Great quote from the fast food workers strike in Chicago (Henry: job market, neighborhoods)

[Chi-town Native]

I think what I find most disturbing is the propaganda that giving the workers a raise will result in a proportionate increase in the cost of your food.

That's ridiculous, and the fact so many people believe it irritates the hell out of me - the cost of labor for McDonald's is a fraction of their total budget. Factor in what a Mickey D's has to pay for the building, the utilities, the franchise fee (which supports the advertising, R&D, etc), and then the actual cost of the food and what it costs to transport it.

I'm guessing you're looking at *maybe* hourly labor being 20-25% of their total budget, meaning that theoretically, if you doubled that expense (which ain't gonna happen), the factor by which it would impact the total cost is relatively marginal.

But of course, that isn't how the market works anyway. From those crusty hippies at Forbes:

The Real Change In The Cost Of A Big Mac If McDonald's Workers Were Paid $15 An Hour: Nothing - Forbes

[Irishtom29]

I don't think anyone has a beef with higher skills drawing higher wages. The point is how much hard work in and of itself should be worth in The United States. And how much respect we as a society actually give to the notion of hard work.

And how much love and concern we have for our fellow countrymen. Given a choice I'd rather pay for higher wages than to subsidize business by making up through taxes what they should pay in wages.

[marothisu]

Originally Posted by Army_Guy

The thing is that the businesses have to answer to their owners, the shareholders. If I'm a shareholder in a company, I think I would want it to make a profit.

Most people don't want to grasp that a business is in business to make money and not give people jobs.

One reason why I think our costs for food (and many other items for that matter) is so high is because of legal reasons. Do this or that and you get sued. Costs of litigation get passed on down to the consumer as well as employee wages.

The only thing that employers can control are wages. They can't control foot traffic.

Anybody would have to be an idiot to not know that businesses are in business to make money. However, 99% of businesses can't be done without workers. That's a pure fact. So there is a fine line between running your business, turning a profit, and also not pissing your workers off where they will leave you and you can't run your business anymore. Unfortunately this happens and it's not easy to balance it all out in the end.


As far as food costs go, yes I think that is one reason. Another reason is fuel/transportation costs.

[Chi-town Native]

Originally Posted by Irishtom29

Whole Foods is finky and a favorite of "social" liberals who think Gays should have marriage unions but not labor unions, I never buy there. As much as possible I shop for groceries at Jewel and Dominic's.

All my furniture is from high wage countries; The United States, Canada and Denmark. My shoes are American made; Allen Edmonds, Redwing, Chippewa and New Balance. My car is a Ford union made in Canada. My watches are Swiss and American made. As much as possible I shop high wage sources. Sometimes this is not possible. But I do what I can.

Bingo.

It's hard to do, but at least if you try you'll learning something & have an appreciation about labor struggles in general.

This is a very enlightening exercise:

Slavery Footprint - Made In A Free World

It's tragically ironic that it's not just the middle and upper classes but also our lowest-income people who are, likely unknowingly, exploiting even poorer communities from largely invisible parts of the world.

[marothisu]

Originally Posted by Chi-town Native

I think what I find most disturbing is the propaganda that giving the workers a raise will result in a proportionate increase in the cost of your food.

That's ridiculous, and the fact so many people believe it irritates the hell out of me - the cost of labor for McDonald's is a fraction of their total budget. Factor in what a Mickey D's has to pay for the building, the utilities, the franchise fee (which supports the advertising, R&D, etc), and then the actual cost of the food and what it costs to transport it.

I'm guessing you're looking at *maybe* hourly labor being 20-25% of their total budget, meaning that theoretically, if you doubled that expense (which ain't gonna happen), the factor by which it would impact the total cost is relatively marginal.

But of course, that isn't how the market works anyway. From those crusty hippies at Forbes:

The Real Change In The Cost Of A Big Mac If McDonald's Workers Were Paid $15 An Hour: Nothing - Forbes

Yes true and good article. A big, international chain like McDonald's knows how to run things. What about the small fast food joint that has 1 location and aren't nearly in the same universe of business skills as a McDonald's?

[NARFALICIOUS]

Originally Posted by emathias

You don't know how she became pregnant. Is it ideal in this culture to be 21 and pregnant? Perhaps not, but 21 isn't 16 and there's really no good excuse to be paying people a non-living wage.

It's perfectly okay for her to be pregnant. It's also perfectly okay to have 3 kids or 4 kids. It's okay to have a mortgage or a rent. It's okay to have a car, with insurance and gas.

It's not okay to think you can get by feeding your kids and paying your bills on a McDonalds entry-level salary. If you think McDonalds owes you something, they don't. own. you. sht. Anyone who thinks they can feed even 1 child, including themselves on a McDonalds entry-level salary alone, is very very delusional and no wonder they are in this predicament in the first place.


Like I said in the other thread, if you want to make a living, there are several options out there.
- Get a promotion at your current job (shift leader? asst manager? manager?)
- Get an education
- Get a better job

Working the drive-thru at McDonalds was meant for teens, young single adults, newly immigrated, or people with second jobs. Not for raising a family.

[Irishtom29]

Originally Posted by NARFALICIOUS

I
Working the drive-thru at McDonalds was meant for teens, young single adults, newly immigrated, or people with second jobs. Not for raising a family.

Who decides what jobs are meant for? Since I see plenty of mature adults working at McDonalds those jobs seem to be meant for adults. No doubt many of these people would prefer to work at Stewart Warner, Florsheim shoes, International Harvester or United States Steel but...you know.

[NARFALICIOUS]

Originally Posted by Irishtom29

Who decides what jobs are meant for?

The wage.

[ChicagoMeO]

I have mixed feelings about this. on one hand, people say this is supposed to be an entry level job ONLY, you are being paid the appropriate amount for the work you do (non-skilled).. it was meant to be a job for teens just getting into the job market.. then that teen is expected to move on to something higher up that would pay more.

But on the other hand, people ARE using Macdonald's jobs as their full time job where they do need to make more money, but that is not what a Macdonalds job was intended.. but since people are working full time - why?

why cant they move up to a better job? Could be - no skills, dont want to learn any skills, therefore they deserve what they earn (whether earning more education to be able to earn better wages, or earn valuable job skills to take to the next job wherever that may be, or maybe they are too lazy to want to do better and have an entitlement mentality where they want the good wages but not put in the work/effort/investment.

or maybe the corporations could take some of the current profits and give more to the worker, they may not suffer, however, this is a capatalist USA (for now) and maybe thats the way its supposed to work, (so that you have incentive to earn more education to be able to earn better wages in a better job.

or maybe compromise and pay them somewhere like $12 an hour, which is a middle of the road. But even if they pass the higher wages onto the customer, someone on the news figured it would add about 69 cents to each burger. so i can afford 68 cents more. But the corporation does not want to budge.

I have a feeling they wont budge because look at how the teachers protested, for the last 2 years, and they ended up this summer, getting fired and schools closing. so good luck with that.

[jonnynonos]

Originally Posted by lenniel

This pretty much sums it up......

“If not $15, then something. I mean give us something. I work 36 hours a week and barely make enough to pay my rent, gas bill, light bill. It gets to the point where I barely have enough for lunch sometimes,” said Angel Richardson, 21, who works at McDonald’s. “I’m five months pregnant, what am I going to do in four months? I hope something changes.”

400 area retail, fast-food workers demand $15-an-hour minimum wage - Chicago Sun-Times

Umm...how about not getting pregnant when you're 21 and can't afford to have a baby? The reason you're 21 and prego is the same reason you're working at McDonald's.

I usually agree that the free market should dictate things, but when you have such corruption in government in the form of crony capitalism that has been dictating our policies for decades, you have a system that has basically become predatory toward the American people.

Real unemployment is awful; couple it with a tsunami of illegal labor that works for peanuts and has replaced a lot of blue collar jobs where people could actually make somewhat of a decent living; offshoring and the corporate perpetual drive to please stockholders and American employees are not in a good place these days.

No doubt unions have been abusive in some ways but hearing people whine about them always cracks me up. Isn't that part of the "free market?" People are exercising their right to strike.

I genuinely don't understand the thinking behind people who apparently think corporations should be able to aggressively exercise their rights, but employees should not. LOL. OK, Mr. Burns!