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The International Socialist Organization reports
The Burgerville Workers Union (BVWU) in Portland, Oregon, has become the first federally recognized fast-food workers union in the U.S.
With a vote of 18-4 in a National Labor Relations Board election, workers at Store #41 notched an important victory in the drive to organize the 1,500 workers at all 42 Burgerville sites located in Oregon and southwest Washington. BVWU spokesperson Emmett Schlenz says that six of the company's locations now have publicly active unions. Workers at another store have already filed for an NLRB election.
[...] The union has been pressing for a $5 an hour raise, stable scheduling, affordable health care, paid maternity/paternity leave, free childcare and transportation, and an end to the employer's use of e-verify to exclude undocumented immigrant workers.
Using direct action tactics, including mass picketing with community allies, occupations and a three-day strike at four restaurants, the all-volunteer BVWU has drawn the support of dozens of local unions, many community and faith-based organizations, and some elected officials.
The union called a boycott of Burgerville after a number of union activists were fired.
[...] The union's announcement of its victory stated:
In this moment of victory, we want to celebrate, yes, but we also want to turn our attention to the 4.5 million other fast-food workers in the United States. We want to speak to everyone else who works for poverty wages, who are constantly disrespected on the job, who are told they aren't educated enough, aren't experienced enough, aren't good enough for a decent life. To all of those workers, to everyone like us who works rough jobs for terrible pay, we say this:
Don't listen to that bullshit. Burgerville workers didn't, and look at us now.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Thexalon on Thursday May 03 2018, @05:14PM
Your math is hopelessly wrong.
To make up some numbers here: Let's say this place serves 30 meals in an average hour, for $10 each, and employs 6 people making $8.30/hr to keep sales and production going at that pace. That means, pre-raise, there is a total revenue for that hour of $300, and a labor cost of $50 and change, leaving $250 to be split between profits and the other expenses of running the business. If we now give each of those 6 people a $5 raise, and pass along the entire cost of that raise to the consumer via increased prices, labor now costs $80, the $250 is unchanged, so the total revenue on those meals needs to be $330, which divided among 30 meals is $11 each.
The more general formula here: wage change * number of employees / items sold per hour = price change per item. Or, in shortened form, dW * E / S = dP.
To get the kinds of price increases you're implying, for a $5 wage increase, you'd need to have E/S >= 2, which would mean there's an awful lot of employees selling not a lot of burgers. Which would mean the place is already in trouble.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.