Science, Technology, Union Backed Strikes, and Fewer McJobs. - Granite Grok

Science, Technology, Union Backed Strikes, and Fewer McJobs.

mcdonalds sign - Unions ending jobs inviting technology to replase peopleThe unions are deep pocketed advocates of the Democrat party.  The Democrat party likes to think of itself as the hip party of science and technology.  In reality, they are trapped in a post-progressive world-view that has been circling the drain for years.  That reality has not, however, ecouraged them to stop being either progressive, or stupid, or dragging us all down with them

Take the Union catalyzed “strike” of fast food workers in the People’s Republic of California (where weeds grows properly in the well prepared soil.)  The union worked with activists in the fast food industry to coordinate a walk out as a demonstration of their power.  That’s what a walk-out is.  You show your boss who the boss is.

Right.

All the unions and the mushy-skulled entry level workers at McDonald’s did was facilitate their own obsolescence.

First, in case you missed that post, I started at McDonald’s, entry level, and in a few years turned it into a career that paid well above the average annual income in the US.  I turned that exprience into other careers.  So I speak from experience, literally.  And my success did not come as a result of the influence of unions or strikes or trying to tell my boss who the boss was.  I worked hard and learned everything they were willing to teach me on their dime and time to make myself more valuable.  In return they paid me more.  And I learned to learn more on my own, making myself more valuable to future employers.

So what did California Unions just do to thousands of McDonald’s employees by trying to organize them to strike for a day?  They made them obsolete.  They sent a message to Fast Food companies that in the age of DemocratCare, increasing regulations, hiring costs, government enforced politically correct human resources formulae, and an obsessive desire to regulate wages outside of market forces, that replacing workers with technology solves a lot of problems.

McDonald’s in Europe are in the process of adding 7,000 ordering kiosks to replace cashiers.  Customers will use automation to order, giving them compete control and giving McDonald’s (and I suppse the NSA) a goldmine of data with which to make their own operations more efficient.

A kiosk doesn’t need insurance, is never late for work, doesn’t have personal problems, will never be a teenager, won’t show up hung-over, unwashed, disheveled, unshaven or late, will never be too busy talking to other employees while customers wait for attention, and costs a fraction of what even a non-striking fast-food worker costs the company in total.  It can more accurately deliver advertising and options, offers, specials, and in any number of languages, in a form factor and interface that fits nicely with the current arc of personal technology innovation by incorporating that technology into the point of service.

If I were a McDonald’s in California, or just running one, I might now feel inclined to send a message that could keep customer costs down (so I could compete and stay in business) and improve service, while shedding 25% of the staff and all the associated labor costs.

Obsolescence.  Replace me, please…and no I don’t want an apple pie with that.

That is the message the Unions just organized the fast-food workers to send in an age and time when doing so would actually be something customers would freely embrace, at a time when finding any job in the Democrat Parties Part-time employment conomy, is already difficult.

Brilliant!

It’s not much different from all the other economic signals (see also crushing policy and executive orders) Democrats and their fellow travelers have and are sending to the marketplace.   And the side effects are the same, and fully explain the malaise of the Obama ‘recovery.’  Talk all you want about your intentions.  Your actions have real world consequences.  And lucky for you, so far, a majority of the voting population is simply too enamored, ignorant, indifferent, or plain stupid to have linked cause and effect.  But misery has a way of changing things.  California is already a miserable place to do business.

Of course, if the goal is to get their pay to $15.00/ hour (noticed I did not say earn) then unemployment might just be the ticket.  Welfare is paying that much in any number of states to do nothing at all.

Buh-duh, bah bah bahh!  They’ll Be Lovin It.  (until they need or want a ‘raise’ or when the money we already don’t have to give them runs out…)

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