The answer to $15.00 Hour fast food restaurant wages

[longboard55]

Everyone wants to talk about $15 an hour, the wage currently is $7.25 not $15, $10.10 spread over several years was rejected

 

[Happyinwonerland]

It's nasty. That poster read post after post putting down her job and her because of her job. She decided to share, probably to give a different perspective but instead of seeing the human side to the people who do these job, you decided to call her names and go for blood. It's nasty.

I don't think anything less of fast food workers. I don't think anyone has said they are less worthy of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness than anyone else. Nobody is calling them names.But the reality is low skill/entry level jobs will never ever get you to a comfortable, middle class lifestyle. And demanding to be paid on a level equal to professionals that put in the hard work to either get the education or work their way up in the company is absurd.

 

[declansdad]

And a decent wage is what workers depend on to survive.

Then do something to improve your skills so that you get a better wage. Entry level jobs are entry level jobs for a reason, they tend to require unskilled labour. As you pointed out the market decides what the price of something will be and markets say the price of these jobs is not worth $15 per hour.

 

[Bianca and Bernard]

It's nasty. That poster read post after post putting down her job and her because of her job. She decided to share, probably to give a different perspective but instead of seeing the human side to the people who do these job, you decided to call her names and go for blood. It's nasty.

Sweetie, I did that job. I decided that working fast food counter service wasn't paying the bills, so I worked my behind off, got a raise every 2-3 months, and got into management. Learned as much as I could there, and then found a job at a place that is considered "a step above" fast food (quick casual), as management. Took all I could learn there, and moved on into "real sit-down" restaurants. (I'm using the "" to express the different types of restaurants)

There was no bloodshed in that post. Working with ungrateful, whiney people day in and day out is what the job is about. However, nurses do it, police officers do it, teachers do it...heck even my engineer husband has to do it. The difference between the teacher, the engineer, the nurse....they had to go to school and spend years learning how to do their jobs. I can train anyone to run a cash register in less than 30 minutes. It takes less time than that to teach someone how to wipe down a table, empty a trash can or sweep a floor. Heck, my management training for McD's took less than 3 weeks.

 

[Minnesota!]

The snobbery on this thread is really gross. It's easy to tell who has never worked a customer service job...

I have. For $5/hr. And then again for $6/hour. And then I went to college and got myself out of it. Because the work was mind numbing (restaurant, Pier 1, dry cleaner) and the pay low. I would never expect to make more than minimum wage doing a job like those. It's not a.job you go in to if you need to make more than minimum wage.

I do think minimum wage needs to be at least $10-$12. But, $15 for fast food is just stupid. It's a starting point, something to do to get your start.

 

[Goofy_Disney_Dad]

 

[aaarcher86]

It just never crossed my mind to picket or post that as up here those professions make $50,000-$100,000+ along with good benefits and pensions. Which they should and I totally get.

I never realized there were people in these professions in the U.S. making so little.

Well, must be nice. I'm sure you could see where it'd chap some behinds for the ER tech that makes $23,000 to see that FF workers would be making the same or more.

I can't imagine Columbus, Ohio being on some odd pay grid of it's own with these professions.

 

[aaarcher86]

Because it is hard to unite people behind a cause that only effects some of them. Around here, police make a LOT more than $15/hr - more like $30+, before accounting for benefits. Brand-new EMTs make less but not by much; the company I'm familiar with in my area starts at $14 for someone with little/no experience. And a lot of our area fire departments are still volunteer or on-call, which is hard to break down to a real hourly wage. Obviously all of that is different in different parts of the country. But it is very hard to build support for a national movement when so many of the people you'd be calling on don't have a personal, every-payday interest in the issue.

Besides, it isn't as though anyone is talking about a fast-food specific wage that would leave underpaid emergency workers out in the cold - any bump in the minimum wage has ripples up the rest of the barely-above-minimum economy. So the whole argument that "burger flippers shouldn't make more than EMTs" is illogical on its face.

Well, it seems the FF workers have a national movement going so it can't be that difficult.

I still remember walking past an Einsteins bagels downtown with my Dh and chuckling that the workers there made more hourly than he did AND had weekends off.

I think we just disagree on the fundamentals of what needs changed. I don't think you can take a job not meant to support families and then expect it to support a family somehow. I don't agree with everything about the system, but it's not always the system that needs changing.

 

[kimblebee]

I have. For $5/hr. And then again for $6/hour. And then I went to college and got myself out of it. Because the work was mind numbing (restaurant, Pier 1, dry cleaner) and the pay low. I would never expect to make more than minimum wage doing a job like those. It's not a.job you go in to if you need to make more than minimum wage.

I do think minimum wage needs to be at least $10-$12. But, $15 for fast food is just stupid. It's a starting point, something to do to get your start.

I wasn't calling you out because I think this is your first post and I don't see any snobbery in it. You've been in the trenches to see what it's like. A fast food job isn't something I'd want to do but I also don't believe that those who do are less, as some on this thread clearly do.

And for the record, not once on this thread have I said the minimum wage should be raised to $15. Not my country, not my argument. My argument has always been that just because you work fast food doesn't mean that you are necessary unskilled and/or unmotivated.

 

[CdnCarrie]

Well, must be nice. I'm sure you could see where it'd chap some behinds for the ER tech that makes $23,000 to see that FF workers would be making the same or more.

I can't imagine Columbus, Ohio being on some odd pay grid of it's own with these professions.

Well all those positions up here are government jobs therefore very strong unions. All healthcare workers are unionized and make good money. Good old socialist country and all.
No one working those types of jobs should be making $23,000. That's horrible.

 

[Mom of a great kid]

Then do something to improve your skills so that you get a better wage. Entry level jobs are entry level jobs for a reason, they tend to require unskilled labour. As you pointed out the market decides what the price of something will be and markets say the price of these jobs is not worth $15 per hour.

I have a better job. I have a bachelor's degree. Not everyone has had my advantages. Someone must do these jobs and these people must be able to eat and pay rent while they do them. As another poster pointed out, everyone cannot be in management, someone must be a laborer. As decent human beings, we cannot deny them the necessities of life.

 

[MagicaDeSpell]

The same concept, supply and demand, applies to the price of labour. If you want to use that argument then you have to include the fact that the setting of a minimum wage is price floor and does not match what the market will bear.

That's true in so far as it goes, but it really only applies when we're talking about inelastic demand (and cases where the provider is maximizing their profits, in some cases that's not legal). Inelastic demands are typically only needs, like my demand for a hospital if I'm having a heart attack, not wants like my desire for a cheeseburger. Customers won't necessarily pay more for a fast food burger AND fast food sellers have a lot of competition that helps depress the price of that burger.

Long story short, when there's a very elastic demand for something, the provider can't just pass the cost on to the customer or they'll lose sales, so even if fast food workers all got $15/hour and that meant that the cost for the provider was 50¢ more per burger, they couldn't necessarily raise that burger's price 50¢, they'd have to take at least some of the increase out of profits.

At the moment, many of these companies are making huge profits, so I'm not going to be too broken up about it if they have to pay a living wage to all employees and take a hit to their profits because of it, that's the cost of doing business. Besides, I don't think that taxpayers should be subsidizing cheapskate businesses by keeping their employees alive with SNAP, WIC, Section 8, and so on. If we wouldn't use tax money to repair the roofs on McDonald's restaurants, why would we be responsible for keeping their employees in working shape?

 

[Hikergirl]

Everyone wants to talk about $15 an hour, the wage currently is $7.25 not $15, $10.10 spread over several years was rejected

My state just approved $15 minimum wage, spread over years. I'm not against a raise in the minimum wage, I'm against the notion that unskilled entry level jobs deserve $15. There are many skilled workers doing more important work than cooking fast food and running cash registers that don't make that much. I only hope that when that $15 kicks in those workers get a substantial raise.

 

[MagicaDeSpell]

It is still an artificial price. The cost of labour is a major factor in the final price of a good, if the cost of labour increases it has to be factored into the price of the good. You would have two choices - increase your price or reduce your labour costs. Reducing your labour costs mean you let people go or stop hiring.

You also need to look at the relative value of that position to the company. If the minimum wage is set at $15 you would need to adjust all wages up to maintain the value in your pay scales.

You forgot the obvious third choice: cut your profit margin. The price of manufacture does not equal the price of sale.

 

[aaarcher86]

I wasn't calling you out because I think this is your first post and I don't see any snobbery in it. You've been in the trenches to see what it's like. A fast food job isn't something I'd want to do but I also don't believe that those who do are less, as some on this thread clearly do.

And for the record, not once on this thread have I said the minimum wage should be raised to $15. Not my country, not my argument. My argument has always been that just because you work fast food doesn't mean that you are necessary unskilled and/or unmotivated.

People are talking about the job, but you're putting that towards their perception of the people working it because your daughter does and that's a personal thing.

I'm sure your daughter has tons of skills, but that doesn't make a FF job a skilled position. There's a difference in the people and the position. I don't think anyone thinks less of a person because they work there just because they work there.

 

[aaarcher86]

Well all those positions up here are government jobs therefore very strong unions. All healthcare workers are unionized and make good money. Good old socialist country and all.
No one working those types of jobs should be making $23,000. That's horrible.

Boo. I wish. No hospital unions here - at least not the several we've worked at.

 

[Happyinwonerland]

Sorry, I should have made it clear (although I did up thread) that there is no comparison to the two. BUT, that doesn't mean that fast food workers deserve to be looked at like nothing just because they don't save lives on a daily basis. They contribute to society too, just not in the same way.

I'm sorry, no, the only thing fast food contributes to society is obesity. It is convenient and sometimes tasty depending on the chain, but our infrastructure would not fall apart without mcdonalds. That doesn't mean the workers are any less valuable as people, I'm sure they are wonderful mothers and fathers, loyal friends. I bet many of them are active with volunteer organizations and churches and make a big impact in their communities, but the job is not worth high wages.

 

[declansdad]

That's true in so far as it goes, but it really only applies when we're talking about inelastic demand (and cases where the provider is maximizing their profits, in some cases that's not legal). Inelastic demands are typically only needs, like my demand for a hospital if I'm having a heart attack, not wants like my desire for a cheeseburger. Customers won't necessarily pay more for a fast food burger AND fast food sellers have a lot of competition that helps depress the price of that burger.

Long story short, when there's a very elastic demand for something, the provider can't just pass the cost on to the customer or they'll lose sales, so even if fast food workers all got $15/hour and that meant that the cost for the provider was 50¢ more per burger, they couldn't necessarily raise that burger's price 50¢, they'd have to take at least some of the increase out of profits.

At the moment, many of these companies are making huge profits, so I'm not going to be too broken up about it if they have to pay a living wage to all employees and take a hit to their profits because of it, that's the cost of doing business. Besides, I don't think that taxpayers should be subsidizing cheapskate businesses by keeping their employees alive with SNAP, WIC, Section 8, and so on. If we wouldn't use tax money to repair the roofs on McDonald's restaurants, why would we be responsible for keeping their employees in working shape?

You forgot the obvious third choice: cut your profit margin. The price of manufacture does not equal the price of sale.

You are also forgetting that the vast majority of businesses are small business and can not simply lower their profit margin or eat all the costs. For them to do that they would have to change something and that would most likely be reduce their labour force.

 

[MagicaDeSpell]

Then do something to improve your skills so that you get a better wage. Entry level jobs are entry level jobs for a reason, they tend to require unskilled labour. As you pointed out the market decides what the price of something will be and markets say the price of these jobs is not worth $15 per hour.

You may have missed it, but earlier I posted the statistic that 44% of minimum wage workers already have more than a high school education. There are more unskilled labor jobs in the country than there are unskilled laborers. I remember in 2009 when college graduates, even MBAs, were swamping McDonalds franchises across the country with applications whenever they said there were openings.

 

[Goofy_Disney_Dad]

OMG, what a night...

You just can't write this stuff...

Oh wait...