The National Retail Federation called the strikes “further proof that the labor movement (has) abdicated their role in an honest and rational discussion about the American workforce.”
And in the Wall Street Journal on Thursday, the conservative Employment Policies Institute ran a full-page ad with a picture of a robot making pancakes, warning that higher wages would mean “fewer entry-level jobs and more automated alternatives.”
“You can either raise prices and lose customers, or (automate) those jobs,” said Michael Saltsman, EPI’s research director. “The idea that restaurants are rolling in the money is not representative of the situation franchisees face.”
Dorian Warren, an assistant professor of political science at Columbia University who has published work on labor organizing and inequality, said new protests in the South are “a huge, huge deal.”
“The South has always been the model for low wage employment, from slavery to the Jim Crow laws, to the present. It’s also the most anti-union part of the country, so the fact that workers feel empowered enough to take collective action is enormous,” he noted.
(Writing By Atossa Araxia Abrahamian; Reporting by Karen Brooks in Austin, David Beasley in Atlanta, Steve Neavling in Detroit, Laila Kearney in Oakland and Atossa Abrahamian in New York; Editing by Andre Grenon, Jeffrey Benkoe and Richard Chang)
Article Appeared @http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/29/us-usa-restaurants-strike-idUSBRE97S05320130829