Fast Food Was Always A Work Starting Point For Young People, Now Those Jobs Will Be Going To Robots

Fast food industry rapidly moving to replace employees with robots and eliminate payroll, health benefits and human unreliability

Friday, March 25, 2016 by: J. D. Heyes
Tags: fast food industry, robot employees, minimum wage

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(NaturalNews) If you're reading this, it's very likely that, within your lifetime, you're going to see a revolution in robotics. In many ways, this technological revolution will be a very good thing for humanity, but in some ways, it will be a very bad thing.

As noted recently at Bugout.news, there is little question that the Age of Robotics will make life easier for humans, make companies more efficient and profitable, and advance certain technologies beyond anything we can comprehend today.

"But in the process," the site added, "these advances will mean massive job losses and, in fact, many jobs that exist today will at some point in the future become obsolete."

Indeed, we are already seeing this transition taking place, and not so ironically, humans themselves are largely responsible for it.

"Does it really help if Sally makes $3 more an hour if Suzie has no job?"

The CEO of Carl's Jr. and Hardee's has been inspired by the 100-percent automated restaurant Eatsa after having visited the place, and it has given him some new ideas about how to deal with the issue of government-mandated minimum wage increases.

"I want to try it," CEO Andy Puzder told Business Insider (BI) of his plans to add more automation to his restaurants. "We could have a restaurant that's focused on all-natural products and is much like an Eatsa, where you order on a kiosk, you pay with a credit or debit card, your order pops up, and you never see a person."

He says his interest in restaurants that are free of human employees – which he adds would only be possible if the company found the time to research and test the concept while Hardee's works on expanding in the northeast – is being driven by government mandates that he pay employees wages above and beyond what their qualifications would otherwise demand.

"With government driving up the cost of labor, it's driving down the number of jobs," Pudzer told BI. "You're going to see automation not just in airports and grocery stores, but in restaurants."

Indeed, Puzder – who will no doubt be vilified by some elected officials and others who push higher minimum wages as a political issue and who have never had to make a payroll of their own – is one of the most outspoken advocates against minimum wage increases. He has written a pair of op-eds in The Wall Street Journal describing what forced wage increases are leading to – less overall employment.

"This is the problem with Bernie Sanders, and Hillary Clinton, and progressives who push very hard to raise the minimum wage," he said. "Does it really help if Sally makes $3 more an hour if Suzie has no job?"

"This massive social change is coming"

Of course not. But pushing the issue might help one of those two be elected president, even if it makes it more difficult for American companies and small businesses to afford labor.

So Pudzer and others in his business are not sitting around waiting for the shoe to drop. They are already eager to invest in automation, the end result of which will be fewer overall employment opportunities for some of the poorest Americans with the least amount of marketable skills.

"If you're making labor more expensive, and automation less expensive — this is not rocket science," Puzder told BI.

That said, and though there are financial benefits, automating the restaurant business is not an easy process. For one thing, the technology has to work all the time, and at present, Pudzer says he doesn't think a machine is capable of taking over all of the nuanced kitchen work performed by Carl's Jr. and Hardee's employees. But for rote tasks like burger-grilling and order-taking, technology is actually more accurate than human employees.

"They're always polite, they always upsell, they never take a vacation, they never show up late, there's never a slip-and-fall, or an age, sex, or race discrimination case," he said when discussing the benefits of swapping machines for workers.

"This massive social change is coming, there is no stopping it and governments are too inept, slow-moving and in some cases outdated to do anything to mitigate it," Bugout.news noted.

Sources:

Bugout.news

Finance.Yahoo.com

WashingtonPost.com

Science.NaturalNews.com

New York's Unilateral Move To $15 Per Hour Will Have Unintended Consequences

$15-Per-Hour Wage Gains Ground In New York, California, DC.

The AP (7/23, Leff, Klepper) reports that in New York, the state Wage Board Wednesday endorsed a proposal to set a $15 minimum wage for workers at fast-food restaurants “with more than 30 locations.” Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s Administration “has the final say, and he has signaled his support.”

        The New York Times (7/23, A1, McGeehan, Subscription Publication) reports that in New York, wages would first be raised in NYC “and then the rest of the state,” reaching $15 per hour in NYC in 2018 and in the rest of the state in 2021. The move is “a major victory for the campaign to improve the lives of workers who often struggle to pay for basic needs on low salaries.” The Times says that the $15 wage “would represent a raise of more than 70 percent for workers earning the state’s current minimum wage of $8.75 an hour.”

        The AP (7/24, Klepper, Dobnik) reports that New York’s fast-food industry is considering filing a lawsuit against Gov. Cuomo’s plan, which still awaits formal approval by Cuomo’s labor commissioner. Lawyers “say their lawsuit could focus on whether the increase was arbitrarily and unfairly applied to a single group.” Critics of the proposal are “also unhappy with Cuomo for letting an unelected Wage Board issue the recommendation instead of letting the Legislature debate the idea.”

        In a front-page story, the Washington Post (7/23, A1, Davis) reports that a “historic measure to raise the District’s hourly minimum wage to $15 is headed toward next year’s ballot after city officials released a ruling Wednesday approving a voter initiative.” The ballot measure “will go to voters in November 2016 only if supporters collect enough signatures, but even opponents say that is likely.”

        And in California, the New York Times (7/23, Lovett, Subscription Publication) reports that the University of California will “raise the minimum wage for its employees and contract workers to $15 an hour,” the “latest in a string of recent victories for labor leaders here who have fought to increase workers’ pay.”

        New York Wage Board Decision Creates Gap Between Low-Wage Workers. The New York Times (7/27, Swarns, Subscription Publication) reports that the move has “created a stark new divide between low-wage workers who will receive the boost in their paychecks and those who will not.” While about 50,000 fast-food workers in the city will benefit from the increase, according to the Fiscal Policy Institute, about 1.25 million workers “who earn less than $15 an hour do not work for fast-food chains and will not benefit.”

        Meanwhile, the New York Times (7/27, Scheiber, Subscription Publication) reports that the move to push the minimum wage to $15 “faces major obstacles, both political and economic.” Even where the proposals are “politically viable,” the “economic challenge could prove daunting” because the size of the proposed increases amounts to what the Times calls “an economics experiment the country has rarely if ever seen before.”

        NYTimes Sees $15 Wage For Fast-Food Workers To Set Trend For Other Businesses. In an editorial, the New York Times (7/24, Subscription Publication) hailed the decision by the New York Wage Board to order fast-food workers to receive a minimum wage of $15 hour over the next few years. The “raise itself, however, is likely to be only one of several outcomes of the board’s action. A fast-food wage of $15 could push up wages in New York more broadly because it sets a new bar for retailers, home care agencies and other low-wage employers to meet or exceed.”

        Retail Labor Union Pushes For Higher Minimum Wage After New York’s $15 Fast Food Victory. Forbes (7/24) reported that retail workers nationwide are pushing for higher minimum wage rates after New York’s Wage Board made the unprecedented move to approve a $15 hourly minimum wage for the state’s roughly 200,000 fast-food workers. Stuart Appelbaum, head of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, said the decision in New York has set a precedent and predicted more wage bumps. He said, “The message from this week’s decision is that workers, no matter what they do, need to be compensated fully for their work. When you go to work you should not be condemned to a life of poverty.”

        Minimum Wage Push Meets Resistance. Writing for the Orange County (CA) Register (7/28), Ian Lamont warns that, no matter how high officials raise the wage floor, “the total amount a business can pay for wages will remain about the same.” As a result, increases to the minimum wage will disproportionately hurt “young, unskilled and untrained individuals” and endanger their jobs. Lamont notes, “while $18,000 to $20,000 a year in annual wages is certainly not a living wage, being unemployed is far worse in the long run.”

        Forbes (7/27) contributor Mike Patton explains that businesses generally have five ways to respond to large minimum wage increases: increase prices, lay off employees, replace some job functions with technology, move to an area with a lower wage floor, or shut down operations.

        Blog Post: Corporate America Is Not Unified On Minimum Wage Issue. In a “Wonkblog” post for the Washington Post (7/24), Lydia Depillis wrote that businesses are being “steamrolled” as activists push minimum wage increases across the nation. However, Depillis adds that “the private sector itself is far from united against raising the minimum wage,” with “some corporate leaders” actually favoring raising it. This has “made it difficult for the largest business groups, which have to balance the interests of all their members, to put much effort into opposing minimum wage hikes.”