IWF writers have been following the Big Union-orchestrated fast food walkouts for months and how the demand to increase the minimum wage would largely hurt low skilled workers. Salim Furth at the Daily Signal explains just how this would play out. He writes:
… in the short run, prices would rise 38 percent, production and hours worked would fall 36 percent, and wages would decrease to 1 percent of revenue from 3 percent in 2013. In the long run, some restaurants would close, and the survivors would shift to fewer, higher-skilled workers and more labor-saving technology.
Some workers would come out ahead from a $15 fast-food wage: those with the most experience and the highest efficiency. Sadly, marginal workers–including those with the worst alternatives and the fewest marketable skills–would be left behind.
Higher wagers isn’t the only demand. According to Stephen Moore, also writing for Heritage’s Daily Signal, transforming (maybe destroying?) the very way fast food restaurants operate is the ultimate goal:
If the Obama Administration has its way, Ronald McDonald may soon have to wipe that grin off his face as he stands beneath the Golden Arches. One of the most successful models for expanding small-business ownership in America is under full-scale attack from unions and the White House.
The political strategy is to fundamentally change the legal relationship between locally owned stores like McDonald’s (NYSE:MCD), Popeyes (NASDAQ:PLKI), Taco Bell (NYSE:YUM) and their multibillion-dollar parent companies.
No longer would franchisees be legally classified as independent contractors to the parent company. The left wants the employees of each of the hundreds of thousands of independently owned franchise restaurants, hotels, retail stores and others to be considered jointly employed by both the independent franchisee and parent.
This change would overturn a 30-year legal precedent for how the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) deals with franchisees.
We’re seeing regulations kill businesses. From small cheese makers, to onion growers to both large scale and small family owned restaurants that can no longer comply with FSMA, Obamacare and other crushing regulations, these businesses and teh workers they employ are in deep trouble.
True lovers of food need to understand that by taking down the big guys, you often hurt the little guys much worse. And that’s what we’re seeing with these attacks on fast food. Lefty politicians and food scolds who approve of hurting the fast food industry need to understand the real consequents of these actions: killing jobs for low skilled workers and shattering small businesses and small-scale farmers.