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San Francisco Officials Are Planning To Ban Corporate Cafeterias, Force Tech Workers To Eat Out At Local Restaurants (nytimes.com)
"According to The New York Times, San Francisco officials are planning to ban corporate cafeterias to force tech workers to eat out at local eateries," writes Slashdot reader The Original CDR. Here's an excerpt from the report: Two San Francisco supervisors introduced an ordinance last week that would forbid employee cafeterias in new corporate construction. It is not clear whether the measure will pass, but it is a direct attack on one of the modern tech industry's most entrenched traditions. The ordinance, which seeks to force tech workers out of their subsidized cafeterias and into neighborhood restaurants, is the latest attempt by San Francisco leaders to make the tech companies that are migrating north from Silicon Valley adapt to life in the city.
"These tech companies have decided to leave their suburban campuses because their employees want to be in the city, and yet the irony is, they come to the city and are creating isolated, walled-off campuses," said Aaron Peskin, a city supervisor who is co-sponsoring the bill with Ahsha Safai. "This is not against these folks, it's for them. It's to integrate them into the community." Mr. Peskin's ordinance is also aimed at getting more out of a tax deal given to tech companies that would agree to move into a troubled area called Mid-Market. In 2011, the companies were given tax breaks on payroll and stock options with the hope that they would bring jobs and investment to the neighborhood, just a short walk from San Francisco's City Hall. Within a few years, a number of companies like Twitter, Square and Uber moved into Mid-Market. But despite initial excitement over the opening of a number of restaurants and shops, the neighborhood has not yet flourished the way many had hoped. Further reading: San Francisco Examiner, San Francisco Chronicle
"These tech companies have decided to leave their suburban campuses because their employees want to be in the city, and yet the irony is, they come to the city and are creating isolated, walled-off campuses," said Aaron Peskin, a city supervisor who is co-sponsoring the bill with Ahsha Safai. "This is not against these folks, it's for them. It's to integrate them into the community." Mr. Peskin's ordinance is also aimed at getting more out of a tax deal given to tech companies that would agree to move into a troubled area called Mid-Market. In 2011, the companies were given tax breaks on payroll and stock options with the hope that they would bring jobs and investment to the neighborhood, just a short walk from San Francisco's City Hall. Within a few years, a number of companies like Twitter, Square and Uber moved into Mid-Market. But despite initial excitement over the opening of a number of restaurants and shops, the neighborhood has not yet flourished the way many had hoped. Further reading: San Francisco Examiner, San Francisco Chronicle
the highest priority for the city.
They should all have to get to work in rickshaws, too, and buy their shoes from local cobblers.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Let's ban citizens from preparing meals in their households as well. What better to ensure the success of local eateries?
It wasn't enough the government wanted to tell you what to eat. It wasn't enough they took away your plastic straws. Now they want to tell you where you must eat.
At what point do people sit up and say "wait a minute, you don't need to be meddling in my life to this extent"? Are people oblivious to the slippery slope this kind of stuff always leads to?
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Would y'all please stop? We already have to many of your people in Texas now... This will only bring more of them! ;) (Just kidding... Y'all come on. Just remember why you left...)
Sounds exactly like the liberal paradise they all wanted. Always makes me think of this meme https://pics.me.me/wants-more-...
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Hm, well, speaking from experience, the corporate cafeteria is more like an attractive nuisance. It's good enough that you don't bother to go out, but not as good as what you'd get if you went out. And because everybody is doing it, if you don't, you stand out, which a lot of people aren't comfortable with.
I don't think this ordinance has a chance in hell of passing constitutional muster, but I actually think the idea behind it is good. Sometimes the only way to get the right result for individuals is to have a collective norm.
In order for a meal break to be unpaid for non-exempt employees, employees must be free to have their break onsite or to leave the premises if they choose. Employers can require employees to stay onsite during a meal break. However, if an employer requires this, the meal break is considered to be paid time.
If cafeterias or sufficiently large enough breakrooms are not provided, then it it's time to report every non-conforming company in SF to the California Department of Industrial Relations Sorry but state law trumps municipal code here!
"tech companies have become independent fiefs with dry cleaning, gyms, doctors, shuttle buses and bountiful free meals...
Fantastic quote from the article. The fiefdoms of tech campuses are creating a new kind of society: the corporate city, open only to those with a badge. On the large scale practiced in the SF Bay Area, this corporate coddling certainly seems to be capable of whittling away at the vibrance of city life.
NEWS RELEASE: "The independent city-state of Google has declared war on the city of San Francisco by poaching its best chefs." LOL.
Surely this would help local restaurants. Sheesh, this city seems determined to force the tech companies that make up a large percentage of the tax base to leave.
Facts have a liberal bias.
has a cafeteria. Companies put them in because they get you to work through your lunch in exchange for some food (and sometimes not even that, the places I worked just had cheap food, it wasn't free). This'll get shot down. These guys are just fishing for campaign contributions. The restaurants will get outbid by the the mega corps.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
"This is not against these folks, it's for them. It's to integrate them into the community."
Interesting concept. Perhaps we could try that with immigrants. See if we can get people who immigrate to the United States to respect the laws, learn the language, and integrate into the culture and society.
What? That's ridiculous and shows no respect for the immigrants? Why is it OK to force a company (a voluntary association of people) to respect the laws but not actual individuals? How come cities like SF like to think that they can thumb their noses at federal laws they don't like and then turn around and brow beat companies (and, indirectly, tax-paying citizens) with their own local laws? Will they applaud when those companies stand up to the inhumane overreach of the city government in the same way the city has stood up to the federal government?
... will make this unfeasible. Most companies I've worked for in recent years have been moving to a work day that starts at 8:30 and only allows 30 minutes for lunch. (Unless it's someone's birthday or a co-worker's last day. Then it's 2 hours.)
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
I was working at a tech company when they closed their cafeteria to do some renovation. Even though we had flex hours and could easily have left campus to eat, to my knowledge practically no one did. The company let a vendor come in and sell boxed lunches, a few people would order delivery but mostly people just brought their lunches. Unless the campuses are extremely small and there are nearby restaurants within an easy 5-10 minute walk, no one is going to leave for lunch. The onsite cafeterias are a convenience and that is it.
You need to try some of the cafeterias at the Silicon Valley companies. These aren't Sudexo pieces of shit. They have real chefs and actual food. I know at Facebook in addition to 2 cafeterias they had a burger shack, a pizza place, a noodle soup place, a salad place, a barbecue place, and frequent popups. And that was just the main campus, not the sattelites. The food tends to be pretty good, and if it doesn't do it for you the daily places work.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Two San Francisco supervisors suggested this. There are eleven city supervisors. The summary makes it sound like this is definitely happening.
Everybody hold your water. It's just some harebrained idea that two politicians raised to placate businesses they represent. I doubt it will really happen.
You are welcome on my lawn.
So probably will have very little effect.
Don't even try to bring your lunch, especially if you bring a straw. WTF is wrong with SF?
Zoid.com
When you believe that you know what is in other people's interests better than they do, regulation always seems like a great idea.
I do love that SF is being subjected to their own socialism though.
My initial thought was that this is ridiculous overreach. But the government regularly says where restaurants can and can't be. Framed as : You can't open a restaurant in your house, or your barber shop (I bet), or your office building—it is less unreasonable.
On the plus side, cities are supposed to be the most accountable governmental unit, and the easiest to leave.
Also, some drastic municipal ordinances (no smoking in restaurants, no plastic bags, no large sodas) come to be seen as common sense.
This law will have a negligible effect for many reasons:
1. It is addressing a problem that doesn't exist. The main problem faced by restaurants in SF is not "too few customers" but "too few workers", since people making waitress and dishwasher wages can't afford to live in SF. Customers aren't going to just wait longer to be seated. They will instead bring a sandwich and an apple in a paper sack and eat at their desk.
2. It doesn't actually ban "free food at work." . It bans new construction of cafeterias. But SF already rejects 95% of all building permits, and the NIMBYs and BANANAs prevent almost all new construction anyway. Existing cafeterias can still be used, and tech companies without cafeterias can just contract with an offsite caterer to bring in meals. Unlike the cafeteria workers, these caterers are likely to make the meals in Oakland or Daly City, and truck them into SF, so this may reduce jobs for SF residents.
Stupid laws have stupid unintended effects.
It's expensive to live there, it's overrun by homeless drunks and drug addicts, the streets are covered in human feces and whinny liberals keep sticking their noses in your business. Why not move to a state like Texas where there's so much land that you can build an entirely new city just the way you want it? San Francisco is a shit hole city, literally. You couldn't pay me to live there.
If your want to do your own Cyberpunk enclave, stay in the desert. Plain and simple. I totally get the SF officials on this one. ... Seems awkward.
I'm just wondering if this is the right measure to fix this
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
The turn around time for lunch is usually shorter. You walk down to the cafeteria. You grab lunch, eat it and are back at your desk inside the allotted lunch window. If you have to go out, then the travel time is up, there is weather to contend with, lines, its more of a hassle.
The tech companies have made the decision that providing lunch is a bennie and it keeps people inside the bubble longer. If San Fransisco passes the "no cafeteria" regs, expect the corporate offices to rent food trucks on a rotation to stop in front of their office, seven days a week. The press on the local food establishments will be insane. People don't want to integrate into the community, they want to work and go home. Forcing them to go out for take out just annoys them.
San Fransisco has a lot of growing up to do: They have to come to terms if they want the big companies to be in town, they need to build at least 100,000 more apartment units, quickly. And those will get snapped up in about 30 seconds with people screaming for more. Watching the city slowly destroy itself with the: "But we don't want to build anymore units because it will change the city" get trampled by the stratospheric rent rates has been fun to watch from a far distance.
Architectural plans are like computer source code with a couple of differences: You only compile once.
Hm, well, speaking from experience, the corporate cafeteria is more like an attractive nuisance. It's good enough that you don't bother to go out, but not as good as what you'd get if you went out. And because everybody is doing it, if you don't, you stand out, which a lot of people aren't comfortable with.
I don't think this ordinance has a chance in hell of passing constitutional muster, but I actually think the idea behind it is good. Sometimes the only way to get the right result for individuals is to have a collective norm.
My company isn't large enough to have a full cafeteria, so they do catering, and the catered food is as good as any local restaurant in the $10 - $20 price range I'd be willing to pay every day. The choices are limited so some people chose to eat out and no one cares.
I actually think the idea behind it is good.
Why stop at food? Why not require that employees purchase gas locally... and haircuts... and groceries... and everything else that could be purchased locally? After all, the employers are indirectly paying for all of that through the pay they give employees.
Or, if towns want employees to buy more local products, then maybe they ought to relax their tight zoning laws and allow much more housing to be built near the offices... then they wouldn't have to force people to shop locally, it would happen naturally.
Search your office for a "refrigerator" above a set capacity that could allow workers lunch "food" to be kept on site?
... wondering out onto the streets and using more of a wage to be forced by a government to buy what your own company can offer?
Could an advanced water fountain be a "cafeteria" as it allows for hot and cold drinks that are totally removing daily beverage profit from local eateries?
A government inspection to find an office kettle that could make instant coffee and tea on demand for office workers? Another search for any type of hidden "kitchen" area?
Government teams using infrared to look for any hot self-contained small cooking appliance between 11am and 2 pm?
Why should workers be forced by a government to spend their own wage in a way a government demands?
Who wants to walk out on the streets to walk around waste, drug use, tents, RV and crime?
When a really great employee cafeteria allow workers to eat and talk in a really nice area?
No crime, clean, great food, good people... vs
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Stupid laws have stupid unintended effects.
My admittedly brief personal experience with SF and what I've heard about it, that probably is accurate for a rather unfortunate number of the local laws.
I am just going to guess that they are Democrats. Because looking for new ways to restrict personal freedom and to treat adults like their own social experiment toys is what this party has become.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
This is probably crony capitalism, not socialism. The restaurant lobby bribes their way in.
Table-ized A.I.
Laugh all you want. Democrats are just that kind of party.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
I'm sure that the all the restaurants within a few blocks of Uber and Twitter HQ (which are pretty much next to each other) could handle the 5000 employees pouring out of Uber and Twitter between 11:30 and 12:30.
Maybe someone can tell these lawmakers the number of cafeteria works that will be laid off...
I have to admit I actually find this an interesting idea. But banning is kind of an overly authoritarian way to go about it. Maybe something like a "cafeteria license" where they make them pay extra to provide such a facility (and include all the inspections and other costs that go with it?), making it less economically viable to provide a cafeteria but earning extra revenue for the city from the companies that do. Or, maybe provide an incentive, like waive those costs if they allow local businesses to provide catering/delivery to those cafeteria areas.
Either way this is such a "bay area" problem. And we all know the real way to fix the bay area is to raze it with atomic flame.
See if we can get people who immigrate to the United States to respect the laws, learn the language, and integrate into the culture and society.
Whoa there buddy. You are all over the radar and trying to tie things that don't go together. Let's unpack it just a bit.
who immigrate to the United States to respect the laws
Those that do so legally, and I'm going to assume that's what you are talking about but what do I know, respect the law or they loose their status. That includes anyone and everyone who is not a natural born citizen. Though rare, even naturalized citizens can be deported for breaking the law if serious enough.
learn the language
Last I checked there wasn't a law that required any particular language. While I get that the majority of folks speak English in the US, there's not a strict requirement by any law to speak it anywhere. And I understand your point here but then that understanding gets derailed when you say:
Why is it OK to force a company (a voluntary association of people) to respect the laws but not actual individuals?
See you are making your argument here that not speaking English is against the law and well that's not true.
integrate into the culture and society
Again, there's not a strict law for any of that. And if there was it would beg the question of "Whose?" I can tell you from traveling around the country that there's a huge difference in "culture" between say, California, New York, Iowa, Texas, and so on. And hells bells there's big difference within States themselves. So you ask someone to "integrate" and what exactly are they supposed to integrate into? It's left really wide open there as to what your question is there, almost to a degree of bigotry, just saying. When you start saying things like, "Person ABC there isn't "American" enough" that's going to raise eyebrows as to what exactly you're meaning there.
How come cities like SF like to think that they can thumb their noses at federal laws they don't like and then turn around and brow beat companies (and, indirectly, tax-paying citizens) with their own local laws?
Because that's how our system of government works. Last I checked Congress hadn't regulated cafeterias within corporate buildings and so that ability to do so devolves, first to States, and then on down the chain of command there. Now I'm not saying that you have to like that law or anything and if it rubs you raw enough, I'll just give you the answer that my State currently has for those that don't like the current batch of abortion laws. Just move somewhere else. That's kind of how it's worked here in the US since like the start of the US. I really don't know what else to tell you there. If you don't like a city doing that, then don't live there or vote or both or neither, I don't really care what you do.
Will they applaud when those companies stand up to the inhumane overreach of the city government in the same way the city has stood up to the federal government?
Those aren't like things. Here's a rough outline for you.
Federal Government = A recognized form of public government within the US.
City Government = A recognized form of public government within the US.
Company = Not a recognized form of government within the US.
See how companies are slightly different? And it's been trending lately to try and treat companies much like citizens or even like organized government, and that's usually proven to be a bad idea, but if that's what the public wants, who am I to argue? Not me, because that's not really a point I honestly care about. Point being, you can't say "Will A blah to B, like B blah to C", when A is something that is completely unlike B and C. Those aren't equal things.
In short, I really had to say something here because the
Although, to be fair the ban on the bologna sandwich is not because of restaurants losing customers, but because SF has decided that meat is murder, you should have a nice quinoa-and-kale sandwich on stone-ground pita.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
"This is not against these folks, it's for them. It's to integrate them into the community." - Aaron Peskin
I believe that workers are perfectly capable of deciding to go out into the city for lunch. Why Mr. Peskin thinks this requires a city ordinance to accomplish this is beyond me.
Start requiring companies to enforce a 40-hour week or pay overtime. Require a sane amount of time for lunch, so employees have TIME to go out, go for a walk, etc without having to wolf something down at the company store ... I mean caf.
They can, and they will. This will get tossed out. It is just a NIMBY feelgood measure that everybody knows won't really go into effect.
"Secure building" -- sounds like a nicely appointed prison.
Even if it was constitutionally valid, it would be trivially easy to get around, as it only affects construction, but there is no rule that you have to keep using every room the same way in the future. As long as you don't have to remove structural supports, this is just a matter of labeling at the design phase.
Immigrants do respect the laws, learn the language, and integrate into culture and society. The technical term for that is "assimilation", and it's why America is called a "melting pot".
Contrast that with places like Germany or Japan, where foreigners can remain foreigners even after multiple generations. Jews in Europe weren't considered "German" or "Russian"; they were considered "Jewish" no matter how many generations their families had been on the land. But once they came to America they became simply "American", and we think of the work of Irving Berlin, Aaron Copland, Al Jolson, and the Gershwins as All-American music rather than "Jewish music".
You probably think of pizza and Budweiser as American foods! But only because those Italian and German immigrants that brought them over assimilated so well that you don't even realize their foreign origins. Now imagine if you weren't allowed into Italian restaurants because you're not Italian. You can bet that pizza wouldn't be considered American and there wouldn't be pizza shops on every corner.
But what does this have to do with government subsidies? SF decided that they could revitalize some neighborhoods by giving tax breaks to companies who move in. When the revitalization never materialized because the companies were making their own private restaurants instead of patronizing neighborhood businesses, the city decided to do something about it. Just like if Italians came into my neighborhood for tax subsidies and opened restaurants where only Italians could eat, I'd ask the city to do something about it.
dom
It's a city. There are restaurants and stores within walking distance of work. This isn't some office park where the Mickey Dee's is a mile drive away.
You're not even going to hire a dishwasher at minimum wage, because they would have a 3 hour commute. That's not enough pay to even live at the end of the BART line, they'd have to commute from farther east just to get to the BART station. And they can get about the same wage jobs in Oakland or Berkeley.
The economics of that are not actually a problem because of the high price of meals in SF, but restaurant owners tend to be Republicans who are allergic to paying over minimum wage, so they'll suffer a perpetual management nightmare with staffing problems and unhappy customers rather than pay what the market requires.
In the end, that's why there is so much more good food than in most cities, even while table service is below average. I'll leave the missing piece of that analysis as an exercise for the reader.
Because that's how our system of government works. Last I checked Congress hadn't regulated cafeterias within corporate buildings and so that ability to do so devolves, first to States, and then on down the chain of command there.
I am not making a value judgment on SF choosing to regulate corporate cafeterias. If they want to let them. The voters there in SF can decide if they like it or not. While it is true that Congress has not regulated cafeterias at the federal level, they do regulate immigration. So, in the way that a company operating in SF is a constituent of SF and subject to the applicable laws and regulations, SF is a constituent of the United States and subject to the applicable laws and regulations. In this case, Congress has constitutional authority to pass legislation related to immigration and the executive branch has a constitutional authority and responsibility to enforce those laws. The position that SF (and other local and state governments) take of obstructing the enforcement of those laws is just that: obstruction. I suspect that if a company in SF denied enforcement officials access to their corporate campus on humanitarian grounds, SF city officials will not be amused.
I work right in the 'meat' of Mid-Market and a third problem is that most of the restaurants that have opened in the area are 'concept' restaurants that a semi-famous local chef sinks a couple million bucks into, which results in the average lunch costing 25 bucks. Cavernous restaurants like that have shuttered at a pretty quick pace over the past couple years because they don't know how to cater to the techie lunch crowd. Meanwhile, Little Griddle, Ananda Fura (sp? I don't eat veggies), Sam's, The Market on Market and even the Subways in the area thrive. The food trucks at Soma Straet Food are often crowded as long as it's not rainy, and people have to walk a ways to get there.
Hopefully these big, prominent failures will start to give restauranteurs a clue about how to appeal to us nerds. When you're competing with free or subsidized food, you have to be different, fast, and reasonably priced (by San Francisco standards.) Nobody cares about your wine list (Dirty Water) or microbrew (that French place whose name escapes me.) Both those places were good for an occasional fancy lunch, but I'm not spending $25 on food every day, nor is anyone that works in the area.
Sandwiches nfm
The main campus at Facebook (Menlo Park) had a really good cafeteria when it was Sun Microsystems. The satellite buildings had a single sandwich bars, so employees would drive out in a convoy to the nearest restaurant for lunch. Those places were so busy, that there were waiting lines outside for 30 minutes.
Pita is so 2012. Everything comes on avocado toast now.
"Welcome to the Restaurant Extragavanza. Do you have any reservations?"
"Well, since you asked, the wine list looks a bit pricy and the wallpaper looks a bit tacky."
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Not being in a suburban hell that bores the crap out of 20 and 30-somethings of above-average intelligence?
Not forgetting company scrip, which was a corporate currency which was used to pay wages and could be used to buy items from the company store, pay for accommodation at the company hotel and meals at the company bar.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Smart people and tech firms are flocking to the SF Bay Area. If anything, it's a victim of its own success.
I think this is a great idea. There's nothing to stop a company from having caterers bring food in, or setting up a meal voucher program, much like my company does for my commute costs. They give me a debit card with which I can add value to my Clipper Card. Why not issue debit cards for use in buying meals from nearby vendors?
How much do you think the homeless and crazy people like sharing the streets with selfish assholes?
You described a company town, a substantially different beast from feudalism. The latter is a bunch of little shit fiefdoms incapable of meeting all the needs of residents, the former is potentially capable of meeting all the needs of residents (and being held accountable by them, much like any other town incorporated in the US.)
Any of the many things they could would effectively reduce world poverty!
This action - increasing the amount of people getting out and about, the small businesses created to service the demand - would be effective in reducing the problems Brett Buck listed.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
What you're talking about is just slightly more extensive employee perks than what we're used to today. You can still find company-paid employee lodging particularly in very seasonal work, but typically it's smaller things like cafeterias, daycare and gyms.
Sure, to an outsider it does look unfair, but in reality the employees who have access to employee perks like that are still paying for all of it, just not up-front.
"Why should I want to make anything up? Life's bad enough as it is without wanting to invent any more of it."
Without reference to the regulation in question:
Why is it OK to force a company (a voluntary association of people)
Because the company isn't a mere voluntary association of people, it has limited liability protection. What you are therefore arguing is that companies should get both more protection and priviliges and be subject to no more rules to maintain those.
If you were talking about simple associations of people, then sure you'd have a point. But you're talking about companies so you really don't.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
A company town is a way to avoid excessive taxes and allow a town which formed under a singular revenue stream (e.g. mining and lumber towns were big on them) to pool resources tax-free via company scrip and allow workers to have a stronger say in how the corporation was run than a more common top-down model. Company towns were more like town-owned company branches than company-owned towns, the citizens would run everything and they could do so without bleeding themselves on taxes with every transaction in the process.
What happens in San Francisco is a bunch of companies working for themselves to lock workers into their structure and skirt taxes while ensuring those unpaid taxes prevent people from quitting due to the cost of living issues in the surrounding city.
You're comparing a method which allows workers greater control of their lives vs one which allows corporations greater control over people, and through your own ignorance call them the same when they are entirely antithetical in nature.
City Hall, where these morons work, has it's own in-building cafeteria. They call it a Cafe... Talk about a bunch of hypocrites.
If a company is going to get tax incentives to move to a particular spot based on the theoretical benefits it'll provide, it damn well better be regulated to ensure it produces what it promised. Although personally -- even though I'm a socialist -- I'd prefer to pass a law outlawing localities from providing incentives to compete with each other for companies (which is of course terribly inefficient for the state/country as a whole).
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Just like bail outs etc.
There's a bunch of people with a lot of money. They are started doing shitty things that consumers were like, you know what, I don't need it.
Or due to inflation, cost of living vs wages, they're saying we can't afford it.
Eating out is crazy expensive with everything else. Hell if I want two small pizza's delivered it's 30$, plus they expect you to tip the driver, even though 4.50$ of that is for the fucking delivery charge in the first place.
I'll spend 6$ on a large frozen pizza from the grocery store. Yea it's not as good, but it's good enough, especially at that price.
It's not my fault too many restaurants opened up, don't pay their staff enough so they can't afford to eat out, walmart shut down local businesses and they don't pay enough for their staff to eat out etc.
Like all these companies keep siphoning money away from local communities, pay shit wages, and then people are fucking stunned when no on can afford to use the businesses in town.
They could read this very post and they still wouldn't fucking get it. They're stare blankly in to space, their face going duhhh as soon as the words not paying staff enough enters the field, all their brains turn to mush and they forget how the local economy works since each of them just look at their business savings that year for paying low wages, expecting the money to come from the other businesses, which are doing the same fking thing.
that's really a very fascist move, forcing a company to not have a cafeteria is ridiculous. This is going too far (I guess one of the people who came up with this plan has a restaurant him/herself (or one of it's friends) near those big companies..
Companies should be able to decide for themselves if they want to have a cafeteria to cater for their employees, having to go out to a restaurant also takes a lot of time so people will have to be away from home longer than necessary, only due to some stupid politician not wanting companies to have their own cafeterias for their employees..
When I was recruited, Mr. Johnson said I would never have to leave the Arcology for any needs. I hope the suits figure this out.
So, who owns the restaurants/commercial property they're on that stands to gain financially? Someone politically connected stands to make a bunch of money by forcing this change.
This. When I eat lunch, I care about 3 things: Speed, price, amount. Taste comes in as a close fourth, but the quality level "edible" is sufficient for a lunch place to see me again. But I only have a limited amount of time at my disposal, so optimally my lunch is already ready when I decide I want it. It should be reasonably priced so that it's not more sensible for me to bring my own stuff. And it should be sufficient to last 'til dinner.
Our campus cafeteria offers exactly that. Nothing fancy, nothing that you'll come back for seconds for, but it's ready when I get there (because they cook permanently through lunch time), the price is all right and it's filling.
Plus, as an added bonus, your company is VERY interested in you not getting sick to your stomach from the grub because people who vomit don't work.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Hey it's SF, legislation is not about problem solving here, it's all about virtue signalling.
There are two rules for success:
1. Never tell everything you know.
Astonishing how restaurants can survive the world over with minimum wages but not in the US.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You .... you TERRORIST!!!!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Real Mexican food is bland? Are you sure it's not the other way round or are you confusing texmex with authentic Mexican cuisine?
sudo rm -r -f --no-preserve-root /
If the city really wanted them to not have in-house cafes, they should've put that in the contract, not retroactively creating laws after the companies have already moved their offices there.
I also consider myself a socialist, but I understand that backstabbing people will not end in long-term prosperity. Pushing for these dumb laws only gives socialism a bad name and reduce political support for more important issues such as universal health care or UBI.
Besides, if the choice comes down to restaurants, which are entirely profit-oriented, and tech companies, which are more socially conscious, I'd rather have more of the latter. And if the dramatic rise in food prices are any indication, the restaurants are doing just fine right now.
I'm liberal, live & work in San Francisco and I'm worried that the city is going to shit (literally) while our city 'government' stands by and fills the pockets of its friends (campaign contributors).
... I suppose it is kind of funny to watch the smug eat themselves, lol!
"These tech companies have decided to leave their suburban campuses because their employees want to be in the city, and yet the irony is, they come to the city and are creating isolated, walled-off campuses," said Aaron Peskin, a city supervisor who is co-sponsoring the bill with Ahsha Safai.
Funny, isn't it? People are human. Being urbane might even be more of a pose for most; it's almost like they are human or something.
To get told by a government at what location to eat?
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
And this is a corporate canteen, not some shabby fast food joint. Do you know what you're suggesting? Instead of eating healthy (which is something the corporation itself would want from its workers, because a healthy worker is a busy worker, something an outside eatery doesn't give a shit about) you want them to stuff their face with greaseballs?
And don't tell me "but there are alternatives". Show me one lunch restaurant that doesn't live by the philosophy "cheapest grub is good enough because we know you won't have the time to complain and demand your money back".
Not to mention that they couldn't compete with our cafeteria anyway. You get good food and a drink for less than 10 bucks.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Hey SF tech people, Feel free to move to the Rust Belt. More and more tech companies are opening offices here. Our commute times are sane and housing affordable. Our internet speeds are reasonable so you can remote into the office. In all my years here, I've only found a single human turd and a single syringe laying around.
They will instead bring a sandwich and an apple in a paper sack and eat at their desk.
I've always brought my own food regardless of what was at/near work. And this just reminds me of when I had to work crappy jobs like a warehouse one. Everyone I worked with in the warehouse would complain constantly about money... but every day would run out and grab $10-15 of food.... eat what they could during the 30 minute lunch break... then just trash the rest of it. (in addition to also spending $3-4 at the vending machine throughout the day)
Every day.
Next, they will ban lunch boxes and brown bags.
I don't think this ordinance has a chance in hell of passing constitutional muster,
But then again neither does anything else in today's San Francisco.I can see the Council passing this just to spite the rest of us.
I've worked in a number of companies that have cafeterias. Though they are great for grabbing lunch on busy days, nobody ever eats in them every day of the week. Local restaurants still get lunch parties daily, to the extent that in every tech area with a community nearby, lunch is the busiest time of the restaurant day.
They can build their own factory that grows food and prepares it using robots.
But the techs who work in that factory will still have to eat out.
In Europe, in most Restaurants no one would work for minimum wages.
Only a few Pubs can get away with minimum wages because the guests give enough tips.
Minimum wage in Germany is btw. somewhere around EUR 9,50.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
In the real world, companies running company towns would severely underpay their workers, and then fleece them on prices at the company stores, hotels and restaurants, the only places that would accept company scrip.
You have to be real goddamn deep in corporate pockets to even think that would somehow improve worker's rights and influence over the company.
Eat the rich.
How to make companies move just outside of SF in one easy step!
And, honestly, I'm not sure something like this could survive a challenge in court.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
It's not racist, at worst it's linguist. Anyway I speak Spanish, so your points weren't well thought out. Try again.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
TFA mentions existing ones will be grandfathered in, but I also agree with your first sentence.
There's no such thing as a communist paradise because communism is just bait used to trick morons into supporting psychopaths. A company town is a tax-avoidance scheme on behalf of a population, whereas other such schemes are on behalf of a company.
it's interesting to think of corporations as foreign communities. The idea is that they blend in with the locals, but if the group is big enough they just form their own communities, with local shops from their place of origin. In the end they all stay together and don't blend in at all, some of them won't even be able to write/speak/read the local language. Now it seems that big corporations are very much like that, if they are big enough, they will provide for themselves, without any benefit to the local city. they just need a place to be, they couldn't care less where it is.
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
You might want to add that living expenses in Germany are also way lower than in SF. Living off 1500 a month is very doable in Germany. Not so in SF.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Company towns give workers more say? Really? Have you read history? The workers get uppity, company management calls in the Pinkertons to bust some heads, and the workers go back to toiling away. Company towns are horrible for the workers, its effectively slavery.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
It really depends on the company and the people. Company towns existed in places where there was no option to move away for the company - the resource they needed was in or around the company town. People working there had all the power in that scenario, but it didn't eliminate scarcity: it was still a single revenue stream supporting an entire town (as in, all of their needs.) Even in more traditional towns with a single company it's effectively the same resource scarcity issue at play, the only difference is that in non-company-towns the company doesn't take on the immobility of a company town because it can move if the workers are non-compliant. A company town is a tool, just like any incorporated town (e.g. "town,") it can be used for good or bad but more often than not the workers had more say because the company could very rarely just pack their shit and leave if they didn't like the demands of their workforce. Company towns went out of style largely because of this exact "issue," companies who could abuse their workforce slightly more due to the ability to say "fine, don't like the pay then we'll go to X town because they'll appreciate us" ended up surviving whereas company towns didn't (outside of the few long-lived ones which happened to be founded literally on top of a mine.)
Literally all companies were like that when company towns were a thing. The big difference between a company town and the population of a company in a normal town is that the same dollar value in wages is worth more in a company town because it doesn't get knocked down 50% on pay, 50% on food, 50% on rent, etc during taxes (counting both sides of the equation there, not just income tax and sales tax but what the person they are buying from pays in taxes on that transaction as well when factoring in taxes on their income.) Company scrip was the defining characteristic of a company town, the town was just the infrastructure in which the scrip was usable. Scrip didn't get taxed so long as it was circulating within a company - a modern example of this was the Microsoft store, where until a few years ago employees could purchase MS products basically for free with an internal credit system - they ended up getting in trouble for allowing cash sales when employees would tell their friends and family about it and had to close it down as a result, but the key factor to such a system is avoid double, triple, and quadruple taxation because the distributor, middleman, seller, and buyer don't all have to shell out a percentage of the transaction going from distributor to buyer in taxes - it effectively means a scrip equal to a dollar officially is equal to about 6-12 dollars in actuality.
Says the person who believes in a "communist paradise?" Funny.
And you realize that company scrip, which was only useful in that company town, effectively meant that workers had absolutely no ability or means to leave the company, right? That next town down the road? Owned by a different company so they won't take your scrip. Workers had no freedom of choice, they could only "buy" what the company offered to sell them. If the company even offered exchange services for legal tender it would be at exorbitant rates making that impractical. I don't know why you seem so high on company towns. It's a horrible situation for the worker, almost on the level of slavery as I said above. Makes our current H1-B situation look like a good deal.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Sometimes the food options also get repetitive. In some places I have been to employees get lunch coupons that covers part of the cost of the meal, so it allows them to get a form of corporate sponsorship.
I donâ(TM)t know whether banning company cafeterias is the best thing, but if a company is going to move to the city then supporting local businesses in some form should be part of any design, otherwise we just end up with a corporate ghetto.
In Montreal, Ubisoft has around 3000 employees and if they donâ(TM)t have their own lunch then theyâ(TM)ll it out. This helps create a community around them that would be worried if they left and also gets employees out of the office for some air.
Having a community care about losing a big player is important, as this means politicians will fear losing a company and therefore work harder to keep them there. The alternative is asking what they are doing to help support the city and treat them as some replaceable burden.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
>"San Francisco Officials Are Planning To Ban Corporate Cafeterias"
Ah, central planning in Socialist SanFran to the rescue again... I am sure government meddling in all aspects of the "free market" will prevail, eventually, because bureaucrats know so much better what is best for people and economies and businesses. And CA still wonders why they are hemorrhaging tax payers to surrounding states more rapidly every year.
Company scrip didn't take the place of minimum wage, it added to it. You still have the supply issues of any town, the only distinction is that a company town provides additional benefits for employees in the form of greater access to goods due to the cost savings of scrip for applicable goods. It adds the burden of managing those supply chains and the associated economy to the company in question, which most were not cut out to manage simply because it's a complex problem but still did a much better job of it than their peers. You have to keep in mind who it was used for: blue collar workers who wouldn't exactly have afforded mansions to begin with, it was a net win for them relative to what they would have had otherwise. Applying the company town model to something like Google for example might mean people making $500,000+/year now might be reduced to $80,000/year+scrip, but if scrip covers housing+food+utilities in full it's still a net win for them, since in the San Francisco area they could easily make that much along with their partner and still barely get by.
Then it's a local restaurant. The fact that virtually zero people from off-campus are ever going to eat there shouldn't invalidate that. Or, if it's good enough, people will come from off-campus and effectively certify it as a local restaurant?
Pushing for these dumb laws only gives socialism a bad name
no no, socialists give socialism a bad name
I don't care what some city official wants. I decide which region of the city I want to go out in and which one not. There is zero reasoning to make some nonsense law about it. Next they'll think of regulating hairstyles like North Korea, or beards like ISIS.
However they have every right to tie their tax incentives and other corporate welfare to conditions. Totally within their rights there, they are forking over money so they can say "if..."
But if the company moves into the city without any tax benefits, I don't see which leg they hope to be standing on with this idea.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
your lunch. Well at least until the city outlaws that.
;)
Just my 2 cents
Remember how they once tried to ban the JROTC because of the war in Iraq, while shielding known juvenile delinquents and known bandits from from immigration authorities? They also tried a special tax on alcohol to cover the city's own health care costs.
First, how are corporate cafeterias not local businesses? They employ local people.
Secondly, I think most people just go there because the food is free (in some cases) or because it's convenient. If you work for a big company with a large campus, it's often the case that going to the corporate cafeteria only takes a few minutes, while going off campus to a local restaurant might take 10, or 15, or even more minutes just to get there.
Thirdly, the reason they set up cafeterias in the first place is to allow people to converse about work over lunch. That can sometimes be hard to do when there's people from competing businesses sitting at the table next to you. Not only that, but you have to find a place that everybody wants to go to. With cafeteria style eating arrangements, each person can eat whatever they want from the menu, or even bring their own lunch from home and everybody just gathers at an available table.
Speaking of bringing your own lunch from home, I think this will be the end result if they somehow outlaw corporate cafeterias. People don't want to go off campus everyday and spend money on lunch. They will just bring their own lunch from home. I've never had a corporate cafeteria, so given the choice between bringing my own lunch and buying lunch every day, bringing my own lunch is the clear winner, as it's cheaper and more convenient.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Most of the upvoted comments here seem to be totally missing the point. The impetus behind this idea didn't come out of thin air - it's not as if these city supervisors pulled the idea out of a hat. They're not hell-bent on telling people what to do because they're authoritarians, or think they know better than other people.
As the article states, "Mr. Peskin's ordinance is also aimed at getting more out of a tax deal given to tech companies that would agree to move into a troubled area called Mid-Market. In 2011, the companies were given tax breaks on payroll and stock options with the hope that they would bring jobs and investment to the neighborhood, just a short walk from San Francisco's City Hall. Within a few years, a number of companies like Twitter, Square and Uber moved into Mid-Market. But despite initial excitement over the opening of a number of restaurants and shops, the neighborhood has not yet flourished the way many had hoped."
In other words, the city supervisors are basically saying, "Hey tech companies, we gave you tax breaks and other benefits so that you would come here and help out existing local businesses by your employees patronizing said businesses. It turns out your workers aren't really doing that, which means we're giving you these benefits and not getting much in return. To make the deal more fair, we're going to find ways to force/encourage your employees to spend money in the local economy."
Now I happen to think this is the wrong solution to the problem. The solution is not to offer big corporations special tax breaks in the first place, since that really means everyone else is subsidizing them, including the citizens and local businesses who the move was intended to help. But for all of these people commenting that the city supervisors are proposing this out of some authoritarian mindset - that's just not the case.
You have actually time to go to a local cafetaria each day? That would take far too much time for me. Fortunately the culture here is that you either eat at the local cafetaria of bring your own sandwiches and drinks. I usually eat them behind my desk working at 25% normal speed or doing some casual surfing. That's a lot cheaper too.
1. Learn that they are human, just like you, and have legitimate interests, just like you that you probably should pay attention to if you want to be in upper class and effective at it.
2. Never get it in your head even as a conceptual thought that people who have different background from you are "deplorable".
3. Win elections.
And these business shouldn't expect tax breaks....
Actually there is an intended effect. Making sure businesses live up to their promises of investing in communities or did you support Amazon's opposition to Seattle passing a tax to help the homeless.
Instead of building a Cafateria, then build storage areas, and when construction is complete --- Setup a kitchen area and use the storage areas for storing food to be prepared and delivered to employees to eat in their break rooms and offices.
Just give up the tax break (tax breaks on payroll and stock options mind you) and you can build your fancy cages. But when you demand tax breaks, the tax payer has a right to expect something in return, and not some empty vague promise.
That's point people are missing. The city provided tax break on the expectation that there would be investment in the community. Heck that's the fucking selling point businesses make. All the workers swarming in your community think of the money they will spend. But then that doesn't happen because businesses build these campuses which keep people from going out into the community.
That wasn't the selling point. Businesses didn't mention that would happen. But they're happy to take their tax breaks.
Be honest... you just turned 18 and got permission to swear, right?
Hopefully when you grow up, you'll realize that the swearing makes you look less mature and less rational.
There is or isn't a law - is a BS argument. Laws are not truth or justice or wisdom, they're just laws.
The article is kind of a demonstration of that.
People come here because they think it'll be a better life than it was where they originated. They should consider why that might be - maybe our culture works better in some sense, and they should learn it and our language in order to be a contributing member. And sure, we should also learn from the better parts of their culture, but ditch the horrible flaws that are the reason these people left their original home in the first place. I don't see what's so hard to understand about that.
Why guess when you can know? Measure!
There was no such concept of minimum wage yet "they weren't 'payed' in cash" - interesting "contradiction" you found there.
Most company cafeterias are subsided so that lunch doesn't cost of lot of money for the employees. Some companies go so far as to provide free food.
By forcing employee to go out, it will cost these employees more money. Likely more employees will just bring in lunch, being they won't even have the excuse of going to the cafeteria to have lunch -- they just eat at their desks. So you'll get not-many-more employees going out for lunch, those that do being out of pocket, and those that don't having less movement in the day.
texmex is not bland. It's one of my favorite parts of living here
There was no minimum wage anywhere at the time. Corporations basically beat their workers for not working everywhere then, let alone revolting (company town or not.) Company towns, meanwhile, are still legal constructs and would function radically differently given the working standards of today (in an all-around better way for employees at that.)
Whoa there buddy. You are all over the radar and trying to tie things that don't go together. Let's unpack it just a bit.
...says the guy doing the same thing.
See if we can get people who immigrate to the United States to respect the laws, learn the language, and integrate into the culture and society.
See you are making your argument here that not speaking English is against the law and well that's not true.
In fact, he listed "respect the laws" as a distinct action separate from "learn the language" and 'integrate into the culture". Your insistence that he is lumping all of these traits under "against the law" is complete bollocks.
Italian food is world renowned for being both peasant food and incredibly flavorful. Your argument is hollow.
Good-bye
...to attempt to control every nook and cranny of your life.
Doing that turns a 1/2 hour lunch into a 1 hour lunch while you walk or drive to someplace you like, and so your time out the door is another 1/2 hour later, and that sucks. Probably will make the waits for service in the restaurants longer too as 1000's of new customers stress the ability of the kitchen to be able to turn out that much food in that short of a time.
Liberalville is a terrible place to live...
The proposed ban on cafeterias is not retroactive, it would apply to new offices only.
I actually think the idea behind it is good.
Fuck you. It's none of the government's business where I decide to eat.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Yeah, I was always stuck behind you Sun bastards when I went to lunch at Togo's back then :)
Because "people" don't want to live in Buttfuck WY/etc. Especially young, self entitled, fresh outta college millenials.
I'm conflicted on this one. I don't think that the city of San Fran should be dictating stuff like this, but on the other hand in-house cafeterias tend to lead to people having to eat at their desks during lunch because an important so-and-so e-mailed or instant messaged them with something at 11:55 AM. Basically, you end working through lunch instead of getting a actual "real" lunch break.
The poor and the toughest to educate
Why would the rich want to educate their children at a place that attracts the poor and toughest to educate? Out of altruism or something? I am asking seriously. I get what's in it for the poor people and schools but what's in it for the rich people going to crappy schools? Why would anyone do that if there is a better option somewhere else?
What you are advocating (those dang rich people should send their kids to public school like the rest of us!) doesn't make any sense whatsoever. It's like starting a war on jealousy.....it just ain't gonna happen.
I don't think this ordinance has a chance in hell of passing constitutional muster ...
I think it actually will, and with no problem at all. Tying preferential taxation to specified behavior is well within any jurisdiction's authority.
On what grounds? A city has every right to determine what conditions it puts on tax break deals with companies.
Being pushed into ruling position before you're ready, it's a recipe for disaster for you and those you rule over.
It's one of the major problems with inherited power and people dying too early. North Korea comes to mind as example of this.
Sorry about that - hard to keep up! Gluten free, I presume? And made with free-range avocados?
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
I don't get it? Why do we think vouchers and public schools are mutually exclusive? Why do we think public schools have to suck? Why do poor neighborhood schools have to be worse than rich neighborhood schools? Why can't all schools adhere to some standards of performance?
I hardly see how that can be. But it could be a matter of perspective: horse germs are more dangerous to horses and human germs are more dangerous to humans because microbes tend to specialize. Therefore, species-X-poo is going to be more dangerous to a random member of species-X than species-Y's poo.
As far as the smell, I live fairly close to a horse trail, and under certain circumstances, horse poo does really really stink.
(Can't believe I'm debating horse poo vs. human poo. Slashdot has gone to shit, literally ;-)
Table-ized A.I.
While I do not work in San Francisco, I would wager this issue is the same across all the major cities.
That issue being you can not go to lunch at " lunch time " because a bazillion other people are also going to lunch.
Traffic during lunch hours is fucked, second only to rush hour periods.
IF you can manage to get through traffic, then you get to stand in line or wait for a table for half an hour or more.
By the time you actually GET to eat, you have to head back to the office if you want to get back on time.
In the end, it will be easier to just bring your lunch. . . which means the local eateries still miss out.
Unless they ban that too :|
My first job was at Applied Materials in the early '90s, they had a great cafeteria with pleasant staff and a large variety of freshly prepared foods to choose from: burgers, pasta, salads, and so on. I would eat there for breakfast and lunch every day. At the last corporation I worked, the cafeteria served up pre-made frozen crap dumped in a fryer or tossed in a commercial microwave oven. They eventually decided to invest in more consumer microwaves and installed about 30 of them along one wall stacked 3 high in custom shelving. The outsourced cafeteria staff got replaced by another outsourced company with 1/3rd less offerings than the previous company offered. They focused more on pre-packaged crap they could set out in refrigerated stands for people to buy and microwave in the newly increased microwave area. The small company I am at now has nothing but vending machines and a handful of microwaves. The best option is to go out and eat at a local grill.
I'm surprised that more people don't go out to eat considering the paltry offerings available on-site.
Millennial's something something.
-==- Buy a Mac and leave me alone!
That's a great idea! Just like the pilgrims all learned and started speaking Abenaki when they landed.
Oh wait...
Cafeteria food eats you.
Companies with cafeterias are companies with mostly salary workers. They do not get paid for their time, but for their productivity. Which is why cafeterias are such a nice perk for both sides. Worker gets half hour more to work around lunch, and leaves fifteen minutes earlier than otherwise. Win/win.
> All of that does take money. You know how to get more money? Making people buy lunch off
> campus instead of eating at the free office caf which generates revenue from additional
> restaurant licensing, liquor sales, and staff wages paying city taxes. Crazy idea right?
* Add additional restaurant licencing... but lose property taxes on cafeteria in building
* liquor sales... are you out of your effing mind?
==> Employee drives to restaurant and then drives back to work with alcohol in his system; traffic hazard
==> Most employers will fire you on the spot if you come back from lunch with alcohol on your breath
* staff wages paying city taxes... but lose the money from former cafeteria employees who used to pay city taxes
Crazy idea? Damn well right it is.
Another item. Most employees want to get home after work as quickly as possible. Let's say you have a choice between
* half hour lunch break at work cafeteria
* one hour lunch break of which you spend 15 minutes getting to restaurant, 1/2 hour eating, and 15 minutes getting back to work. That's at at a fast-food joint. At a "real restaurant", it's "please wait to be seated", and dump menus on your table. They'll be hovering over you all the time to take your liquor orders, but it'll be 15 to 20 minutes before someone comes around to take your food orders. In 30 to 45 minutes the food will have been prepared+served. It's one thing for an occasional office event, but not daily. That would be 30 hours per month out of your life that you'd never get back.
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
My god, was that beautiful.
Oh believe me, I have. I've tried several. But I used to work for a small company with no cafeteria, and we ate a lot better. It took a little longer to get to the food, though, and cost more. That's what I mean when I say it's an attractive nuisance. :)
The big argument in favor of this in Silicon Valley is that the food you drive to isn't close by, and there's two car starts and the associated fumes, so it really makes sense to have these cafeterias in Silicon Valley. And to be fair, the neighborhood under discussion here is not an organic neighborhood with existing good food like you'd see in New York, and when I worked in that neighborhood back in the late nineties, it was a virtual food desert unless you like sandwiches. So I get why this is happening. But the influx of well-paid employees actually could seed an ecosystem of good restaurants and services, so I'm really sympathetic to the supervisor's position, despite that I doubt he's going to succeed.
Your post is a non sequitur, emotional based argument. Notwithstanding, I would point out that it would have been better for the natives if the pilgrims had learned Abenaki.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Company scrip didn't take the place of minimum wage, it added to it. You still have the supply issues of any town, the only distinction is that a company town provides additional benefits for employees in the form of greater access to goods due to the cost savings of scrip for applicable goods.
Shill or troll, hard to figure out what you are.
Of course scrip didn't take the place of "minimum wage" -- there was no minimum wage. Scrip took the place of ALL wages. All you got was scrip.
Scrip didn't give you greater access to goods, it limited your access to what the company store wanted to sell. It didn't create "cost savings" for the employees, because the price of goods was controlled solely by the company, and they didn't sell at a discount. If you liked Kellogs's Sugar Pops for breakfast and the company store sold only Wheaties, you bought Wheaties because you couldn't drive to the next town over to buy what you wanted.
Applying the company town model to something like Google for example might mean people making $500,000+/year now might be reduced to $80,000/year+scrip,
No, it would mean employees would be paid entirely in scrip, which could only be used to pay rent for a company apartment, buy food from a company store. You could scrimp and save for the future, but you couldn't use whatever you saved if you left the company -- it's useless outside the company town.
but if scrip covers housing+food+utilities in full it's still a net win for them
Unless they wanted something that the company didn't sell, or to save for a future that the company didn't provide. Someone making half a mil a year and able to live where they want could save a lot of money and retire early. Someone getting paid in scrip that went for food and clothing and shelter has no future. If you leave the company you leave with zero assets. Oh, maybe you have 10,000,000 scrip "dollars", but they're no good anywhere outside your ex-employer's stores, and you don't have a badge to access those stores anymore.
Only a shill or a troll would argue that company towns were good for the employees. Or an ignoramus.
Ah you're right. I missed that part.
The position that SF (and other local and state governments) take of obstructing the enforcement of those laws is just that: obstruction
Okay so you might not be savvy to this debate, but the Federal government wants local law enforcement to enforce immigration laws because the Federal government "feels"... You know what I'll just cut the crap. The Federal government doesn't want to really pay for it. Now there's been some cities that are totally okay with "helping" out the Federal government, there's some that give the Feds the middle finger, and then there are the majority that are like, "Sure we'll do that, how much are you going to give us?" And when the answer back is a big fat zero, those cities are content to sit on their hands. Now there are some cities like our current topic, SF, that see through this BS and openly aggravate and that's fine if you view that as obstructing, but ultimately enforcing those laws are up to the Feds and we've had a few court cases that have indicated that cities don't have to lift a finger for doing law enforcement for the Fed if they aren't getting paid to do it. In short, like most things, it mainly comes down to money for the majority. But yes, SF is one of those that are in the minority and sit on the sideline saying "neener-neener-neener".
I suspect that if a company in SF denied enforcement officials access to their corporate campus on humanitarian grounds, SF city officials will not be amused.
Again you're doing the tie things together that aren't related. SF can do that to the Feds because they're a government. Companies cannot because they distinctly aren't forms of government. It's a really simply concept to follow. If A SF company denied enforcement officials anything, they'd get a court order and come in anyway. That's because the court recognizes that the government is, wait for it... A government! (insert mind blown sound) And that's not my opinion on the matter that's literally me just pointing out our form of governance, since late 1700s.
Cities don't have to put up with companies antics. They put up with it, because they bring in money, but they only do so as a courtesy. So if a city doesn't care about the money are they see the company as a bad fit, they can run them out of town and there's not really a legal recourse for the company unless some contract was signed between them and the city. That's why you see companies sign deals with cities before they move in. That's a CYA move by the company, so that they gain something resembling some form of rights. But outside of those contracts, companies are the city's/state's bitch if the state or city so wished it.
TL;DR summary. SF can thumb the Feds because they're elected officials, they are recognized by the courts as being a legally binding government. Companies don't get to thumb anyone unless they signed a contract allowing them to do that, that's because unlike SF and the US, they are recognized by the courts for squat in these matters that we speak of.
I am not making a value judgment on SF choosing to regulate corporate cafeterias. If they want to let them. The voters there in SF can decide if they like it or not.
I do agree with this part of your comment, so thumbs up random Internet person. I doubt you care though, but at least we agree on something, so I'll have a beer to that and call it a night. Cheers person!
[If you could see and feel the dramatic, negative impact of these hordes of self-entitled "tech" workers on present day San Francisco (and even parts of the East Bay)] ...would have been to pass an ordinance which "confined" tech workers to remaining on-campus, dining inside the company store cafterias, thus sparing the citizens, and actually working people, of our community. Please, kiddies, go back to your "open plan" cubbyholes in Mtn View, Sunnyvale, Fremont (LOL)... wherever...
Finally...a reason not to be jealous of the good food they used to get
Local Restaurants should work to make their food so damn good that people would rather go their and pay a bit more instead of eating at work.
Seems a bit backwards to ban something a workplace has already invested in if the local places to eat can't even outdo Cafeteria food.
Crap, I have a levitation class at 25:131. Better set the alarm to 'cinnamon'.
"traitor" is what the criminalcrats invented to cover up the fact that the Democratic Party is a pro-crime criminal organization. Their platform can be summed up in 1 sentence: let us and others get away with crimes.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
BTW, the whole absurdity of what you are saying is best exposed by how ridiculous what you say happens to be. It's lunacy.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
I expect to read "SF Outlaws Brown Bags" next. That will be followed by outlawing eating outside a registered food facility. Somewhere in there, I expect to also read about open season on SF supervisors.
To be completely effective, this law will have to ban brown-bagging.
Will people smuggle lunchesh? Will the city respond by inspecting backpacks and attache cases?
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.