A boon to workers?

Mark Antonio Wright reports for National Review on the minimum wage hikes recently enacted in New York and California. He interviewed Jamie Richardson, vice president at White Castle, the burger chain I have heard so many good things about, but have never had the pleasure of eating there.

...Richardson says — and common sense dictates — that if menu prices at fast-food chains shoot up by anywhere near 50 percent, many people will stop eating out as much, replacing trips to White Castle with trips to the grocery store. Customers can always vote with their feet and their dollars. But thinking through the implications of raising prices to cover increased costs, which could reduce sales, isn’t what irks Richardson the most: To him and to White Castle, New York’s minimum-wage hike is a threat to a culture of opportunity in the neighborhoods that they have always called home.

“Candidly, this could create a whole generation of kids who won’t get their first job,” Richardson laments. “We’re in tough neighborhoods — and White Castle hasn’t abandoned those neighborhoods. On the surface, higher pay seems noble, but it’s not — because it denies the reality of the free-enterprise framework that has allowed small businesses like ours to thrive.”

White Castle is very proud of providing what for many of its workers is the first rung on the ladder of employment. And it loves to promote from within. Richardson tells me that of White Castle’s 450 top employees in restaurant operations, “444 of them started out behind the counter in an hourly job.” Susan Milazzo, the regional director in charge of the 35 Castles in the greater New York City area, is a prime example of a worker who started out on the bottom rung and worked her way up.

But some of White Castle’s successes are even more exceptional: Richardson tells me the story of Jahangir Kabir, a Bangladeshi immigrant who came to America without knowing a word of English. He got a job as a cook at a White Castle and learned the vernacular by interacting with customers. In four years, he was a general manager. On the way to being promoted to district supervisor in charge of eight Castles, Kabir went to school, earning an MBA from St. Joseph’s College in Brooklyn in 2005. Recently he completed a Ph.D. in business administration — and it all started at White Castle, cooking fries.

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