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A former McDonald’s CEO says implementing $35,000 robots is less expensive in the long-term than paying employees $15 an hour — and who can blame him?
Ed Rensi, the former overlord of the Golden Arches, discussed his position on employee wages with FOX Business. Basically, he thinks we are all entitled babies. A short excerpt is below.
From FOX Business:
“I was at the National Restaurant Show yesterday and if you look at the robotic devices that are coming into the restaurant industry — it’s cheaper to buy a $35,000 robotic arm than it is to hire an employee who’s inefficient making $15 an hour bagging French fries — it’s nonsense and it’s very destructive and it’s inflationary and it’s going to cause a job loss across this country like you’re not going to believe,” said former McDonald’s (MCD) USA CEO Ed Rensi during an interview on the FOX Business Network’s Mornings with Maria.
He doubled down on his argument by suggesting a new wage system entirely:
“I think we ought to have a multi-faceted wage program in this country. If you’re a high school kid, you ought to have a student wage. If you’re an entry level worker you ought to have a separate wage. The states ought to manage this because they know more [about] what’s going on the ground than anybody in Washington D.C.,” he said.
I’m not going to pretend to be an economic expert — I dropped every college economics class I took before finals in a last-ditch effort to salvage my GPA — but this makes a lot of sense. I asked someone in upper management at my office what would happen if a federal $15 minimum wage increase was mandated and he literally scoffed and said, “Instead of eight interns per class, we’d hire maybe three — max.” That would suck for recent grads. Particularly me, a lifelong Professional Intern.
Look, $15 an hour is $120 a day before taxes. That’s $600 a week (How about that Grade A math, motherfuckers). Even in a major city like Chicago, that’s pretty solid — especially if your only skill is flipping beef patties. I speak from experience, because I have survived in this town for almost a year on less. And I work a job that requires, at minimum, a college degree. How sad is that?
With the minimum wage debate raging on and the new overtime rules taking effect for employees who make under $47,000 in salary, it’s definitely an interesting time to be a postgrad in the job market. Terrified Excited to see how this all plays out..
[via FOX Business]
Image via 1000 Words / Shutterstock.com
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Fuck em, the robot arm won’t judge me for ordering 4 mcdoubles when I get the drunk munchies.
I’m 100% in favor of replacing entry level restaurant employees with robots. At least a robot won’t spit in my food when I ask it for no pickles on my burger.
Spit AND the pickles are still on it
Now that is service!
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GTFO with your “£”, redcoat.
Still better than Kara.
Hard to justify paying a fast food worker more than we pay the people fighting for us overseas. Working at McD’s isn’t meant to be a career, either become skilled and advance or you’ll be priced out and replaced with a machine.
From what I understand about the #FightFor15 (lol), the issue isn’t that they want to make more money than soldiers or teachers or whoever else. They want the wages in this country to increase to at least put them in the same position as their grandparents, who could get a job out of high school at or near the minimum wage and support their family.
I think that idea has merit- we don’t need to be paying CEOs millions of dollars and at the same time have people who work for them getting on welfare programs because that’s the only way they can put food in their kids’ mouths and clothes on their backs.
Agree, but our grandparents’ generation also knew sacrifice. These people don’t just want food, clothes, shelter, but iPhones, new Nikes, Beats by Dre’, etc. Being poor used to mean you went without luxury and worked hard to improve your situation. Now it means complaining until you get what you think everyone deserves.
Yeah, but have you seen the latest Nike’s?
Our grandparent’s generation also didn’t have exorbitant costs of living. The amount for housing, healthcare, and education has skyrocketed. They may as well have been getting all of that for free compared to how it is now (and in the case of education, they pretty much did given that they could drop out of school at 13 and still have some chance of success).
The long and short of it is that the price of living has far outstripped ‘cost of living’ adjustments given by employers. I don’t think its right that CEO pay has skyrocketed in the last few generations, while the working class has gotten shat on. (sickleandhammer.jpg)
Paying someone according to how skilled they are isn’t a novel concept. It’s how any economy should work. People having hurt feelings are the reason this isn’t the case 100% of the time.
Well, you know how it goes around here; rampant inflation occurs, a financial crisis happens, then a war starts. It’s been a cyclical system for decades. The only difference now is with automation freeing up more people than ever before, imagine a 3rd world war with a mandatory draft that has a massive recruiting pool. Instead of ppl getting out of things by joining the manufacturing base for the war effort or going to college, more people will be available to fight once they create a new enemy far away and then slap a name over the face of fear because manufacturing is now outsourced or automated and going to college is much less adorable than before. Instead of flipping burgers and bagging freedom fries, these people should pick up skeet shooting, Night reconassense flashlight tag, learning to survive on next to nothing, and getting really good at Call Of Duty as a training exercise for the future.
“Know what your dollar is worth” ranks in the top 5 bits of wisdom I’ve received. If $5/hour had the purchasing power of a $50k/year salary, would you even need a $15/hour minimum wage? Much less, a minimum wage at all? Rampant inflation will destroy your purchasing power faster than a sub-par wage.
(I’m a shameless economic theory nerd. Keep more articles like this coming.)
This whole topic is incredibly stupid. $15 is a nominal number, and a few years down the line you’ll have the same issue of “you can’t support a family on $15 an hour” because of inflation. You need to be fighting to have your wage pegged to the CPI, that way it actually holds value over time.
Surely you can’t be expecting these people to understand the difference between real and nominal wages…
Good point I just get frustrated when I see things like this all over the media but not a single view from an economist. But again that would be making too much sense.
True and when they do have economists, it’s people like Paul Krugman. I’d pay money to watch him debate Thomas Sowell.
Can’t lie, just got a bit of a nerd boner at the mere thought of this debate.
Krugman would get destroyed harder than my Warriors were last night.
I’ll nominate Tom Woods for that debate too. Just as entertaining to listen to as Sowell, but a different approach.
I’ve worked across the street from McDonalds’ campus in Oak Brook for years. Every year, these morons protest. It’s really fun to watch….like a freak show at a carnival. They do clog up traffic though so that blows.
It’s bullshit, they closed the entrance road to my office from 3pm-6:30pm yesterday for the protesters, so I had to stay late.
“it’s inflationary”
yes, that’s the point
Arby’s in Canada had a mostly automated restaurant a few years back. Needless to say, was not disappointed.
Even though you were still at Arby’s? Wow.