Posted on 08/29/2013 1:05:57 PM PDT by kevcol
"You're trying to go up and you're just going down," said protester Shantel Walker, 31, of Brooklyn who makes $7.25 working at a Papa John's in Manhattan. "All of us are in the same financial crunch. We're trying to take care of our families and our livelihood."
The strikes mark the latest salvo in a nearly year-long battle to get not only higher wages but also an opportunity to unionize without facing retaliation from employers.
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U.S. Labor Secretary Thomas Perez told The Associated Press the strikes were a sign of the need to raise the minimum wage. "For all too many people working minimum wage jobs, the rungs on the ladder of opportunity are feeling further and further apart," Perez said.
Workers are demanding that the $200 billion fast-food industry more than double starting salaries to $15 an hour from the current $7.25 an hour minimum wage and the $8.94 median wage for front-end workers.
(Excerpt) Read more at inplainsight.nbcnews.com ...
Your sympathy doesn’t change the laws of economics. As long as tons of people (including millions of illegals) are competing for these jobs, the wages will stay low.
You get high wages when your level of education and training would make it tough for your employer to find a replacement should you depart.
Since literally any idiot can work at McDonalds, the employees have zero leverage.
And even if McDonalds did buckle and start paying everyone $12.00/hr, they would soon go out of business since Burger King, Wendy’s etc would keep paying their people $7.00 - thus allowing them to keep prices low and take away McDonalds’ customers.
Bottom line, the solution is not to wave a government wand and force the company to pay more. Deport all illegals and close the borders. Without the huge oversupply of labor, the labor of these fast food workers would start to become more valuable.
Same’s true for farm work...
Liberal elites don’t think we care that we’re paying for illegals, paying for unemployment for blacks, and paying with low wages for the rest of us. We notice - we care.
hey numbnuts.
If the price of a 1/4er pounder or Burger Royale goes to $8, how is that helpful to anyone as sales will plummet and consequently the number of workers required to run the operations is reduced?
Damnit!!!
FR is truncating again.
No one will invest in them if the cost of labor is too high. What idiots.
Go eff yourselves, Obamaites.
Where did I say the government should get involved? I said I would like to see them get a bit more pay but the market will decide.
Good lord. So now people have to be told that fast food is a transition job, not a career? There’s a reason I did it at the age of 17 but I’m not doing it now.
Explains why they never get the orders right, anymore.
These wages shouldn’t be increased. If anything, lower them. Why? When I worked these kinds of jobs in college, it was the greatest motivator in the world to finish engineering school. I kept telling myself, “If you don’t finish school, this is your life right here.”
No, you're trying to get started.
"Go up" is what you do when you leave this job for a better one.
-PJ
-PJ
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