There was a strike yesterday, on the part of fast food workers, in several large American cities. It was for the traditional reason: they are underpaid. Having worked at a wide variety of underpaid jobs in my life (in fact, I feel I am underpaid now), my sympathies are entirely with the workers.
They will never be late, they will never mouth off to the customers and they will never steal the toilet paper
Management is made up of rich fuckers who have more money than they know what to do with. There is no reason in the world I should sympathize with them. They don’t need my sympathy.
Also, the CEO of McDonald’s just got like an 8 million dollar bonus, and every time I go into a fast food restaurant, there is a line of people just waiting to give them money, so you know they are raking it in hand over fist.
Then this ad came out, saying all the workers are going to lose their jobs to robots if they don’t shut up and quit complaining. It’s bullshit. If the industry has money to fight the strikers with ads, they’ve got the money to give them all a bit of a raise. Maybe not quite as much as they’re asking, because $ 7.25 up to $15 is quite a leap, that is going to affect the bottom line a bit, or prices – but certainly they could afford a bit of a raise.
It’s also an idle threat because robots aren’t quite at that level yet. The first fast food restaurant that puts a robot in charge, is going to wind up with meat all over the floor and ketchup on the walls first time somebody places a special order.
Still, it’s coming, and it might not be that far off. Fast food places will embrace robots as soon as they are good enough and it’s cost effective. Factory workers, miners, and migrant fruit pickers will also find themselves out of work in the future. No robot train driver will ever make the kind of mistake that driver in Spain did, so eventually they’ll all be replaced, too.
It’s going to cause some big changes in our society. Not because everybody needs a job. But, everybody needs to eat. Everybody needs a home. Everybody wants a little bit of spending money in their pocket.
Changes will have to be made.
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