Posted on 05/14/2013 1:53:48 PM PDT by Welchie25
Laura Bailey makes $7.80 working at Wendy’s, but most of her income goes to transportation to and from work, making money tight for her and her teenage daughter, she said May 14 at a roundtable for minimum wage workers.
An increase of the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $9 “would do wonders” for her budget, she said.
Bailey was among 19 people who shared their stories with Seth D. Harris, acting U.S. secretary of labor, who hosted the roundtable at Our Daily Bread Employment Center, a Catholic Charities program in Baltimore. The event was the 23rd of its kind hosted by the Department of Labor in an effort to increase support for raising the minimum wage by the end of 2015.
A full-time worker making minimum wage earns $14,500 a year, putting a family of four under the poverty line. Harris estimates that 15 million workers would benefit from an increase in the minimum wage.
In the 2013 State of the Union address, President Barack Obama championed an increase in minimum wage to $9 and indexing it to inflation. Legislation has been introduced in Congress to increase the wage, but not along the outlines of the president’s plan.
Harris hopes the policy will gain bipartisan support, pointing to past Republican-backed efforts to raise the wage. He said the proposal has “overwhelming support in the country,” which should help it garner congressional support.
“Minimum wage and low wage workers are the most passionate, effective and articulate advocates for the policy the president has proposed,” Harris said.
(Excerpt) Read more at catholicreview.org ...
Tech will take care of low wage jobs. If no one will do them, there’s an ‘ap’ for that.
As in, a disruption in picking tomatoes lead to a hybrid that could be picked by machine. Automated MickyD’s and Wendy’s are just ahead.
“Laura Bailey makes $7.80 working at Wendy’s”
and food stamps and other EBT money and HUD housing and free school meals and so on.
Probably makes approx. $35,000/year.
Serious question:
Is that what made Florida tomatoes perfectly round, uniform in color and size and utterly tasteless?
The Catholic “social justice” view on this is simplistic and shallow. They are promoting the emotional, knee-jerk, progressive policies which in fact caused this, and will make a bad situation worse.
First of all, few if any, families have 4 members all working at minimum wage. Raise the minimum wage, and you simply make it more difficult for low-skill young people to find jobs.
Secondly, they should look to our monetary and regulatory system. Rigid, socialist controlled labor markets, Printed fiat money, destruction of the currency and stealth inflation to pay for Government debt, bailouts and Government over-spending will always hit those without physical assets and those without skills the hardest ie) lowest-wage earners.
One wonders if they learned anything at all from poverty in (Catholic) nations such as Mexico, Argentina, Venezuela, or Haiti
The UCCB should protest Ben Bernanke instead.
I think I’d be more likely to eat fast food if it were automated.
A 24% rise in my income would do wonders for my budget too.
Let's say during an 8 hour shift there are 4 employees. That's 32 hours per shift, times 2 shifts = 64 work hours per day, times $4 = $256 per day, times 7 = $1792 extra dollars per week. Or $93,184 higher annual labor costs than anticipated.
The boss can fire himself, or a couple of employees.
Who do you think will win that tug-of-war?
An increase of the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $9 “would do wonders” for her budget, she said.
A $1.75 raise would do wonders for my budget also. But I may be real lucky and get 25 cents - 30 cents no matter how hard I work.
$7.25 for bagging fries seems pretty good to me. My first civilian job when I mustered out in 1973 was a Correctional Officer in a County Prison at $2.75 an hour.
I agree with all that you said. So many “compassionate” people can only see that more would be better, but they can’t seem to realize that someone has to pay for it. Why not give everyone $25 an hour? Wouldn’t that be great?
In '67 I quit Burger King at $1.00 per hr to go to work for a gas station for 58.5 cents per hr. I really hated BK.
I believe we all know the answer to that one. The higher the over the counter cost for a product, especially in fast food, the lower the sales volume.
The only thing that can keep volume propped up is if the Government is paying the difference by passing out more EBT cards for use at FF franchises.
Or $100,000 per year, minimum. Just think how much better off we’d all be, and, how much extra money the government would collect in taxes.
I guess the proponents of this a higher minimum wage think, "We may not have gotten to kill them before they were born (although we tried), but we don't have to give them anything but a miserable existence of dependence on the state in crime-infested ghettos!"
I am sympathetic to Ms Bailey’s predicament. It is, however, not the prerogative of government to decide that Wendy’s can afford to pay her more. If she isn’t making enough to pay the bills, it is time to find another job.
Where is her husband? How much does he earn?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.