Posted on 12/01/2012 7:15:07 PM PST by DeaconBenjamin
Hundreds of fast food workers at New York City branches of McDonald's, Burger King and other big-name chains have staged a walk out in protest of low wages.
The strike, organised by pressure group New York Communities for Change (NYCC), was part of an attempt to gain union recognition for staff at fast food outlets in the city.
"So many people in our neighbourhoods work at fast food restaurants and make poverty wages so low people can't put food on the table, put clothes on their kids' back or even afford the train ride to work."
The group staged a number of demonstrations across the city, culminating at the McDonald's in Times Square.
NYCC organizers have held discussions with employees about forming a new union, the Fast Food Workers Committee, for several months. Attempts have been made to sign them up to a petition demanding that workers be granted the freedom to join a union, and a raise the minimum wage from $7.25 to $15 an hour.
McDonald's said in a statement: "McDonald's values our employees and has consistently remained committed to them, so in turn they can provide quality service to our customers." It added that most of its franchisees offered competitive benefits.
Some 50,000 workers are involved in the fast food industry across the city, with many paid the median hourly wage of $8.90 (nationally, it is $8.76). Low-pay campaigners estimated in 2010 that an adult with one child living in the least expensive area of the city needs to make $21.85 an hour to be self-sufficient. The average fast food worker in New York earns about $11,000 a year.
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
“Why are you sympathizing with these enemies of our Republic? “
Because I think wage busting is as big an enemy as unions. There wouldn’t be unions had they not become necassary. To a large degree they’ve outlived their usefullness.
Any CEO will tell you straight out that their only goal is to make money, if that means outsourcing then they outsource, if it means paying substandard wages and they can get away with it then they do that as well.
I heard the outsource argument that said companies moved overseas because unions broke them, but if it were just about pay and bennies why not just move to a right to work state.
The middle class is largely gone and that’s not going to come back if the policy is that large Corps can pay whatever they feel like paying the workers.
It may seem radical to you but I believe that somebody working a fulltime job is justified in having a reasonable expectation that they can feed, clothe, and house themselves.
Not in grand style, but where they don’t still need assistance.
BTW I thought a lot of posts on this thread were more than anti union, they were anti working people.
Go forward with that message and see how many people it converts to any conservative cause.
Bob, have you ever signed the front of a paycheck? Ever written the checks to cover the overhead costs of running a business? Ever sat at your kitchen table with your wife on a Sunday, going over your family's business accounting, trying to figure out how keep your prices competitive, while squeezing every last penny you could into the payroll budget to keep the good and loyal employees from seeking greener pastures - all while making sure there was enough to pay all your suppliers, creditors, and your advertising bill?
Not to mention that fact that you and your wife ought to see a paycheck somewhere in that mix. Have you ever done that, Bob?
I have. More times than I can tell you.
The fact is, there is only so much pie to go around in any business. McDonalds restaurants may do lots of business, but there's only so much any one store can carve off for payroll. Just like there's only so much they can charge for a Big Mac. At the end of the day, you can only pay your employees what the market will support.
If your customers would be happy with a 100% increase in the cost of your goods and services, then you'll have no trouble doubling your employee's wages. If not, then it's not something that's within your ability to make happen.
Brother, you and I are living the same nightmare. I’ve been dealing with everything you mentioned in your post for well over a decade now.
Sometimes I think you won’t be able to find a native born American in the trades in another ten years.
“Most of them are franchises and are not big businesses. “
They still have to pay the employees. I have to figure that if they got the money
together for the franchise they submitted a business plan and if that planned was only profitable by paying the lowest possible wages...they should go back to hiring HS kids.
If the employees are coming from some other labor pool besides HS kids working for extra money then the costs of labor are almost certainly going to go up.
I believe that somebody working a fulltime job is justified in having a reasonable expectation that they can feed, clothe, and house themselves
lol. Now they will work 29 hours a week and the taxpayers will be feeding, clothing and housing themselves.
if they are union or leftists maybe
but mostly it is an “a ha!” Obamaland strikes again!
“Not to mention that fact that you and your wife ought to see a paycheck somewhere in that mix. Have you ever done that, Bob?
I have. More times than I can tell you.
The fact is, there is only so much pie to go around in any business. McDonalds restaurants may do lots of business, but there’s only so much any one store can carve off for payroll. Just like there’s only so much they can charge for a Big Mac. At the end of the day, you can only pay your employees what the market will support.”
Yes I have.
If the company can’t pay wages that even keep their employees just a bit below the poverty line, then by the free market principle, shouldn’t they close the doors.
Also we’re not talking about a family run small business like the one you described. We’re talking about a national chain. Someone pointed out that the stores are franchises but they still have a lot of heft from being part of a national chain.
If the only way they can stay open is by paying substandard wages, or hiring illegals, then hasn’t the free market spoken?
“and there should also be a reasonable expectation that a company can fire bad workers too.”
Absolutely a bad employee should be fired.
This is the same forum that regularly bashes welfare recipients and yet here’s a group of people working an honest job for a Corp that is worth who knows how much and it’s somehow offensive that the workers try to get more money.
I hate to say it but the attitude of some of the conservatives here toward struggling workers may be why we’re losing everywhere.
My posts on this thread and other restaurant threads are not "anti worker," but I believe merely pro-reality.
The fast food business model formed in the 1930s-1950s from two changes in society, the increasingly mobile public, and an increasing middle class. Previous to the 1940s, restaurants were for the upper class. Workers too their lunches to the factory in buckets, and later lunch pails. The McDonald's fanchise business model brought consistency and cheap warm food to the middle class, but it does so by controlling costs.
Today we have 2.7 million workers in the fast food industry, which runs on thin margins. And now the government thinks it can do better to run the industry. It has mandated health care, it is raising taxes on small business, which is what these are, it wants to raise taxes on "millionaires" making 250k, which is what they are, it has raised regulatory requirements for signs, and now the workers are being encouraged to form unions and strike for whatever is left.
The fast food business model can't support all of those new requirements. It hires low cost employees for a reason, because it operates on a thin margin. Raise the costs, and they have to raise the prices. If they raise the prices, people will substitute, because they can do so easily. It is already cheaper to bring a lunch in a lunch pail from home, it is just a convenience to go to Taco Bell. But if Taco Bell keeps raising their prices, more and more people will decide it is not worth the convenience and will substitute. The government can force costs to rise, but it can't force customers to go there.
The only thing fast food restaurants can do to survive is to fight these added costs as best they can. They will hire only part time workers. They will automate as much as possible, and get as lean as possible. Jobs will be lost, jobs that business owners were willing to pay for before all these regulations.
What no one on the "worker" side seems to understand is that the fast food business model is not a pre ordained, must have business model. Regulations can kill the entire industry. I believe these regulations are more "anti worker" than the business owners, or any of these posts.
Get a good ladder...It worked wonders for me...
I guess if they can’t afford the arbitrary regulations imposed by the behemoth in DC, the “free market” has spoken?
seriously?
We could see every retail level establishment in the country put all their employees on part time schedules because of Obamacare and other needless regulations.... but you think they should all shut down because the “free market has spoken”??
If Obama imposes a 100% tax on business and businesses shut down, its the “free market” that has spoken?
If workers walk off the job and you aren’t allowed to replace them, is that somehow the “free market” too?
Here is the test. If these $8 an hour workers refuse to work, let us see if this business can replace them. If it can with people who are willing to work, then the “free market has spoken”.
‘kay?
Seriously? The franchises PAY THE CHAIN, not the other way around.
Burger workers want $15/hr? Let them move to North Dakota. They pay more than that and can’t find people because the oil fields scooped all the burger crowds up from there.
Problem solved.
They need to automate and just have one guy back there and some machines doing most of the work.
Then they can pay $15 an hour, to that guy
“Seriously? The franchises PAY THE CHAIN, not the other way around.”
Right. Who pays for the advertising. Would a Mom & Pop burger stand have as good a chance of success as Micky Ds?
“I guess if they can’t afford the arbitrary regulations imposed by the behemoth in DC, the “free market” has spoken?”
I’m sorry I thought we were talking about a specific group of workers. Namely some MickyDs employees in NYC who were trying to get a pay bump from the $8.50 an hour they’re making now.
No other arbitrary regulations were mentioned. I said that if the company couldn’t afford to pay their workers and still stay open then the free market principle had spoken.
They can raise their prices or they can close but labor is a legitimate business expense.
Maybe they can save money on their deliveries by telling whoever they get their fuel from that they can only pay 2 dollars a gallon for fuel.
You forgt to mention they might need to live in a tent for a while. :p
Bob, I read through your posts on the thread, and nowhere did you relate your personal experiences as a business owner. You say you paid a competent professional to do some work for you once, but that's very different from owning and running a real business for an extended length of time.
Frankly, your posts throughout this thread read exactly like someone who's always been (and still is) a wage earner, not an entrepreneur.
If the company can’t pay wages that even keep their employees just a bit below the poverty line, then by the free market principle, shouldn’t they close the doors.
Whose free market principles are those? Karl Marx'? SEIU's? Obama's?
The free market is just that -- free. It's trade conducted between willing sellers, and willing buyers. If I have a shop that sells cheap hamburgers to customers of modest means, then there's only so much I can afford to pay someone to flip patties for me. There's just not that much profit margin built into the sales price of the product.
Just as I offer the public a decent sandwich for a cheap price, I offer a low paying burger flipping job to anyone who's willing to do that menial job for the pay. Not everyone will take it, but there are some who (for whatever personal reasons) will.
Not everyone will buy my burgers, either. Some folks want a better meal, and are willing to pay more to get it. It's a free market, and they've got choices. So do people looking for employment. Not everyone's going to be willing to flip burgers for me for what I can afford to pay, but that's alright. It's a free market. They're free to try and sell their labor to someone who can afford to pay more. Like the more expensive restaurant up the road.
There isn't any rule in free market capitalism that says you MUST provide a 'living wage' to everyone who works for you. Some jobs simply don't have that level of real world exchange value. Sorry, but that's just elementary economics at work.
The expectation that any job in the economy should pay a so-called 'living wage' is a total arbitrary invented by leftists. Everything has a value, including labor. Some types of labor is more valuable than others. Some has hardly any value at all. In a truly free market, there will always be someone who's willing to trade with you, if the perceived value of labor to dollars is equitable.
They make a couple pennies on the dollar, a very slim profit margin.
If these workers think they can make $15 an hour, they are free to start their own fast food place and pay themselves whatever they like.
If the price goes up, I’ll just cook my own burgers at home.
“Bob, I read through your posts on the thread, and nowhere did you relate your personal experiences as a business owner. You say you paid a competent professional to do some work for you once, but that’s very different from owning and running a real business for an extended length of time.
Frankly, your posts throughout this thread read exactly like someone who’s always been (and still is) a wage earner, not an entrepreneur.”
I owned a cabinet and woodworking shop for about 5 years.
had as many as 12 employees, not counting independent installation contractors.
Owned a small paint business that was really just to help me sell cabinet jobs.
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