Fast Food Workers Push For Automation

Well that is not what they think they doing. They think they are striking for higher wages.

The next round of strikes by fast-food workers demanding higher wages is scheduled for Thursday, and this time labor organizers plan to increase the pressure by staging widespread civil disobedience and having thousands of home-care workers join the protests.

The organizers say fast-food workers — who are seeking a $15 hourly wage — will go on strike at restaurants in more than 100 cities and engage in sit-ins in more than a dozen cities.

But by having home-care workers join, workers and union leaders hope to expand their campaign into a broader movement.

Home care workers? Doesn’t that mostly come out of government budgets? Well extorting taxpayers is never ending.

And what is this civil disobedience stuff? Do they plan on breaking windows or just tying up traffic?


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8 responses to “Fast Food Workers Push For Automation”

  1. Man Mountain Molehill Avatar
    Man Mountain Molehill

    I met a grad student who was doing robotics research funded by Burger King. The King’s thinking was that if labor costs ever got excessive they could automate production. Labor cost was better spent on customer service. This was sometime in the 1980s. I’m sure the technology has improved a bit since then.

    Science fiction authors have been blathering on about what happens when robots do all the work and humans are obsolete for decades. I saw a statistic the other day that 104 million Americans receive some sort of government benefit. That’s 1/3 of the population on the dole. We’re there already.

    I have seen the future, and it kinda sucks…

  2. Sigivald Avatar
    Sigivald

    I keep seeing, on Facebook, a thing about how “Magic Superman FDR wanted the minimum wage to be a living wage!!!!” – where they don’t mention that that 1938 wage, in modern money, is $4, because “living wage” meant a lot less then.

    $15 an hour is ludicrous, for anyone with any idea about economics.

    (I swear, they really do think that jobs exist to pay people, not to get people to do labor.

    That basic mistake seems to be the root of all the problems around understanding wages and employment.)

  3. bob sykes Avatar
    bob sykes

    These people have these jobs because they are low IQ, uneducable and untrainable. They are also very unreliable. Of course they don’t understand economics. Their only hope of survival is handouts. They are excess baggage and eminently replaceable.

  4. OregonGuy Avatar

    A friend of mine owns three McDonald’s franchises. Twenty years ago, the average age of an McDonald’s employee was in the teens. Now, it’s in the forties.

    And most make more than minimum wage (Oregon 9.10 an hour).
    .

  5. captain arizona Avatar
    captain arizona

    In thomas malthus iron law of wages. Wages in capitalism tend to fall to just above starvation level as if they fall below to many workers starve to death and you have labor shortage! This country was better off in the 1950’s when tax rate was 90% giving rich people less money to do evil with unlike now, see koch brothers.

  6. Gringo Avatar
    Gringo

    bob sykes
    These people have these jobs because they are low IQ, uneducable and untrainable. They are also very unreliable.

    I suspect you underestimate the ability of people in entry level jobs to increase their skills and move up.

    A son of a cousin, who didn’t want to go to college, started working at McDonalds after high school, and moved up to a manager’s position at McDonalds. He later got a college degree and is working as a professional.

    McDonalds also has an online training program for managers who need more training in English.While increasing their managerial skills, the program also increases their proficiency in “Hamburger English.”

    The scorn should not be directed at fast food workers, but at the “progressive” activist do-gooders who don’t realize they are agitating people out of jobs, courtesy of automation.

  7. Joseph Hertzlinger Avatar

    I thought it was Ferdinand Lassalle’s iron law of wages.

  8. Man Mountain Molehill Avatar
    Man Mountain Molehill

    Somehow I don’t think a bunch of fast food workers suddenly decided to demonstrate for higher wages. This is being organized and directed from somewhere. I bet, if anyone digs down, we’ll find the organizers just happen to share office space with something like Acorn, SWP, WWP, RCP or some such.