And you people completely ignore Human Nature. Someone making low, medium or big bucks whose employer initiates a bonus program often increases their performance and many continue at that pace because they're motivated by the proverbial carrot on a stick but some will revert to their old ways after they become tired of working harder. When everyone makes the same money, there is no motivation to perform better because they know it won't matter- they'll just do the minimum and when a union has enough power, they make it almost impossible to fire employees who slack off. That screws the rest of the employees and it definitely screws the company.

You want to use one company as the shining example in an area where you have ~4000 restaurants? With Microsoft and Amazon as two of the major employers and Microsoft being the single largest creators of millionaires? Try this in a depressed market and see how well it works.

Read this- it's in your area, but you don't seem to know how much wages affects a restaurant. From the link- "No major city has ever seen an across-the-board 60 percent increase in its minimum wage. Restaurants employ about a quarter of Seattle's minimum wage workers. Labor typically accounts for about a third of a restaurant's costs."

How would you deal with adding $4/hr to the pay of people making $11/hr when you can't guarantee an increase is revenue?

[Link: npr.org]

BTW- it's apparently not the fast food location that raised the pay, only the salmon house.