If they doubled his pay, I bet he'd work half the hours he works now. The problem here is not the wage.
That's ignoring payroll taxes and anything else that might be getting deducted from his paycheck. Agreed. Only rich people should be allowed to have kids, yes? Seems to me he's using free market capitalism to try to fight for a higher wage. That seems to be an attempt to provide more for his children, no? Or does capitalism only work one way? He's likely also supplemented that with various aid programs. An extra $60 per week will always make a difference, unless you cross a welfare eligibility line that reduces your total net income. Certainly extra hours would help too, though. That's probably fairly likely and certainly the employer's right. I don't see why it's wrong, though, for people to try to fight to improve their lot in life by trying to get higher wages.
By that response I'm a little confused. You didn't seem to acknowledge that you undunderstand that it is franchisee making money off the min wage workers. I don't think a franchisor can force a franchisee to pay their workers more.
I can't believe I am agreeing with tallanover here but there are quite a few brackets between minimum wage and "rich". And, yes as a responsible human you should wait on having children until you earn a skill that pays more than the minimum wage.
Yeah you are right... Wasn't thinking there. That is a problem. One of our workers is married with kids and he requested that we didn't work him more than a certain amount of hours so he would still qualify for government programs. Fwiw, he's a manager for our print customers now and he has some significant upside so he now works full time.
Yeah - the sad thing is that it's such a simple problem to solve, and one that both parties should want to address. There's no reason adding $60/wk in salary should cost you $100/wk in aid. Just graduate the scale so that there's always a benefit to more work. It would cut costs and help more people get out of poverty. As it is, the rational economic choice is often to refuse a promotion or more hours or wage increase.
The franchisee makes money off the minimum wage and pays franchise fees to McDonald's which is also therefore making money off the minimum wage. Ten percent of McDonald's restaurants are owned by McDonald's as well. Did you miss this part of the article? McDonald's CEO Don Thompson saw his salary triple from $4.1 million to $13.8 million just between 2011 and 2013. In the meantime, the federal minimum wage of $7.25 hasn't been raised since 2009. If the minimum wage kept up with inflation since the 1960s, it would be over $11 an hour. Elizabeth Warren pointed out that if the minimum wage had kept up with worker productivity in that same time period, it would be over $22 an hour today. Actually McDonald's can amend their franchisee agreements to say just about whatever they want, at the very least for lease renewals and new store leases. Certainly the government has a say in the minimum wage as well. This is nothing more than a giant company squeezing gigantic profits off the backs of minimum wage workers that are supported by government benefits like food stamps, welfare, and child health care subsidies like CHIP. It's corporate welfare to a disgusting degree and it happens all across corporate America. The CEO triples his salary in two years while his corporation exploits this corporate welfare.
I thought the story about the girl working at Dunkin' Donuts with the Degree in Political Science with a minor in Sociology was sort of funny. I mean, what a useless degree! Everybody else I can have a bit of sympathy for.
Goodness. Diminishing returns from here on out for all the lower income citizens in this country. Interesting times we live in, corporations are people, and actual poor people are dehumanized and hated.
we live in a world where it's more and more acceptable for capital to gain surplus over desperate workers. That doesn't bode well, and it never has (cue pre-1929 bells).
Basically people are organizing because they are unhappy with their pay. If companies won't pay them more, they will eventually strike and force an increase. These companies pay lower rates by discouraging workers from organizing. So don't blame people for feeling their time should be valued more. If you felt you were underpaid you'd probably want to get more too. They aren't asking the gov't for help, they are striking to take things into their own hands.
Many of them are educated but can't find jobs because there are not any available. New jobs in this economy are these types of jobs. Credit them for working instead of trying to collect unemployment or sit on their butt. How does a 40 year old who has worked a career - is no longer needed, and there are no jobs for him - do it then? Join the military at 40? They don't need college education. They have worked skilled jobs - ones no longer in demand.
I think you mean smartphone, otherwise, point me to the nearest phone booth in a five or ten mile radius. Incidentally I remember watching a 48 Hours in high school mentioning someone on welfare having cable; when a total basic package might have been $20 a month.
Their strike is probably ineffective and sadly only harming themselves. I don't and I would, but I wouldn't strike over it. I'd find a new job.
That would eliminate about 2/3 of the births in this country. I am all for it, realistically? No. Also, keep in mind a lot of these people had good jobs when they had kids.
MPA programs, congressional, state, county and city governments are chock full of these people helping run massive bureaucracies. The alternate would be to get a somewhat more expensive law degree or just magically work your way up to these roles. Furthermore, if your grades are good enough from a decent school, you could easily get into a banking or corporate analyst training program with one of these degrees.
