Volunteer opportunity! Hand out drive-thru orders at your local Chick-Fil-A. Is the latest advance in slavery?

It’s not volunteering.
They get paid “in kind”.

It points to chick-fil-a’s unparalleled brand loyalty. Working for literal peanuts makes more sense.

Chick-Fil-A as a national company supports far right causes. I wouldn’t work for them if they paid $50/hr. I also won’t buy from them.

One North Carolina store does not make it “your local Chick-Fil-A”

5 entrees per hour ‘volunteering’ does not make slavery. You mean those ‘volunteering’
are not getting health benefits, retirement, profit sharing, unemployment etc. etc.

Can we redefine spin as bullshit?

True, one store in NC doesn’t make it a trend – yet – but you can be sure that if that branch had success, others will follow. That’s how capitalism works.

@rebbel if I remember my American history, slave owners fed their slaves as well. They didn’t call it “Payment in Kind”. The slaves were still slaves.

I wonder if the ‘volunteer’s’ landlords would accept payment in chicken sandwiches, instead of rent…

It’s a way to bypass worker protection laws, and exploit and those who need employment most. This hypercapitalistic race-to-the-bottom is unhealthy for the economy.

@WhyNow ” You mean those ‘volunteering’
are not getting health benefits, retirement, profit sharing, unemployment etc. etc.”

Just to fill in a few of those etc’s for you: There’s no worker’s compensation if they’re injured on the job, there’s no minimum wage, there’s no payroll taxes been paid for social security and medicare/medicaid. That means this person will get worse benefits for social security despite all of the time they spent to help enrich the private corporation’s owners.

What makes this especially illustrative of why this kind of thing is terrible, is that in a capitalist system, this particular Chic-Fil-A will have a competitive advantage over other fast food restaurants in the area, that are NOT exploiting desperate people. That incentivizes those other companies who were doing the right thing to start also abusing desperate people.

The term for this shit is called “corporate welfare.” It’s handouts from the public to billionaires.

@gorillapaws you said it better than I could have. thanks

Where would one store all of his/her sandwiches so they didn’t spoil while the person was working? And how many sandwiches does one need or can handle in their daily life? Would this one feed the excess sandwiches to their dog? Would that be healthful?
Payment is sandwiches seems excessive in so many ways…

I see from the article that the store decided to end the program.

It’s illegal under the Fair Labor Standards Act, which may be why the store (the franchise) decide to end the program:

Jennifer Haigwood, director of communications for the North Carolina Department of Labor, told The Post in a statement that while the agency does not have any jurisdiction over volunteers or situations where there isn’t an employer-employee relationship, the FLSA’s requirements regarding private for-profit employers “are clear that there cannot be an employee who provides ‘volunteer’ work for that for-profit employer.”

“Generally, labeling a worker as a ‘volunteer’ will not remove the employer from its FLSA obligation to pay the required wages if that individual performs work that benefits the for-profit entity,” Haigwood said.

Known for touting its “family-owned” and “biblically-based” principles, including closing on Sundays, privately held Chick-fil-A has been one of the most profitable fast-food restaurant chains in the country, with more than 2,600 restaurants across 47 states, D.C., Canada and Puerto Rico.”

I see that the article stated that the volunteer would “earn” the entrees, so I think storing them wouldn’t be an issue because the volunteer wouldn’t necessarily have to get the entrees that day, it seems like, from the article, @kritiper.

There’s a Chick Fil A nearby where I do a lot of shopping in CT, and it’s very popular. So popular that they have people in the parking lot directing traffic. I won’t go there because of their far-right Christianity bullshit, plus I am not into fried foods if I can avoid them.

People holding a sign saying ‘will work for food.’
People who want to eat but don’t have credentials for employment.
That’s who.

Working for free, child labour, it is all coming back.
And if they could, capitalists would happily make you pay for privilege of working for them, because is it not an incredible honour to slave away for the XYZ corporation?
At least slave owners were “gracious” enough to also “offer” housing for their slaves., and not just a few mediocre sandwiches.
Your country is already a dystopian hell hole, and it will only get worse.

Hey now. That’s on topic. Chik fil a serves a decent chicken sandwich. I could care less about their politics. I just want a goddamn sandwich. Here are reviews by people who worked there. That one restaurant was a single franchise. They offered five sandwiches an hour. So if you want to feed a starving family of 5 you can work an hour. That’s like $25. I have mixed feelings about this but it’s not slavery or horrible.

I read the article. Chick-fil-A spokesperson said it wasn’t done with their approval. In the article, it says the one Chick-fil-A was having a grand opening of their newly remodeled driveway and was paying in kind up to 5 entrees per hour the person worked. I suppose the homeless in the area would’ve loved it. Anyway, there was major criticism online and in the news about this act and the store stopped it. Here’s the link Hendersonville, NC

As popular as it is here, they’ll make a killing. But since it’s a choice, it’s not close to slavery.

I actually grew up in Hendersonville N.C. It’s pretty dilapidated now but it was a nice place 35 years ago. That gimmick may have been welcome to some people there.

A spokesperson for Chick-fil-A, which is headquartered in Atlanta, told The Washington Post on Thursday that the Hendersonville store had “decided to end this program.”

Either it didn’t work out very well…OR…corporate nipped it in the bud due to bad publicity.

I won’t pay to eat there; therefore, I won’t be paid in food to work there!!!

@elbanditoroso @KNOWITALL said it: they have a choice.
Slaves hadn’t.
Comparison goes limb.

@rebbel What about indentured servitude? Those folks had a choice. They could have starved in Ireland or become slaves in the New World didn’t they?

They found a slave ship where the slats between the shelves were 14 inches apart.
Humans were forced to lay there for 23 hours a day during the duration of the trip to
a short and miserable life.

And today, the saint do gooders compare that to some kids getting 5 sandwiches by
carrying bags a few feet. That’s why I’m a liberal. Leftists should be fucking ashamed!

@elbanditoroso Nope.
I’m sorry, still no.

Does Chick-fil-A still donate to organizations that support gay conversion therapy? That’s really the only thing I care about.

@Demosthenes “gay conversion therapy” WTH?? that’s disgusting!

And what about the Korean green grocers in NYC using desparate ‘migrants’
12 hours a day for a pay of $50. Yes they feed them.

And how those early teen little girls viciously forced to work as coyote sex slaves.
and those unaccompanied minors being abused in gov holding camps.

You never mention those mr el whatever because they don’t advance your narrative.

And frankly you don’t give a flying fuck.

Not close to slavery or indentured slaves. Slaves are forced to labor, and indentured slaves are bound by a contract. Neither applies. They can work an hour and be gone all for the very low price of 5 entrees. Slaves and indentured slaves have no real options. So it is like volunteering. You very much have the option of not doing it.

No, since in slavery horrific cruelty went on. The slaves were less than property. Comparing it to slavery is undermining the horror that slavery was, even if the people who are volunteering are very poor, and maybe can’t find actual jobs.

Indentured servants were very severely treated. They were so overworked they might be
disfigured by the end of their contract. I remember seeing a low wall somewhere in NJ
from nowhere to nowhere and being told this was built by indentured and told it was
a common practice in Europe while clearing a field of rocks for plowing.

Human brutality towards human is as old as humans.

Even before trump amazingly!

Yes. It is slavery. In the future jobs will be contracted out to bypass minimum wage laws.

From my experience:

I worked a summer, for free, in a convenience store when I was 17. Mopping floors and putting those little move tags back in the video rentals, and loading the coolers, juice and stuff, in a hot summer (that I was grateful for). In exchange for unlimited slurpies (Frosters). Two years later they gave me a full time night shift position alone for two years for $1.50 over minimum wage ($6.50/hour). They even let me tell the customers that I was the night time manager.

I was working as a laundry/chamber maid job in between for $6 and I got a retroactive wage increase to $6.75 (Plus a $50 tip) in a deal to clean a couple of nasty NSFW rooms that where totaled with puke and malt liquor from a biker gang.

It is hard to compete, but I managed to have a paying job right out of high school and university, because I was willing to go the extra mile for a job. I knew that it was only temporary and I would be able to get better employment after I finished my psychology degree.

From the article
>>“There is so much wrong here I don’t know where to start,” one commenter posted on Reddit.

That about sums up my reaction.

As a teenager, I worked in the concession stand at a swimming pool operated by the city Parks & Rec. Dept. (i.e., non-profit). Some members of the community used it as a day care center, leaving their elementary school-aged kids there unsupervised for hours at a time. Sometimes these kids would beg for free snacks from the concession stand. The concession staff briefly tried giving them popcorn in exchange for letting them sweep up around the picnic tables in the concession area, but the manager soon put a stop to that. The FLSA applied in that case and it certainly applies to Chick-Fil-A.

Chick-Fil-A could easily hire 14-year-olds to be runners and pay them minimum wage ($7.25 in NC) rather than the $19 they’re paying their other staff. It would put these kids in their pipeline to be future regular employees. This “volunteer” thing is not just illegal and exploitive, it’s a missed opportunity. Stupid.

Chick-Fil-A is known for long opening day lines. Maybe the manager came up with
what he thought was a clever way to give out free food. He just didn’t know that only
the state has the right to show benevolence to poor people, he knows now!.

Plus since the chain is extreme right wing, the chitter chatter class will hound them
mercilessly! See above Original Question.

It“s just an opening day gimmick.

Wow. I’m glad I don’t frequent Chick-Fil-A and that I didn’t buy a house in Hendersonville. I’m only half serious. Chick-Fil-A has been on my boycott list for a long time.

Meanwhile, where I live in FL I pay for my zumba certification (around $500 a year) and I don’t get paid any money to teach, it’s all volunteer. I get tickets twice a year to a show and I can use a rec center for free for a party once a year, that’s my payment. It’s crazy that I keep paying for my certification.

@JLeslie You may not realize but Hendersonville is about an hour south of Asheville. It’s full of hippies now and has quite a liberal population. You would fit right in there. The downtown area is not what it used to be but the Flat Rock area is like a mini Boulder Co. these days.

^^I read too fast. I was thinking Hendersonville, TN. I almost did buy a house there. Thanks for the correction.