WCDefenseCA

When your humble blogger was wrapping up high school and getting ready to start an exciting life of cow-tipping and avoiding bike-seat-theft at UC Davis, something magical happened in Southern California.  The California Coastal Records Project took photographs of Barbara Streisand’s coastal home along with photos of the much of the rest of the California Coast.

In 2003, Ms. Streisand sued seeking to have the photos of her home removed from the website, claiming the right to privacy.  Internet wisdom holds that until this lawsuit, the photos had only been downloaded 6 times, but after the lawsuit, several hundreds of thousands of people went to see the photos, and likely more since then.  In trying to sue to protect the claimed privacy of her home, she drew enormous attention to it instead.  The “Streisand effect” is just one of those examples of unintended consequences.

So let’s talk about AB257, which empowers the State of California to raise minimum wage for fast food workers up to $22 per hour, along with the growing (and growingly crippling) cost of workers’ compensation in California.  Much like California’s gas tax increases the cost of each gallon drastically at the pump, California inflates the cost of an hour of labor in the fast food industry as well: minimum wage, HR laws, and, of course, the cost of workers’ compensation per $100 in wages.

Well, Daily Mail recently had an article about yet another automation system intended to minimize a fast-food restaurant’s reliance on human labor: “Flippy, Sippy and Chippy”  The idea is, of course, to automate many of the tasks and, ultimately, replace much of the human work force while avoiding paying for things like breaks, no-shows, injuries, overtime, etc.

Several major chains are already paying Miso Robotics the installation price and monthly fees ($3,000 per month!), reportedly including Chipotle, White Castle, and Panera Bread, among others.

So, naturally, California has made the cost of labor in the fast food industry so high, that it is economically efficient to replace a portion of the labor cost with these robots.  Of course, this isn’t an option for everyone: given the start-up capital needed for installation and the monthly rentals involved, smaller franchisees are probably not going to be able to use this technology until the price falls and the maintenance is reduced.  But that’s not a concern for Sacramento, of course.

So, the net result will be as it has always been – smaller businesses and their employees will be out of the job and their competitors with better staying power will lay off a portion of the workforce to replace them with machines.  Meanwhile, your humble blogger will start working on good-faith non-discriminatory personnel action defense trial briefs for the inevitable psyche claims of “stress from being replaced by a robot” applications.

Perhaps we can start referring to this as the “Sacramento effect?”

Have a great weekend, dear readers!

Happy Monday dear readers!

Your humble blogger hopes your weekend was restful and rejuvenating, and that you’ve come back to California workers’ compensation with the vigor and will necessary to continue denying benefits.  In the meantime, I’d like to highlight a natural and timeless phenomenon occurring before our very eyes.  The California Public Utilities Commission is allowing Cruise to proceed with driverless taxis and offering passengers rides for a fee in San Francisco.  Although this is a limited test as to time and parts of San Francisco to be serviced, if this proceeds well we could see more and more of the same state-wide, if not nation-wide.

Of course, Sacramento is used to getting brownie points by championing the rights of UBER and Lyft drivers by putting the squeeze on their “employers” while at the same time pricing that labor out of the market and opening the door for more automation.  How much of California’s economy is reliant on drivers?  How much of that economy can we see replaced by self-driving cars?

If self-driving cars are successful, what can we expect to see as an impact in California’s workers’ comp system?  Fewer injuries, both specific and CTs, claimed by drivers, because, of course, there would be fewer workers in that field.

What can Californians in general expect if human drivers are successfully replaced with self-driving cars?  The same thing we see wherever automation is allowed to flourish: more consistent services at lower cost. 

Your humble blogger is cheering the trend towards automation on with both hands.  Now, who amongst my beloved readers will be brave enough to ride a driver-less taxi in San Francisco and report on the experience?

Straight on to Wednesday, dear readers!