Posted on 04/04/2013 10:05:37 AM PDT by traumer
They work for some of the biggest businesses in the United States, yet they are among the country's lowest-paid workers.
On Thursday, fast-food workers staged walkouts at McDonald's, Burger King, Taco Bell and other restaurants in New York City to call attention to their plight. Organizers scheduled the job actions to commemorate the day Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated 45 years ago in Memphis, where he was supporting a strike by sanitation workers.
"It's not enough," Elba Godoy, a crew member at a McDonald's just a few blocks from Times Square, said of her $7.25-per-hour minimum wage, which helps support her extended family of seven. "They don't like [that we're out here], but we have to do it. We cannot survive on $7.25."
Godoy and her colleagues are seeking a raise to $15 an hour and the right to form a union without retaliation. The walkout is part of a national movement by low-wage workers to raise wages and gain rights.
(Excerpt) Read more at inplainsight.nbcnews.com ...
The fact is, fast food restaurants are not the kind of place a person should work if they plan to raise a family. They’re for young people just getting started.
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Like my first job, a few decades ago, as a dishwasher. It’s a first step on the employment ladder.
It’s not meant to be a career. Well, unless you move into management or something like that. But I can’t imagine raising a family on a McD’s cashiers wages.
Not if there are all sorts of low skill jobs where a person can learn but oh wait that model has slowly been phased out for decades as manufacturing jobs have gone overseas.
Really easy to take your attitude but the fact is we’re no longer making learn as you go jobs that pay. Now when some idiot goes on CNBC and says i’ve got 20 openings at a factory they neglect to mention those jobs all require engineering degrees.
Lady (loosely used term in this case), take Thomas Friedman’s advice
“Need a job? Then invent one!”
We never eat fast food, I just don’t like it much, but yesterday I had a coupon for Carls Jr so decided to use it. My total order was $12.75 and I gave her a $20. She gave me back the $20 along with the $7.25. I didn’t even look at it and just shoved it into my purse so didn’t notice til after I got home and we had eaten and I pulled it out to put it in my wallet. I was not going back then.
On the plus side she did get my order right even though the food was kind of lousy.
I am sure the greedy owner can be force to pay Elba (Elba?)
$20-$25 an hour. and if he cannot afford to pay, he should just close down. After all it is not Elba’s fault that he is running an under capitalized business.
Or something like that.
Elba. Now that sounds like something Napoleon once spoke.
“Able was I ere I saw Elba”. :O
Yer Fired!
Wait a minute now. O’B *created* these jobs !!!/s
So, go learn to do something of greater value so you’ll be worth more money!
I was lucky. I started working at $2.65 30+ years ago and stayed at the same company. Wife was making the same wage as I was. Nothing excess in our budget. No video games, cell phones, cable / satellite, no Nike shoes to spend money on.
Took us about 6 years to save up enough cash for a 20% down payment to buy a house and 15 acres of land. Interest rate was 13% at the time I think.
If it’s too little money for you, quit. Maybe someone else thinks it’s enough, maybe they don’t. If it’s the latter, then the business has to pay more to get the workers. if it’s the former, then maybe your job isn’t worth what you think it is.
This is why ladies and gentleman the importance of people entering the work at a young age. My 16 year old daughter made the same comment on her first minimum wage job. I told her that her employer does not owe her a wage to meet her living expenses, rather your employer pays you a wage for the value you provide the business in an open and free labor market. When she learned this she made sure she did a good job and only earned minimum for about 3 months. Now at 18, she is a shift manager.
...or the rebranded “Unhappy Meal” at $12.50 plus tax
And any young person worth their salt will quickly move to supervisor, then shift manager, and so on. And once they've got managerial experience they can parlay that to somewhere higher paying.
I think these folks are forgetting if they move to $15/hour (30k per year), they'll be on the hook for their own food (no food stamps), their own heat (no LIHEAP), and they may even have to pay a co-pay for their kid's medical care via the CHiP program. I wonder how widespread this walkout was? My guess is not much - it's just the unions grasping at straws and their helpful idiots in the media reporting their spoonfed lines.
What's that, a few kids each from different fathers? Maybe she should have moved past a minimum-wage-level job before she became a brood sow.
Elba Godoy
No one will ever hire you now. You are forever on the internet as a trouble maker with no common sense.
Great point, Gaffer! I wonder how much money this “extended family of 7” is raking in from all those freebies from Obama.
The key weasel words are “helps support.” Translation: She’s not the main source of income for the family. Someone else — perhaps Uncle Sam and state and local welfare? — is. The overwhelming majority of minimum-wage workers are not the principal breadwinner in their household.
Work more hours get another job...hey get an education dn find a better job.
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