Fast-food workers in walkout to protest low wages

[SpanishInquisition]

Looking through the port hole on the Way-Back machine, I can still see they guy that it took me three days to teach how to prepare Filet o' Fish sandwiches... and he still couldn't get the words "Filets up, package please" out.

As a kid, I was stunned that I was started at a nickel above minimum wage, something unheard of at my store. $3.15 an hour was sweeeet! ...and McDonalds is a great job for kids or someone looking for a starter job, but anyone trying to make a career there and not be in management is coming up short in the realistic expectation department.

[VBshooter]

Those jobs are not meant to be careers or a means of full support... Raise the wage and they will become obsolete sooner than they know... I personally couldn't give a flying _________ if they did close... As far as the workers walking out.. "You're Fired!!" . enough said!

[SHMIV]

Very rarely do I come across a fast food worker that is worth more than $3/hr. If even that much.

I know that fast food places maintain a file of applications; everyone is replacable. Fire the strikers.

I hate working for low wages. So I went and got a grown up job.

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[VBshooter]

This comes along with that sense of privilege so damn prevalent these days,, These clowns actually think they are worth that much and that it's owed to them... Time for a real taste of reality ... Fire their asses and never look back..

[Swampman]

Hey dumbass! You want f****** fries with that raise douche-bag?

[dorminWS]

Only reason I EVER eat at McDonald's is because I can blow through the drive-thru and get a cheeseburger pretty fast and know it will be edible (just barely), won't make me sick, and it won't run down my arm while I'm trying to drive like a GOOD cheeseburger would. I don't really care that it costs a little over a buck, although its quality certainly doesn't justify much more than that. But if I had time to eat, I'd have eaten something else. So I'm not buying on price OR quality at McD's. I'm buying speed and eatability-behind-the-wheel. As for any of the other fast-food joints I occasionally use, I never fail to order without looking at prices and then wince and mutter "damn, they sure are proud of that stuff" when they tell me what it costs. I'm not too cheap to pay; I will cheerfully pay well for good food. But fast food always already seems to me to be overpriced for what you get, so on my personal scales the price elasticity of demand for fast food is low. It wouldn't take much of a price increase for me to walk away. I suspect there are a lot of folks like me. Of course, there are a lot who've been raised on that crap and don't know any better, too.

It also seems to me that in this aging society of ours A LOT OF FOLKS EAT MANY MEALS OUT BECAUSE YOU CAN FEED just one or two people that way cheaper than you can buy groceries, cook, and waste some of it; and momma is tired of cooking now that the kids are gone. If wage costs at fast food places were doubled and that was reflected in pricing, I suspect it might significantly remodel consumer purchasing habits and motivations to the detriment of fast food sales.

So I suspect it would prove to be a case of "be careful what you ask for lest you get it". Is it better to be underemployed at $7.25/hour or unemployed at $15?

[dorminWS]

Hah! Might as well drop this into the pot while we're raggin on poor old Mayor McCheese...........

http://shine.yahoo.com/shine-food/mcdon ... 10331.html

[dmharvey]

Demanding $15.00/hr huh? Where can I get some of whatever they're smoking?

[ShotgunBlast]

Anytime you raise the minimum wage, the low-experienced and low-skilled worker the law was meant to help end up getting hurt through layoffs. Your teenager you'd like to see making a few bucks over the summer will end up sitting on their duff because no one will hire them. Chop off the bottom rung of the ladder enough times through wage increase laws and eventually there's no ladder.

Dormin also makes a good point about how all wages are expected to be raised and how that helps a fledgling union starving for dues.

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[Mindflayer]

$15 an hour is more than $30k a year. That's more than enlisted folks, more than college grads in some fields, all for flipping burgers?!? A minimum wage job is a starter job, or fill the gaps job. It's not meant to be a life-long job.

Hell, my first IT job out of college I made $19,000. I busted my ass and worked my way to where I am today. People just feel entitled nowadays. "You mean I gotta work?!?" Whining idiots.

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[Mindflayer]

In b4 CowboyT says, "ENIAC was long ago."

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[HighExpert]

there is one other consequence these folks have not thought of. If you raise the pay to $15 per hour, what makes you think I am still going to have hire your uneducated and no work ethic butt? I can hire some real employees who may even be able to count change and put together a proper English sentence.

[Kreutz]

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.

They're always clean and the food is quite good.

As for the people criticizing their 15/hour demand, they're not looking for 15...they're really looking for 12/hour. Always ask for more than you want in any negotiation!

To be fair to them 15/hour in NYC allows you to to pay rent and eat for negative 40 seconds.

[skeeterss0]

I told my daughter it looks like some jobs are opening up...go apply!

also, if they raise the wage to $15 an hr how much do you think a cheeseburger is gonna cost? They don't realize the company would just pass the cost to the customer. Which means less people can afford fast food which means the company needs less $15 an hr workers.

[SpanishInquisition]

McHostess

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[Reverenddel]

High Expert is CORRECT!

GO AHEAD AND RAISE THE MINIMUM WAGE! Then they can hire BETTER QUALIFIED folks, and have better services.

Uneducated people have been fed a bill of goods that they're "entitled" to things they have not earned.

1000 years ago, they would have been serfs, and died at age 32.

[gunderwood]

They are free to protest and work for any wages they feel is fair. Just as the employer is free to fire them (at least in most states). Artificial "minimum" wages, just like wage caps, distort the natural balance that is struck when two parties freely negotiate the price of a service. That distortion is paid for by the rest of us.

On another note, has anyone else noticed that the general service at fast food restaurants seems to have gone down in the last couple of years? I use to never have problems with Chick-fil-a (one of the best IMHO), but now it seems that:

1. I get orders messed up if it's not a simple number (e.g. tried ordering chicken tortilla soup, get chicken noodle).

2. The chicken isn't being properly trimmed, so you get a nice big bite of fat if you're not careful.

3. The fries went downhill when they switched to Canola oil.

4. Seems like I get "old" food more often because the staff isn't properly managing the reserve and how long it's allowed to sit.


It's not just Chick-fil-a though (I just chose them as an example). Basic things like putting the sauce I ordered for the nuggets in the bag (or putting the right amount...who only uses 1 sauce for a 20ct?); a straw for my drink; etc.

I eat fast food for convenience, but if I'm going to pay what is rapidly approaching $10 for a value meal, I expect it to at least be prepared properly.

[dorminWS]

High Expert is CORRECT!


1000 years ago, they would have been serfs, and died at age 32.

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

Yeah; life expectancy of 32 years or 15 seconds after they went on strike; whichever came first.

[graybeard321]

The fast food industry was never supposed to provide a living wage, many decades ago i was a night manager at arbys and a large roast beef was 89 cent. all the employees were school age kids other then the managers. The problem now is kids don't want to work after school and weekends, they prefer to sponge off mommy and daddy. Gee and we wondor why Obama and his supports get elected.

[dorminWS]

What you hear from these striking workers and their supporters is how hard they work and how what they earn is insufficient to meet their needs. Never have any of them offered an explanation of why they took such a job to begin with, but that it obvious; it was the only available job they were qualified for.

But the issue is that they are being paid for the value of their work. However hard they work and however insufficient their earnings may be to support them, the value of what they produce controls their wages.

Mandate higher wages than that, and the cost of their product will exceed its value. That will cause people to stop buying the product. As sales fall, the cost of labor will be allocated to ever smaller volumes of sales; which will further increase the cost and therefore decrease the sales of the product. That is called a downward spiral. It ends with unemployment for all of those employees as the owners of these businesses redeploy those assets to an enterprise that can earn a profit.

tsk tsk tsk....... All those folks who think you can get blood out of a turnip. And all those do-gooders who actually "helping" them onto the federal dependency plantation via unemployment and welfare.