but there are plenty of horror stories out there too.
Relevant Freefall strip:
http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff4000/fc03940.png
http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff4000/fc03940.htm
Hm. No preview and the strip itself won’t load on my work computer.
Without reading the thread…
Minimum Wage. ‘We acknowledge that you perform a valuable task that needs to be done. But we don’t want to pay you.’
It wasn’t clear (at least to me) from the OP exactly what the thread was supposed to be about. But even if it’s supposed to be about “how the new minimum wage will affect the fast food industry,” it seems to me that the question “Why is it the fast food industry that’s specifically being targeted?” could indeed be quite relevant.
Regarding the fast food industry in general, isn’t a lot of it on the franchise model, where the failure of individual restaurants in California will have little to no effect on the multinational chain as a whole?
According to Must-Know Fast Food Employee Statistics [Current Data] • Gitnux, about 20%. That’s not the majority by a large measure, but it’s not insignificant.
Yup,
‘If they ain’t gettin’ paid enough they can get food stamps and welfare!’
Also,
‘Why are we giving these bums food stamps and welfare? Why can’t they just get jobs?’
To be fair, nobody wants to pay more than they have to, whether it’s consumers paying for consumer goods, employers paying employees, etc.
And to some extent, the free market takes care of that. If you won’t pay a decent wage, you won’t have people who are willing and able to work for you.
There are reasons why that doesn’t always work in practice, but it’s not clear to me whether a higher minimum wage is always the best way, or even an effective way, of addressing those reasons.
And that is the thing here - employers and consumers will gripe about higher costs, but in the end they’ll still make a profit/buy hamburgers. The net gain is by the workers, who can now better afford to pay for rent and food for themselves and their families in a very expensive place to live.
For the record [emphasis mine]:
It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By “business” I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry; by workers I mean all workers, the white collar class as well as the men in overalls; and by living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level-I mean the wages of decent living.
Anyone who thinks fast food is “unskilled” work has never worked fast food.
That’s a fair cop. I didn’t explicitly lay out the parameters. Sorry about that.
I’ve seen the short order cook at Waffle House and that’s well outside my skill set. It’s also not something he’s got a certificate hanging on the wall for.
It doesn’t take long for someone with no experience to become proficient at the service aspects of fast food, thus the attraction for new graduates or someone otherwise lacking in skills. ie unskilled
The learning curve to work a grill or a drive-thru might not be a steep one, but it’s not something just anyone can do. You need endurance, speed, concentration, good short-term memory, an ability to multitask, and the psychological strength to stand up to verbal abuse from customers and the constant pressure to reach arbitrary and often unattainable metrics. There’s a reason a typical fast food restaurant has over 100% turnover in a calendar year - people take the job thinking it’s gonna be easy and it turns out to be anything but, and they either wash out quickly or get burned out after a few months.
My cite is that I worked ten years in fast food at all levels from fry cook to restaurant manager.
But what “they have to” means might be in dispute. A company who pays more than competitors (like Costco, say) might have higher salaries, but less turnover, more efficient employees, more motivated employees, and be more profitable.
I’m sure pay has something to do with this also. But I’ve noticed, even in large companies, that the cost of turnover, being hard to measure, just does not get considered when setting salary scales.
I was thinking more of the stress for survivors, which you mentioned also. When AT&T split into 3, we got such a generous package that about 30% of my center left at once (including me.) It was quite a mess for those who remained. That’s the stress that gets ignored.
What may be an entry level job for some is the only available job for others. Not everyone has the education or skills to compete for well paying jobs, so they should be able to earn a living wage just like the rest of us.
It’s that darned 13th Amendment getting in the way of free enterprise.
Agreed.
Whenever minimum wages are discussed, it always seems clear to me that what we (or at least I) really want is, not that every job pay a living wage, but that every person (who needs one) has access to a job that pays a living wage. It’s not necessary that every job pay a living wage, as long as there are enough obtainable jobs that do, so that anyone who needs one can get one. But minimum wage laws may be one good tool to use to move toward that.
I’ve worked fast food and I don’t have any problem calling it unskilled labor. Unskilled labor is labor that requires very little training or experience in order to do the job to a satisfactory level. This describes most fast food jobs. Yes, I was better at slinging food, bussing tables, and working the register after two months of work, but management could replace me at any time and the new guy would do a satisfactory job after a few hours.
Unfortunately there are many people who view unskilled laborers with disdain. One of the things I can thank my mother for is inculcating in me a respect for workers. As a child or a teen, if I ever tried to poke fun at someone who had a crummy job, like fast food or twirling a stupid sign advertising a sale, my mother would always say something like, “At least he’s got a job, he’s working,” or “He’s working, he’s probably got a family to feed.”
I wish my mother still had this attitude as she’s one of thoe people who are disdainful of the idea of fast food workers making half-way decent wages. You know, the type who say things like, “And they want $15 an hour?” Yeah. Maybe they’d do a better job if they made more money.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and say fast food restaurants have more than 100% turnover because of low pay combined with crummy managers, jerk customers, poor working conditions, and uncertain hours. It’s not because the job is hard it’s because the job sucks.