Fast Food Strike

Coltsdad

Today locally, and from what I've heard, across the country fast food workers are going on strike because they feel they should get double the minimum wage ($15/hr).  Thoughts, feelings, experiences?

Coltsdad

I want to go on record and say I spent nearly 5 years in the retail industry.  I hired in at $7.50/hr (this was in 1999).  By the end of my time there I was making $10.  I figured that every employee in our store averaged somewhere just over $500,000 a year in sales based on equal hours for all part time employees.  I've lived that life.

That being said, I feel for the people struggling to make ends meet, but I think paying a pimple faced 17 year old kid who spends as much time talking about what he did last night as he does working $15 an hour is insane when there are college degree required jobs that pay less than that.  You don't want to make $7.50 an hour?  Better yourself.  Acquire a trade.  Go back to school.  Frankly, the only real job requirements for an entry level McDonald's job is age and not being on drugs.

If you double the wages, you can expect a Big Mac to cost $7.  McDonald's isn't about ready to eat that profit margin.  You double the price of a Big Mac, you lose customers.  You lose customers, you go out of business.  You go out of business, you lose your $15/hr job and have to settle for a $7.50 job somewhere else.

I get it, it is hard to live on 15K a year, you are almost forced to work a 2nd job, however, some jobs quite simply aren't 30K a year jobs.

Sandy Cohen

I look at it completely differently. I think they should make more money. Maybe not $15 an hour, but more than $7. Most of the fast food places I eat at have adults working in them.

I don't want to see anyone struggle. I feel like the more we can help each other out the better of a society we will have for our future.

And you're not talking about a mom and pop's shop going out of business, you're talking about a multi billion dollar business.

Fuck corporate greed.

Prime

Minimum wage here is a little over $9.  Higher wages at McDonalds and the other retail places that have employees joining in will end up affecting small businesses.  People won't want the jobs at lower wages and they will end up having to raise wages to be competitive.

Higher wages also increases prices for consumer goods.  They aren't going to raise wages out of the goodness of their hearts.  That money has to come from somewhere.

How about we help people not struggle by reintroducing the concept of personal accountability in this country.  Better yourself.  Work to get a job that makes more money or make it obvious to your boss that you deserve more money.  Not by whining, but by your actions on the job.  It's not always someone else's fault.

Sandy Cohen

I understand consumerism.

I guess I just hope for a better world where people are more concerned about people than making money.

LuckyDad

I'm not sure the strikes will do much. I suppose they are increasing public consciousness a bit.

I think the Minimum wage in the US right now is a joke and should be bumped up a bit.

It's interesting, we used to live in a much more urban area, and all the fast food workers were adults. We moved to an inner suburb, and a lot of workers are teenagers. I worked fast food as a teen. That job sucked. I don't want my son to ever work a job like that... the only thing I learned is MY GOD MY JOB IS GREAT compared to that job was.

futant462

LuckyDad said:

I'm not sure the strikes will do much. I suppose they are increasing public consciousness a bit.

I think the Minimum wage in the US right now is a joke and should be bumped up a bit.

It's interesting, we used to live in a much more urban area, and all the fast food workers were adults. We moved to an inner suburb, and a lot of workers are teenagers. I worked fast food as a teen. That job sucked. I don't want my son to ever work a job like that... the only thing I learned is MY GOD MY JOB IS GREAT compared to that job was.

I worked concession at AMC Theaters when Titanic came out and minimum wage was like $5.30 or something like that.  It was fucking awful but you're right, I do appreciate my job more than I probably would had I not had that experience.

Wulfgar

I always thought that fast food especially was for teenagers, retired people wanting a little extra income, or people who's spouse brings in most of the wages to live on and this gives the spouse something easy to do while the children are in school.

That being said, if you start paying fast food workers $15 an hour then you have to slide all wages up to compensate for the additional cost of everything.

I am sorry, I have worked low wage jobs while working on getting my engineering degree and I understood that I couldn't do a lot of extras that middle class people do.  I also have seen first hand people that purposely stay at minimum wage jobs and keep jumping jobs to maximize government aid.

My final thoughts on this matter is that when you give manufacturing jobs a black eye and praise service jobs you get what you ask for especially if for the past 30 years the culture has been pushing for the lowest price possible instead of what Henry Ford did which was a living wage so that people can pay for actual costs of products.

Wulfgar

Hate to say this, it is not about making money, it is all about if you want living wages you need to price your goods so that you can pay those living wages.  If the consumers don't want to pay the price for living wages then you can't force the market to pay that for goods.

bklyndad

Sandy Cohen said:

I look at it completely differently. I think they should make more money. Maybe not $15 an hour, but more than $7. Most of the fast food places I eat at have adults working in them. I don't want to see anyone struggle. I feel like the more we can help each other out the better of a society we will have for our future. And you're not talking about a mom and pop's shop going out of business, you're talking about a multi billion dollar business. Fuck corporate greed.

I'm with Sandy on this one. I worked in retail for years, starting in high school and continuing on through college, and it was fine at the time. But today the problem is not so much the wage as it is the wage gap. When I was punching buttons on a register and forcing smiles at the great unwashed, I was able to find decent food and an apartment I could afford (admittedly, it wasn't great, but it was clean and not in a completely cracked-out neighborhood). I lived lean, but I did have a life. Today, with rents and the cost of living, I have no idea how anyone survives on a "McDonald's" wage, and as Sandy pointed out it's not just pimply faced kids back there on the fry baskets. 

The quote is variously attributed to Carnegie, Ford, one of the Vanderbilts and a number of others, but whomever said it, the idea that "the guy at the top should make no more than 100 times what the guy on the factory floor is making" is a good one — and all of those guys were considered to be exploitive a$$holes. 

According to Business Insider and Bloomberg, in 2012 the CEOs at Starbucks, Abercrombie & Fitch and JC Penny all made more than 1,100 times their average worker's pay. 

Narrow that wage gap and everyone gets to participate in the economy, buying a car every few years instead of every 20 years, saving to buy a home, keeping other people employed. Allow the gap to expand, the middle class disappears, what's left can't afford to buy anything of value, and the guys at the top gladly turn to that huge market to the east and leave the rest of us here to do what, exactly...? 

Fuck corporate greed. Let them make $25 million a year instead of $53 million (the salary of A&F's CEO Michael Jeffries in 2012) and bump up that minimum wage.

Sandy Cohen

I think $9 is fair for minimum wage.

I reread what I wrote yesterday and I hope no one thinks that I'm okay with them making $15 an hour. I agree that it's a great entry level job for person to learn about the responsibilities of a work environment.

I definitely understand that if you raise wages that will increase the price for the consumer. That is basic economics.

I suppose my problem is with the corporate world as brkylndad pointed out. I feel like we are definitely way to far apart on the wage scale. That doesn't mean I don't think that CEO's shouldn't earn a hefty wage, I just wish they respected their workers more.

When you live in an area where people are homeless and live in less than desirable housing, I can't help but feel compassion for these folks.

It maybe apples to oranges in this topic and I came off a little strong. Everyone has made great points as to why it shouldn't be raised.

Wulfgar

I agree with @polooo26 that to make it to the top of the corporate world you have to put in your dues.  This means working 60 to 80 hours a week and being willing to move when ever the company you work for says jump.

I am not personally willing to do this.  I left one job because they not only wanted me to work 60 plus hours a week but since I was a capital project/ manufacturing engineer at a plant that runs 24/7 with shutdowns only for the major holidays I got to be at work over all holidays.

I also have known people who were making $12.50 an hour watching boxes fill and they thought that they needed to be paid more even though the job was barely a step up from totally unskilled.

bklyndad

Absolutely understand where some of you are coming from, and I agree that the guys with the smarts who put in the hours and take risks are entitled to be rewarded accordingly. But there's a rather thick line between "accordingly" and "grossly," and one only has to look at a chart marking income inequality from 1980 to today to see that we left the former behind a long time ago.  

On the flip side, I heard someone at one of the fast-food demonstrations interviewed on NPR yesterday demanding benefits and $15 per hour, and it turns out he's 43 and he delivers cookies on his bicycle for a bakery here in New York. I think that he must be completely insane.

bklyndad

Like I wrote, my problem isn't with people at the top making big numbers — they absolutely deserve to make a ton, and more power to them. My problem is with the gap between their "ton" and the salaries of "the other guys."

Pro sports is a great analogy, especially within the limited scope of the teams themselves. The top players make a ton, but every member of the team is fairly compensated, no matter how small his or her contribution.  Numbers from 2012:

MLB

Top dog: $30 million

Average player: $3.2 million

Guaranteed minimum: $480,000

NFL

Top dog: $22 million

Average player: $1.9 million

Guaranteed minimum, 1st year rookie: $375,000 (increases to $685,000 after four years' service)

NBA

Top dog: $30 million

Average player: $5.15 million

Guaranteed minimum, 1st year rookie: $490,000 (increases to $947,000 after four years' service)

NHL

Top dog: $12.7 million

Average player: $2.4 million

Guaranteed minimum: $525,000

In contrast: In 2012, 80 percent of Wal-Mart's employees received wages low enough to qualify them for government assistance (Bloomberg). Subsidizing Wal-Mart's employees cost U.S. taxpayers $2.6 billion that year. Meanwhile, Wal-Mart's CEO was paid 1,034 times the salary of the company's average worker. 

So why does Wal-Mart, which ranked second on the 2012 Fortune 500 list, pay its employees so poorly that 80 percent of them are on some sort of welfare? Or are the pathetic wages what enabled it to earn the ranking? 

Either way, I don't like subsidizing anyone, much less the employees of a firm that netted $447 billion in 2012 (with profit of $15.7 billion). If they take care of their team members, the rest of us don't have to. And so it goes with many profitable companies. 

bklyndad

I did qualify my last comparison as strictly within the framework of the teams — "Pro sports is a great analogy, especially within the limited scope of the teams themselves" — and didn't include parking, concessions, etc., functions which are all (usually) handled by separate companies.  Within that limited scope, I think pro sports teams are a great example of economic distribution: the ones that contribute the most make a ton more than the players who don't (and rightly so) but no one is left so far behind as to not be able to afford a decent life for himself and his family. 

And likewise, not trying to argue. I think there are a number of ways to look at the issue of salaries, and far too many variables involved in the issue as a whole to hash out any absolutes in a forum like this — we haven't even mentioned regional cost and tax variations, for example —  but it's fun to get different perspectives.