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Well, the lines appear to be have been drawn. If the union comes it, squeezes the price structures, we'll see what we've already seen in other higher wage cities such as Seattle. More people out of work, and fewer hours for those that remain. McDonald's has already has exhibited their automated kiosks to reduce the staffing. One has to question whether this is forward progress.
I'm not sure the data say much has happened in Seattle. The economy is doing fine and employment of affected workers is up. Some of the data appear to indicate that the rate of growth is slower in Seattle than in neighboring areas not affected, but the differences are small.
And the automation argument could have been made at any time in American history, really. Of course as wages go up, there is more incentive to automate, but firms will automate whenever the technology is feasible. There is already a HUGE incentive to automate a bunch of tasks - low wage worker turnover is huge, and often unreliable, just as a function of low wage work. Amazon is reportedly automating their warehouses even in states like TN with no minimum wage laws beyond federal - raising wages for those workers doesn't seem like it would have a big impact other than perhaps speeding it up just a bit.
I'm a little agnostic on minimum wages, but I do support the ability of workers to join a union and then bargain for wages and benefits. I don't see a real problem when, e.g., McD and other large companies can use their clout derived from their immense size to demand concessions on their behalf and then allowing workers to collectively bargain from a position of relative strength versus one woman against McD. IMO, that's a far better and more market oriented approach than the sledgehammer of raising wages across every company and every class of employee to $15, say.
One thing that seems always ignored is the fact that the value added for these positions doesn't warrant more than minimum wage. The market values the contributions that those jobs make at the that wage. How much value added is in the job when just about anyone off the street can be shown how to do the job in 5 minutes? For that job the balance point is, as it always is in markets, labor supply and demand.
I understand, and it does depend on how you measure value added. If you automate 10 tasks in McD, production per hour of labor goes up, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the employees got any more individually productive, but that's true when we automate plants. Just think about Ford's changes in the production line - some guy who was working on many parts of the car now might just install side panels - that's it. Or maybe the right front panel, while the guy next to him does the left front which requires less actual skill but allowed Ford to churn out many more vehicles per worker. And for a couple hundred years as the productivity of the economy went up, wages and living standards followed, from the bottom to the top, and it's not at all clear that individual workers were more 'productive.' For a long time the economy got more productive, but those gains went mostly to the top few percent.
The 1) government or 2) union mandated wage hike serves no more than to distort the market, to change the market conditions, and, in which case, McDonald's will come out with their automated kiosks, with other fast food vendors competing in the same markets to follow, the business' response to the changed business conditions. Many seem to be in denial that businesses do change in response to changed business conditions, and often not the way which is desired nor their intent, in fact, often quite the opposite.
IMO, those are different - unions have to negotiate/bargain for wages same way McD bargains for the price of beef. It's no more a distortion of the "market" than saying McD can demand a lot lower price per pound of beef because of its size than can a mom and pop hamburger joint. Unions just provide a bit more clout than individuals, but they can no more dictate wages than McD can dictate to a farmer to get beef at 20 cents a pound.
And as to automation, again, that's going to happen with or without wage increases. The price of automation will come down and restaurants who can get away with making their customers type in an order on a screen will do it at minimum wages soon enough. It's already happening - the Chili's Restaurant near me has automated kiosks on every table, and we have federal minimum wages.