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Hundreds of Fast-Food Workers Strike for Living Wage, Inspired by Wal-Mart Strike
- Thread starter kame-sennin
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MidgarBlowedUp
Member
I hope the office you worked at was better than the one where I had to visit through part of my unemployment. The one near me can suck my !@#$ and drown in my !@#$. Complete scum of the earth in my opinion and I only hope the worst for them. The only thing they ever tried to do was crap me out of every dime of unemployment money they could, even while I was going to school as part of the program. I even had to wait there for 3 hours one day just to turn in my monthly sheet of paper that proved I was in school. There were less than 10 people in the lobby that day and every one of them had to wait for hours. Some unemployment offices are only there to discourage people and save money for the state by finding ways to turn people down. I finally switched to one near my school and got the help I was entitled to get.
Angelus Errare
Banned
The same can be said for any business, unfortunately many people who work at unemployment offices become desensitized and worse are threatened to have action taken if they don't be quicker on processing (which is the number one cause of mistakes in unemployment offices contrary to what state government PR wants to tell you). When I was working there, they would get mad at me if I spent more than 10mins with any one given person from walk in. It was frustrating, for me. I'm an empathetic person so the unemployment office really wasn't the best place for me anyways, I geniunely listened to people who just wanted to talk to someone about their frustrations, I helped people piece together resumes making their limited experience and skills seem great, I did way more than what was necessary at that job. I've organized clothing and food drives among other things. Volunteered to stay late pretty much all the time, in the end it really amounted to nothing in the eyes of higher ups. I was passed up for promotions ALL the time. Even I became victim to the desensitizing and started just trying to churn people out like numbers.
Though working there is alot more involved than people think outside looking in. The mainframe system that we all log into is old as shit, it's slow and cumbersome so even the most menial of tasks becomes a test of patience. Hell just simply entering in a person's social and telling the system they've passed their scheduled eligibility review (where you bring in your looking for work sheets) can be a pain in the ass.
Yea fuck that job, but it humbled me even more than I already am.
shadowsdarknes
Member
Really, they don't represent cost of living to the United States? Here you go, http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/rankings.jsp enjoy. Six Australian cities are priced 125.625% higher on average than the United State's most expensive common denominator, New York City.
I support raising the minimum wage, just not to $15.
Alcohol and cigarettes are bad examples as the Australian government places heavy taxes to distort the true price.
Huh, no it doesn't.
Inflation almost by definition affects the poor more than the rich, as it typically hits staple goods and every day service more than luxury good which have a more elastic price..
The one positive for poor people when it comes to inflation is that it reduces the value of their debt.
shadowsdarknes
Member
Why? Gina Rinehart's (richest Australian) estimated net worth is USD 18 billion. However, her net worth in Australian Notes is equal to 18,759,600,000 (USD net worth x exchange rate). How is her purchasing power in comparison to other Austrlian's weakened because of higher minimum wages?
That and the wealthy store the vast majority of their wealth in assets the price in inflation expectations.
Rubbish King
The gift that keeps on giving
In a perfect world..i agree with you however i am still inclined to disagree
-COOLIO-
The Everyman
She has to pay them 15 bucks an hour. Which she hates.
-COOLIO-
The Everyman
How does a high minimum wage cause inflation? Isn't inflation caused by currency being devalued due to more bills being produced? I might be mixed up.
kame-sennin
Member
Yea, but the tax code is so messed up, you would have made more money not taking the better job.
That's one cause of inflation, but not the only, or even the primary.
A minimum wage increase can also be a cause of inflation because it increases costs as well as demand(in dollar terms if not in unit terms) which increases the prices of things.
The reason we left classical economics is because price controls were introduced on wages.
Wages have to be able to rise and fall with demand and supply, the only way to actually have full employment.
When the price floors were introduced, through industry unions and laws, the only way to actually adjust wages do they would adjust with supply and demand was got massive government movements devaluing the currency.
Since nominal wages can functionally only go up in a political economy, it does not change the fact that in any economy the real wage rate needs to be free and adjustable in both directions.
As i said a inflexible and manipulated nominal wage is the reason we have inflation, no economist argues this.
This also goes back to why many say you cannot have inflation without full employment.
shadowsdarknes
Member
It isn't really a tax on her inasmuch as it is on the world economy. It does, however, affect her business's growth. My guess is she stockpiles because the world economy can't afford the higher price, thus lessening demand and requiring her to stockpile excess natural resources.
Edit: Anyway I get your point, I'm boiling it down to semantics at this point.
-COOLIO-
The Everyman
Hmmm I see. But how do price increases cause inflation? The value of the currency is still strong. You could exchange it for usd at the same rate.
-COOLIO-
The Everyman
Ahhh. It'll take me a couple reads but thanks.
Exchange rate of not inflation. They are correlated but not highly, nor are they interchangeable.
I worked HR at a large fast food company for about 4 years. I got paid really well but had to leave for something else because of the things being discussed in this thread. It made me sick to my stomach with some of the things I saw. You would get a restaurant, a busy one, with 45 hourly employees. The GMs were allowed to hand out TWO DOLLARS in raises for the whole store for the year. So you had 45 people splitting up that $2. I would sign off on glowing employee reviews that showed someone getting a six cent raise. So they would now be making 7.31 an hour. It wasn't the GM's fault. They could give a big raise to one or two people, or split it around with pathetic, insulting raises.
They don't care about these employees in the least. Not one bit. In all honesty, the GMs I met with mostly cared. Above that? You'd have meetings with a GM, their boss and me...and we would sit there and the GM would have to justify the existence of anyone on staff making more than $8 an hour. If they couldn't, these employees were put on "plans" which almost always resulted in them getting terminated. It was REVOLTING.
It's a horrid environment. Most of these people at these restaurants are extremely hard working, good people. 20% are total loser saps, but most are good folks. They are people who would have worked for Ford or Chrysler or whatever 30 years ago, but those jobs are gone. Not everyone is capable of going to school and becoming an engineer or HR specialist or whatever. They need jobs too. It would be one thing if they could work at one of these places and work their way up to $15 an hour with hard work. But they can't. I don't know about the underemployed, because this particular restaurant chain simply wouldn't hire them. Period.
It's sad and needs to change. But it won't. Sorry to go on like this, but it is a real issue with me. I would meet literally hundreds of these workers (who to the shock of many of you took some pride in their work) and I watched them get treated like garbage. It was tough to be around and really sets me off.
They don't care about these employees in the least. Not one bit. In all honesty, the GMs I met with mostly cared. Above that? You'd have meetings with a GM, their boss and me...and we would sit there and the GM would have to justify the existence of anyone on staff making more than $8 an hour. If they couldn't, these employees were put on "plans" which almost always resulted in them getting terminated. It was REVOLTING.
It's a horrid environment. Most of these people at these restaurants are extremely hard working, good people. 20% are total loser saps, but most are good folks. They are people who would have worked for Ford or Chrysler or whatever 30 years ago, but those jobs are gone. Not everyone is capable of going to school and becoming an engineer or HR specialist or whatever. They need jobs too. It would be one thing if they could work at one of these places and work their way up to $15 an hour with hard work. But they can't. I don't know about the underemployed, because this particular restaurant chain simply wouldn't hire them. Period.
It's sad and needs to change. But it won't. Sorry to go on like this, but it is a real issue with me. I would meet literally hundreds of these workers (who to the shock of many of you took some pride in their work) and I watched them get treated like garbage. It was tough to be around and really sets me off.
Value of a currency relative to other currencies is a completely different measurement than value of a currency vs. things purchased in that currency.
Which is why different areas in the same nation have different inflation rates, even though they use the same currency.
In a perfect market, they would be the same, but in the real world with transit costs and taxes and tariffs and god knows what else, especially in international trade, arbitrage just isn't 100% efficient at smoothing out these disparities.
Liu Kang Baking A Pie
Member
Minimum wage is an unlivable wage.
http://nlihc.wordpress.com/2012/03/16/talk-of-the-town-making-the-rent/
Liu Kang Baking A Pie
Member
Are you doing that thing where you mistake what money is taxed under which bracket?
how many customers do you think they can ring up in an hour. Back when I was in highschool (i'm 30 now) I could ring 20-30 people an hour easily with lunch crowds or dinner crowds I would hit over 100.
If the average person orders $8 worth of food then your looking at a low of $160 and a high of $800 brought in.
Now throw on another cashier and your doubling that. Add in 2 cooks and your at 4 people on the job. 4x15=$60. Your your easily looking at $320 to $1,600 brought in per hour. Even if you bloat up the cost of the employees to $100 due to insurance and other things your still much higher up. You have product and other over heads also but raising employee pay wont destroy the company. I think $15 an hour is a bit much as a cashier or cook. But I think they should get bumped up to $10 an hour for sure.
shadowsdarknes
Member
Minimum wage is an unlivable wage.
http://nlihc.wordpress.com/2012/03/16/talk-of-the-town-making-the-rent/
Relevant statistics and information:
Number of hours represents rent for a standard two-bedroom apartment.
78% work at least 20hrs per week --> 80% are at least 20 years old.
Junk article. Needs more information.
Liu Kang Baking A Pie
Member
Minimum wage is an unlivable wage.
http://nlihc.wordpress.com/2012/03/16/talk-of-the-town-making-the-rent/
It's still just a tautology that provides no answers, unless you can come up with a way to pay minimum wage earners more without inflating the rest of the economy to match.
kame-sennin
Member
No, but Alphanoid did at one point, hence the reference.
shadowsdarknes
Member
A poster posted this earlier and I think it deserves more attention because it is the reality of how a McDonald's operates.
A raise from $8 --> $10 is a 25% increase to total annual payroll expenses. An increase from $540,000 --> $675,000 or a difference of $135,000. Now, deduct $135,000 (change in payroll VC) from $153,900 (Net Income) and the franchisee makes a respectable $18,900 to pay his bills, and support his family.
This isn't magic. You can't make drastic changes to the McDonald's formula that has been operating the same way for decades. That's why it works. It is this way by design.
Payroll taxes would increase as well.A poster posted this earlier and I think it deserves more attention because it is the reality of how a McDonald's operates.
A raise from $8 --> $10 is a 25% increase to total annual payroll expenses. An increase from $540,000 --> $675,000 or a difference of $135,000. Now, deduct $135,000 (change in payroll VC) from $153,900 (Net Income) and the franchisee makes a respectable $18,900 to pay his bills, and support his family.
This isn't magic. You can't make drastic changes to the McDonald's formula that has been operating the same way for decades. That's why it works. It is this way by design.
A poster posted this earlier and I think it deserves more attention because it is the reality of how a McDonald's operates.
A raise from $8 --> $10 is a 25% increase to total annual payroll expenses. An increase from $540,000 --> $675,000 or a difference of $135,000. Now, deduct $135,000 (change in payroll VC) from $153,900 (Net Income) and the franchisee makes a respectable $18,900 to pay his bills, and support his family.
This isn't magic. You can't make drastic changes to the McDonald's formula that has been operating the same way for decades. That's why it works. It is this way by design.
So if you doubled the minimum wage across the board; your competitors would be forced to follow suit in their price rises.
Lets see... that's an addition 750k p.a. with crew and managers payroll and adjustment on payroll tax.
That would mean you would need 3.55 million revenue from the sales.
Which would mean you would need a 28% bump in food costs to maintain store operating profit parity.
Doubled wages, for a measly 30% increase in cost.
Meanwhile, everyone else that's poor gets more money to spend meaning that the 30% raise in cost is more than counterbalanced by their 100% raise in incomes.
Do you honestly think doubling minimum wage means doubling the wage of everyone else?
Because that's the only circumstance in which its a 'tautology'.
shadowsdarknes
Member
Yes that is all there but the article isn't fairly representing that data. The article paints this picture of parents with families in a two-bedroom apartment, struggling to get by, yet provides zero statistical evidence of this occurrence. I'm not doubting that struggling families are out there in a two-bedroom apartment, but how prevalent is this issue? It is obviously an issue if even a single family is living under these conditions. But given the premise of the article, and using at least to describe a range of data, is deliberately misleading.
For example, it assumes a single breadwinner in the entire article. An average two-bedroom apartment across the United States is $949. In reality, a single person making minimum wage is paying half of that, or $474.50 per month.
I can use their sources that they used to point by point rebuke the entire article because it is that big of a turd (IMO) and just generally poor journalism.
Don't take offense, I just generally distrust all sources by online news publications.
killer rin
Member
Ouch, I had no Idea they got paid that low at those fast food places... I mean, I'm only 18 and I work at a grocery store for 11.50/hour (Minimum wage is 10.25). I hope they stick with their strike and eventually get what they deserve to at least live. Lord knows they need it; especially in this economy.
Their are 168 Hours in a week... Holy cow, In some places people can't even get a full night of sleep! That has to be causing health issues.
Minimum wage is an unlivable wage.
http://nlihc.wordpress.com/2012/03/16/talk-of-the-town-making-the-rent/
Their are 168 Hours in a week... Holy cow, In some places people can't even get a full night of sleep! That has to be causing health issues.
The tautology was the first part, about the minimum wage not being a living wage. Which is something that is known already, we aren't even debating it.
And yes, over time all wages and prices would adjust to where we are in the exact same situation. Value and pricing in an economy is relative, you can't just mess with individual variables without affecting the whole.
... the way you're using the word tautology... doesn't seem like you quite understand what a tautology is.
Also, why the hell would all wages readjust back to where they are relatively speaking?
You understand the clear intent of raising the minimum wage is simply to rebalance the relative purchasing power of the lowest paid members of society.
If that means readjusting it constantly so that the primary intent of a livable wage can be kept, then so be it.
shadowsdarknes
Member
It's not that simple.
Edit: The reason why it isn't that simple is because there needs to be a natural distribution of wealth. Raising minimum wage is unnatural and therefore won't work as you believe.
You're really just asserting things without justifying them.
I'm well aware that doubling minimum wage doesn't double their effective buying power. But it does nonetheless raise their effective buying power to an extent.
Unchecked immigration keeps unskilled labor wages low. The US would seriously need to consider closing it's borders before it can think about raising the minimum wage to $10+/hr
The US should also institute a visa program for seasonal farm workers or get rid of stupid farm regulations that keep Mexican tomatoes and other certain veggies from being sold in the US.
The US should also institute a visa program for seasonal farm workers or get rid of stupid farm regulations that keep Mexican tomatoes and other certain veggies from being sold in the US.
Tautologies are self reinforcing statements, which your initial statement may not quite qualify as, but the main thing is that that point isn't even really in contention, so your statement was irrelevant. It's getting late, sorry if I picked the wrong logical fallacy.
If you increase the low end wages everyone who can demand higher will to maintain their relative position. Then there is increased demand from higher wages, which drives up prices in addition to initial price hikes to offset wage increases. Not to mention that doubling the minimum wage would impact way more industries than fast food. That would be a massive economic shock to the lower end of the manufacturing segment, many businesses would just go out of business because they can't compete with higher wages, and their product is not as demand inelastic as fast food.
Now the increases in prices aren't always going to 100% offset the wage increase, some of the difference will be made up via firing the marginal workers. The price increase will be unequally distributed among industries based on which uses the most minimum wage labor as a percentage of sales, and of course goods can be sourced from overseas where the production isn't affected by the minimum wage increase(at least to the degree the foreign business don't gouge you because the domestic competition is so expensive).
shadowsdarknes
Member
There are certain things I learned in economics that I know are true, and my assertion is one of them. Economics isn't my thing, business is, so someone else who is more knowledgeable about economic theory can offer a better explanation.
One thing I know, is economics is super complex. I hardly know a thing about it outside of the general macro and micro courses I took, which essentially means my input is moot. However, micro and macro are still relevant for certain foundation theories. Artificially boosting minimum wage beyond the rate of inflation will result in insufferable consequences on the US economy, bottom line. Luckily this thread is not about the minimum wage, but the wages of a particular corporation.
With that said, to how much of an extent will these employees buying power increase?
water_wendi
Water is not wet!
i support this. If i have to pay 20% more thats acceptable. Even if dollar menu stuff was 50% more (or 100% in the case of double cheese burgers) if i knew it meant a person working there could actually support a family i would gladly pay.
I'm late to this but just wanted to say:
The opposite in fact, suburbia is cheaper relative to urban areas. There is in fact more poverty in suburbia than in the cities in the USA.
shadowsdarknes
Member
But what about the families searching for opportunity for their children with both the father and mother working multiple jobs whom rely on McDonald's dollar menu to actually be a dollar menu - not a dollar fifty menu - to feed five hungry mouths among other expenses? This is a devils advocate argument just for reference. However, with the way this discussion has went, I think it is an interesting perspective to call attention to.
Yeah since there are a ton of better jobs instantly available for people who work in jobs with low pay.
Oh wait... That isn't true. That in itself is a crazy concept.
lol @ the "If I, did it anyone can" attitude. Let's just instantly dismiss the different situations a ton of people are in (in which some have to take whatever is available).
Never ceased to be amazed by people who can't related to social issues. Most who can't usually had it good. That shouldn't be an excuse though as there are many who did have a decent life/upbring that can still relate to the problems of the less fortunate (like me).
travisbickle
Member
Contemporary wage structure is fuckin' arbitrary anyway, noone knows what the hell is going on and people only give a shit when pay in their sector is affected.
The reality is a high percentage of people on here probably create more individual revenue using Facebook and Twitter then they do as an individual with their jobs, there's no relation between your labour and what you are paid.
It's a fucking shambles and will only be rectified when the new salaried bourgeois are effected, but it'll be too late by then.
The reality is a high percentage of people on here probably create more individual revenue using Facebook and Twitter then they do as an individual with their jobs, there's no relation between your labour and what you are paid.
It's a fucking shambles and will only be rectified when the new salaried bourgeois are effected, but it'll be too late by then.
This person has no idea what he is talking about.
Lol, this is like getting a shitty nickname in highschool, it never goes away. Poor alpha noid
water_wendi
Water is not wet!
This is true but the goal is to get the multiple-job workers (everyone really) to at least a living wage so that a $1.50 value menu isnt over budget.
It's GAF, where some can have elitist attitudes over the most pointless things. Not really surprising... still a bit sad though.
shadowsdarknes
Member
Maybe I missed a lot in the first couple of pages, but who is being elitist?
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