Skip to main content

What I've Been Reading This Week


Quite the busy week kept me on the road and out of the office.  One of the more thought provoking articles I came across dealt with the relationship between President Trump and the fast food industry.  Recall that President Trump's first nominee for Labor Secretary was Andy Puzder (of Hardees/Carl's Jr. "fame").  Of course he did not make it through the entire confirmation process...but that example certainly lends credence to the fact that the President appears to be quite cozy with certain sectors of the fast food industry.  Whether that pays dividends long term for these employers is still up for debate, but at the below article notes, it appears that things are certainly looking up for the time being.

As always, below are a couple articles that caught my eye this week.


President Donald Trump: A Friend to Fast Food Employers?

Dave Jamieson over at The Huffington Post muses on the seemingly strong "friendship" shared by President Donald Trump and fast food employers across the country.  Jamieson does a good job providing a concise overview of steps the Obama Administration took which angered the fast food industry...compared to what President Trump has done over the past 7 or so months:  taking steps to undo the Obama Administration's attempt to raise the overtime threshold, indicating its limited interest in raising the federal minimum wage, and appearing ready to embrace the "joint employer" bill that was recently introduced in Congress which would rewrite the NLRB's definition from Browning-Ferris (and you guessed it, make "joint employer" more employer friendly).  At least for the time being, this honeymoon continues...


Little Caesars Introduces Automated Pizza Pickup

As some commentators had suggested, given the increased cost of labor, it was only a matter of time before restaurants introduced automated machines in an effort to cut these rising costs to employ hourly workers.  Recently, Little Caesars began installing machines at some of its locations in which customers order their desired pizza on an app, pay for it, receive a notification when it is ready, punch a code into a machine, and retrieve their pizza from behind a glass window.  As Michelle Maynard at Forbes writes, Little Caesars is not a trailblazer in this case as other chains such as Panera Bread and McDonald's have implemented similar machines.  Unless there is a huge backlash by consumers over the lack of interpersonal communication with an actual human (and these consumers actually take their money elsewhere), I would expect other restaurants to look at implementing similar machines in an effort to cut back on labor costs.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

NLRB: Discussion Among Employees About Tip Pooling is Protected Concerted Activity

  This Advice Memorandum from the National Labor Relations Board’s Associate General Counsel, Jayme Sophir, addressed whether employees which discussed and complained about tip pooling at work constituted protected concerted activity. In relevant part, an employer in New York operated a chain of steakhouses.  While tip pooling was in place at these steakhouses, some of the employees objected to it on the grounds that it was not transparent and improperly divided tips among the workers.  Employees were told not to complain or talk to each other about the tip pool and were told that doing so would endanger their jobs.  Despite the employer later attempting to provide some clarity as to how the tips were being divided, rancor still existed among some employees.  At one point, the employees were told by a general manager that some employees that had been talking about the tip pool were “cleared out” and the employer would continue to do so. In the Advice Memorandum, it was noted that emplo

What I’ve Been Reading This Week

A few years ago, I remember when the “Fight for $15” movement was taking off around the country.  Lo and behold, it appears that a $15/hour minimum wage is not the stopping point, which should be no surprise.  As the below article notes, New York is aggressively moving to ramp up hourly wage rates even higher.  While all the  below articles are worth a read, I called particular attention to that one. As always, below are a couple article that caught my eye this week. Disney World Workers Reject Latest Contract Offer Late last week, it was announced that workers at Disney World had rejected the most recent contract offer from the company, calling on their employer to do better.  As Brooks Barnes at The New York Times writes, the unions that represent about 32,000 workers at Disney World reported their members resoundingly rejected the 5 year contract offer which would have seen workers receive a 10% raise and retroactive increased back pay.  While Disney’s offer would have increased pa

Utah Non-Compete Bill Falters in House

Last month, a non-compete bill sponsored by Representative Brian Greene (Republican from Pleasant Grove) & up for vote in the Utah House failed to make it through the Legislature.  The bill sought to ban enforcement of non-competes if they came after a worker was already employed, given no compensation (such as a bonus or promotion) for signing the non-compete, and laid off within six months.  However, by a 22 - 49 vote, the bill was resoundingly defeated after some business groups lobbied to kill the non-compete bill.  One group in particular, The Free Enterprise Utah coalition, argued that the Utah State Legislature should hold off on any changes to non compete laws in the state until a survey about non competes was done among Utah businesses.  Representative Greene had countered this claim and argued that a survey was not needed to show that the current non compete laws in the states allowed many businesses, including some small high tech companies in the state, to per