
‘No Poach’ Deals for Fast-Food Workers Face Scrutiny - leephillips
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/09/business/no-poach-fast-food-wages.html
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jjeaff
This is despicable. It's one thing for firms to do this for high paying white
collar jobs (like the SV no poaching scandal), but to do this to people making
poverty wages is just awful.

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blahblahblogger
It's really odd too - what's the advantage?

Not to be offensive but these people do low skilled work. You can onboard
another employee relatively quickly.

A part of me would think it's there to avoid turnover costs because I imagine
these businesses have decent turnover given the low quality job and pay, why
not bounce to a new job if this one sucks or is too stressful?

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igneo676
We had no poach deals with other franchises when I was a hiring manager. The
idea was:

1\. Other franchise owners knew each other by name and would call each other
up when they found their employee were hired by us. Enough harassment and you
tire or worry that they won't help you in situations like running out of
product or selling/purchasing stores from you

2\. The kind of person looking to sell themselves often were often trouble and
weren't what we were poking for. Signal to noise ratio was terrible in these
situations

3\. Since we paid so little, a wage war was a sort of Mutually Assured
Destruction and good employees were worth much more than we were paying them.
Why chance that?

4\. Training a new employee was a lot of time and money - a week with another
employee just to make them somewhat competent in their station and a month so
they could reliably hold their own. Then do that for every station the
employee was expected to work (5 - 6 for a non-kitchen employee)

I only "poached" if I was sure I would withstand a tongue lashing from the
office and I was almost told to stop the hiring process on one after I had
offered them a job.

Glad I'm out of that industry

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lovich
How is that not illegal collusion?

The franchises have set themselves up as separate companies for their own
benefit, but when it would benefit employees they work in concert?

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wmf
Legally, two different Arby's locations are independent competing companies,
but in practice they act as extensions of the parent company. (Similar to the
"independent contractor" nonsense going on in the "sharing economy".) So we're
really talking about poaching _within_ a company and there's pretty good
precedent that companies are allowed to have these kinds of internal rules.

~~~
wavefunction
As you noted there is a legal slant to this and that's all that matters if
we're hand-waving away ethics and morality.

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wmf
From an ethical perspective, the fact that all Arby's locations pay the same
doesn't sound that outrageous, but I don't work in fast food so maybe it's
really a tragedy.

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azernik
The whole point is that they _don 't_; that workers have been barred from
seeking jobs that would _pay better_ at another franchise.

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wmf
Unfortunately every company operates that way; once you accept a lowball offer
(which you usually don't even know is low due to salary secrecy) you can never
get out of the hole except by quitting.

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zacherates
... or getting a competing offer.

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Eridrus
So, these terms are horrible for low wage workers, but these are also bad for
tech workers.

Does anyone know any any groups in NY agitating to ban these terms for all
workers? I would be quite interested in participating in such a group. Bonus
points if anyone knows groups interested in restricting the rights employers
have to IP employees create outside of work hours/scope.

~~~
knuththetruth
I dunno about this specific issue, but the DSA are probably among the most
active proponents for labor rights issues and could definitely connect you
with other people working to combat this. I’d hit up the local chapter.

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gok
> The restrictions, often referred to as no-poach clauses, do not stop workers
> from switching from, say, an Arby’s store to a Wendy’s, but can keep an
> employee of one Arby’s location from taking a job at another.

That’s an interesting twist.

~~~
donbright
especially since alot of fast food spots are not owned by the fast food
company, they are owned by the franchisee who in all senses of the word,
except for meeting xyz standards of the brand, operates an independent
business entity.

next thing they will do is say that employees of one franchise of a
conglomerate brand cannot leave and go work for another franchise of the same
conglomerate brand (which happens to own 5 different brands, including
ChickenLicious, BuildaBurger, SteakMachine, FreshCrunchy, and SugarCoffee)

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iambateman
a question arose in a couple places about the difficulty of onboarding. I
worked at a fast food restaurant for 4.5 years (roughly 3K hours) during high
school and college.

When I started, I was asked directly not to switch to another store without
letting them know. It wasn’t a threat, just a courtesy. I believe the given
reason had something to do with anti-poaching.

Just a guess, but I could see a group of 6 people at one store saying “let’s
go over to the other store” together. Losing one person isn’t a big deal,
losing 6 people from a shift is an expensive pain. I doubt it happens often,
but it doesn’t feel like a stretch to me.

As far as onboarding goes, my job performance continued to improve for at
least 2 years. They were getting one hell of a bargain at $8.80 back in 2007.
When I started, it was mostly washing dishes. A few years in, our team could
push 130 cars and $1,400 through our drive thru in an hour.

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s73v3r_
Yeah, but those 6 people from one shift aren't all going to up and jump ship
at the same time for shits and giggles. If they're doing that, then it's
because they're feeling mistreated.

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JustSomeNobody
Companies have way too much power these days. What kind of person comes up
with this? How can you treat low wage employees like this? Have these people
no couth?

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Gibbon1
My Grandmother would mention what things were like in the 1920s and 1930's and
none of this surprises me at all.

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berbec
As bad as things are, we don't have employees working insane hours, in
horrible conditions, for poverty wages and being rewarded by losing limbs now
a days.

OH wait.... [1]

1: [https://www.propublica.org/article/trashed-inside-the-
deadly...](https://www.propublica.org/article/trashed-inside-the-deadly-world-
of-private-garbage-collection)

~~~
awinder
Also
[https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/05/08/exploitation-a...](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/05/08/exploitation-
and-abuse-at-the-chicken-plant)

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dev_dull
when I worked in fast food, many employees already worked two jobs at two
separate restaurants.

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kevmo
This sort of systematic wage suppression is why America is cruising towards
socialism. You can crush the workers only so much, then they rebel.

