1y ago

McDonald's franchisee group says new $20 minimum wage California fast-food bill will cause 'devastating financial blow'

www.cnbc.com McDonald's franchisee group says new California fast-food bill will cause 'devastating financial blow'

The California fast-food bill will raise the minimum wage for many California workers at fast-food chains to $20 an hour starting April 1.

Antiwork @lemmy.world

McDonald's pushes back: "business model can't sustain $20/hr"

www.cnbc.com /2023/09/15/mcdonalds-advocacy-group-criticizes-new-california-fast-food-bill.html

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140 comments

Press X to doubt.
- Exactly, they shure as shit don't have a problem giving their "food" away now. The truth is most likely that telling their investors that they won't make so much money will be a devastating financial blow.
  
  In our local fast foods most places are already advertising at least $19 hour for new hires. Is also over $20 for a kids meal and one adult meal “deal”, which takes less than 5-6 minutes to sell me.
  They’re raking it in.

Sounds like McDonald's can't afford to do business. I guess the free market will have them close.
- The group said the costs “simply cannot be absorbed by the business model.”
  They can do business, just not be as profitable if they can't pay slave wages. The problem here is in the quote... they don't want to change the model where the franchisee's earn a little less and their crews can actually afford rent.
  
  Why the heck should the franchisee be footing the bill? Make corporate McDonald’s pay for it. Surely they’ve made enough money off ice cream machines by now to afford it…
- Oh honey, no. The free market only applies when it works in their favor.
- Yes except that they were lying and they will still do business. :-/
- There is nothing "free market" about a forced minimum wage.
  There are lots of arguments to be made for an increased minimum wage, at least try to be smart when making them.
  
  The irony of you asking for smarts to be considered in regards to a mega billion dollar corp, who can more than afford this change for the entire country, let alone just California, is astounding while you are commenting the stupidest crap about "free markets" in relation to this news. It is hilariously pedantic....

Yes.... And?
Slave labor would be much more profitable, but we have values beyond just your profits.
- we have values beyond just your profits.
  Heresy! Blasphemy! Heretical Blasphemy! Blasphemical Heresy!
- Don't give them any ideas.

Big company suffers devistating effects when told to pay their workers well.
Well boo-fucking-hoo
- In this case, the franchisees (small business owners) are saying the big business (McDonalds, which makes its money off of real estate and franchise fees) is going to be fine but they (the people that make money from owning a restaurant) are in trouble.
  For many of them, it's true; they didn't consider whether they could open this business if they had to pay a living wage. Unfortunately, that's not our problem, but it won't be a problem for McDonalds either.
  
  Good. I hope they go out of business and the owners have to cry themselves to sleep. I hope they have to sell everything they own before having to work a minimum wage job.
  
  Honestly sounds like something McDonald's should be fixing still.
  
  Won't someone please think of the wealthy upper middle class!

To quote FDR:
In my Inaugural I laid down the simple proposition that nobody is going to starve in this country. 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.
- We need an FDR. I'd take a modern Roosevelt. Any of them, assuming they keep up with the times (equality, similar).
  Any = FDR, Eleanor, Teddy

If you can't pay your workers a fair wage, you shouldn't run a business.
- If you need to be bailed out for the stupid mistakes you made with your business you don't deserve to have a business. Why stop at wages.

The guy who owns the franchise my nephew worked at in high school drove an actual Rolls Royce. He owned a few, but goddamn. The guy who owned the franchise I worked at 20 years earlier owned like 3 houses or something and flew planes as a hobby (idk if he owned one).
Excuse me for not giving a shit about a financial blow to people like them.
- I just think of the SNL skit/song "boomers got the vax"
  At one point Kenan Thompson is portraying a wealthy boomer and the song goes like;
  I got the big-ass house and the SUV. Got my second house two, and my third house three. And the place in Vermont, and one in Miami!
  Damn, I got five houses? That's a lot. Good for me.
  
  https://youtu.be/2hekDuCBxCc?si=qLOe-P0pjQTsmTgX

And? Of course it'll cost them money. They have been hoarding pay increases for years. 8f your business model doesn't support paying a decent wage, your business model sucks.
- Yeah, wasn't this the whole point of capitalism or something? If you can't compete in the free market then gtfo and all that
  
  That's what it says, but it's just marketing. Capitalists don't actually believe in fair competition. They believe in themselves having all the stuff, not anyone else, by any means necessary.
  
  Except when big Business expect government handouts then they're okay with socialism
- I'm sure most of their employees will still draw public assistance to supplement their basic needs. Fuck these companies.

Cry me a river! Y'all already charging $15+ for a combo meal!

McDonald's operates in many, many countries, several of which require minimum wage way higher than what they pay workers in the US. I'm sure they'll be fine.

Boo hoo. If you can’t run your business without exploiting the fuck out of people then you don’t deserve to be in business. Fuck off already your food is SHIT.

I guess they can't afford to do business 🤷
Go get a job, lazy ass "owners".

You mean, just like all restaurants and fast-food franchises were going to go bankrupt if they raised minimum wage to $15.00 up here?
It’s been several years, and I haven’t seen any boarded-up McDonald’s during that time.

and I say to them "eat shit and die"
- That's what McDonalds tells their patrons too

If, like me, you're concerned that franchisees may not be able to raise prices and offset this $250k in yearly expenses, worry no more because they totally can.
This whole complaint is nonsense. That's a trivial markup per food item.
- Besides, less fast food restaurants would be a good thing anyway.
  
  I'm still waiting for taco trucks on every corner. Fuck that would be awesome
  
  That's my first thought. Oh maybe higher wages reduces mega chain economies of scale and makes local small businesses more viable.
- They can, and they always do. Yet for some reason people argue that they won't, every time wage increases become a conversation.
  
  Well, their problem is they already planned to increase prices with zero added benefit to employees or customers. Asking them to actually contribute something in exchange for their gains? Psshhh
  
  Restricting your own wage increase in the hope that companies won't add to inflation is very much like trying to be extra nice to an abusing partner in the hope that they won't hit you.
  I know that you later wrote that you're in favor of a law restricting their ability to increase prices so please take this as an aside.
- Exactly, how many burgers would a staff of three people push out every hour? 100? If their wages went from $15 to $20 that's an increase of $15 an hour or an extra $0.15 increased burger cost.

Has McDonald's seen what it charges for its garbage food these days? $20 ain't shit.
- McDonald’s used to be relatively cheap.
  Now it costs as much as a lot of the sit down restaurants in my area. Getting out for under $16 is a task and it’s more likely gonna cost me $20+.
  Wendy’s is still affordable for the most part and has taken over those times I’d normally go to McDonald’s.
  
  The only decently affordable fast food places are wendys and taco bell. Atleast that ive noticed from the big ones. The local ones can still be cheap.
  
  You can go to the pub and get a better burger and a beer for almost the same as McDonald's.
  
  I live in a small town, McDonald's is the only "fast food" place here until last week when a Popeye's chicken opened. That place had been packed every day since they opened. You can get an equivalent meal for two at nearly the price of one meal at McDonald's.
  Plus the food at Popeye's is way better.

It's not like $20/ hr is even that much money - ~40k a year probably won't even qualify you to rent an apartment most places anyone wants to live.
- God it’s so wild. When I was a teenager $20/hour was good money. That’s just 20 years ago. Now it’s impossible to live on that wage in my area.
  
  Yeah, doing some quick math, if the rental wants 3x the rent in income to qualify and you make $40k, you're at best going to be able to qualify for something that runs ~$1100. That's a really crappy 1-bedroom in my medium-sized FL city if you're really lucky.

"We'll make less money. We're job creators. We can't create more jobs but hording the money if you don't let us have the money!"

Boo hoo, if you can't capitalism right then your business should go under right? Isn't that what they believe?

BS. They said the same thing about $15, then COVID forced it on them (and presumably also raised their own costs for supplies), and it's been fine. I think my McDs charges 1.25 for a soda now instead of a dollar.
- Pretty sure everywhere it's 1.25 now, aside from a couple states.
  
  Try Canada. A large costs like 3.40

Awww. I'm so sad for these billionaires.
- Would you pay $20 for a Big Mac? ...though they'll probably automate the cooking and cashier positions, so they don't have to pay an employee what I make as a robotics technician.
  
  Have we seen any of that happen in the places the company already operates that enforce a decent wage?
  
  Are you ignorant or what? There's proof worldwide that paying your workers decent wages doesn't cost more. Also, imagine what would happen if workers actually had money to spend... Guess where they'd spend.
  
  was the whole point of this comment to flex your job in robotics
  
  I think if they could have done that (automate the cooking and cashier) to save paying $3 wages they would have.
  
  How much of the overall cost do you think is labor? Because your dollar figure implies you've overestimated by plenty.
  Assuming USD.
  
  No, I wouldn't. That's why they won't price it at $20. They're gonna have to figure something else out or just have a complete negative loss in the state. You can try to price gouge people but they'll likely just go somewhere else. This is some bs thinking through and through
  
  So it turns out that you are underpaid just like these McDonald's employees. Unless by robotics technician you mean something like a roomba repairman. Maybe support your fellow laborers when they are fighting for fair wages. It shouldn't be a competition.
  
  Good.

No it won't, you'll just make slightly less profits, but you'll still be profitable. If it helps sweetie, you shouldn't have been making that much profit in the first place, you're just getting called out on your bullshit now.

if we have to pay a living wage fast food will die
Then die.
- Then die.
  If he dies, he dies.

Fuck you, pay them

A devastating financial blow, to our yearly bonuses.

Good, any shit company that can't make living wages work don't deserve to be in business.

They may only be able to give executives a 20% raise next year if this goes ahead.

Since they’ve been shrinking down the size of their meals and raising the prices along the way- I’ve no sympathy for them at all. Let them go under. We’d be better off.

McDonald's CEO salary is at $20 million, but yeah paying the employees, who actually bring value to the company, a living wage is the problem

Go fuck yourself, world's leading fast food restaurant and the inventor of the chain franchise. Billions served, hundreds of billions of dollars made, millions of tons of food thrown away, and still can't afford to pay people a living wage? Instead of eating McDonald's, let's just eat McDonald's. Eat the rich!

I call bullshit in Australian minimum wage, because they've been doing just fine paying more than that here, for quite a while.

They always say this, it never happens because the min wage when it was originally implemented would be 35 dollars now. It didn't happen then, it won't happen now, but the press just reports this stuff like McD's is serious.

Don't threaten me with a good time.

Oh darn. Anyway

It will be ever so devastating for their employees to actually be able to afford a meal at their own restaurant.
Whatever will they do with all of these new customers that are also their own employees.
/s

... to the franchisees 🙄 To everyone else though, we'll get a livable wage.
And let's be honest, this devastating financial blow they speak of probably just means 1 less yacht for them.

They can just run the kitchens themselves to save a few bucks

Poor-poor tiny McDonald's.

You lot are so unsympathetic this could mean some people will have to wait another year for their private islands where's your humanity!

This is a threat, not capitulation

Good.

They’re doing just fine in Australia where the minimum wage is higher than that

Fuck mcdonalds 👍

They already pay $20/hour in my area. I am not in Cali.
- They advertise like $11 / hour where I live for managers.
  
  Without doxxing yourself, can I ask where? I live in one of the lowest COL states and McDonalds managers are still advertised at least $18/hr or more. Even the part time employees usually start around $14 from the signs outside the store.

There go the petty bougies complaining again as if we give a shit.

Oh noooo other restaurants managed even without universally well known name to back them up. How could Mcdonald ever survive? The Mcdonalds in Europe have to be in shamble, surely.

They'll wipe their tears with the help of Benjamin Franklin

Every time they have made this complaint in the past, it has been a lie.

NRA (National Restaurant Association)
Lifting a BigMac into the air
FROM MY COLD, DEAD HANDS!
- Oh god, I'm dead. This is hilarious.
  (Btw I see you everywhere lol, hiii)

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