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How unions won a 30% raise for every fast food worker in California

pluralistic.net

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Re: How unions won a 30% raise for every fast food worker in California

#71

Post by Buttons840 »

garciasn wrote: post #2

Most of the McDs around me are already paying $17-20 (in Minnesota, including rural areas) and the menu prices reflect it. We recently have begun to pay >$50 for a family of four. For context: the two cheeseburger meal is now just under $11. Subway is the same thing, with most sandwiches topping $10/ea and totals coming out around $50 for four of us. What is interesting, however, is that we're not witnessing this wit…

On a macro level, there's an employee shortage (which is good, because the alternative is a job shortage), and over time workers will shift away from the least important jobs. Arguably, fast food workers are some of the least important jobs, judging from pay. In the long run fast food might stop existing, or rather, the fast food worker might stop existing, replaced by machines or other food sources.

Re: How unions won a 30% raise for every fast food worker in California

#72

Post by MR4D »

adgjlsfhk1 wrote: post #48
MR4D wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are approximately 40K McDonald’s in the world. That’s about USD 50,000 in profit per location. If you think that’s egregious, then we aren’t going to agree on much.

Note that given the franchise model, that's 50k profit on basically no expenses (i.e. you aren't looking at the profit of the stores, that's the amount of money being taken out of each store by McDonalds in addition to the profit that the owners are making). McDonalds isn't paying for the employees or the food or the buildings. That's just the tax they are charging the franchises for the privilege of calling themselv…

> McDonalds isn't paying for the employees or the food or the buildings.

I would suggest doing at least a little research on this topic before commenting.

For instance, "McDonald's owns about 70% of the buildings and 45% of the land at its locations worldwide. Once all the math is done, calculations show that McDonald’s owns around 47,037 acres of land."

Source: https://www.yahoo.com/video/owns-more-land-bill-gates-132113...

Re: How unions won a 30% raise for every fast food worker in California

#73

Post by WWLink »

Yeul wrote: post #60
WWLink wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea but milking the customers and blaming the employees is a great way to make profit!

It was an American called Henry Ford who realised that if you pay your workers enough they will also buy your products. I consider wages to be a feedback loop system in the consumer economy that America is.

Word. I'm just pointing out that they like to blame the price hikes on increased wages when there's no way the wages are causing costs to go up that much.

Re: How unions won a 30% raise for every fast food worker in California

#74

Post by thegrim22 »

lancesells wrote: post #28
garciasn wrote: post #2

Most of the McDs around me are already paying $17-20 (in Minnesota, including rural areas) and the menu prices reflect it. We recently have begun to pay >$50 for a family of four. For context: the two cheeseburger meal is now just under $11. Subway is the same thing, with most sandwiches topping $10/ea and totals coming out around $50 for four of us. What is interesting, however, is that we're not witnessing this wit…

> Most of the McDs around me are already paying $17-20 (in Minnesota, including rural areas) and the menu prices reflect it McDonalds had $1.9B in profit in 2022. $1.6B in 2021. Starbucks had $3.3B in profit in 2022. $3.6B in 2021. Subway announced they had beaten sales plans by $1.4B in 2021. It's not the wages that are the issue making the prices go up. These companies aren't hurting for profit.

At least correct for inflation .. they could be making the same exact profit margins every year but as long as there's inflation, the number will be bigger every single year. Just saying "but number bigger!" doesn't mean squat.

Re: How unions won a 30% raise for every fast food worker in California

#76

Post by ffgjgf1 »

OfSanguineFire wrote: post #8
garciasn wrote: post #2

Most of the McDs around me are already paying $17-20 (in Minnesota, including rural areas) and the menu prices reflect it. We recently have begun to pay >$50 for a family of four. For context: the two cheeseburger meal is now just under $11. Subway is the same thing, with most sandwiches topping $10/ea and totals coming out around $50 for four of us. What is interesting, however, is that we're not witnessing this wit…

Considering that the USA has higher salaries overall than Norway or Switzerland and comparable cost of living, it seems like the USA is just catching up and being on the level one would expect it. In those countries, a fast-food meal is around US$20. Traditional restaurants and/or fast casual spots in the USA involve “mandatory” tipping, so even if menu prices are lower, I would assume that the total meal price is hi…

Switzerland still seems to have significantly higher average salaries than US?

$90k vs $56k

Of course if you start comparing individual states it would be quite different.

I think a lot of the tables which compare household income etc. are PPP adjusted and CoL is quite a bit higher in Switzerland

Re: How unions won a 30% raise for every fast food worker in California

#77

Post by ETH_start »

bjoli wrote: post #65
ETH_start wrote: post #40

This is written from the perspective of rent-seeking unions who benefit from laws that suppress people's right to freely contract in labor negotiations, and must vilify the principles of a free society through conspiracy theories about "neoliberalism" and "corporate greed" to maintain public support for the legal arrangement. The last 50 years of wage growth stagnation comes solely down to a declining rate of product…

Labour productivity has been developing faster than wages for the last 50 years. This is the same in most western countries, regardless of union influence. But: erosion of collective bargaining is positively correlated with higher income inequality an greater wealth inequality, also when disregarding the lowest quartile. How do you mean that there has been a decline in market liberalism? I am pretty sure that the US…

>>Labour productivity has been developing faster than wages for the last 50 years.

This false claim was popularized by the EPI, which is funded by unions.

The reality is that worker compensation has almost perfectly tracked labor productivity:

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/sources-of-real-wage-stag...

Comparing productivity with one measure of inflation to compensation using another measure of inflation is the way the EPI produced its false claims, as the above article explains.

>>How do you mean that there has been a decline in market liberalism?

Increase in regulatory compliance costs. Increase in the percentage of occupations requiring a license. Increase in the size of the Code of Federal Regulations. Increase in the percentage of GDP constituted by government spending. Increase in the number of regulatory agencies. Increase in regulatory restrictions on housing development, particularly in the highest productivity economic zones.

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