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 Fast Food Strike...Right Or Wrong ? Your Opinion ?

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cjt
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joefrank
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joefrank


Number of posts : 8210
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Age : 75
Location : Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

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PostSubject: Fast Food Strike...Right Or Wrong ? Your Opinion ?   Fast Food Strike...Right Or Wrong ? Your Opinion ? EmptyThu Dec 05, 2013 3:57 pm

12/5/2013

                  The fast food workers went on strike today, disrupting services. I have read
                  where many fast food workers make a low minimum wage $7.25 Hr. I agree
                   that's too low, it should be raised to $10.00 an Hour but asking for $15.00
                   per hour is too much, can you imagine what a hamburger would cost $$$$$$
                   that's my opinion , what's yours...

                     http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/12/5/fast-food-workerswalkoffjobs.html


                                                          Cheers.....Joe.....Very Happy
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cjt
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cjt


Number of posts : 51
Registration date : 2013-11-08
Age : 55
Location : Boston, MA

Fast Food Strike...Right Or Wrong ? Your Opinion ? Empty
PostSubject: Re: Fast Food Strike...Right Or Wrong ? Your Opinion ?   Fast Food Strike...Right Or Wrong ? Your Opinion ? EmptyFri Dec 06, 2013 3:48 pm

I was a manager at McDonald's back in the day and raising the wage to $15/hour would result in an average of a five cent increase in prices, but not on everything. Sodas and fries have a huge profit margin, while hamburgers have a very small one. Of course this was fifteen years ago but I imagine the profit margins are the same.

The main cost to a franchisee is actually the lease on the building and the franchise fee to McDonald's Corp. Labor is a small part of the budget.
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dkchristi
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dkchristi


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Fast Food Strike...Right Or Wrong ? Your Opinion ? Empty
PostSubject: Re: Fast Food Strike...Right Or Wrong ? Your Opinion ?   Fast Food Strike...Right Or Wrong ? Your Opinion ? EmptyFri Dec 06, 2013 3:55 pm

Unfortunately, a wage change across the board does not account for the general wage differences across the country.  Starting salaries for school teachers is a good bell weather.  A percent of their starting hourly wage should dictate minimum wage for unskilled labor.
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cjt
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cjt


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Fast Food Strike...Right Or Wrong ? Your Opinion ? Empty
PostSubject: Re: Fast Food Strike...Right Or Wrong ? Your Opinion ?   Fast Food Strike...Right Or Wrong ? Your Opinion ? EmptyFri Dec 06, 2013 4:01 pm

Also, exact costs at McD's does vary. In the McD's I started in labor costs were 25% of the budget, compared to 8% for the franchise fee and 4% for the lease. Toward the end of my tenure, the franchise fee went up to 12.5%, the lease 8% and they added training and remodeling fees that added another 4%. Now add in maintenance, utilities and taxes and you can see why raising the wage at McD's wouldn't be the END of McDs.
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alj
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PostSubject: Re: Fast Food Strike...Right Or Wrong ? Your Opinion ?   Fast Food Strike...Right Or Wrong ? Your Opinion ? EmptyFri Dec 06, 2013 4:18 pm

It's interesting to look at the change in buying power over time. When I worked at my first job - a three-month summer stint as a file clerk, I was paid the then current minimum wage, $1.50 an hour. I was in college, but home for the summer. My dad insisted I put half of each check in savings to help pay for my Fall expenses. I still had enough left over to buy a "little" black silk dress, a pair of Julianelli pumps, and service for eight in a discontinued, half-priced, Rosenthal china pattern over the course of the summer.

I doubt that a student today, living at home, in similar circumstances, could stretch $7.25 an hour that far.
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dkchristi
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PostSubject: Re: Fast Food Strike...Right Or Wrong ? Your Opinion ?   Fast Food Strike...Right Or Wrong ? Your Opinion ? EmptyFri Dec 06, 2013 4:19 pm

I think it's a "minimum wage" issue rather than a McD's issue.  I remember when the fast food places were starting jobs for kids in high school, and not very fun ones at that.  They worked hard in those first jobs and some moved up into manager opportunities even on to owning their own.

After the economic slump, fast-food restaurants had no slump but increased business and people unemployed with great educations needed any employment they could get.  Thus, people with families to support moved into the fast food lane of employment, discovering it wasn't paying for much.  They are more sophisticated though with a louder voice than the "kids" of the past.

I don't know the economically correct resolution to employment that does not pay a living wage.  However, the turn of the U.S. to a service economy of low wage jobs that can't be sent overseas (fast food in particular) is going to see many people without a living wage struggling - and qualifying for food stamps to survive.

If I was a corporate business owner, I'd hang my head in shame that my full-time employees were so poorly paid they qualified for public assistance.  The U.S. government should collect an additional tax from those businesses whose employees receive so little pay they are also receiving our tax dollars - as a corporate repayment because they are profiting at the executive level on the taxes paid by people at the bottom.
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alj
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Fast Food Strike...Right Or Wrong ? Your Opinion ? Empty
PostSubject: Re: Fast Food Strike...Right Or Wrong ? Your Opinion ?   Fast Food Strike...Right Or Wrong ? Your Opinion ? EmptyFri Dec 06, 2013 4:35 pm

My daughters both worked fast-food jobs in high school for a while. I remember picking up Susan one night after closing time. After she got into the car, she burst into tears - and Susan is a very stoic person. She had been working overtime and not given a break, which technically wasn't legal, but she was powerless to do anything about it if she wanted to keep the job.

For many youung people today, these are the only jobs available.
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joefrank
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Fast Food Strike...Right Or Wrong ? Your Opinion ? Empty
PostSubject: Re: Fast Food Strike...Right Or Wrong ? Your Opinion ?   Fast Food Strike...Right Or Wrong ? Your Opinion ? EmptyFri Dec 06, 2013 5:03 pm

12/6/2013

                    I remeber when I was 18 I wokred at a Dept. STore in NYC called
               Ohrbachs, it went back a hundred years and I remember meeting the
               owner Mr. Ohrbachs, he must have been 90 ! I made $50- a week in
               1968 , got $34- after taxes working 34 hrs a week and my mother got
               half.....

                                                                  Cheers....Joe...Very Happy
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dkchristi
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dkchristi


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Fast Food Strike...Right Or Wrong ? Your Opinion ? Empty
PostSubject: Re: Fast Food Strike...Right Or Wrong ? Your Opinion ?   Fast Food Strike...Right Or Wrong ? Your Opinion ? EmptyFri Dec 06, 2013 7:19 pm

I have no sob story for the work of my youth.  I started a baby sitting business at 12 and made .25 an hour to do my homework.  I had so many jobs I upped my wages and by 15 was making .50 an hour and sometimes, $1 an hour.  At 16 I worked co-op in high school.  I spent 20 hours a week standing on a ladder at a set of file boxes adding marks to inventory cards and subtracting them.  I did that for four years, starting at .65 and hour and ending at 1.35 an hour - and at 16, they started taking out social security which was a shock.  By graduation, I had typing, shorthand, and cost accounting completed and in college while my friends made a fortune waiting tables, I worked for less than minimum wage on work study as an executive secretary for Michigan State Graduate Center - but I had an office and sat in a chair and didn't have to put up with drunks.  Later, I went after that "big" money and worked in a fancy bar for big tips - and lasted 3 months.  They called me "college girl" and made it rough for me because I wouldn't pad the tabs for bigger tips and it made the rest of them look bad.  Then I started substitute teaching in the inner city schools of Grand Rapids in Jr. High.  Even then, it was a tough job.  I walked into a classroom where they were throwing knives at the teacher's desk.  When I walked past the lockers, the older boys made comments, some lewd and some just plain scarey.  I don't remember how much I made but it was about a third of what I made in the three months in the bar. In Washington, D.C. I was a political intern (honorary with a small stipend and free room & board) by day and worked all night but for a couple hours sleep typing for lawyers and editing books.  One thing for sure, I worked a lot of hours in my life, but I never flipped a burger.
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Abe F. March
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Fast Food Strike...Right Or Wrong ? Your Opinion ? Empty
PostSubject: Re: Fast Food Strike...Right Or Wrong ? Your Opinion ?   Fast Food Strike...Right Or Wrong ? Your Opinion ? EmptyFri Dec 06, 2013 11:59 pm

I can see the plus and minus of minimum wage.  Increasing the wage for "unskilled" labor such as flipping hamburgers tends to discourage young people to seek a higher education.  I remember when I was in high school that some of my classmates said they were going to try getting a job as trash collector since that job paid $1.50 an hour.  That was a lot of money at that time and more than many skilled labor jobs.  Since unemployment has forced people with Bachelor's and Master's degrees to take jobs at fast food restuarants, the increase in minimum wage may discourage the pursuit of a higher education while at the same time eliminating the incentive to seek a better job.
Minimum wage is not the solution to our nation's problems.  When there are jobs available, competition determines the wage.
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alj
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Fast Food Strike...Right Or Wrong ? Your Opinion ? Empty
PostSubject: Re: Fast Food Strike...Right Or Wrong ? Your Opinion ?   Fast Food Strike...Right Or Wrong ? Your Opinion ? EmptySat Dec 07, 2013 6:16 am

Not having a minimum wage encourages employers to take advanage of the underprivileged groups who are desperate for work and have no other means, and encourages feelings of hopelessness.  Young people who feel they have hope for a decent future are not that willing to settle.  Ambitions for a better life are based on one's feelings of self-worth.  A reasonable minimum wage encourages that.

That summer of 1962, the $1.50 an hour that I was earning was the minimum wage.  That Fall, according to the tables in my sociology textbook, the dividing line between upper and middle class was an income of $10,000 a year.  If we conservatively say the the equivalent salary today to be $100,000, then an equivalent minimum wage would be $15 an hour.  That sounds reasonable to me.
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joefrank
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Fast Food Strike...Right Or Wrong ? Your Opinion ? Empty
PostSubject: Re: Fast Food Strike...Right Or Wrong ? Your Opinion ?   Fast Food Strike...Right Or Wrong ? Your Opinion ? EmptySat Dec 07, 2013 7:14 am

12/7/2013

                   I remember my step-father made in 1962 $10,000- a year, we were a
                   family of six children, two adults, we ate, we went on fishing trips, I
                   remember getting .50 a week for doing chores....

                                                            Cheers....Joe....Very Happy
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LC
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Fast Food Strike...Right Or Wrong ? Your Opinion ? Empty
PostSubject: Re: Fast Food Strike...Right Or Wrong ? Your Opinion ?   Fast Food Strike...Right Or Wrong ? Your Opinion ? EmptySun Dec 08, 2013 9:12 pm

Quote :
Not having a minimum wage encourages employers to take advanage of the underprivileged groups who are desperate for work
It sure does, which is why so many CEOs are pushing the immigration floodgates open and pushing for amnesty. They give their bullshit stories about how this country needs more entrepreneurs, but they go after the most low-skilled, low-end ones they can find. Like that POS Steve Case:


http://dailycaller.com/2013/12/05/billionaire-steve-case-says-immigrants-will-offset-middle-class-job-losses/

I would LOVE for the min wage to be raised to $15 if for no other reason than to remove the incentive for flooding the market with more immigrants; if they have to pay everyone the same relatively high wage, what's the advantage? But that's not going to happen. Instead, this will happen:

http://www.neowin.net/news/mcdonalds-orders-7000-touchscreen-kiosks-to-replace-cashiers

And this:

http://www.dailytech.com/Applebees+to+Place+Tablets+at+Each+Table+for+Paying+the+Check+Ordering+Food/article33858.htm

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