Michigan Labor & Employment Law Blog

Are $10 Big Macs Coming to a Restaurant Near You Soon?

According to the National news media over the last 72 hours, California is on its way to a $15 an hour minimum wage by the year 2022. That would give California the nation's highest minimum pay wage. Currently the wage in California is already very high at $10 an hour. While it is not yet law, the Democratic Party which is in control of the Governor's Mansion as well as the legislature, probably has enough votes to get it passed. What does that mean? 

Among other things, the $15 minimum wage will start a trend of increasing the minimum wage across the U.S. Apparently New York is already actively in talks to raise its minimum wage to $15 an hour from its current $9 an hour.

For those of you old enough to remember, 15 to 20 years ago there was a ground swell of support for "living wage" ordinances, i.e. an ordinance adopted by a township or city which stated that within that city's boundaries everybody had to get a certain amount of money per hour which typically was far in excess of the minimum federal wage. At the time, Detroit, would have doubled or tripled the minimum wage being paid to unskilled, uneducated positions such as parking lot attendants, so much so that some of them went out of business and others switched to automatic tellers.

We are currently seeing that same reaction by big business now. In the state of Arizona, within the last year, at least one prototype McDonald's restaurant has gotten rid of all of its cashiers and order takers and replaced them with ATM type machines that not only allow the person to press buttons to put in the order they want the way they want it, but also to pay for it at the same time. The only staff left at this restaurant are the people that are actually cooking the food.

So what does a $15 minimum wage get you? Probably a $10 Big Mac and probably people that used to work at McDonald's standing in the unemployment line wishing they could afford the old Big Macs at half the price. 

Categories: News & Events, Wage and Hour