U.S. fast-food workers hold walkouts over low pay

[melloman]

Originally Posted by Anjew

isnt the wages in calgary around 15dollars for mcdonalds in order to stay competitive?

Originally Posted by sdubfid

Rates are approx $13 here in fort mcmurray. Turnover is higher than between shaniquas legs. Oprah winni-free should smack some reality into those people. Don't like your bf, find a new one. Don't like your job, find a new one. Don't like your car, find a new one.
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Wages will be more competitive to try and get people to work there.
Considering in Alberta you have oil galore and the railroads paying out big bucks, you need the less desired jobs to pay out more.

Same with Fort Mac where you have mines, lumber, etc.

[7seven]

These fast food workers need to shut the fuck up IMO. These jobs in the most part are meant to be entry level jobs for most to gain experience, some elevate to management positions within and most move onto better jobs. Don't like making $7.25 an hour, go learn a trade or get more education and find a new job if you want more pay. In most of these peoples cases (most not all), they have no one to blame but themselves for personal financial position they are in. All raising the minimum wage will do is increase operating costs to businesses, which will result in increase costs to consumers and potentially layoffs or cut backs in hours.

The worst was the girl CNN article

Wave of fast food strikes hits 50 cities - Aug. 29, 2013

Latoya Jemes, who's been working at a Memphis McDonald's for the past year, said ahead of the protests that she planned to join in.
She makes $7.45 an hour, and has to work overnights because she can't afford childcare during the day. Her mother watches her children during the night.

"I'm a single parent of three, and I'm living check to check," said Jemes, 24. "I only have enough to pay my rent, and I might be able to squeeze out the things that my kids need, but I'm not making enough."

You are a single parent of 3 at the age of 24, maybe you should've spent the time getting educated, learning a trade or being smarter instead of spreading your legs and making poor decisions to have kids when you clearly cannot afford it.

[68style]

Haha... it's a testament to the affordability of life in the U.S. that someone making $7.25 an hour can live check to check (I spelled it their way for continuity's sake) with 3 kids as she puts it. I'd like to see someone last 1 week up here in that situation

Birth control! It's cheaper than babies

[negative.one]

most of these places in the US that have a low minimum wage also have a low cost of living. If you compare our cost of living here in Vancouver, our minimum wage will, in most cases, be lower in perspective

[Phil@rise]

Originally Posted by J____

correction, min wagers should not have kids period

Ummm why is that?

[twitchyzero]

in all seriousness...a lot of us have worked at Mickey Ds @ $6.50...it was no fun for me
$10 locally nowadaysis pretty damn good

[68style]

Originally Posted by Phil@rise

Ummm why is that?

Isn't it obvious? J______ envisions a hybrid world where only financially successful people are allowed to reproduce. He has deduced this after spending some of his spare time applying Darwin's theories to Hitler's teachings while harbouring a healthy disregard for the fact much of China, Southeast Asia, Africa and India would be banned from reproduction (and ignoring the fact there's a good chance he wouldn't even exist today) were this 'rule' actually enforced

[Traum]

There are lots of reasons why people with lower education backgrounds / lower waged jobs will almost always have more kids than those with higher income. But one of the biggest factors is because their opportunity costs to do so is lower. Imagine a (female) doctor / lawyer giving birth. If she normally makes $200k a year and she only takes 3 months off to give birth and look after her newborn, she is still losing $50k's worth of income. Whereas for someone making $20k a year, even if she takes a whole year's worth of mat leave, she is still "only" losing $20k in wages.

[stewie]

if they go on strike theres gonna be a looooooooooooooooot of hungry americans...

but for a lot of them that make a career out of fast food employment, how many of them, such as shaniqua davis, are young, have kids, have a spouse who is unemployed or a "self employed dealer"? even if they don't have kids, they slave away for 7.25 an hour for 40 hours a week, then come Friday/Saturday they hit the clubs and spend 90% of their earnings or go out and buy video games/other shit they don't need, only to complain the next day about how their wages aren't enough...

my opinion, if some of them who are complaining learn the difference between want vs need, they wouldn't be in the shitty low position they're currently in.

[C5_Ryder]

$15 an hour = higher prices

higher prices = lower sales

lower sales = lay offs

layoffs = 0 dollars an hour

[RRxtar]

Originally Posted by Phil@rise

Ummm why is that?

because you shouldn't bring a child into this world if you cannot afford to take care of it?

if you cant manage to sustain your own life on your low paying part time job, why is it ok to bring 3 lives into this world, and expect handouts from the government to support them?

[Hondaracer]

Agreed
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[FerrariEnzo]

Obama to raise min wage to $9 is good.. that should shut them uneducated fools... until the next strike and another single parent of 5 start complaining...

[Geoc]

Franchises already run on a really thin margin, and the bulk of the cost next to franchise fees is labor. And if they jacked it up by +110%, are two outcomes:

1. Owner buys automation machines and fires all staff
2. Owner closes shop and fires all staff

[Gucci Mane]

this thread has made me hungry.

[Lomac]

Originally Posted by Knight_KB

this thread has made me hungry.

I actually went out to McDonalds a few minutes ago after seeing this thread again.

[cho]

Originally Posted by Lomac

$15/hr working at McDonalds...

How's this for a thought... Working at a fast food joint, unless you're management or higher, isn't a career. It's a job designed to get you work experience and to help pay for college. I know apprentices in trades who don't even make $15 an hour (and, yes, I'm aware they'll easily make twice that once they become a journeyman, but still...).



But then who's fault is that? If I decide to go into a specific field to study, the first thing I'll do is to look at the existing jobs and try to get a feel for what the job situation in four years will be. I'm not going to blindly get a degree in social economics, hoping that there will be a plethora of jobs available once I get out of school. And if I assume there will be, that fault will be on my shoulders, not the school's and not anyone else's.

i have my red seal and if i calculate how many hours i work to how much i make, im just at about 13.50 per hour

[StylinRed]

another problem is that in many places in the US, McDonalds et al. is the only "secure" job people can really land, Detroit for example, as we know, is bankrupt and industries are collecting dust

They're too poor to get up and move to go elsewhere, too uneducated even if they were to move to land a better job than mcdonalds, and even if they were to move there's not a lot of places they can go

so it comes as no surprise that they're hoping fast food chains will raise wages but that's not going to solve anything in the long term

Originally Posted by cho

i have my red seal and if i calculate how many hours i work to how much i make, im just at about 13.50 per hour

[Stiig]

Originally Posted by stewie

if they go on strike theres gonna be a looooooooooooooooot of hungry americans...

but for a lot of them that make a career out of fast food employment, how many of them, such as shaniqua davis, are young, have kids, have a spouse who is unemployed or a "self employed dealer"? even if they don't have kids, they slave away for 7.25 an hour for 40 hours a week, then come Friday/Saturday they hit the clubs and spend 90% of their earnings or go out and buy video games/other shit they don't need, only to complain the next day about how their wages aren't enough...

my opinion, if some of them who are complaining learn the difference between want vs need, they wouldn't be in the shitty low position they're currently in.

This would probably help to solve america's obesity problem

[xSin]

I think $15/hr is laughable in most areas of the United States, in NY its harder to say as I suspect the cost of living there is probably pretty high. (According to Craigslist it sure is!)

Life is about choices, some (Probably not all) of these people need to make better choices. McDonald's was never intended (when I was younger at least) to be a career choice and yet it seems like more and more frequently its becoming a job that people stay at.

At $7.25/hr on a full time 40 hour work week the gross wage is approx $580 every two weeks, Income tax rates in New York (according to a quick Google search) start at 2.9% so roughly $34/mo goes towards income tax so even if we round up drastically with imaginary other possible deductions they're able to bring home ballpark $1000/mo. Which isn't a lot, and after checking Apartments in New York on Craigslist, yeah that wage by itself is probably darn near impossible to live on.

[twitchyzero]

Originally Posted by xSin

Life is about choices, some (Probably not all) of these people need to make better choices. McDonald's was never intended (when I was younger at least) to be a career choice and yet it seems like more and more frequently its becoming a job that people stay at.

unless you move onto a management position in McD, that's just a cop out.

Dog eat dog world but there's only so many external factors as reasons to stay at a minimum wage job.

[rsx]

They should have a "bankrupt" option for your life. You declare it in legal terms and you get put into a government labour camp. Food, shelter and you can build up credits to "buy" luxury items like a 12" black and white tv or smth.
You surrender your kids as well.

[PeanutButter]

Originally Posted by rsx

Why not let the market speak for itself and not have a regulated minimum wage.

You aren't serious are you?