Consequence of $20 minimum wage for fast food workers?

[ZiprHead]

Why American workers haven't risen up and destroyed their oppressors continues to baffle me.
Any Australian workplace that tried to tell workers that they must continue working if they get a workplace injury, would be in serious legal trouble.

Zipr is exaggerating for effect. We have things like OSHA here.

Really?

Editorial Note: Approximately 1.4 million persons in the United States sustain burns each year; of these, an estimated 54,000- 108,000 are hospitalized (2). Work-related burns account for 20%- 25% of all serious burns (3). Based on data from a Bureau of Labor Statistics survey, in 1985, 6% of all work-related thermal burns occurred among adolescent workers aged 16-19 years (4). As indicated by the investigations in Colorado and Minnesota, restaurant-related burns, especially those associated with use of deep fryers, continue to represent a major and preventable source of occupational burn morbidity, particularly among adolescents. These findings are consistent with the findings in other studies that emphasize the risk for burns associated with hot grease (3,5).

An estimated 400,000 commercial eating and drinking establishments in the United States employ approximately 6 million workers (6). In 1989, the Bureau of Labor Statistics ranked these establishments first in total number of recordable work-related injuries and illnesses; in 1991, they accounted for approximately 5% of on-the-job injuries and illnesses reported nationwide (6). In restaurants, thermal burns accounted for 12% of work-related injuries (6). Workers' Compensation FRII from 1987 through 1990 indicate that, in Colorado, thermal burns accounted for 9% of the injuries occurring in restaurants (Colorado Department of Labor, unpublished data); in this report, findings were similar in Minnesota.

The findings from the Minnesota Adolescent Occupational Injury Study help to define the risk for burn injuries among adolescent workers. Because a substantial number of adolescents are employed in the full-service and fast-food restaurant industries, they are at increased risk for sustaining burn injuries; however, this risk has not been sufficiently documented. These findings emphasize the need for improved surveillance for this problem, as well as improved design of engineering controls and work practices for the prevention of burns in the food-service industry.

Occupational Burns Among Restaurant Workers -- Colorado and Minnesota

 

[barbos]

The US started zip codes for mail sorting in 1963.

It was NOT fully automatic.

I’m not certain what you mean by fully automatic.

Prior to adoption of current system in 1963, there had been a local zone code was used in the US from the mid 1940’s.

Human operators were reading ZIP code and entering it into machine. Machine was merely moving letters around and into different bins. Russian system, on the other hand, had a system using a template for writing ZIP code so that pretty primitive machine can read codes reliably.

 

[Toni]

The US started zip codes for mail sorting in 1963.

It was NOT fully automatic.

I’m not certain what you mean by fully automatic.

Prior to adoption of current system in 1963, there had been a local zone code was used in the US from the mid 1940’s.

Human operators were reading ZIP code and entering it into machine. Machine was merely moving letters around and into different bins. Russian system, on the other hand, had a system using a template for writing ZIP code so that pretty primitive machine can read codes reliably.

Really? I don’t think that is true. But I could be wrong. Do you have a reference?

Ukraine had early development of postal codes. Great Britain much earlier.

 

[barbos]

The US started zip codes for mail sorting in 1963.

It was NOT fully automatic.

I’m not certain what you mean by fully automatic.

Prior to adoption of current system in 1963, there had been a local zone code was used in the US from the mid 1940’s.

Human operators were reading ZIP code and entering it into machine. Machine was merely moving letters around and into different bins. Russian system, on the other hand, had a system using a template for writing ZIP code so that pretty primitive machine can read codes reliably.

Really? I don’t think that is true. But I could be wrong. Do you have a reference?

Reference for what?

Ukraine had early development of postal codes. Great Britain much earlier.

Yes, Ukraine sent the first man into space too. And won WW2. Not to mention they dug up Black Sea.

 

[Toni]

The US started zip codes for mail sorting in 1963.

It was NOT fully automatic.

I’m not certain what you mean by fully automatic.

Prior to adoption of current system in 1963, there had been a local zone code was used in the US from the mid 1940’s.

Human operators were reading ZIP code and entering it into machine. Machine was merely moving letters around and into different bins. Russian system, on the other hand, had a system using a template for writing ZIP code so that pretty primitive machine can read codes reliably.

Really? I don’t think that is true. But I could be wrong. Do you have a reference?

Reference for what?

Ukraine had early development of postal codes. Great Britain much earlier.

Yes, Ukraine sent the first man into space too. And won WW2. Not to mention they dug up Black Sea.

Your claim that Russia could read postal codes with machines.

I can provide references for my claims.

 

[barbos]

Your claim that Russia could read postal codes with machines.

Yes, that should be obvious for anyone who saw a russian (and soviet) letter

Actually, I am not sure about all modern letters, some don't have it, but some still do I think.

 

[Toni]

Your claim that Russia could read postal codes with machines.

Yes, that should be obvious for anyone who saw a russian (and soviet) letter

Actually, I am not sure about all modern letters, some don't have it, but some still do I think.

So, you are unwilling or unable to back up your claim?

I cannot understand how it would be possible to tell by looking at a Russian letter ( I’m assuming you mean the envelope?) that the postal code was read by a machine. Certainly it would be impossible to know that this was possible 60 years ago or more.

 

[barbos]

Your claim that Russia could read postal codes with machines.

Yes, that should be obvious for anyone who saw a russian (and soviet) letter

Actually, I am not sure about all modern letters, some don't have it, but some still do I think.

So, you are unwilling or unable to back up your claim?

I cannot understand how it would be possible to tell by looking at a Russian letter ( I’m assuming you mean the envelope?) that the postal code was read by a machine. Certainly it would be impossible to know that this was possible 60 years ago or more.

Just google it. "soviet envelope mail" and switch to pictures.

 

[Toni]

Your claim that Russia could read postal codes with machines.

Yes, that should be obvious for anyone who saw a russian (and soviet) letter

Actually, I am not sure about all modern letters, some don't have it, but some still do I think.

So, you are unwilling or unable to back up your claim?

I cannot understand how it would be possible to tell by looking at a Russian letter ( I’m assuming you mean the envelope?) that the postal code was read by a machine. Certainly it would be impossible to know that this was possible 60 years ago or more.

Just google it. "soviet letter mail" and switch to pictures.

Yeah, not so much. Why not provide a link so I can see what you see?

 

[barbos]

Your claim that Russia could read postal codes with machines.

Yes, that should be obvious for anyone who saw a russian (and soviet) letter

Actually, I am not sure about all modern letters, some don't have it, but some still do I think.

So, you are unwilling or unable to back up your claim?

I cannot understand how it would be possible to tell by looking at a Russian letter ( I’m assuming you mean the envelope?) that the postal code was read by a machine. Certainly it would be impossible to know that this was possible 60 years ago or more.

Just google it. "soviet letter mail" and switch to pictures.

Yeah, not so much. Why not provide a link so I can see what you see?

I trying to teach you to fish google.

 

[Toni]

Your claim that Russia could read postal codes with machines.

Yes, that should be obvious for anyone who saw a russian (and soviet) letter

Actually, I am not sure about all modern letters, some don't have it, but some still do I think.

So, you are unwilling or unable to back up your claim?

I cannot understand how it would be possible to tell by looking at a Russian letter ( I’m assuming you mean the envelope?) that the postal code was read by a machine. Certainly it would be impossible to know that this was possible 60 years ago or more.

Just google it. "soviet letter mail" and switch to pictures.

Yeah, not so much. Why not provide a link so I can see what you see?

I trying to teach you to fish google.

I know how to google.

I’m trying to teach you to back up your claims. Alas! I fear that you simply cannot.

 

[barbos]

I’m trying to teach you to back up your claims. Alas! I fear that you simply cannot.

I perfectly capable of doing that. And had been doing that but stopped in order to teach your ilk to properly acknowledge my arguments.

 

[Toni]

I’m trying to teach you to back up your claims. Alas! I fear that you simply cannot.

I perfectly capable of doing that. And had been doing that but stopped in order to teach your ilk to properly acknowledge my arguments.

Your arguments got all the acknowledgment they deserve.

But I accept that you are unable to back up your claims.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Speaking of automation, what about US postal service? You idiots still use hand written zip codes?
In USSR we have been using machine sorting since forever. I am talking about standard letters.
Why can't you do the same? Now, of course, you use bar codes and such, but ordinary human letters are all handwritten and sorted by hands.

We machine-read addresses these days.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

According to a restaurant manager where I used to work, in the industry there are some buckets: labor, rent + utilities, materials that are about even in cost with remaining being profit. If we assume that McD's isn't that different, then labor might be about 33% of sales. But labor may include, not just wages, but health benefits, bonuses, other benefits etc. The Internet has some other figures like 17% and 20% which are in line with separating pure wage from other labor costs. So, I will use the larger of the two: 20% for wage cost.

I don't know about McD in particular, I have seen benefit costs in general in the 20% to 100% range. (The low end being the no-benefits job, The high end including good health insurance, 401k match etc.) (And, yes, you have benefit costs in no-benefit jobs. Worker's comp, unemployment, employer FICA etc. FICA alone is 7.65% in most cases.) It's also irrelevant to your argument, though, because it's already part of that labor bucket.

The current min wage in California is $15.50. Moving it to $20/hour would be about a 30% increase. So, this would be 30% x 20% ~= 6% of revenue which would cut into the 10% profit. (This is also assuming the worst-case that all employees only get the exact minimum wage, no one gets more than that).

Therefore, they could simply increase all costs across the board by 6% in order to pay for the wage increase if their goal is to maintain their profits.

But here I think you're way, way off! That 20% number doesn't enter into this calculation.

While I don't know the numbers I have no reason to question a 30/30/30/10 (labor/plant/materials/profit) distribution. 30% increase in the 30% bucket is 9%. Now you have 39/30/30/1. You basically killed their whole profit.

From the article:

"Certainly, there’s going to be some element of that that does need to be worked through with higher pricing," he said. "There’s also going to be things that I know the franchisees and our teams there are going to be looking at around productivity. How all of that plays out, there will certainly be a hit in the short term to franchisee cash flow in California; tough to know exactly what that hit will be because of some of the mitigation efforts."

If we assume they have meaningful ideas to implement to improve productivity, then perhaps those changes would be on-par with price increases. So, perhaps they could just increase price by 3% and then also implement productivity changes, whatever that means.

You can't dump this on "productivity improvements", that would have been done anyway.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

So was there someplace in the USSR that automated earlier?

Yes, everywhere. since at least 1960s, probably earlier.
I am talking about zip code sorting.

No, you are talking about bullshit.

While I can't confirm the timeframe his search terms show me something that would be far more machine readable than anything short of the barcoding you see on a lot of commercial mail these days. Dictatorships occasionally manage to actually dictate something sensible.

I don't think early 60s, though.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I cannot understand how it would be possible to tell by looking at a Russian letter ( I’m assuming you mean the envelope?) that the postal code was read by a machine. Certainly it would be impossible to know that this was possible 60 years ago or more.

I have my doubt about machine reading 60 years ago but what I found from his search I believe would certainly be machine readable 50 years ago assuming the mechanical part of it was up to the task. The limit will be the point at which the read head can be fit within the space available.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

According to a restaurant manager where I used to work, in the industry there are some buckets: labor, rent + utilities, materials that are about even in cost with remaining being profit. If we assume that McD's isn't that different, then labor might be about 33% of sales. But labor may include, not just wages, but health benefits, bonuses, other benefits etc. The Internet has some other figures like 17% and 20% which are in line with separating pure wage from other labor costs. So, I will use the larger of the two: 20% for wage cost.

I don't know about McD in particular, I have seen benefit costs in general in the 20% to 100% range. (The low end being the no-benefits job, The high end including good health insurance, 401k match etc.) (And, yes, you have benefit costs in no-benefit jobs. Worker's comp, unemployment, employer FICA etc. FICA alone is 7.65% in most cases.) It's also irrelevant to your argument, though, because it's already part of that labor bucket.

The current min wage in California is $15.50. Moving it to $20/hour would be about a 30% increase. So, this would be 30% x 20% ~= 6% of revenue which would cut into the 10% profit. (This is also assuming the worst-case that all employees only get the exact minimum wage, no one gets more than that).

Therefore, they could simply increase all costs across the board by 6% in order to pay for the wage increase if their goal is to maintain their profits.

But here I think you're way, way off! That 20% number doesn't enter into this calculation.

While I don't know the numbers I have no reason to question a 30/30/30/10

It's better to be evidence-based FIRST and sanity check second...not sanity presume first and fail to look up numbers second. Sorry, I am not trying to be a jerk here. Take a look at some links.

Or, McDonald's Could Double Wages For Employees, Not Raise Price Of Big Macs, And Just Make Less Money ...

www.businessinsider.com

McDonald's spends 24% of revenue on salary and benefits. Health benefits and bonuses are not wages. So wages are quite a bit less than 24% of revenue. Besides, some employees are management whose wage >> $20/hr and have other benefits. Imagine management is 10% of employees but in benefits and wage makes 4x as min wage employees. That's significant portion. Also, I deliberately put the number at min wage of $15.50. Many employees make $16 or $16.25 or $16.50. I was deliberately being conservative, adding a big cushion. To show even when making large impactful (counterfactual) assumptions in McDonald's favor, they'd still only have to increase price a small amount.

(labor/plant/materials/profit) distribution. 30% increase in the 30% bucket is 9%. Now you have 39/30/30/1. You basically killed their whole profit.

There's also royalty to global McDonald's which is 5% of sales:

https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/22/business/mcdonalds-franchise-fees/index.html#:~:text=For%20the%20first%20time%20in,a%20monthly%20percentage%20of%20sales.

You can add that to profit bucket.

From the article:

"Certainly, there’s going to be some element of that that does need to be worked through with higher pricing," he said. "There’s also going to be things that I know the franchisees and our teams there are going to be looking at around productivity. How all of that plays out, there will certainly be a hit in the short term to franchisee cash flow in California; tough to know exactly what that hit will be because of some of the mitigation efforts."

If we assume they have meaningful ideas to implement to improve productivity, then perhaps those changes would be on-par with price increases. So, perhaps they could just increase price by 3% and then also implement productivity changes, whatever that means.

You can't dump this on "productivity improvements", that would have been done anyway.

They are accelerating that. Derec says more kiosks.

 

[lpetrich]

That's when the machines will realize you are pretty useless except as a stationary battery. Of course none of this makes sense, but you saw it in a movie.

Allegedly in the original draft of the script, humans were supposed to be used for processing power, not as "batteries". Whether or not that is true, it would have made a lot more sense.

That's talking about "The Matrix", I'm guessing.

That is a totally harebrained premise, because we are not very efficient at converting primary energy forms into electrical energy.

Light - photosynthesis (energy extraction, biosynthesis) - production of edible parts - running our brains - making electricity in them

with plenty of inefficiency at each step.

It's much more efficient to use solar energy or wind energy or geothermal energy directly.

As to why advanced AI's might want to keep us around, it would be as pets.

 

[lpetrich]

The outrage over excessive pay seems to be focused on those at the bottom, those earning more that $10 dollars per hour.

Generally speaking, very little of that moral outrage is aimed at those at the top of the heap, who's value is measured in multiple millions, without a blink of the moral eye.

What reason is there for moral outrage aimed at those at the top of the heap, whose value to their customers is measured in multiple millions? ...

Randroid hero worship.

This works from a labor theory of value, something that is supposedly a Marxist fallacy, even though Adam Smith also advocated it.

As one goes up the wealth and income scale, the most that this is plausibly true is for upper-middle-class professionals and people who become big celebrities for their activities, like writers and singers and actors and professional athletes. Celebrities get their wealth from having large numbers of people interested in their activities.

Most great wealth has a different source: ownership and management of assets. Having large amounts of capital on hand is a necessity for building factories and warehouses and mines and ships and server farms and other such big things, but the owners and managers of such capital are all too often Yet Another Arrogant Ruling Class.