Fast food workers to get a $20 minimum wage in CA
Fast food workers to get a $20 minimum wage in CA
When it takes effect on April 1, fast food workers in the state will have among the highest minimum wages in the country.
California fast food workers will be paid at least $20 per hour next year under a new law signed Thursday by Gov. Gavin Newsom.
When it takes effect on April 1, fast food workers in the state will have among the highest minimum wages in the country, according to data compiled by the University of California-Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education. The state's minimum wage for all other workers is at $15.50 per hour and is already among the highest in the nation.
Newsom's signature on Thursday reflects the power and influence of labor unions in the nation's most populous state, which have worked to organize fast food workers in an attempt to improve their wages and working conditions.
Here's a (not so) funny anecdote: I went to Italy years ago and got McDonald's equivalent of a double quarter pounder with cheese for shits and giggles. Dollar for euro, the price was about the same, if not a little cheaper, in Italy. Now couple that with the fact that Italians have access to healthcare, are paid a living wage, and have ample vacation pay.
These companies could pay their workers properly and provide benefits if they wanted to, they have the money. They don't because fuck you
But did you ever stop to think about how Italy's system impacts the most important among us: the wealthy shareholders? A truly humane system would prioritize them at all costs.
/s (should be obvious, but I'll put it there to be safe.)
But muh freedumb
Yeah when you think about how many meals they sell in an hour, they probably only need to charge less than 20 cents more for a meal to cover the cost of employees having a livable wage.
If were charging more for your burger in Italy, the difference in price was small enough to be unnoticeable. Because when you do the math, employees wages at a fast food joint isn't a significant percentage of the price.
They still monkey around the hours in these places to avoid paying any employee too much. I’ve worked in similar industries and you have to fight for shifts, or deal with taking shifts last minute on your days off.
This is an awesome victory for fast food workers and unions. People constantly shit on the folks working in customer service and kitchen jobs, but they are often gruelling and unpleasant. The people there certainly deserve it more than the CEOs and shareholders exploiting them (I mean, I'm against the entire structure, but if we're working within that structure, then ye .).
Hopefully this will cause a push to higher wages across the board. California is expensive to live in, and $20 / hr is reasonable, but difficult, to live on.
For people who are afraid that raising wages will mean less people employed: for the most part, wage demand is pretty inelastic. Studies have shown that wages changes really don't mess with numbers employed that much. Most places only want to employ the least number of people they can already. They can't go lower, generally.
Of course it doesn't. The amount of money these people make is insignificant compared to the billions siphoned off by corporations to payout themselves and their shareholders. Wage suppression is about control.
PA over here still having to eat human feces for lunch since minimum wage is still $7.50
that doesn't even buy top shelf fresh organic shit
only preprocessed canned shit shipped from who knows where.
Vote.
Beat me to it
cool, now give everyone a living wage, maybe a universal income, & you'll have solved poverty
(X) doubt. You’ll just inflate shit. Need government regs on corps if you wanna solve poverty.
You’ll just inflate shit.
We'll let's see, inflation is running rampant irregardless of wage increases, so I think I'll go with the wage increases.
Need government regs on corps if you wanna solve poverty.
Regulations like "what is the minimum salary you can pay your employees"?
Money is literally worth half of what it was when I graduated high school in the 90s. My senior year I worked as a grocery clerk and made $9.50/hr while in a small city in Oregon (not expensive California). Math works out for me.
Well, there's this, and this to say you're right. Had the minimum wage tracked in line with production, it would be ~$26 today. If it had tracked in line with inflation, it would probably be closer to $21.45.
That it's been flatlined for so long means people working for minimum wage have been getting steady pay cuts for 50 years.
It also happens that this is one of the reasons social security is straining financially- they were able to predict the demographic bulge of the baby boomers well enough, but they weren't able to predict that wages would be constrained in the way they have been- and wages are the basis for Social Security's funding.
I’ll just leave this here
Now what about the rest of everyone? There need to be regulations for everyone, including gig workers, to make more money.
Gig workers gimped themselves voting to remain as contractors in prop 22. And now there's that stupid 80%(?) majority rule to make amendments.
Go after those who caused the increased cost of living not employees who are simply trying to survive because of it.
rents have probably doubled in the last decade, absurd to think that wages wouldn't need to go up. Groceries in the last year as well. COVID was clearly a cover to gouge.
I wonder if McD’s “automated” franchises are the preemptive move by the company expecting more of this to happen. The writing was on the wall and they moved to compensate. They make a big deal of it like it’s some cool thing, but IRL they’re just reducing human overhead.
Businesses are always seeking to replace people with not-people in every way they possibly can so I don't think you can really draw a cause and effect here.
Brazil have a shit minimum wage and McDonald's and other fast food restaurants are full with automated cash registries and self service.
They will absolutely replace all the workers with robots the second they can, even at 5.00/hr wages for workers.
Might as well bleed them until then.
That's always the idle threat, but the reality is that they likely don't want to invest in the machines anyway.
I think a more likely phenomenon is that some (likely smaller) chains will be like "fuck it" and close up shop in CA.
Or the most likely scenario is that they just pad the prices a little more in CA and keep the chains open.
Long term I think people will just adjust to it and it'll be normal. Chains that are looking to maintain their "value" positioning will just absorb it out of their profit margins like they do in other localities.
Looking at it from a business perspective, you want to weigh the costs so you automate as much as is economical to reduce to as few unskilled people as possible. A minimum wage person is now about $45k a year in salary and support costs, so if a machine costs $40k a year and removes a worker, you are money ahead.
absorb it out of their profit margins
You're joking right? this is a satirical post. i mean, it has to be right?
The "automated" stores are less about reduction in labor cost and more about improving the overall operation and growing sales (thus increasing jobs.) It does help labor cost because the labor that is staffed is more efficient, but that's more of a tertiary outcome. They still employ roughly the same number of staff, and potentially will employ even more as efficiency of the process grows.
Simplest way I can explain this is thinking about the order kiosks. One of the worst parts of fast food is that most people aren't actually trained at birth how to order right, and secondarily it introduces another couple of humans who are fallible and won't get it correct. EG: customer comes into McDonald's and says "I want the whopper basket." Crew person, internal: "wtf are they talking about, I guess I'll give them a big mac." Then the customer comes back pissed off because they actually wanted a quarter pounder with fries, it has to be remade distracting the kitchen, manager, that crew person, etc further.
Also, the entire time the customer is ordering, it's engaging a whole crew person. To scale up and take more orders, you have to add an additional crew person for each order you want to take concurrently, and because customer flow is not 100% predictable, this isn't even really possible. Most McDonalds have like 4 kiosks, and you'll only find that they're all used at the same time for maybe a grand total 3-4 hours a day. To replicate that with a human, you would have to be like "I need you to work from 7:23-7:59, and you to work 11:46-12:07, and you to work, 12:03-12:07..." which literally no one is going to do, and isn't actually that predictable regardless. No automation means some customers are going to come in, see a line, and peace out. This means lower sales, and lower overall employees.
With automation, the demand can be filled much more often and a whole massive point of complexity is removed. In the example above, the customer comes in wanting a whopper basket, looks at the menu and goes "oh they call it a quarter pounder here" and clicks the buttons. Because they can now capture more demand, kitchens are busier and there are more orders to deliver, so they move that person who was going to be extremely inefficient by comparison serving customers 1:1, and move them to a kitchen position or to an expo position.)
The McD's or BK's I have visited with ordering computers and only one till, looks to have around the same number of staff, mostly they just stopped taking orders while packing them.
Out of all the pictures likely taken during the announcement they had to use the one with the Wendy’s gal picking her nose?
what was the mininum before?
State wide, $15.50. This will remain in affect until April 1st, 2024.
Automation, here we come!
It's a good thing we weren't automating anything before this! Nothing at all. Companies DEFINITELY weren't researching and implementing automation until right now when the minimum wage increased. And they DEFINITELY will start hiring more people if the wages go down again.
Yep, many fast food places are already implementing AI taking orders in the drive thru, not to mention all the kiosks in the lobby. Only a matter of time until making the food is automated and all there will be is a skeleton crew of workers to make sure everything is running smooth.
I was visiting a city for a wedding and went to a restaurant I'd never heard of to get food. Turned out to be drivethru only with an AI voice assistant order taker and holy crap was it a fight to get the AI to give me a damn second to read the menu for a place I'd never been. The food was very good though
So now that ca is at 20$. Why is tipping still a thing?
This is only for fast food workers, who generally don't get tips.
Who tips fast food workers?
I hope this makes workers...more motivated. With my food.
I hate to burst everyone's bubble but all this is going to do is speed up fully automated restaurants.
Oh right because this was the only thing keeping businesses from switching to zero wage robots. No companies were already planning on doing this, but now that employees get a livable wage, all bets are off.
I might just be really cynical but that may be why they even agreed to this in the first place.
So that would put it at 31 Aud dollars or so.
There a trades that take 4 year apprenticeships in Australia that are paid less than this or very close too.
Fast food joints shouldn't be a place to build a career, they're a place for students etc to work.
If you want high living wages go to school or get a trade, minimum effort jobs are not for grown adults.
Sounds like the trades are being underpaid.
Fast food joints shouldn’t be a place to build a career, they’re a place for students etc to work.
Soooo who exactly is going to serve lunch when school is in session?
Uni isnt every day 10 hours a day
What an incredibly bad and ignorant take. If you can make more money flipping burgers, trades will have no choice but to raise their wages to compete. Or, quit your job and go flip burgers if that's a better deal.
Fast food places are so fundamental as a stepping stone to building a career and to say only children who are exploited should be working there only says you are ok exploiting children.
If someone is working to serve you your food, they deserve a living wage.
Then never in your life go to a fast food joint at 10 am on a Tuesday.
In terms of pure dollar amount, it should by adjusted by PPP. It should be a wage to live off of. I'm in engineering, a few years into my career, I am well paid but I should be paid more, relative to CoL. I should be doing very well even if I have a family not doing well because I don't have one.
Ouch on those age numbers.
If they're meant for students than you wouldn't be mad if they were closed during the day would you? Since that's when students are in school and all.
No not at all
Fast food joints shouldn’t be a place to build a career, they’re a place for students etc to work.
This is why you can't buy fast food during school hours. Seriously, stop with this bootlicking, boomer classist bullshit myth. All work deserves dignity and a living wage. Aside from that, I will near guarantee that you apply this across the industry, you've just closed about 85% of restaurants and hospitality (retail, etc) as most of the people working there are not students. Also, it's NOT easy work which is another bullshit line. It's like that old trope about the plumber that comes out and twists one knob and the guy that called them says "you only twisted one knob! Why should I pay you $300?" and the plumber says "because I knew which knob to twist." Fast food and this type of work is a lot like that, except we don't pay them well enough for most to stay long enough to know which knob.
Tbh, if fast food employees were paid their worth, there is a decent chance that customer cost would go down because they'd usually be closer to max efficiency and the restaurant would spend less money on things like lawsuits and fines and such because the "manager" had more than 10 minutes of experience and training before promotion.
I look forward to everyone removed about how much more food costs.
It's a good thing food costs haven't increased before this was announced! Where's the dollar menu again?
Funny thing - there are multiple things that affect for prices.
You obviously have no clue what you are talking about.
Food already costs too much and it does partially because the government continues to pay farmers not to grow to get votes.
minimum of 20 locations nationwide
And then, when this predictably puts all the small time, local food joints out of business, the people that vote for these clowns will be complaining that big corporations control everything.
Can you guys even see 10 inches in front of your own nose?
Uh... no? It's right there at the bottom:
The raise takes effect on April 1 and applies to workers at restaurants that have at least 60 locations nationwide
Small time, local food joints would not be required to raise wages above the current minimum. They'd actually be able to compete more.
What the heck are you smoking?
Indeed - not saying I agree, but this is the main talking point from the fast food companies. It's not fair they have to pay more when (sometimes) slightly smaller businesses do not.
OK I fat fingered 20 instead of 60. That's even better for my argument. To get the good pay you have to work for a huge multinational. Who else has 60 locations in the US alone?
What are you smoking? You know there's a labor market right? And companies compete for workers? Imagine you run a taco shack and every one of your employees is waiting for the minute there's an opening across the street at taco bell, or the opening of the new burger king down the street. What do you do? High turnover and employee resentment or raise wages? If raising wages means going out of business you're stuck.
And then small minded people like you will be in a thread in 2 years quoting statistics showing how big corporations are putting smaller ones out of business and taking over all the industries, even going so far as to blame corrupt politicians and corporate capture, conveniently forgetting that you cheered on the very corporate capture legislation that led to it.
The raise takes effect on April 1 and applies to workers at restaurants that have at least 60 locations nationwide — with an exception for restaurants that make and sell their own bread, like Panera Bread.
Where did you get 20? And does your point about minimum locations make sense with also bringing up local joints who are explicitly exempt given said minimum?
Edit: I see, are you saying that small businesses won't be able to compete with this new wage minimum? Valid point there.
My bad, 60. That's even better. To get the good pay you have to work for a big corporation.
Yeah, the "exempt" ones will be in a situation where they'll have to raise pay above what they can afford, thus going out of business, or have high turnover and high employee resentment. The end result of all of this is of course more big multinational control over the fast food industry.
I literally don't care if something is owned by a small or big business. The obsession of small businesses is absolutely stupid. I only care if prices are low and wages are high. If that means only "big businesses" can provide that because of economies of scale, than good for them, companies should be rewarded for doing that.
If "small businesses" want to compete they should provide equity, there's literally nothing stopping that from happening.
There's a local barber shop that I go to and in my province the min wage was increased 50% while the prices have climbed 80% since I started going to them. But guess what, there still the best price/service wise so I go to them. The chains cost more than double plus taxes. And a lot of the local neighboirhood goes to them.
The only business that complain about labour laws especially laws like this that put heavier burden on larger companies are poorly run companies.
I see good business treating people good so when things like this comes up it shows me that business people will always push against progress.