Why Arent Paychecks Growing? A Burger-Joint Clause Offers a Clue.

[elleng]

ORLANDO, Fla. — The American fast food industry is built on two pillars: cheap hamburgers, and cheap labor.

As economists try to understand why wages have stagnated across the country’s economy, they are examining the cheap labor part of the equation closely. A few have zeroed in on an obscure clause buried in many fast-food franchise agreements as a possible contributor to the problem.

Some of fast-food’s biggest names, including Burger King, Carl’s Jr., Pizza Hut and, until recently, McDonald’s, prohibited franchisees from hiring workers away from one another, preventing, for example, one Pizza Hut from hiring employees from another.

The restrictions do not appear in a contract that employees sign, or even see. They are typically included in a paragraph buried in lengthy contracts that owners of fast-food outlets sign with corporate headquarters.

Yet the provisions can keep employees tied to one spot, unable to switch jobs or negotiate higher pay. A lack of worker mobility has long been viewed as contributing to wage stagnation because switching jobs is one of the most reliable ways to get a raise.'>>>

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/27/business/pay-growth-fast-food-hiring.html?

[PJMcK]

1. So corporations have screwed their employees?

Really? These economists are just figuring this out?

And they went to college for these insights?

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

2. I wonder if that's almost too complex an explanation,

and the fact that there are enough people at the bottom who are willing, even desperate to work for minimum wage for however many hours they can get, isn't sufficient to explain this.

High school students, college students, single moms, and people who once had much better jobs. I know that if I were unemployed and absolutely needed to get a job, I'd do part time fast food work. Nearly a decade ago, having relocated after a divorce, and very close to desperate for a job, I found myself working two part time jobs, one retail, one clerical, because I needed the money. The down side was that I then was turning down other temp jobs, which might have been better. After several months I got a full time permanent job at the local hospital.

I was lucky. I had decent skills and an ability to negotiate an otherwise tricky job market. I had enough savvy to craft different resumes for different jobs. In short, even if I'd worked fast food for a while, I wasn't going to stay there.

And trust me, I'm not dissing fast food workers. My son, who is currently in a PhD program in astrophysics has worked fast food. This was at a time when he'd actually flunked out of one college and was home for the summer. I wasn't about to let him just sit around and sent him out every day, insisting he apply at at least three different places. On the third or fourth day the local McDonald's hired him. And a couple of years later, when, needing a reference letter, he tracked down that manager, who'd since moved to a different location, that manager made it clear he'd rehire my son on the spot. So I tend to think well of fast food as a job.