Tag: Fast-food workers

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Millennials’ hatred of ‘dealing with people’ is a major threat to fast-food workers

fast food self serviice

Hayley Peterson

Many millennials hate interacting with people, according to a new survey.

Nearly a third of people 18 to 24 prefer ordering from the drive-thru at restaurants because “they don’t feel like dealing with people,” according to a study by Ohio-based Frisch’s Restaurants, which owns and franchises 120 Big Boy Restaurants.

That’s bad news for fast-food employees.

It gives restaurant chains an added incentive to invest in automation technology, such as digital tablets that allow customers to buy food without human interaction.

Many restaurant chains, such as McDonald’s and Panera Bread, are already heavily invested in automation. Both have rolled out digital tablets at restaurants nationwide.

The technology has been praised for helping to improve customer-service speed and accuracy.But it also threatens to eventually replace human workers — especially as labor costs rise, according to analysts and labor activists.

https://www.businessinsider.com/millennials-hate-interacting-with-people-2016-8

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Let them Eat Fries : Fast food workers take to the streets

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Let them Eat Fries : Fast food workers take to the streets

Thousands of fast food workers are expected to stage protests Thursday outside of restaurants such as McDonald’s, Burger King and Domino’s in a coordinated push for higher pay.

Backed by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), fast food workers in 150 cities plan to walk off the job and pick up picket signs to demand that they be paid no less than $15 per hour. It will be the seventh strike organized by the Fast Food Forward campaign since November 2012, when the campaign began.

“At Thursday’s strike, fast food restaurants will see firsthand that workers are willing to do whatever it takes to win $15 and union rights,” said Kendall Fells, the organizing director at Fast Food Forward, which receives funding from the SEIU.

Business groups and franchises are pushing back on the campaign, arguing an increase in the minimum wage would be bad for the economy and ultimately hurt workers.

Steve Caldeira, CEO of the International Franchise Association, said in a Wednesday statement that the SEIU and other labor groups were putting pressure on the corporations in a callous attempt to grow their membership.

“When you boil this all down, it’s really about the unions being hypocritical and greedy by exploiting proposals meant to support fast food workers to enrich themselves,” Caldeira said in a statement.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the nation’s most powerful business group, produced an analysis that says more than 40 of the full-time employees at SEIU headquarters make less than $15 per hour — the same amount that the union says should be the minimum for fast food workers.

Read more: https://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/business-a-lobbying/216594-fast-food-workers-take-to-the-streets-for-15-minimum#ixzz3CLvkywmD 

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Fast-food workers prepare to escalate wage demands

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Fast-food workers prepare to escalate wage demands

JULY 26, 2014    LAST UPDATED: SATURDAY, JULY 26, 2014, 1:21 AM
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
THE RECORD

* Fast-food workers will be asked do “whatever it takes” to win $15 an hour and a union

CHICAGO — Fast-food employees say they’re prepared to escalate their campaign for higher wages and union representation, starting with a national convention in suburban Chicago, where more than 1,000 workers are expected to discuss the future of the effort that has spread to dozens of cities in less than two years.

About 1,300 workers were to attend sessions Friday and today at an expo center in Villa Park, Illinois, where they’ll be asked to do “whatever it takes” to win $15-an-hour wages and a union, said Kendall Fells, organizing director of the national effort and a representative of the Service Employees International Union.

The union has been providing financial and organizational support to the fast-food protests that began in late 2012 in New York City and have included daylong strikes and a protest outside this year’s McDonald’s Corp. shareholder meeting that resulted in more than 130 arrests.

“We want to talk about building leadership, power and doing whatever it takes, depending on what city they’re in and what the moment calls for,” said Fells, adding that the ramped-up actions will be “more high profile” and could include everything from civil disobedience to intensified efforts to organize workers.

– See more at: https://www.northjersey.com/news/business/wage-battle-heating-up-1.1057683#sthash.MNFW2WJf.dpuf