As we recently discussed, the SEIU tipped its hand on an upcoming magic trick by inventing an illusory union after failing to organize fast-food workers through card signing and the NLRB election process. This stunt followed the SEIU’s lobbying extravaganza for California’s FAST Recovery Act, AB 1228, pushing the fast-food minimum wage to $20 per hour on April 1. Preemptive side-effects of this legislation include layoffs and fast-tracking of automation, so the SEIU’s antics are hurting the workers that it claims to want to represent.
Negative byproducts of union tactics are nothing new, as many workers can attest to after experiencing the realities of living under a union constitution. Yet it’s quite something that the SEIU has managed to trounce workers who technically haven’t even signed up for union membership. Legislation with a significant impact on the bottom, like AB 1228, often has unintended consequences. In an industry where lobby kiosks are ubiquitous, that means exploring automation to replace or supplement human labor.
Stuart Kerr, VizExplorer Senior Vice President of Development and AI, has drawn an apt analogy in a LinkedIn post: “Unions are playing checkers, while companies are playing chess.” Kerr further explains that “automation has already been operationally deployed that can replace line workers” at McDonald’s, Burger King, Jack-in-the-Box, and Carl’s Jr in California.
Other restaurant industry tidbits further back up this growing trend:
- The number of quick-serve restaurants experimenting with automation continues to increase. Those chains include Chipotle (which has been frying tortilla chips via robots) and Sweetgreen (which uses a robotic food-prep service to prepare salads). Many companies, including White Castle, Wendy’s, Del Taco, Sonic, and Panera, are testing AI bots to take drive-thru orders. Some restaurants also use Google Cloud to suggest personalized recommendations when customers order through an app.
- The overall U.S. shortage of food-service workers will not slow the automation trend a bit, although many businesses still hope to grow their numbers with actual workers, too. Restaurant Business Online detailed how employers have been pulling out the stops – including child care and tuition assistance, armed service veteran-to-franchisee initiatives, and mental health benefits – to entice workers and enlarge their labor pool. Sadly, that still leaves around 225,000 open food-service positions in Texas, let alone the rest of the U.S.
- The SEIU’s One Fair Wage arm, which devotes substantial efforts to ending a lower minimum wage for tipped workers, could further push the restaurant industry towards automation. Of course, the irony in One Fair Wage’s approach is that workers have vocalized how ending the tipped minimum wage would lower their overall pay, yet the movement persists. As a side note, Congress is questioning why the IRS allows One Fair Wage to maintain 501(c)(3) non-profit status for tax purposes despite their participation in political advocacy while lobbying against the restaurant industry. Stay tuned there.
The takeaway: The food-service industry’s automation floodgates are open. This is happening – between California’s sudden shift toward a much higher fast-food minimum wage and labor shortages throughout the rest of the U.S. – whether anyone wants it or not. The roller coaster has taken off, so hang on tight.
