The first Starbucks ever unionized last week in Buffalo, NY and it brings on a pretty big question. Why aren’t more fast food places unionized? 40% of fast-food workers live in poverty.
$12.43 is the average wage.


28,000 teenagers are sent to the hospital yearly, due to accidents working fast food. Fast-food jobs aren’t very fun, fulfilling, and don’t add much experience. Starbucks just had their first union setup and it’s only in one store in Buffalo. After that, it’s pretty much nothing.

McDonald’s
Burger King
Dunkin
Subway
KFC

Nothing unionized. In fact, the largest fast-food chain unionized in the US is a restaurant chain called Burgerville, which has 40 locations and I’ll be honest and say I’ve never heard of them once until writing this. This puts in a big question of why they aren’t unionized and should they even be? Looking at why they aren’t, found a few simple reasons.

1. Age

The average fast-food worker is only 27 years old. The amusing thing about this is 47% of minimum wage workers are 16-24, but 3% are over 65. A small number, but a growing chunk of fast-food workers are actually people over 65. This means the average age being 27 is actually inflated noticeable and likely something more like 22-24. This is a big reason why unions in fast food just haven’t happened. They don’t stay there long and 44% of fast-food workers don’t last for over a year. This makes one case why they don’t unionize.

2. Money

$1,144 is the average weekly earnings for union workers in the US.
$59,488 a year
$832 is the average union due for 1.4% of salary. Fast-food workers average $25,800 a year.1.4% of their income would be only $361 a year. Getting to the $832 number would be 3.2% of the average fast-food worker's salary. On average, union workers make 11% more per year than nonunion workers in the same job, but it’s unclear if a union in fast food could get workers that boost. To get real union support, it’d cost $800+ a year like other unions, but an 11% salary hike would have over a third lost to dues. Something which they might be able to get, but chances are pretty unlikely. Money-wise, there’s a lack of interest in getting a big union to support, and the needed dues would likely cost more than actual salary/benefit hikes.

3. Replacements

This is ultimately the sad part, but a true one and that’s fast-food workers are fairly easy to replace. If someone is working in a factory, be it one making cars or even hostess cupcakes, there are thousands of jobs and many require some pretty unique skills. If 10-30% of those factory workers leave, that company is gone. It’d be impossible in a reasonable time to replace them. Fast food? A restaurant likely could handle a 30% labor drop and with job training only averaging 3-4 weeks, finding a new staff isn’t extremely hard. This isn’t to say fast-food workers don’t have value and can be replaced in a snap, but they just don’t carry the difficulty other jobs have to replace. That’s why fast food companies haven’t unionized. Young staff that isn’t there long.
Not enough money for big unions.


Easy to replace staff. That’s why they aren’t unionized, but the next question is the bigger one. Should they be? Yes.4.7 million people work in fast food in the US and I don’t ultimately believe they get the best deal. Hours?
TerriblePay?


Terrible Safety conditions?
Below average extra $1 an hour might not sound like much, but can actually people out. Be it a college student working part-time that prevents one student loan payment from happening or a 16-year old that may have a bill to pay for his/her parents. The case to make more is a good one. So how could this be fixed?The best thing to look at is just how difficult the union itself was to set up in Buffalo. The process took months of paperwork.
Was oversaw by larger union leaders.


Had anonymous votes, lawyers, and more. The attention on it was huge and a ridiculous amount of paperwork. Better reform might be allowing in company unions “yellow unions”, which were banned in the US in 1935. The reason is the claim that the union leaders/management shouldn’t be the same group of employees in the companies. A lot of countries banned these, but many claim larger union groups lobbied to ban them, largely due to them undermining them. Japan has them and they are working well.17% of the country is unionized, which is comparable to France, the Netherlands, and Spain. Also, much higher than the US at 10%. Hold similar salary benefits as regular unions.
Lower fees


Better relationships with the companies. The reason this may work is it’d be a much faster process to unionize and something companies fight less, versus the current model of outsourcing to a large group. All said and done, writing this due to the Buffalo Starbucks being an important story, and didn’t really love either side's commentary. On one side, I saw a camp overly bashing fast food companies and ignoring basic common sense on why unionization there is rare. On the other side, I just saw people who identify as capitalists seem to forget the free market the moment the right for unionization to come up.

This is really a pretty simple thing and I hope this Buffalo store is successful.