Fast Food Workers

ORLANDO, Fla. — The American fast food industry is built on two pillars: cheap hamburgers, and cheap labor.

As economists try to understand why wages have stagnated across the country’s economy, they are examining the cheap labor part of the equation closely. A few have zeroed in on an obscure clause buried in many fast-food franchise agreements as a possible contributor to the problem.

Some of fast-food’s biggest names, including Burger King, Carl’s Jr., Pizza Hut and, until recently, McDonald’s, prohibited franchisees from hiring workers away from one another, preventing, for example, one Pizza Hut from hiring employees from another.

The restrictions do not appear in a contract that employees sign, or even see. They are typically included in a paragraph buried in lengthy contracts that owners of fast-food outlets sign with corporate headquarters.

Yet the provisions can keep employees tied to one spot, unable to switch jobs or negotiate higher pay. A lack of worker mobility has long been viewed as contributing to wage stagnation because switching jobs is one of the most reliable ways to get a raise.

from the NYTimes

Worker mobility in fast food stores

Is just about nil, closing many fine doors

For toilers who want to move up in their field,

But find that their bosses this point will not yield.

This is a restriction that makes little sense;

It has no relation to skills or expense.

Perhaps it is meant just to rub noses in

The fact that the rights of their workers are thin.  

What is the reason a dull franchise holder

Lets profit margins his soul start to moulder?

But then if they paid more for working a grill,

A Big Mac would cost you a ten dollar bill.