Union-Backed “Day of Action” Will Hurt Teens
As teens get ready to look for summer jobs, worker centers are rallying to raise the minimum wage, making it harder for youngsters to find employment and more likely that they will spend their vacations unemployed and on the streets.
May 15 is an international day of action for the Service Employees International Union, which is calling for strikes at fast food restaurants through its worker centers, including Fight for 15 and Fast Food Forward. The SEIU wants restaurants to pay fast food workers $15 an hour.
No matter that an increase in the federal minimum wage of over 100 percent will price low skill workers—many of them teens—out of the job market. With a teen unemployment rate of 19 percent in April, 37 percent for African American teens, young people need a lower minimum wage, not a wage floor that is doubled.
Increasing the minimum wage to $15 an hour will encourage employers to invest in electronic ordering boards and pre-made food, reducing the demand for workers. Higher-skilled workers will replace the low-skilled. Plus, the prices of fast food will rise, so fewer people will go out to eat. That means fewer jobs.
Worker centers are self-appointed labor organizations that advocate for worker rights through demonstrations, lobbying, and community organizing. Some are tax-exempt. They seek to persuade employers to change wages, hours, and terms and conditions of employment. Some offer education, training, employment services, and legal advice.
Worker centers have been complaining that fast food chains are multinational corporations that make billions in profits, and that they can afford to pay more.
Ron Oswald, general secretary of the International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers’ Associations (IUF), said, “This is just the beginning of an unprecedented international fast-food worker movement—and this highly profitable global industry better take note.” The IUF represents 12 million workers in 126 countries.
Fewer than 3 percent of working Americans earn minimum wage, and increases will damage job prospects for teen and unskilled workers, who already face high unemployment rates. A higher minimum wage means fewer jobs, more discouraged workers.
The absurdity of worker center protests can be seen by the selective strikes. If activists were truly interested in $15 per hour wages, retail stores such as Apple and the Gap should be as worthy candidates for strikes as fast food restaurants. Their employees are service workers, just like fast food workers, and many make minimum wage.
Apple, and other organizations that pay workers entry level wages, such as Whole Foods and Urban Outfitters, have been spared the corporate shaming that the SEIU and worker centers are inflicting on fast food companies. Apple appeals to those who support liberal causes and the union agenda, so the union leaves them alone.
Union membership has been declining steadily over the past 30 years, and reached 6.7 percent of private sector workers in 2013. Unions are looking for a new game plan to stem the tide. Hence the new focus on worker centers, and the public shaming applied selectively to corporations that, for whatever reason, anger those who support the union agenda.
Under the U.S. labor laws, unions have to hold elections, so that workers can elect representatives. Unions represent workers because officials are elected in supervised elections.
Worker centers are not official representatives of workers, including fast food workers, because they have not been elected.
Unions have to file financial disclosure forms with the Labor Department, specifying how they spend their money. Worker centers do not have to file these forms.
When workers are given the choice of joining a union in a supervised election, they often vote no. Many prefer not to pay union dues, and realize that the costs are not worth the benefits. One recent example: employees at a Tennessee Volkswagen plant earlier this year turned down the opportunity to be represented by the United Auto Workers.
Reports filed with the Labor Department show that the number of members in SEIU Healthcare Michigan declined from 55,265 in 2012 to 10,918 in 2013, an 80 percent loss, because Michigan stopped defining home healthcare workers as public employees, giving them the choice over whether to belong to the union. The union’s dues declined to $7 million in 2013 from $12 million in 2012.
Unions are relying on worker centers to do their dirty work. But doubling the minimum wage for fast food workers would cause restaurants to cut back on hiring and put more low-skill Americans, such as teens, out of work. As summer vacation approaches, we want more teens working, not fewer.
Diana Furchtgott-Roth, former chief economist at the U.S. Department of Labor, is senior fellow and director of Economics21 at the Manhattan Institute, You can follow her on Twitter here.
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