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@Ahtman:

I can't speak for anyone else, but I'd be taking them more seriously if they asked for 11.00 and settled for 9.00. Their demand is gratuitous.

And, like I said, I think they SHOULD make more.

In Toronto fast food workers earn $10.25-11.00 per hour.

$15 is pretty laughable though.

 gossipmeng wrote:
In Toronto fast food workers earn $10.25-11.00 per hour.

$15 is pretty laughable though.

Has there been a study comparing those rates to the standard of living?

Toronto is an expensive place to live in...no? Or, am I confusing Toronto with Vancouver?

 daedalus wrote:
@Ahtman:

I can't speak for anyone else, but I'd be taking them more seriously if they asked for 11.00 and settled for 9.00. Their demand is gratuitous.

And, like I said, I think they SHOULD make more.

I agree, but I understand why they went higher. I think [$15 an hour] probably is to much, but maybe they also wanted to make sure it got coverage, so they went with an exorbitant number. I could be wrong as well. They may want $15 an hour and expect to get it, which is delusional.

I wonder how many "strikers" will get fired. Pretty sure you dont get much strike protection when your non union

A walkout for higher minimum wage is a great idea. even it is is a 1.00 higher. That would mean an extra 80$ a month for me. If you can significantly disrupt the system, they will listen t you. Like we have a subway driver strike right where i am. And the company is bending ovr backward to make sure it doesnt happen? Why? because thousands of people would not be able to get to work if they do not
But 15 s too much. what i d isnt worth 15$ an hour. maybe 10. but not 15

Frazzled wrote:Workers of the World Unite!

Frazzled wrote:I agree. I fully support their right to strike for a living wage. If you heartless capitalist swine don't see their plight then too bad for you. Workers of the World Unite!

Frazzled wrote:You're just being a capitalist running dog. All wages must be raised for all oppressed workers. For too long have the 1%ers kept their foot on the neck of the American Worker. RIse up and take back whats yours you Patriots!

Frazzled wrote:oh ok.

Oh I forgot Workers of the World Unite!

I know since you were previously a mod you're never going to get banned regardless of how obviously you are spamming, but i just want to point out if anyone else did what you do every day, they'd be shown the door within a month.


Anyway, I feel for these guys and I wish them the best of luck, but realistically wages in America aren't set by "fairness", they're set by demand; and flipping burgers or pulling espresso or other relatively-easily-trained, entry level jobs are not skills that Americans hold in very high demand.

Should they be set by "fairness"? Probably not. Most countries that try and set price controls along these lines have not done very well, because the government is (theoretically) good at building level playing fields, but not as good when they start rigging the games and picking winners and losers - correct me if I'm wrong, if there are countries that have pulled this off successfully.

Why is that spamming. I am just showing support like you are.

Just because The companies overall are making Billions, doesn't mean each store contributes the same amount


In Tiger Point, We have all sorts of people that work various jobs. From Retirees on Social Security and folks working in Fast Food/Retail to Doctors, Lawyers, Engineers, and Military Officers.


HOWEVER: None of those Doctors, Lawyers, Engineers, or Military Officers WORK in Tiger Point. They work in Navarre, or Gulf Breeze Proper, or Pensacola, or Fort Walton.

So during work hours, the only people in Tiger Point are Retirees and Retail/Fast Food Employees, working their Retail/Fast Food jobs in Tiger Point.

I work at The UPS Store and see (during 9-5 work hours) Retirees and Retail/Fast Food people coming in during their breaks or on their Day off shipping packages and dropping their jaws at the fact that it costs 12-15 bucks to ship a package. That's could be a couple days of food for them. Now from 5pm-7pm or 8am-9am the folks leaving tiger point might swing in, spend 50-75 bucks and not blink an eye, and walk out.( assuming they didn't go to a UPS Store in Proper, Navarre, Pensacola, or Ft Walton during their lunch break.)

All of those people with the big money jobs get lunch in Proper, Navarre, Pensacola, or Ft Walton. They don't drive home to the local McDonalds or Arby's. Those Fast Food jobs in Tiger Point don't make enough money off of Retirees, Retail, and Fast Food workers to stomach a $7/h raise for all 10-15 employees. Even moreso if the prices go up, because then They lose out of Retirees on Fixed Income and Retail workers who didn't get a 7 dollar raise. Which means a lot of lost jobs where I live, or a massive cut in everyone's hours.


I know for a fact (since I did payroll at my old Fast Food Job. Hoorah for Lazy Managers and Delegating paperwork to the guy that likes math!) that the local stores could prolly stomach $1.50 and only lose out one maybe one or two employees( which would bring them up to about $9, minimum wage in FL being like 7.50 or something to that tune), but 11 is the limit most would be able to handle, and 15 would pretty much kill my town.

Compromise. Give em $10 an hour, that's good enough. I have a job that requires a helluva lot more than "do you want fries with that?" And I only get paid $14.50 an hour (except on days where I work for the military, then it's a lot more). Their time isn't worth MORE than mine.

 timetowaste85 wrote:
Compromise. Give em $10 an hour, that's good enough. I have a job that requires a helluva lot more than "do you want fries with that?" And I only get paid $14.50 an hour (except on days where I work for the military, then it's a lot more). Their time isn't worth MORE than mine.

And is the time of ceos worth exponentially more than even yours?

However, this isnt an argument of 'i only get paid' it is a case of raising the minimum wage to something that a person can actuallu live on.

You cant possibly imagine the wages of everyonr elae will remain static? I remember seeing in another thread some union workers pay rate is based on whatever the minimum pay is, so i imagine they would be very happy for the minimum wage to go up

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
A walkout for higher minimum wage is a great idea. even it is is a 1.00 higher. That would mean an extra 80$ a month for me. If you can significantly disrupt the system, they will listen t you. Like we have a subway driver strike right where i am. And the company is bending ovr backward to make sure it doesnt happen? Why? because thousands of people would not be able to get to work if they do not
But 15 s too much. what i d isnt worth 15$ an hour. maybe 10. but not 15

Is a walk out such a great idea if they all get canned? If they were a union that's one thing, but they aren't

Yeah, this thing kicked off in Detroit. I highly doubt they'll have difficulty finding unskilled laborers to fill the gaps.

If you want to make $15 an hour, then get a skill that is worth $15 an hour. Flipping burgers and making fries is not one.

Seems like there are 2 clear things coming forward in this topic
1. Working in fast food doesnt pay enough to make earn a living wage
2. Seems to be a lot of support for the theory that you should get paid what your worth and people dont seem to feel like fast food workers are worth $15 an hour.

I think part of the struggle with this issue is its hard to look at a fast food job in isolation without trying to compare the work to what someone else who makes $15 an hour. I agree with both points. I think jobs should pay enough for people to live on but I also agree that I dont feel like a fast food job is on the same level as other "skilled" jobs

When are people going to understand that raising minimum wage by large amounts does nothing to help?

A large raise in minimum wage will help in the short term but will quickly cause a spike in inflation.

$15/hr for fats food workers is fine if you feel like paying $20 for you meal at mcdonalds.

All raising minimum wage by a large amount does is screw the middle class. All the people who bust their ass to get educated and get a good job and start at $20/hr get hit the hardest.

Plain stupidity if you ask me

since your not from america frogg you might not understand that the solution to all of our problems is to screw the middle class

 SilverMK2 wrote:

 timetowaste85 wrote:
Compromise. Give em $10 an hour, that's good enough. I have a job that requires a helluva lot more than "do you want fries with that?" And I only get paid $14.50 an hour (except on days where I work for the military, then it's a lot more). Their time isn't worth MORE than mine.

And is the time of ceos worth exponentially more than even yours?

However, this isnt an argument of 'i only get paid' it is a case of raising the minimum wage to something that a person can actuallu live on.

You cant possibly imagine the wages of everyonr elae will remain static? I remember seeing in another thread some union workers pay rate is based on whatever the minimum pay is, so i imagine they would be very happy for the minimum wage to go up

Seeing how I answer directly to the CEO of my company, hell yes, his time is worth more than mine. Lol. I see the crap he has to deal with, and the responsibilities he has, and I'll fully admit his time is more valuable than mine. $15 for a burger flipping job is ridiculous. The $10 I suggested is more than fair.

LOL really? people dont think CEO's actually do anything?

sounds like some people get all their info from dilbert or something...

CEO's make that much because its a high stress, elite skill set, where you make multi million/billion dollar decisions every day.

just like doctors make 100's of thousands a year because they have to make important life or death decisions,

but the guy cleaning out the bedpans makes 25k a year...

even though its "harder" work, or unpleasant, guess what?

literally anyone off the street can do it, so despite it being "real" work, its not gonna pay as much as the DR's who really do nothing but deligate work, or write prescriptions, ect.

 ironicsilence wrote:
since your not from america frogg you might not understand that the solution to all of our problems is to screw the middle class

Yeah, because it is the poor that screws the middle class, what with their huge political lobby and PACs. There are two groups that screw the middle class:

1. The Rich
2. The Middle Class

The poor get screwed by them all, the difference being that the Rich and Poor tend to realize where it comes from whereas the Middle Class seems to like to blame everyone that isn't at fault.

I don't think anyone has said CEO's do nothing, but if you compare CEO pay in the US versus, well, every other developed nation in the world's CEOs, you find a staggering gulf between the two.

A man should have the right to withdraw his labour. It has been shown over the years that that right is often all that stands between workers and ruthless exploitation.

However, $15 an hour? Pull the other one, it's got bells on. $10 an hour? Reasonable.

 pities2004 wrote:

 SilverMK2 wrote:
I'm all for a living minimum wage. Best of luck to the fast food workers striking at the fat clogged heart of America.

............................................................................
Fast food is not a career and should not be paid like one

Perhaps it is time for the rest of us to start demanding more form our careers then. Maybe we should all strike?

 Ketara wrote:
A man should have the right to withdraw his labour. It has been shown over the years that that right is often all that stands between workers and ruthless exploitation.

However, $15 an hour? Pull the other one, it's got bells on. $10 an hour? Reasonable.

Oh, absolutely. Withdraw away. Just don't hold your breath.

I keep hearing this "living wage" nonsense. To me a living wage doesn't include a cell phone. It doesn't include cable. It doesn't NEED to include a car payment. For people that need to make a "living wage" off of a fast food job, it sure as gak doesn't include paying student loans.

There are too many things that have somehow become "rights" in the US that are not, in fact, rights at all. And if you can't support your family on your gakky fast food job, close your legs and don't pop out any more kids.

I want to support their right to strike for a minimum wage that they can live off of, but at the same time, I only make between 12-20 an hour on most stagehand jobs I do, and I work far worse hours, in more dangerous conditions, and do a lot harder work than any of them are doing.

I would think 10 -12 would be reasonable, but 15 bucks an hour is really pushing it for what they do on a day to day basis. If they're wanting more pay for what's essentially a dead end job, factories and warehouses are almost always hiring. Heck, Amazon will pay you 11.75 an hour to push around a shopping cart and grab books and dildos off shelves, and they're always hiring.

though the jobs aren't careers, and never will be, due to the crappiness of the job market and the growing gap between rich and poor, its often the only thing offered to most people
so what, how do you survive when this is all that is offered to you?

You know, it's kind of funny how people are insisting that these people don't "deserve" more than $X/hour. What happened to good old fashioned capitalism where the free market sets the price of labor? If fast food workers can negotiate $15/hour successfully then that is what their labor is worth. Don't like it? Offer to take the job for $14/hour and take that money.

 cincydooley wrote:
I keep hearing this "living wage" nonsense. To me a living wage doesn't include a cell phone. It doesn't include cable. It doesn't NEED to include a car payment. For people that need to make a "living wage" off of a fast food job, it sure as gak doesn't include paying student loans.

There are too many things that have somehow become "rights" in the US that are not, in fact, rights at all. And if you can't support your family on your gakky fast food job, close your legs and don't pop out any more kids.

to be fair there are no such things as rights, because rights aren't rights if they can be taken away

 ironicsilence wrote:
I wonder how many "strikers" will get fired. Pretty sure you dont get much strike protection when your non union

Better then being in a union that strikes becouse they can, causing the company to close. Only to have the company sell off it's IP to "itself" and reopen. Twinkies still on the shelf, empolyees on the street.

 ironicsilence wrote:
since your not from america frogg you might not understand that the solution to all of our problems is to screw the middle class

Kind of Sounds like Australia at the moment...
Back on topic, I think the minimum wage should go up for them, just not the extent that they are wanting... I'm with those saying that $10 if not $11 an hour would be substantial for working in fast food (heck, I would be happy with any raise if I was earning what they earn an hour). Of course I could kind of see prices of the products going up if they succeed in somehow getting their large increase, it's just business to pass the expenses on to the customer as much as possible if new taxes or pay increases occur *cough* Carbon Tax *cough*... Or at least that's how I find it tends to be in my job of retail.

 easysauce wrote:
if your job is worth 9$/hr, you dont get to make 15$/hr... its simple math/economics...

Yes, simple economics. Very simple economics. So simple it's completely and utterly fething wrong.

There is no inherent 'worth' to a job. You don't hire a dish washer and watch him generate $9 worth of business activity every hour. If he costs $9 or $15 you hire him either way, because you need the dishes cleaned.

What actually determines what a job pays is just supply and demand - more people offer to do a job and the price the employer has to pay goes dfown. But people have this idea that because the market determines a wage, that wage must be what a person is inherently worth. That is only true in a perfect market (which economists will tell you over and over again never ever happens). For the price of labour to be completely fair then everyone involved would have to have the same level of knowledge of market conditions, no party involved would have any ability to influence the overall market price, it would have to be completely free and easy for a person to switch jobs, and there must be no possibility for weaker and strong bargaining positions (ie a person would never accept a job with a crappy wage because he needs to make this month's rent).

But given those things happen, and we know that when we let the market take over entirely we end up with sweatshops and workhouses, well it only makes sense that we should step in and limit the excesses of the market. Which is why historically we did just that.

Now, I suspect $15 an hour is too high, certainly in the short term its too big a jump too suddenly. But given the minimum wages around the world that allow for a sustainable, very profitable fast food industry, it's pretty clear the US could tolerate a an increase in the minimum wage of $1 an hour, each year, with an idea to eventually reach $12 or thereabouts.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 daedalus wrote:
On the other hand, 15/hour is 31,200/year at full time. About 5 years ago, the job I was at paid 36,000, and that was a job that required a massive amount of knowledge and skill on my part to be able to do. Pay grade isn't a competition, but I'm concerned about a society that rates the difference between flipping burgers and replicating technical issues in a complicated infrastructure at only being worth 13% more. Were I not now making much more, I would probably go with the burger flipping at that point. Less stress, work never follows you home.

Yes, but you moved up and started to earn more. When I started work some friends without degrees earned more, in one case more than five grand more (the work they were doing manual, but it wasn't McJob stuff). But because of my qualifications and the kind of work I was doing I quickly moved past their incomes, and then kept on going.

People understand that, and they will be willing to do a tougher job now, because it has the prospect for promotion down the track.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 gossipmeng wrote:
In Toronto fast food workers earn $10.25-11.00 per hour.

$15 is pretty laughable though.

In Australia the minimum wage is $16.37, and higher in some states. Reduce that by the exchange rate, and in USD that'd be about $14.73. But that's still overstated, because the exchange rate does not reflect the actual cost of rent, food and everything else (purchasing parity), and it drops to about $11.50 USD.

Which fast food companies can tolerate and still remain very profitable. McNuggets would probably go up a little bit in price, though.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Ouze wrote:
Should they be set by "fairness"? Probably not. Most countries that try and set price controls along these lines have not done very well, because the government is (theoretically) good at building level playing fields, but not as good when they start rigging the games and picking winners and losers - correct me if I'm wrong, if there are countries that have pulled this off successfully.

Yeah, complete command economy price setting is going to produce some very sub-optimal results. But you can have a free labour market, and just control for its excesses of very poorly paid labour by putting a minimum wage in place (as the US has done), and then raising that over time to reflect inflation and rising standards of living (as the US has not done).


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 logg_frogg wrote:
When are people going to understand that raising minimum wage by large amounts does nothing to help?

A large raise in minimum wage will help in the short term but will quickly cause a spike in inflation.

Because it isn't true. As I seem to end up explaining in every single one of these minimum wage threads.

Even if we assume an uncompetitive market where an increase in the cost of labour can be entirely transferred to the consumer with a price increase, then the only way the minimum wage worker ends up breaking even is if wages are the only cost of producing fast food, and all workers are on the minimum wage. To the extent that inputs other than wages make up the cost of the burger, and to the extent that people earn something other than the minimum wage, is the extent to which you'll see the price increase born by other elements of the economy.

$15/hr for fats food workers is fine if you feel like paying $20 for you meal at mcdonalds.

You need to check your maths. For that to be true a McValue meal would have to have a minimum wage cost component of about 300% of its cost.

All raising minimum wage by a large amount does is screw the middle class. All the people who bust their ass to get educated and get a good job and start at $20/hr get hit the hardest.

While it is important that middle class certainly earn more to provide an incentive for people to get educated and get high end jobs, I don't think we can extend that to feeling sympathy for engineers and IT managers having to pay 5% more for a Fillet'o'Fish.