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 ...
And now you're working for $15 an hour? Why aren't you in business anymore?
“And now you’re working for $15 an hour? Why aren’t you in business anymore?”
I don’t believe I said what I’m making now.
I closed the shop when the building started to fall off.
I kept the benchtop machines and sometimes will build a few cabinets if it’s for somebody I know.
I sold the rest of the stuff. I was getting payments for the bigger machines for a couple of years since I owned them all outright.
and they are paying their workers
if they can’t afford to have these workers quit because new ones with their high level of irreplaceable skills won’t work for what they pay then, yes, pay would have to go up and they might employ one less worker too.
have you ever seen the TV show “Worst Jobs in Hostory”??
history
dang
I need to hire a Chinese kid to type for me at $1 an hour...
I’d rather not, it would be nice to purchase a hamburger for 5 dollars.
“if they can’t afford to have these workers quit because new ones with their high level of irreplaceable skills won’t work for what they pay then, yes, pay would have to go up and they might employ one less worker too.”
I wonder which would work best. If they cut a worker and raised the current pay. Maybe not to $15 but say $12 and that worked as a solution or would it be better to stand on $8.50 and have the workers unionize.
I also wonder if the stores will stay open if the workers do unionize.
If they raised the pay and eliminated a position, I expect them to burn the place down anyways. :|
“If they raised the pay and eliminated a position, I expect them to burn the place down anyways. :|”
Lol. Well my question was really, is it better to raise the pay or have them unionize.
And if they unionize will the NYC MickyDs stay open.
Fast food jobs are meant for school kids...its an entry level job for kids....democrats are the one’s that put in motion such jobs are for the family man or woman....idiots aren’t worth even minimum wage at times...
Exactly.
For highly repetitive 24/7 jobs, the break even point for a robot is close to $20 per hour.
For robots, that price will come down, and they will get more productive each year.
For humans, their price will go up, and their productivity will slightly improve each year.
Good luck to those with limited blue collar skills.
The next ten years will be seriously painful, not just in America and Europe, but everywhere.
” However, many branches are operated on a franchise basis, and owners fear their profitability would be hit if they are forced to pay higher wages than a nearby outlet.”
Really? Higher expenses mean lower profits? How can this be? Is this really a surprise to anyone? Do the union rank and file not understand their striking for higher wages will affect the company they are striking against? Does the word TWINKIE help?
The unions will continue to get black eyes as they strike against employers during a ressession. Even low union wages look good compared to unemployment checks!
everyone who wants to pay $15 for a Big Mac so the illiterate punching pictures at the register can support illegitimate children- please raise your hand
or to be fair, perhaps that register puncher is a permanently underemployed liberal arts grad obama voter with $100K in student loans. So add in $5 fries and a $5 drink
the illiterates realize union dues will take mo’ money out of their paychecks, right? The cruelest tax of all
Sorry. I must have mixed someone else's posts in with yours.
I closed the shop when the building started to fall off.
I can't speak to your personal business circumstances, but nearly every successful business owner has weathered repeated economic storms in the life of their business.
In my own, I've seen it go from a cockamamie idea in my head, to a thriving concern that produced excellent products and great jobs, to just me and a couple of helpers, down to just me and my truck, then slowly climbing back to the brink of real success again.
If you made it for five years, I've just got to believe that you could still make it. Businesses that make it to the five year mark, are pretty solid. It takes some exceptional adversity in the marketplace to kill a business that's made it that far. The only other thing that can kill it, is if the owner simply decides to pull the plug.
I know all about the construction market falling off. I think everyone in the trades does. What I found in my own business, was that the market for high end sheet metal work was being slowly taken over by the modular, assembly line sort of products. When I came into the business fifteen years ago, the high end only accounted for maybe 15% of the market anyway, but that was plenty for us to maintain a strong and healthy business. Nowadays, that's probably down to about 5%, and in the Dallas area (where we moved seven years ago), it's even less.
We suffered horribly because of being edged out like that, and the proliferation of illegal labor didn't help either. It pushed the wages and the product quality down across my industry.
My wife and I bailed and went into a completely different business for about three years, but closed that when the products themselves didn't perform to our standards. We went back to doing what we've always done, but had to re-learn the market and a new business model. Now that we've got it, we're about to give our competitors hell.
Anyhow, we're drifting off topic here. I just wanted to reply to the points in your last post.
As a former business owner, I'm sure you can appreciate the fact that what you pay your employees is based upon what your products can fetch in the marketplace. If it takes an employee one hour to produce $50 worth of salable goods or services, you can't possibly pay him $50 an hour. If you paid him $25 an hour, that would be 50% of the gross, which is unsustainable in any business I know of. $15 an hour (or about 30% of the gross) would be about tops for that employee, I would think.
Naturally, that employee's pay would increase if he could produce higher revenue per hour for the company. That's just the way the simple economics work.
No, I haven't. What's your point?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but as I understand it, if you don't belong to a Union already you cannot legally go on strike. If I owned one of these companies all of the people who walked out would be fired ASAP.
****And many here cheer another American losing their job..pure BS****
Yes that is pure BS. Many here see the destruction of socialist policies and shout it from the rooftops. That is not nearly the same as cheering our downfall.
” The only other thing that can kill it, is if the owner simply decides to pull the plug.”
That’s pretty much what happened. I had lost interest in the work.
It seemed like as good a time as any to move on to something else.
I had a couple if $15 an hour employees. That’s about the top out for that kind of work. Those were the skill positions.
Everybody else made around $11 which was about a dollar or two above average but it was worth it not to roll the crew over so much.
I don’t know how much MickyDs food costs in NYC. I would guess that it costs a little more than other places just because everything there costs a bit more.
I don’t know how anybody makes it anywhere on $8.50 an hour, and certainly not in NYC.
I’ll ask you the same question I asked upthread in another post.
In your opinion would it be wiser for MickyDs to raise the pay or to have them unionize.
And if they unionize will the MickyDs stay open?
I've been reading your comments(snarkybob) and you are an idiot. I don't believe you ever ran a business, I think you are a left wing troll spouting left wing talking points. To answer your stupid question. If McDs doesn't raise pay there is no guarantee that the workers will Unionize, it takes a bit of effort to do so.
However, if they did Unionize and demanded higher wages I would bet McDs in NYC would shut down, if they can't afford to raise the pay to 15 an hour now, what makes you think they could afford it if the workers unionized?
Your question is totally idiotic and self answering which is why no one else answered you on it. I decided to because I became tired of reading it in every other comment. Anyone with a brain(especially someone who claims to have owned a business) would never have asked such a stupid question to begin with.
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