Yet another Yahoo Finance article bashing any notion of workers rights or economic gains fails (yet again) to uncover exactly how much profit corporate management pilfers from local “entrepreneurs” and communities. Each time I see any headlines on Yahoo Finance railing against wins for hardworking people, my eyes can’t roll hard enough at the failure to consider perspectives other than those who believe that corporations are people with god given rights. Let’s dig in.
The article details that a Fosters Freeze location in a rural California town will be shutting down because the state minimum wage for fast food workers increased to $20 on April 1, 2024. The manager of the local franchise in Lemoore, California waited until April fools day to text all the workers the location would be shutting down because he “didn’t want to ruin their Easter Sunday” which implies that the layoffs were well known ahead of April 1st. The story got me wondering how much it costs to start a Fosters Freeze location and I found this on their corporate franchise website:
Franchise fees alone are $45,000 – which i suppose decreases if an individual proprietor decides to open multiple – all for basically branding and legal support. The work is still carried out by the individual proprietor or whomever gets hired to do so. And that’s just the “initial” franchise fee. I imagine it gets higher over time as corporate investors seek higher returns “due to inflation”. All of this means that less money stays in local economies and the pockets of individual proprietors/investors. A quick search for how much it costs to start a fast food restauraunt in Orange County California offers that $1million is the starting point according to some reddit restaurant owners:
The first cost that owners cut is labor. This is probably why boots and AI are such a hot topic for those who desire to own capital and amass individual profit.
Anyways, this whole post is just a rant against people and Yahoo News for unquestioningly presenting rhetoric and viewpoints against workers rights and gains. But if any of these capitalists really understood their own system, they’d understand that innovation is required for profit gains and every innovation that has succeeded in making huge gains considers how to make people’s lives easier, not harder. Restaurant owners that can’t afford to stay in business should reconsider the viewpoints presented by corporate powers that be instead of blaming and belittling the very people that directly affect their precious profits in the first place – workers and customers. I become further entrenched in this belief every time I read any article published by Yahoo Finance. In their beloved systems, they say that businesses which fail to innovate, that products which consumers decide they don’t want to spend money on, ultimately should fail except it seems where corporate and individual owner profits are concerned.
It’s also high time that workers are offered the same opportunities to become owners of the types of businesses where owners prioritized profits over people and ultimately failed. Employees and workers hold power in their collective knowledge and labor, but individual franchise owners and corporate institutions love to make the public believe otherwise.
I was glad to see at least one not publicly traded fast food restaurant vowing to keep prices the same for now with the new law: In n’ Out. While this company cites the Bible on their food packaging, they seem to actually believe and act out the teachings about money. The owner seems to understand what makes the company great: good products and good people.
I’ll end with this: Blaming workers wages as being the sole reason for business failure will always indicate to me that the business owner priorities were wrong in the first place. I will never find inspiration in a sob story of any individual business owner or corporate entity who dug their own grave. I will always take more inspiration from the hardworking people who may have been excluded from the hegemonic economy and have done more with less, always with dignity and humanity for others that may be different than themselves.
Leave a Reply