If there’s anything the Seattle Times editorial board hates more than the $15 minimum wage, it’s unions!
It is easy to substitute McDonald’s corporate face for the word “franchise” and feel no pang of sympathy. But in reality, franchise owners are often small, family-owned businesses, which get the use of a copyright, advertising, training and group buying discounts. In exchange, franchises typically pay between 4 and 7 percent of gross profits.
Unions dislike this business model and the low wages usually paid by quick-serve retailers, and have worked with some success to unionize fast-food workers. In the political pressure cooker of the $15 Now movement last year, Seattle Mayor Ed Murray and the City Council sided with the unions, and against the small-business owners who are franchisees.
… In siding with the union pressure, Seattle sided against not only fast food chains, but also against pet groomers, barbers, businesses providing in-home care to elders and people with disabilities, and others.
Yup, that’s the Seattle Times’ narrative, and they’re sticking to it: this is a struggle for survival by small, locally-owned businesses (like McDonalds, Burger King, and Subway) against the dastardly political machinations of the IBFFWS (the International Brotherhood of Fast Food Workers or Something), the all-powerful—yet curiously nonexistent—fast food workers union!
What a load of crap.
To be clear, there is no fast food workers union, and while there was certainly a successful effort to organize fast food workers, there was no real attempt to actually unionize them—a virtually impossible task given our weak labor laws and the franchised structure of the fast food industry. So no, the mayor and the council most certainly did not “side with the unions.” They sided with the fast food workers who risked their jobs by walking out in demand of a $15 minimum wage.
The Seattle Times’ effort to spin this into a clash between small business and BIG LABOR is simply bullshit. The story of declining wages in America is the story of the declining bargaining power of labor, and fast food franchise workers are the most disenfranchised workers of all. “We beat them on the federal level, and we beat them on the state level,” International Franchise Association lobbyist Dean Heyl recently bragged at a meeting called by the Koch-backed ALEC to strategize opposition to local minimum wage hikes like Seattle’s. And that’s what this lawsuit is really about: a Koch/ALEC/IFA plot to keep fast food workers as powerless as possible.
Shame on the Seattle Times.
Apparently Goldy does not know that McDonalds, Subway, Burger King doesn’t actually own the business, just the “name”, and that the people who own these franchises are exactly that local and meeting the definition of small business even though the brandnis national. Most franchises have less than 100 employees under any given Business Tax ID # even with multiple locations. The problem is Goldy can’t dishonestly demonize small local business like he can large national companies.
Since the article referred to efforts made last year, I wonder if it’s just possible that one of the unions the Seattle Times referred to was SEIU.
The Service Employees International Union, which has spent more than $10 million underwriting the fast-food movement…
…
“We’d like to see these protests by home care workers spread to other cities and states,” said Mary Kay Henry, president of the service employees’ union. “We’d like it to get as big as the fast-food protests.”
Ms. Henry said that the one-day strikes had already had some success, drawing attention to the prevalence of low wages and influencing decisions by Seattle to adopt a $15-an-hour minimum wage and San Francisco to consider one.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09......html?_r=0
Perhaps, just perhaps, instead of non-existent fast-food unions, the Times was referring to the existing unions, which were trying to help the workers create one. Looking at the Times’ sentence, “Unions dislike this business model and the low wages usually paid by quick-serve retailers, and have worked with some success to unionize fast-food workers.”, it’s readily apparent that the Times doesn’t believe that a fast-food workers’ union existed. The Times explicitly acknowledged that the unions were helping the efforts of fast-food workers to create a union for themselves. The Times never stated that those efforts were successful.
Shame on Goldy’s non-existent editor.
IFA members (franchisees; small-business owners) should realize that while their paid memberships may fund lobbyists whose work benefits them (often by damaging workers), it also provides a convenient single leash for franchisors to yank.
Every dime kept out of workers’ pockets allows franchisors to keep their fees in the 4-7 percent of gross profits range cited by the Seattle Times. Franchisees should use the IFA to organize themselves and punch up at their corporate overlords to reduce franchise fees (or create their own group if need be) instead of always punching down on their workers.
Also, Wikipedia lacks an article on the IFA (because it was deleted in 2013), so maybe somebody should do a little digging and write one up. It’s certainly relevant.
Kidding @ 1
“Apparently Goldy does not know that McDonalds, Subway, Burger King doesn’t actually own the business, just the “name””
Yes he does, you fucking idiot. He has written about that very fact numerous times. And nothing Goldy wrote here suggests otherwise.
WE NEED BETTER TROLLS!
Sloppy Travis Bickle @ 2,
What in bloody hell are you babbling about now? Nobody denies that unions were behind the $15/hr campaign. And everyone knows that there have been unsuccessful attempts to unionize fast food workers in the past. The fact remains, THERE IS NO FAST FOOD WORKERS UNION.
The article you cite offers nothing to the conversation.
Perhaps you can contribute something productive to he conversation. Can you refute Goldy’s main point?
And, please, please, please, engage your brain before “sharing” any additional “nuggets of wisdom” with us.
Darryl @ 5
Well, for one thing I would suggest that if a single union (see link @2) dropped $10M+ into supporting the fast-food workers’ efforts to organize and unionize, and were that union to be successfully formed and generally in opposition to interests of small businesses, which most franchise locations are, I wouldn’t refer to that as bullshit.
Formidable, maybe – $10M is nearly double what SEIU spent
https://www.opensecrets.org/outsidespending/detail.php?cmte=Service+Employees+International+Union
in the 2014 federal election season.
But not bullshit.
SEIU, presumably, might end up affiliating with or possibly even swallowing up that newly-formed fast-food workers’ union at some point, thereby swelling its membership ranks, increasing its dues base, and increasing its influence.
And we’d see more SEIU v. IFA strife.
Big labor vs. small business.
So I take issue with that point of Goldy’s, the same way I take issue with an apparent insistence of his that the Times somehow referred falsely to an existing fast-food workers’ union. The Times didn’t.
@4 “survival by small, locally-owned businesses (like McDonalds, Burger King, and Subway)”
The franchises mostly are small businesses that are locally owned, they are not the actual corporations of McDonalds, Burger King, or Subway, but for the sake of demonizing Goldy paints them as such.
@7 The franchisors are benefiting from a corporate structure that makes it impossible for workers to unionize, and thus eliminates their power to negotiate for a better deal. The NLRB has already ruled that the corporate chains are “joint employers,” and Seattle’s minimum wage ordinance treats them as such. The fact that they are technically individual small businesses doesn’t change the fact that the chains operate as a single corporate entity from the perspective of customers, suppliers, and employees.
On a similar note, consider a major hotel. The property itself might be owned by one company who leases it to a hotel management company who acts as a franchisee of the larger chain, and then contracts out the housekeeping to one contractor, the front desk to another, the restaurants to a third, and so forth. A large high-end hotel might have well over 500 workers on their various shifts, but with no one corporate entity employing more than a 100… all small businesses by your definition!
The truth is, there should have been no distinction between large and small businesses; we should have had a straight 3-year phase in, period. If the IFA would prefer that, great.
Struggling small businesses on the way to getting fleeced by greedy predacious wage earners? Must be a Sharon Pian Chan editorial.
Sloppy Travis Bickle @ 6
” I wouldn’t refer to that as bullshit.”
OF COURSE you wouldn’t. You are so caught up in your anti-Union derangement syndrome bullshit that you cannot think straight.
Let’s see. The Seattle Times says “Mayor Ed Murray and the City Council sided with the unions”, specifically calling out the “unions…that have worked with some success to unionize fast-food workers”–a claim that is incorrect (unless you misleadingly interpret “some” to mean, “not zero”).
But there is a more direct, reasonable, target to suggest for the Mayor and City Council: People. People who work for minimum wage and cannot earn a living wage. They sided with people, who vote, send letters, show up at Council meetings.
So the dichotomy is false. It’s bullshit. There is a far more parsimonious explanation of who the Mayor and City Council sided with.
And then you continue the bullshit by suggesting the SEIU might gain some benefit in the future. A straightforward reading of your comment is the implication that the Mayor and City Council sided with SEIU because they someday might represent a small fraction of some minimum wage fast food workers in Seattle.
Bullshit. They sided with workers.
And you’ve lost touch with reality.
“On a similar note, consider a major hotel.”
I think you at least pretty much described the ownership/management chain of the Fairmont-Olympic. The UW, Fairmont Hotels and Resorts, Cadbridge and a Canadian pension fund.
Oops!
“small, family-owned businesses”
If you call several million dollars of investment capital “small” … you can’t even get considered for a McDonald’s franchise unless you put up at least $1 million, and how many people have that? Not your average fast food worker, that’s for sure. And many of these “mom and pop” franchisees own multiple outlets. Instead of describing them as “small, family-owned businesses,” it would be more accurate to call them “local franchise chains.” The 125 shares of McDonald’s stock I own is puny in comparison to the owner equity in every single one of these “small, family-owned businesses,” although at about $94 a share, it’s a bloody fortune to someone working for $9.34 (or $15) an hour.
@1 Goldy does know that. And while a local fast food franchise chain is a “small business” compared to Boeing, General Motors, or Goldman Sachs, it certainly isn’t “small” from the perspective of any hourly worker, especially one working for minimum wage, or in relation to the financial resources of an average household. Owning one of these “small” businesses is not something those workers can aspire to; the owners are multimillionaires, and you can’t even get considered for a McDonald’s outlet unless you put up at least $1 million of your own money, which is out of reach for most the people in this country. So, please, spare us the crap about how “small” these businesses are. Any owner of a business employing 100 people is very rich by most people’s standards.
@2 “The Times explicitly acknowledged that the unions were helping the efforts of fast-food workers to create a union for themselves.”
And that’s a crime in America? In fact, it used to be. In the 19th century, when capitalists ran amok, unions were illegal and trying to organize workers to bargain for better pay and working conditions landed people in jail — if they weren’t shot by company goons and their hired police thugs. Yes, we know you conservatives want to make us all live in the 1890s again, but we’re not buying what you and the Seattle Times are selling.
@4 “WE NEED BETTER TROLLS!”
Our sub-minimum-wage trolls are a perfect illustration of the dictum that you get what you pay for. If employers want to pay $9.34 (or $7.25, or nothing) for labor, they’ll get their money’s worth, not more. Goldy’s trolls are paid nothing, and they’re worth nothing. The one follows the other. You always get what you pay for.
@6 “were that union to be successfully formed and generally in opposition to interests of small businesses”
Unions don’t exist to oppose the interests of businesses, small or otherwise. If a business fails, its workers don’t have jobs. The idea is for business and labor to prosper together. That’s the model that worked so well for the American economy in the 50s and 60s, before Republicans began dismantling it. By the way, now that Gov. Walker has signed Wisconsin’s right-to-work law, businesses have already started leaving that state.
http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/.....g-in-minn/
Republicans just don’t get that you can’t create prosperity for yourself by beating down someone else’s income. The problem with Republicans is they see the economy as a zero-sum game. The problem with zero-sum games is they eventually sum to zero.
@10 What do you expect from a serial bullshitter?
Funny how all the economic models devised by business owners work a lot better for business owners than for workers. We had a union movement in this country in the first place because workers couldn’t get a fair shake from business owners without them. Nothing’s changed. Workers still need unions, and for the same reasons. What’s wrong with the picture painted by the Seattle Times is that fast food workers DON’T have a union. But they have labor movement support, which is the next best thing. The business lobby and their shills (which include the Seattle Times and the likes of Sloppy Bob) act like unions are a terrible thing. No, they’re a GREAT thing for workers, and for America. The union movement created America’s middle class and most of this country’s prosperity. Unions are weaker now, and fewer workers are unionized, and look what kind of economy that got us.
@13 you do know most franchises are not McDonalds, and require a much, much lower and more affordable investment? That’s where you & Goldy lose the plot, ignoring reality to compare all businesses to the evil McDonalds, when the majority of small business is actually middle class. Much in the same disigenious way Republicans call all people receiving SNAP welfare queens or freeloaders, when in reality many have full time jobs, or are veterans. Both sides are so invested in demonizing anyone not in lock step with their ideology.
One thing I agree with Goldy on is there should have been no difference between large & small business, that inherently treats employees inequally and unfairly. If $15 is the number, or whatever the (much needed) increase is going to be, make it the same for everyone, employee & employer alike. Instead we got a Frankenstein policy crafted by political deal making.
“Funny how all the economic models devised by business owners work a lot better for business owners than for workers. ”
Um, yeah: that’s the whole purpose of opening a small business.
@ 10
So we’re to simultaneously believe that it was the workers, and not the influence represented by $10M+ funneled (nationally) to them in organization and indirect (and direct) payments from SEIU, that the mayor and City Council sided with, while at the same time that it wasn’t the individual business-owning members of the IFA who came out the losers, but the national entities that provide IFA with support not unlike that provide to the workers by the unions.
Got it.
I’m a little concerned that our paper of record doesn’t understand the difference between copyright and trademark law, or that they couldn’t be bothered to ask anyone who’s taken even a semester of IP law. Because, you know, I’d think a “newspaper” would care a little about copyright.
Frank Blethen has proven time and time again that his newspaper is nothing more than a mouthpiece for his big business at the expense of the middle class agenda.
The only thing unions have ever done for me is to COST ME JOBS!
@22 “Um, yeah: that’s the whole purpose of opening a small business.”
And earning enough to live on is the whole purpose of working in a job. Why do rightwing freaks talk like there isn’t room for both? There was a time in this country when business owners and workers both prospered. If either one gets too greedy, neither will prosper.
@26 There are lots of openings at chicken farms in right-to-work paradises like Arkansas, why don’t you try them …
What risk do the workers take? They’re not the ones risking capital, sweat and tears starting a small business.
Sloppy @ 23,
What are you babbling about?