This shit again? Fast Food workers on strike for higher wage. (15$/hour)
221 replies, posted
[QUOTE=AugustBurnsRed;45513377]They are not fighting so only fast food workers get an increase, they are fighting for a higher minimum wage. If they succeed and you make less than the new minimum, CONGRATS you get higher pay too![/QUOTE]
I won't necessarily benefit and I currently make $9 an hour. Inflation is a bitch and raising the minimum wage would would just raise inflation. Prices will certainly go up and then we'll be back to square one, just with everything you want to buy costing twice as much and everything you've saved being worth half as much.
Plus what happens if my employer can't justify paying me $6/hour more? Either he'll downsize his workforce or (less likely than being laid off in my case) bring about automization earlier than than he would when I costed $9/hr.
And what about the people at or above the new minimum wage? They don't get a bump in pay and they still have to deal with inflated prices.
[QUOTE=Megafan;45513353]Someone certainly must have ignored college to not only misspell it but to also think that 'flipping burgers' is actually what these jobs entail.[/QUOTE]
Or the fact that college doesn't pull the same opportunities as it used to but costs a shit load more.
[QUOTE=Megafan;45513353]Someone certainly must have ignored college to not only misspell it but to also think that 'flipping burgers' is actually what these jobs entail.[/QUOTE]
The fact that we keep pretending that manual labour and jobs like that (burger flipper, mechanic, gutter cleaner, tree cleanup, etc.) are for "lowlifes" or "uneducated people".
People like my grandfather [I]started off[/I] in these jobs. We have to stop treating it like "you're a failure if you have one of these jobs instead of X high-paying one".
[QUOTE=rewkasu;45514088]But the people that are bitching about this surely are those that have to work there because they failed school.[/QUOTE]
I'll guess you're unfamiliar with the idea of people dropping out of high school to support their struggling families. It's a thing that happens pretty frequently in the United States.
[QUOTE=JeanLuc761;45514608]The third is how much it costs to go to college, which means that a lot of people straight up don't have the opportunity to do that kind of schooling.[/QUOTE]
I was speaking to a mate who just got back from doing a year abroad at NYU, and he actually mentioned that when someone asked him how much his tuition was and he told them it was around the price of his normally home student tuition (~£3375 for him) the looks on the faces of those around him genuinely worried him for a second :v:
Seriously, what the fuck is up with the US education system? Nobody should have to go bankrupt just to get a fucking Bachelors.
I find the elitism in this threat relating to different job classes amusing when you all can and likely should be replaced by machines.
[QUOTE=Atlascore;45514695]The inflation argument is a load of shit, minimum wage has no affect on inflation, in fact it's the other way around the minimum wage is supposed to be raised based on inflation.[/QUOTE]
So if a store can't afford to double their minimum wage workers and raises their prices to cover the new expenses, is that not inflation? If prices for certain things stay about the same it's probably because they've adapted in a way to keep price increases to a minimum (outsourcing, automization, etc).
[QUOTE=I Faw Down;45514802]So if a store can't afford to double their minimum wage workers and raises their prices to cover the new expenses, is that not inflation? If prices for certain things stay about the same it's probably because they've adapted in a way to keep price increases to a minimum (outsourcing, automization, etc).[/QUOTE]
The US Dollar has been inflating constantly over the past as any currency should, causing people to have less spending power as your minimum wage hasn't been going up to match the decrease of value.
If a company cannot afford to double their minimum wage when people actually have money to spend on the products said company is producing, the the company is pretty fucked from the get-go really and should have restructured a long time ago.
[QUOTE=Zillamaster55;45514742]The fact that we keep pretending that manual labour and jobs like that (burger flipper, mechanic, gutter cleaner, tree cleanup, etc.) are for "lowlifes" or "uneducated people".
People like my grandfather [I]started off[/I] in these jobs. We have to stop treating it like "you're a failure if you have one of these jobs instead of X high-paying one".[/QUOTE]
I mean I work in an office at a university so it's not like I'm trying to get mine by saying that, but physically-intensive jobs in the service/food industries are tough work. Besides that, there's no worth in having a full-time job that doesn't pay enough to survive. You'll eventually lose out on that through debt (by being forced to use whatever credit cards or loans you can get), bankruptcy, or eventually homelessness.
[editline]27th July 2014[/editline]
[QUOTE=Atlascore;45514821]No.
Inflation is something that effects the price of EVERYTHING, Walmart or Mcdonalds having to increase the prices of their products by a few cents (which it all it would take) is not inflation.[/QUOTE]
And minimum wage was long outpaced by inflation long ago anyway, regardless of whatever the inflation rate was or wasn't. Minimum wage didn't go up every time inflation went up, nor did they cause each other.
Adjusted for inflation, the original minimum wage was close to $20 an hour. Everyone should be making at least $15.
Congress fucked up massively when they failed to index the original minimum wage to inflation. It's real value has dropped by well over half in the last 40 years because they raise it slower than inflation. A burger flipper SHOULD by making $15, at least! They did in the 1960s and it failed to destroy the country.
Regular people's wages have been flat or dropping for decades so that more and more money can be sent upwards and into the pockets of the investor class, and you people are bitching about whether people who work at McDonalds "deserve" more than $8? Seriously?
Also, your tax dollars are making up the difference between real wages and a living wage. Every one of those burger flippers is depending on food stamps and other programs to meet basic survival and housing needs. We're subsidizing greedy corporations by making it possible for them to pay shit wages and still have people show up for work. So, what's more unfair? McDonalds paying someone $15 an hour, or McDonalds paying $8 an hour and [B]YOU [/B]pay the rest while McDonalds pockets the difference?
[QUOTE=Used Car Salesman;45514861]Adjusted for inflation, the original minimum wage was close to $20 an hour. Everyone should be making at least $15.
Congress fucked up massively when they failed to index the original minimum wage to inflation. It's real value has dropped by well over half in the last 40 years because they raise it slower than inflation. A burger flipper SHOULD by making $15, at least! They did in the 1960s and it failed to destroy the country.
Regular people's wages have been flat or dropping for decades so that more and more money can be sent upwards and into the pockets of the investor class, and you people are bitching about whether people who work at McDonalds "deserve" more than $8? Seriously?
Also, your tax dollars are making up the difference between real wages and a living wage. Every one of those burger flippers is depending on food stamps and other programs to meet basic survival and housing needs. We're subsidizing greedy corporations by making it possible for them to pay shit wages and still have people show up for work. So, what's more unfair? McDonalds paying someone $15 an hour, or McDonalds paying $8 an hour and [B]YOU [/B]pay the rest while McDonalds pockets the difference?[/QUOTE]
Just throwing it out there, that's totally not true about the original wage laws. During the new deal in the late 1930's the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 was passed which guaranteed 40 cents an hour for a 40 hour work week. Using inflation calculators that comes out to $6.76 an hour nation wide. There was never an equivalent $20 an hour minimum pay.
My views are a bit cynical, if you want to earn more than minimum wage you should learn something that takes longer a few days of on the job training. Find work at a place where you can learn a trade and assert yourself, learn the trade and develop skills that warrant your value to a company being increased. My brother-in-law got out of poverty with hard work. He got a job at a factory with his highschool deploma, utilized all the internal training programs at the factory, became an assistant electritian and after a trial period he qualified for a company sponsered education and he went to school part time while working full time and in two years he got his degree and now he's a licenced electritian and supervisor and making $60k a year. It just took a decade of hard work.
[QUOTE=Atlascore;45515028]The vast majority of employed programmers have no formal training whatsoever.. I guess they should all work for below minimum wage??[/QUOTE]
Where are you gettingthat I said that? They have a skill, which makes them more valuable. It doesn't matter if you go to school or not, just if you have unique and developed skills.
[QUOTE=Ajacks;45515004]Just throwing it out there, that's totally not true about the original wage laws. During the new deal in the late 1930's the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 was passed which guaranteed 40 cents an hour for a 40 hour work week. Using inflation calculators that comes out to $6.76 an hour nation wide. There was never an equivalent $20 an hour minimum pay.
My views are a bit cynical, if you want to earn more than minimum wage you should learn something that takes longer a few days of on the job training. Find work at a place where you can learn a trade and assert yourself, learn the trade and develop skills that warrant your value to a company being increased. My brother-in-law got out of poverty with hard work. He got a job at a factory with his highschool deploma, utilized all the internal training programs at the factory, became an assistant electritian and after a trial period he qualified for a company sponsered education and he went to school part time while working full time and in two years he got his degree and now he's a licenced electritian and supervisor and making $60k a year. It just took a decade of hard work.[/QUOTE]
Oh yeah "just" a decade of hard work. That's totally feasible for people who are currently suffering the worst of it with no money, huge debt and killer hours just to be able to support themselves, let alone their entire family.
It doesn't matter what job you're doing, if it's full time you should be earning a living wage so you don't have to bust your ass at two jobs just to ensure your kids can actually eat or some shit.
[QUOTE=gonedead0;45512355]You can't compare Australia and US wages.[/QUOTE]
It's a stretch to compare any countries wages, adjusting for all the thousands of economic and social factors would be a huge pain
[QUOTE=hexpunK;45515134]Oh yeah "just" a decade of hard work. That's totally feasible for people who are currently suffering the worst of it with no money, huge debt and killer hours just to be able to support themselves, let alone their entire family.
It doesn't matter what job you're doing, if it's full time you should be earning a living wage so you don't have to bust your ass at two jobs just to ensure your kids can actually eat or some shit.[/QUOTE]
A computer programmer doesn't have little or no training, they have often spent many many years learning their 'trade'. They have a skill. Unskilled labor is not hard to get, and therefore because of supply and demand, isn't worth as much as skilled labor. It's simple economics.
My brother-in-law has five kids, and had two before he was 21. He has been supporting them the whole time by himself. You only start off at minimum wage, if you are in a position where you expect to be making minimum wage for perpetuity then you should be looking for a better job while working what you can. He worked his way out of poverty, which is the only way to do it.
[QUOTE=Arctic-Zone;45514369]Yeah, if you have skills in a trade and you're actively working in that trade, who cares what the service sector makes? There's high turnover and job loss rates, whereas you are probably securely positioned as one of the relatively few people in the area who knows how to do what you do.[/QUOTE]
So if you were a programmer making $17 an hour, you'd be fine only making $2 above minimum wage for a job that requires education? Bullshit. You're living in a fantasy world. If you feel otherwise, I'm sorry you don't value your potential as much as many of us do. Just don't expect us to go down with you.
A serious issue with society is that there just aren't jobs for people. And most people are able to be replaced with machines. And this problem will only get worse. Even now, high-level programmers are being rendered redundant by things that do their jobs better than they can. And there are many different ideas for how to approach this, but many of them are shitty.
Do you outlaw technology and halt progress just so people can have jobs and you can uphold the status quo? Do you pad things out by creating things like the TSA that are, in essence, veiled jobs programs for the uneducated? Do you just let natural selection weed people out and have people fighting for the shittiest jobs imaginable? Or do you change everything in your society to move things to a new standard? And if so what and how?
I just threw this together going off living in my own city. My girlfriend is a killer budgeter and we are frugal, eating out about once a month now, and only buying whole foods, not prepackaged frozen things. Our food budget a month a piece is about $150, and we're happy with that. We don't buy things like soda or junk food or liquor (besides a bottle of wine, and a single glass bottle of mexicoke a week each)
Here's a year budget that fits in minimum wage for a single person.
$4,000 for a car/truck that's reliable to get you to work with good mileage.
$600 a year in gas at 13 miles a day commuting/driving average, at $3.75 a gallon current price.
$2,580 for a down payment on a $14,000 home (my area has a dozen homes in that price right now) with a $50 a month mortgage, which comes out to $600 a year.
$710 annual electricity bill for average usage.
$420 annual water and sewage bill.
$510 annual homeowners insurance
$540 annual auto insurance.
$1800 annual food budget at $150 a month.
Total living expenses: $11,724, and you take home around $13,200 off of that $15,000 annual minimum wage income at 40 hours a week. That's $1500 to spare, and the next year will be even lower because you wont have that $4,000 auto purchase or the home down payment, so you'll have another $6580 freed up to put into your home or general budget if you kept frugal.
I understand that unexpected expenses come up, but if you're free of debt you can maintain a good life if you are very smart and frugal.
[QUOTE=Ajacks;45515190]A computer programmer doesn't have little or no training, they have often spent many many years learning their 'trade'. They have a skill. Unskilled labor is not hard to get, and therefore because of supply and demand, isn't worth as much as skilled labor. It's simple economics.[/QUOTE]
I know this, I'm a programmer currently going on to do a masters degree for extra employability (and extra bargaining chips really). But my trade requiring me to spend years learning my skill does not mean that people who opt to not learn a skill and enter the services/ manufacturing industry should suffer. They should still be earning a wage they can live on with ease, not scraping by paycheck to paycheck. We are not islands, we are built on the backs of these people, without their labour our trade would never have had a chance to exist.
"Well I worked for my wage why should they get a better one??!!?" is a shit mindset, if they get a wage increase, you should get a wage increase too. But they are in much more need of a wage increase because right now your minimum wage in most states is laughably low.
[QUOTE=rewkasu;45513029]lol they are like "We didn't take school seriously and ignored collage but we still want high wages for flipping burgers".[/QUOTE]
More like "We want anyone and everyone to be able to survive and pay their bills even if they have to work minimum wage jobs regardless of circumstances."
Don't be an arse.
[QUOTE=GunFox;45512335]15 an hour is technically the amount necessary for people to actually exit poverty.
EDIT: excuse me, they actually would remain in poverty, but would earn a living wage.[/QUOTE]
If you can pay your bills every month you're not in poverty anymore.
[quote]Rather than say "i'm a programmer, I deserve MUCH more money than the unskilled", why not ask "why do the unskilled deserve so much less money".[/quote]
If every job had (near) equal pay, you'd see a lot fewer people doing the more difficult jobs that society needs to function.
[I]See: Communism[/I]
[QUOTE=Monkah;45515696]If every job had (near) equal pay, you'd see a lot fewer people doing the more difficult jobs that society needs to function.
[I]See: Communism[/I][/QUOTE]
Jesus fucking christ. People have explained this numerous times in this thread and past threads. An increase to the minimum wage would be reflected into skilled labour because [B]it's the only logical thing to do[/B]. If the people with no or little qualifications start making more money, [B]everybody[/B] will start making more money. The higher wage of skilled labour is the one major incentive, and in an information economy, skilled labour is massively needed.
$15 too much considering the quality of fast food service, but I think fast food bosses should be more liberal with raises. Worked fast food for three years and I know a handful of employees (including myself) who busted their asses to make the store a better place. Yet we hardly get paid more than the dumb ass employees who don't put any effort into their job.
[QUOTE=Sergeant Stacker;45512262]$15 is kind of pushing it.[/QUOTE]
Nah man. 25 dollars is pushing it. 18-20 is what it should be. 15 dollars is a barely acceptable. 10 is a crime for a western nation. Why do people accept criminally low wages as a standard? That's not how it should be, and in many nations that's not how it is. Here, if you're above 20 the average burger flipping pay at McDonalds is $21.70. ([URL="http://www.ostlendingen.no/hamar-dagblad/her-er-mcdonald-s-lonna-1.6159295"]Source, Nor[/URL]) It's $18.20 if you're under 20.
And yes, Norway is a richer nation, but the US could afford it if it got its shit straight, and that's how it should be.
People who's argument consists of "They shouldn't get paid more because I don't even get paid that much at X job." are being stupid. If that's your argument, you're underpaid for your job, don't shit on other people who are trying to improve their jobs because yours sucks.
[QUOTE=ZakkShock;45512248][URL]http://www.waff.com/story/26120507/fast-food-workers-vow-civil-disobedience[/URL]
These people are out of their fuckin' minds if they think they're going to get paid fifteen fucking dollars an hour for flipping burgers.
Yes, I wholeheartedly agree that the wage needs to be adjusted, but 15$? Jesus. I'm only making 8.59 an hour as an assistant department-manager at a grocery store, does this mean I get my wage doubled too?[/QUOTE]
I make $11.20 an hour as a cashier at walmart.
If you worked over here you'd be getting 20+ an hour.
You need a big ass raise.
[QUOTE=draugur;45515986]People who's argument consists of "They shouldn't get paid more because I don't even get paid that much at X job." are being stupid. If that's your argument, you're underpaid for your job, don't shit on other people who are trying to improve their jobs because yours sucks.[/QUOTE]
They sound like grumpy old politicians.
[QUOTE=mac338;45515985]Nah man. 25 dollars is pushing it. 18-20 is what it should be. 15 dollars is a barely acceptable. 10 is a crime for a western nation. Why do people accept criminally low wages as a standard?[/QUOTE]
Can't speak for everyone, but I work in a factory in SoCal where about 90% of the workers are first or second generation female immigrants who have trouble speaking English, and most of them fear that if they stand up for themselves they'll lose their jobs and be unable to find new ones. The employees that don't fall into that category are usually kids fresh out of high school who don't know any better. Most of the employees are paid minimum wage, are coerced into working 58 hour weeks, and earn about an hour of vacation time every four days, which also counts as your sick leave. It doesn't help that the majority of the upper-level employees and the people in management are white men with control issues.
[QUOTE=Hoffa1337;45513030]I love the sentiment "I make X and $15 is more than I make so that's unreasonable"[/QUOTE]
I personally love the sentiment that even though almost everybody complains about the "1%" and "wealth inequality" these days, people at the poverty threshold will gladly undercut other peoples efforts to get a cost of living adjustment out of pure malevolent spite.
I work my ass off in the oil and gas industry sticking myself in some of the most dangerous jobs in the field, and I only get 14$ an hour. I'll be damned if some burger flipper makes more than I do. for something a helluva lot less dangerous.
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