- NYC: “Restaurateurs Are Scrambling to Cut Service and Raise Prices After Minimum Wage Hike” [M. Tara Crowl, Eater NY via Mark J. Perry, AEI, who has more] Next step for SEIU in New York: demand for laws prohibiting firing of fast food workers without “good cause” [Patrick McGeehan, New York Times, Billy Binion, Reason]
- In “the popular discourse that all that matters are ‘jobs,’ as if it were 1933, not the vast range of the terms of employment — how hard you have to work, hours, tasks, flexibility, side benefits, overtime, and so forth.” [John Cochrane recommending Jonathan Meer draft via David Henderson]
- As the late Paul Heyne taught, economics “contributes to questions of justice – because it imposes the constraints of reality, and because it reminds us that the ethics appropriate for a family cannot work in a commercial society (without lapsing into authoritarian paternalism).” [Nikolai Wenzel]
- Treatment of tipped workers in minimum wage laws responds to political pressures [Richard Mackenzie, Regulation magazine]
- Workers search more for employment at right around the time of a minimum wage increase, but the effect does not last [Camilla Adams, Jonathan Meer, and CarlyWill Sloan, Cato Research Briefs in Economic Policy]
- “Do Minimum Wage Increases Raise Crime Rates?” [Ryan Bourne on NBER paper by Zachary Fone, Joseph Sabia and Resul Cesur]
Filed under: minimum wage, restaurants
7 Comments
Next step for SEIU in New York: demand for laws prohibiting firing of fast food workers without “good cause” [Patrick McGeehan, New York Times
That NYT article gives a couple examples of people claiming to have been fired unfairly, but entirely leaves out the employers’ sides of the story. The Chipotle employee, for instance, who claimed to have been fired for not smiling enough, may well have been repeatedly counseled for having a bad attitude in a customer-facing role. The Taco Bell employee who “was fired without warning from a Taco Bell in Queens after she swore at a delivery driver who was harassing her” may have been justified, or it may have been a fight on the sales floor over a baseless accusation.
We don’t know, because the NYT is completely uninterested in exploring that. I’ve worked retail, and I’ve seen plenty of employees insisting it’s entirely unfair that they were fired for one trivial thing, when they were actually drunk on the job, swearing at a customer, and had a file thick with previous warnings. Sometimes one “minor” offense is the last in a long line of other offenses.
I’m just skeptical about these articles where only one side gets to speak.
Apparently “We have to let people go or go out of business” is not a good reason for SEIU.
Bob
From the perspective of SEIU, non-union restaurants going out of business is a good thing.
NYC wages: Summary: it is expensive to run a business when not exploiting workers.
do as you are told and stop whining.
U.S. local/state/federal governments have an absolute duty & authority to closely regulate all aspects of private commerce & economic activity within their jurisdictions.
That is very clearly stated in the US/NY Constitutions and New York City Charter.
Politicians are in politics, which is a business.
The SEIU is in the union business. They don’t care if their “Fight for $15” and “Good Cause for termination” campaigns results in 50K low-wage workers losing their jobs, due to automation or reduced hiring, as long as the union ultimately organizes and gets more dues-paying members as a result.
France has a law about not firing workers: it results in business being very reluctant to grow or respond to demand. It also results in lots of workers who don’t work and very high unemployment which in Europe generally is often 10% or more (currently 8.8% in France). Cause and effect, how does it work?