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Comment by gruez | Hacker News Reader

Why fast food workers specifically? I suppose their jobs is worse than a desk job, or even a retail job, but there are arguably far worse jobs out there (eg. delivery workers, landscapers, or agricultural workers). The article's explanation of "most of the often overlooked workforce are the primary earners for their low-income households" isn't really convincing. Delivery drivers or agricultural workers are probably even easier to overlook than someone you have face to face interaction with, and I don't see any reason why primary earners would prefer fast food jobs over other jobs.

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This later paragraph sounds relevant:

> It also settles — for now, at least — a fight between labor and business groups over how to regulate the industry. In exchange for higher pay, labor unions have dropped their attempt to make fast food corporations liable for the misdeeds of their independent franchise operators in California, an action that could have upended the business model on which the industry is based. The industry, meanwhile, has agreed to pull a referendum related to worker wages off the 2024 ballot.

I'm guessing because Newsom would like his name on the presidential ticket next year and he's in the process of backroom political negotiations "necessary" to shore up that support. The specific mention of union negotiations bolsters this conclusion.

This seems like a very shabby pitch to beleaguered American workers and encodes the sad expectation that people supporting a family of 4 should be doing so on a fast food job and now they can, temporarily, due to a wage hike in an election year.

A boring dystopia, indeed.

Why is it that people working <less good jobs> shouldn’t have families? Why does half the country have such a firm belief that the bottom tier of society has no place procreating?

Probably because typically jobs such as in fast food are seen as being for those too young to have a family, teenagers, college students etc.

Is that the reality of the fast food labor force though? I don’t think it is. I see less kids working at fast food in my city than adults.

I don't believe that at all. I just don't believe that minimum wage "hacks" like this are the correct tools to solve the problem. I think policy energy would be much better spent dealing with the over monopolization of our economy and in creating new industries for these people to own and to be employed by.

probably because there isn't much support for the collective subsidizing the very personal choice of procreating

Which looks really silly once significant negative population growth kicks in. With US well below replacement rate and net immigration rate down 58% since 1998 and continuing to trend down. So things may start getting interesting fairly soon.

https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/popu...

Sounds better than an economic system that demands surplus labor to treat as disposable. Drive that total fertility rate down.

Ultimately population scales the demand just as it scales the workforce, so it’s not inherently going to change anything outside of extreme situations. Significant negative population growth is however unpleasant because the infrastructure you build today ends up excessive in the future.

As to surplus labor you need flexibility simply from people changing jobs. Average 1 month searching every 4 years and that’s a 2.1% unemployment rate. Yes, many people keep their jobs for very long periods but other people job hop regularly.

Excessive? Since we refuse to build light rail and such, at least we might have roads that aren’t slammed sometime in the future!

Oddly looking at Japan etc you’re likely to see worse traffic as population declines not better. People end up abandoning areas and concentrating more so you get ghost towns and mega cities.

It becomes much more expensive per person to keep a small town water treatment plant running and roads cleared etc as population declines. So not only is useful infrastructure abandoned early, you now have people migrating into already densely populated areas.

"the collective subsidizing the very personal choice of procreating" I support massive subsidies because the sum of these personal choices is equivalent to the next generation's collective

Collective subsidizing how? Are you referring to food stamp and other government benefits? If so, I’d argue that jobs offering better wages should help with that issue.

> Why is it that people working <less good jobs> shouldn’t have families?

No one said that.

However, it is unrealistic to expect that a single 40/hr week low-skill income to provide for a family living independently.

Because our servants should be as cheap as possible and not distracted with their own families of course /s

Really though, we're on a website with mostly upper middle class people, many of whom rely on cheap labor to provide their affordable luxuries. If that labor was paid the same as most of us are paid we'd have fewer luxuries. This is clearly unpopular with many people. I think secretly many people wish their baristas and cooks weren't paid at all so they could eat out even more. In fact, not that long ago a terrible war was fought over that very desire, so clearly it's an opinion popular enough nearly half the country was willing to die for it.

So it's no surprise the idea lingers that some jobs deserve to be paid barely enough to cover the car and gas to get to the job. That big companies should be able to collude and prevent organized labor and suppress fair wages, while inflation eats away at the remainder. I mean, they're just standing in a hot greasy and dangerous kitchen all day next to a boiling vat of flammable oil. It's hardly worth the same pay as going to stand-ups and zoning out on the internet most of the day from the comfort of home.

Mechanism might be interesting. It's a rudimentary sectoral bargaining arrangement

https://onlabor.org/california-fast-food-workers-secure-big-...

> Undeterred, labor advocates worked with progressive lawmakers to gather enough votes to pass two more significant pieces of labor legislation. First, AB 102, which was signed into law in July, increased funding for California’s Industrial Welfare Commission (IWC), a long-dormant century-old wage board with the power to set wages, hours, and working conditions by industry. Second, AB 1228, which would have made franchisors jointly liable for labor violations — a long sought-after provision that was taken out of the final version of the FAST Act. According to reports, Governor Newsom led negotiations between industry groups and unions over the summer, and with AB 1228 set to pass this week — the final week of California’s legislative session — industry groups finally caved, agreeing to withdraw the referendum in exchange for a rewritten AB 1228.

> The new bill, which the legislature passed on Thursday, ditches joint franchisor liability entirely and officially repeals AB 257. (As part of the negotiations, legislators also agreed to defund the IWC.) But the bill largely keeps in place the Fast Food Council — with some important changes. First, the government representatives on the Council are reduced to nonvoting members, and the bill adds an independent member of the public who will serve as chairperson, presumably carrying a tiebreaking vote. The Council’s standards would apply to “limited-service” restaurants with over 60 establishments nationwide that share a common brand. But instead of promulgating standards with the force of law, the Council must now submit any standard to the Labor Commissioner, who, upon finding that it is consistent with the Council’s mandate, will then engage in a rulemaking process in accordance with California’s Administrative Procedure Act.

> The bill would set the hourly wage for fast-food workers at $20 effective on April 1, 2024, and the Council may set wages annually thereafter beginning in 2025

If they raised the minimum wage for all workers, it would have a greater destabilizing effect, so they limited it to a smaller group so they could get their message across while minimizing the change they cause.

It just so happens that that particular tribe of people has sufficient political power to push through an increase for themselves.

See non English speaking farm workers that have their very own exclusions to minimum wage laws, even on the west coast. They just don’t happen to have the political power, so they get shafted.

Fracturing your opposition is a tried and true method to break consensus.

Edit: I find it hilarious that even in this tribal delineation, somehow people who work at a business that bakes things got screwed.

> raised the minimum wage for all workers, it would have a greater destabilizing effect

Theory suggests this will happen at some point. Evidence shows we aren’t close to it.

Raising the minimum wage—across the board—to $25/hour in non-rural counties and something lower in rural (where COL is lower) would likely cause growth. Because while costs have gone up, there is a massive purchasing power unleashed. (Critically, this could only be done after zoning reform. Otherwise the surplus will just go to landowners.)

Constantly raising and capturing profits has a far more destabilising effect.

At some point this reality will become clear to US corporate culture. But it may well be rather late and very messy.

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