Fast Food Workers May Go the Way of Elevator Operators
Dozens of fast food workers held a demonstration outside of a McDonald's in Manhattan 15 May 2014. They were part of a worldwide day of protests in 230 cities.
Photo Credit: Andrew Burton, Getty Images
Those fast food workers who walked off their jobs in many U.S. cities a few days ago demanding $15 an hour (1) obviously do not know that decades ago there were tens of thousands of elevator operators in New York City alone. Know what happened to them? Those jobs disappeared when it became cheaper for building owners to spend millions of dollars in upgrades to replace those workers with buttons - buttons that unpaid people could push to get to their floors.
So go ahead you morons, get $15 an hour, hell - if high minimum wages are good then go for $100 an hour. Why not? After all, I doubt McDonalds will ever find a way to replace indispensable workers with some kind of cheaper, non-striking, automated order taker.
ENDNOTES
(1):
USA Today, Fast food workers rally for higher wages
Hundreds of fast food workers walked off their jobs in many U.S. cities and in more than 30 countries on Thursday, joining labor and union activists in protests calling for wages of $15 an hour and the right to seek union representation without retaliation.
At least 17 food chains were targeted, including McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's and KFC. No violence was reported.