Fast-food workers in walkout to protest low wages

[Reverenddel]

Where's the beef? Fast-food workers in walkout to protest low wages
Published July 29, 2013
FoxNews.com

Employees at fast-food restaurants like McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's and KFC in seven cities nationwide are staging one-day strikes on Monday, calling for higher wages. (AP/Seth Perlman) Don’t expect to have it your way today at some fast-food restaurants across the country.

Workers at the nation’s best known fast-food restaurants in seven cities across America are planning to walk off the job Monday to protest what they say are wages that are too low to live on.

The Washington Post reports that the protests will take place in New York City, Chicago, Detroit, Milwaukee, St. Louis, Kansas City, and Flint, Mich., involving workers at McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's and KFC. Some employees at stores including Dollar Tree, Macy's and Victoria's Secret are also expected to join the protesters in several cities.

The workers are calling for wages of $15 per hour, more than double New York's current minimum wage of $7.25.

A network of local community groups, clergy and unions, including the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), are backing the strike.

“SEIU members, like all service-sector workers, are worse off when large fast-food and retail companies are able to hold down wages and push benefit standards for working people,” Mary Kay Henry, president of the Service Employees International Union, told the Washington Post.
In New York City, the protests were organized by a group called Fast Food Forward, which states its Twitter account: "No one can survive on $7.25."

"A lot of the workers are living in poverty, you know, not being able to afford to put food on the table or take the train to work," Fast Food Forward director Jonathan Westin told CBS New York. "The workers are striking over the fact that they can’t continue to maintain their families on the wages they’re being paid in the fast-food industry."

The group posted a photograph on its Twitter account early Monday depicting workers who have “walked out” in New York.

Fast-food workers in New York City earn an average salary of $11,000 annually. That’s less than half of the average daily salary — $25,000 — for most fast-food restaurant CEOs. Employees in the $200 billion industry make 25 percent of the money they need to survive in New York City while working at fast-food restaurants, according to the group’s website.
As of early Monday, more than 120,000 people have signed Fast Food Forward's online petition calling for higher wages in the industry.

Robert Wilson, Jr., a 25-year-old McDonald’s employee in Chicago, told The Washington Post that he makes $8.60 an hour after seven years on the job. A previous walkout in April led to “small victories,” he said, including additional hours and slight raises.

“I’m not really concerned about losing my job,” Wilson told The Washington Post. “If I don’t get anything, I am in a lose-lose situation. I can still get fired at any time.”
Industry representatives, meanwhile, say that most fast-food restaurants operate on a meager profit margin, making it impossible to increase employee wages. But a report issued last week by the National Employment Law Project seemingly refutes part of that assertion, as fewer than one in 50 jobs in fast-food restaurants are managerial. And becoming a franchise owner requires the better part of $1 million in some cases, making that option out of reach for the overwhelming majority of workers.


Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/07/29/fa ... z2aR397qKI


************ HERE"S A HINT! DO NOT EXPECT FAST FOOD TO BE A FRIGGIN' CAREER! IT'S WHAT YOU DO WHILE YOU'RE GOING TO COMMUNITY COLLEGE/TRADE SCHOOL TO DO SOMETHING BETTER! IDJUTS!****************

[FiremanBob]

I hope the companies do the manly thing and fire them all. There are plenty of other people who want those jobs.

[Kreutz]

McJobs may be the future for most Americans given the race to the bottom that is the American reality in which damn near everyone loses. We have a lot of surplus people in this country and this is the only kind of work they will ever find.

I wish them well based on this one fact, though I have no real sympathy for them.

[dorminWS]

Ask yourself how much you are willing to pay for a hamburger. That's where any increases in worker pay (without decreases in the number of jobs) will come from. I'd also be asking myself if I even wanted to eat food that was cooked/served by a disgruntled worker who was trying to unionize. The answer would be a resounding NO. Particularly after the movie "The Help" sort of glamorized adulterating food and wrapped it in the excuse of "social justice". This is just another version of "Take from the rich and give to the poor". It doesn't make everybody rich; it makes almost everybody poor. The only people who get rich are the politicians and union bosses.

[thekinetic]

Given the type of people and service you get (at least in my area), yeah no pity at all. You want a better job well then learn some English, study and get at the very least certified in a chosen field, and this one is really important don't be a lazy dumbarse! I mean seriously these people really couldn't do anything else, they truely are stupid.

I've even sent emails to various fast food joints and told them I'm boycotting their establishment until they hire better workers or at least some with a above room temperature IQ that can actually speak English fairly well. I'm tired of going into a place or worse through a drive through and hearing "bakkabakkabakkabakka" (or whatever the F*** they said and then giving my order and having to take it back because it's wrong.

[SpanishInquisition]

Perhaps today is the day I walk into my closest McDs and try my hand at skills I left behind after high school. I wonder if the kid dressing buns could handle a 10:1 grill doing a 12-12 sear lay.

[Kreutz]

Given the type of people and service you get (at least in my area), yeah no pity at all. You want a better job well then learn some English, study and get at the very least certified in a chosen field, and this one is really important don't be a lazy dumbarse! I mean seriously these people really couldn't do anything else, they truely are stupid.

I've even sent emails to various fast food joints and told them I'm boycotting their establishment until they hire better workers or at least some with a above room temperature IQ that can actually speak English fairly well. I'm tired of going into a place or worse through a drive through and hearing "bakkabakkabakkabakka" (or whatever the F*** they said and then giving my order and having to take it back because it's wrong.

If you want higher quality service you should expect to pay higher prices.

It puzzles me how badly Americans expect quality for cheap.

Sometime ago at a BBQ a table laden with trays of food collapsed and the not so mildly sauced host started kicking it and yelling "cheap Walmart piece of sht!"....well, wtf did you expect? Who puts $50.00+ worth of food on a $25.00 table?

You pay for crap, you get crap.

Expecting intelligent service at a fast food joint is like expecting it to rain gold coins. It'd be great but it will not happen.

[dorminWS]

Yup. You never get more than what you pay for; but you frequently get less. Life's a bitch and then you die. Had a buddy that used to say "life's a bitch and then you marry one". But it seems to me that's redundant.

[Reverenddel]

Expectations aside, I EXPECT you to take my friggin' order, and I EXPECT you to make it correctly, and I EXPECT you to put it on a tray, and I EXPECT you to not drop my food on the floor, or spit on it.

I'm not looking for "linen" service, but by Gawd, you need to do the job you were HIRED to do!

It's not brain surgery, or fine dining. It's FAST FOOD!

[ShotgunBlast]

"I'm going to protest my low wages by not making any money today."

[ Post made via Mobile Device ]

[GeneFrenkle]

There's a difference between cheap and inexpensive. There may be some things process-wise that could increase quality dramatically without increasing costs. Other changes to increase quality could be as simple as caring about doing a decent job. There is something to be said about taking a job seriously.

[jjord014]

Close them all. All they sell is junk anyway making us all fat. We're better off without them. These workers are ignorant. When wages go up, the price of goods sold goes up, prices must then go up, making demand go down unless the Obamination in the WH makes us buy them like obamacare.

[Purdune]

What the heck? Why do I keep hearing that you can't earn a living working at fast food. When could you ever earn a living? Perhaps a manager but you can't expect to take vacations in Paris every year. This is just activist journalism. It's also short sided and dumb. As said in previous posts, when you raise the minimum wage all other prices follow and you get stuck with the same purchasing power. You want fast food people to have more purchasing power? Get the Federal Reserve to stop printing more money then they destroy.

I won't mind my daughters working in fast food while they are in school. As a career? Yeah right!

[dorminWS]

As said in previous posts, when you raise the minimum wage all other prices follow and you get stuck with the same purchasing power.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Actually, raising the minimum wage leaves the poor slob making the minimum wage with REDUCED rather than the same purchasing power. Increases in the minimum wage force increases in greater-than-minimum wages because the folks making them demand to maintain their separation above the minimum wage. Working for minimum wage is regarded by many if not most (adults, anyway) as degrading and an insult. We don't even try to hire people in at the minimum, because we don't want the kind of employees who show up for a minimum wage job. Been that way for years. We automate any job we can't justify at least a $9-$10 per hour entry-level rate for; and it’s a PITA to keep somebody in a job at that wage.

So, let’s say (just to make the math easy) the minimum wage increases from $7.25 to $7.98. That's a 10% raise. It means a raise of 73 cents per hour to the minimum wage worker. The guy making $9.00 also demands a 10% raise, and he gets a 90 cent raise. The guy making $15.00/hour gets a raise of $1.50; and so forth and so on up the line until the auto mechanic at the Chevy dealership or the local plumber gets his 10% raise of $3.75/hour. (This is why unions push minimum wage increases; they tend to push ALL wages up - - -which increase those ever-lovin’ union dues) These increases in wages get built into the cost of goods and services. Then the poor schmuck that's making minimum wage has to have his car or his plumbing fixed. So he takes his 73 cent increase and pays for the mechanic's or the plumber’s $3.75 increase. That's oversimplified and somewhat overstated; I know, because all of that 10% increase may not carry through every time to the guy making $37.50 an hour. But that is exactly how it works in principle and to a very large extent in fact.

It all boils down to those two immutable iron-bound 4-word laws of economics:
(1) Ain’t no free lunch. (ANFL)
(2) Them what has, gets. (TWHG)
Welcome to the real world, boys and girls.

[thekinetic]

Given the type of people and service you get (at least in my area), yeah no pity at all. You want a better job well then learn some English, study and get at the very least certified in a chosen field, and this one is really important don't be a lazy dumbarse! I mean seriously these people really couldn't do anything else, they truely are stupid.

I've even sent emails to various fast food joints and told them I'm boycotting their establishment until they hire better workers or at least some with a above room temperature IQ that can actually speak English fairly well. I'm tired of going into a place or worse through a drive through and hearing "bakkabakkabakkabakka" (or whatever the F*** they said and then giving my order and having to take it back because it's wrong.

If you want higher quality service you should expect to pay higher prices.

It puzzles me how badly Americans expect quality for cheap.

Sometime ago at a BBQ a table laden with trays of food collapsed and the not so mildly sauced host started kicking it and yelling "cheap Walmart piece of sht!"....well, wtf did you expect? Who puts $50.00+ worth of food on a $25.00 table?

You pay for crap, you get crap.

Expecting intelligent service at a fast food joint is like expecting it to rain gold coins. It'd be great but it will not happen.

That's true but there is still a minimum standard and those idiots could probably be easily outclassed by a retard, at least they could pronounce ketchup. I don't expect much for cheap but when it comes to food, especially where sanitation is concerned, good enough doesn't cut the mustard. If it weren't for the money I would become a health inspector and slam these places for every infraction in the book.

[Jakeiscrazy]

As someone who spent a year working at Mcds I can tell you the job probably pays to well as it is if anything it should be less.

[Kreutz]

That's true but there is still a minimum standard and those idiots could probably be easily outclassed by a retard, at least they could pronounce ketchup. I don't expect much for cheap but when it comes to food, especially where sanitation is concerned, good enough doesn't cut the mustard. If it weren't for the money I would become a health inspector and slam these places for every infraction in the book.

Minimal wages and minimal hiring requirements generally result in minimal standards.

And McDonalds is not cheap food contrary to popular perception.

I can make a superior burger at home myself for a fraction of the cost. Yes I know theres the profit margin and overhead factor, but the price you pay for the junk you get there...you're getting swindled by eating there.

In any event yes fast food is a temporary job for many and or the rest...well, we all subsidize them via their Medicaid, section 8, and whatnot.

Add that to the true cost of a McDonalds burger too.

[scott9050]

Why they don't deserve higher wages? An example:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/cha ... story.html

We are not talking high skill here.

[dorminWS]

Why they don't deserve higher wages? An example:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/cha ... story.html

We are not talking high skill here.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

My first thought was that I hope they taught them not to drool. That was cruel and I ought to be ashamed of myself; and I am.

I remember there used to be an obviously mentally-challenged gal that worked in the Cafeteria at Newcombe Hall at UVa; way back in the 70s. All she did was build salads. But she built a damned nice salad. And she had quite a fan club.

[FiremanBob]

I don't know if the pay scale is different there, but I have always had excellent service at Chik-fil-A. Not merely competent, but even friendly and gracious.