Former McDonald’s CEO Ed Rensi appeared Friday on Fox Business and voiced opinions about the automation threat to employment.
Fmr. McDonald’s CEO: Human workers can’t compete with robot replacements, Fox Business, August 11, 2017
Former McDonald’s USA CEO Ed Rensi said regulation will force restaurants to turn to technology to make a profit.
“Not only is the minimum wage an issue but health care, rights to work, overtime hours, government regulation—if you look at the mounds and mounds and mounds of regulation that comes from the local, federal level it’s almost impossible to do business and make a profit,” Rensi told Stuart Varney on Varney & Co. Friday.
Rensi pointed out how Amazon has begun to use robots in its fulfilment centers.
“Look at what’s happening in retail with Amazon. Automation and robotics are going to start replacing people and they’ve got to become more efficient to make a profit,” he said. “There’s too much invested in quick service restaurants around the world across the United States. Too many dollars invested in fixed properties—[they have to] do something and that something they are going to do is automate and try to reduce the amount of labor and labor content.”
(Continues)
Being a former CEO does give Ed Rensi greater freedom to speak about automation-fueled job loss. I reported a year ago about his similar remarks: Former Restaurant Executive Declares a Robot Arm Is Cheaper Than $15/hour Humans.
A one-time CEO of McDonald’s, Ed Rensi, recently appeared on a Fox Business show and explained the financial facts about automation in the fast-food industry: “If the $15 minimum wage goes across the country, you’re going to see job loss like you can’t believe. I was at the National Restaurant Show yesterday and if you look at the robotic devices that are coming into the restaurant industry — it’s cheaper to buy a $35,000 robotic arm than it is to hire an employee who’s inefficient making $15 an hour bagging French fries . . . it’s going to cause a job loss across this country like you’re not going to believe.”
If America is on the brink of suffering massive job loss, then why is Washington continuing its immigration program as if nothing has changed? The time for importing foreign workers is over. There is no shortage of expert opinions about the automated future, and most think the technological job loss will be severe over the next couple decades.
Oxford researchers forecast in 2013 that nearly half of American jobs were vulnerable to machine or software replacement within 20 years. Rice University computer scientist Moshe Vardi believes that in 30 years humans will become largely obsolete, and world joblessness will reach 50 percent. The Gartner tech advising company believes that one-third of jobs will be done by machines by 2025. The consultancy firm PwC published a report earlier this year that forecast robots could take 38 percent of US jobs by 2030. Forrester Research Inc. has a more optimistic view, that there will be a net job loss of 7 percent by 2025 from automation. Therefore:
Automation Makes Immigration Obsolete
The current CEO of McDonalds Steve Easterbrook has to be more politically correct about automation and says things like, “I don’t see it being a risk to job elimination” (McDonald’s CEO says $15 hourly wage, robots won’t kill jobs, Reuters, May 26, 2017).
Meanwhile, the markets are curiously more concerned with companies saving money than customers having cash to spend — as if those things were disconnected. On June 22, CNBC reported: “McDonald’s shares hit an all-time high on Tuesday as Wall Street expects sales to increase from new digital ordering kiosks that will replace cashiers in 2,500 restaurants.”
Ordering kiosks are a labor-saving addition to fast-food establishments.
Greg Creed, the CEO of Yum Brands (which operates Taco Bell, KFC and Pizza Hut) sees future developments similarly. A recent MSN headline (March 28) read: Yum Brands CEO Expects Restaurants to Be Automated in 10 Years. He mused, “I think one of the key question is what are we as humans going to do in the next 10 or 20 years.”
