Posted on 11/29/2012 9:57:50 PM PST by babyfreep
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Pamela Waldron makes $7.75 an hour as a cashier at the KFC in New York's Penn Station, where she has worked for eight years.
That's just 50 cents above the New York state minimum wage. The 26-year old nursing student, and mother of two, says she has asked for a raise but her pleas have gone unheeded for weeks.
Finally, on Thursday, around lunchtime she joined a protest of about 40 fast food workers who walked out of their shifts, carrying placards and shouting slogans to bring attention to their cause of fighting for higher wages and the right to unionize. The protest was held outside a Burger King (BKW) near Penn Station.
(Excerpt) Read more at money.cnn.com ...
I almost got thrown out of my college economics class for pointing out that Ebenezer Scrooge (Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol”) must have been paying a fair wage to Bob Cratchet. There was no slavery. If Bob Cratchet could have made more money someplace else he would have gone someplace else. This arose from a discussion about Wal-Mart. A woman in the class had a friend with “an advanced degree” who had taken a job at the local Wal-Mart for $12/hr. The woman in the class felt that Wal-Mart should pay her friend more because she had a college education. (Turns out Wal-Mart was the only employer in this tiny, western town.) I said, “No, if the friend took a job at $12/hour then that was what she’d sold her time for. If she wanted to use her degree then she’d have to move someplace where the degree was needed.” The class was incensed. You should not have to move to get employment!
BTW, I’ve been laid off and the closest job I can find where I have a shot is four states away and it will pay half what I was making. I own my home outright and can’t sell it in today’s market without taking a beating. If I get this job, I will pack the Jetta and MOVE!
Fire them and put up HELP WANTED signs as they protest outside. They will be killed by the stampede of those seeking jobs.
LLS
On our way to becoming France....
This is why America needs to be free from New York. New York is the liberal centroid, the point from which Marxist collectivisims oozes. The Great Satan is on the Hudson.
So, she has worked there for 8 years and is only making 50 cents above minimum wage and has asked for a raise and been ignored for weeks. I wonder whether the store has asked her to work like she wanted to actually earn her pay and been ignored for years...
>>but you need to plan<<
And that, my FRiend, is the downfall of many...their inability to make, and stick to, a plan.
I don’t know if I’m getting older and grumpier or if is the reality of the world, but I see more and more people who just don’t think beyond the next hour.
As a very tall politician with nice hair once said, “Hope is not a strategy”. The idiot in the article hopes for a raise, just because she feels entitled to it. Super. But what’s your actual PLAN, dear?
>>BTW, I’ve been laid off and the closest job I can find where I have a shot is four states away and it will pay half what I was making.<<
The automotive industry in Central KY is booooooming. I need Engineers, Industrial Maintenance Techs, and Section Managers in a very bad way.
After eight years she should have learned enough to advance to manager instead of still being a cashier. She obviously doesn’t have what it takes and deserves no better than min wage. Unskilled and entry workers don’t deserve large wages and should be thanking big government for regulating the min wage or they’d be making what they’re qualified for and that’s even less.
They want a “living wage” on a job skill set for a semi-literate high-school student?
MOVE OUT OF NYC so you can afford your rent. You don’t belong there if you can’t feed yourself.
Taken in the context of the Fiscal Cliff, the union actions to raise wages are necessary. The unstated solution for resolving the debt issue is inflation resulting from devaluation of the US$.
To sustain the inflation, the people must become comfortable with the constant rise in prices. The discomfort is eliminated by increase in wages. So far, with unemployment at unacceptable levels, labor is not only cheap but plentiful. Employees have no leverage to increase their wages even though their purchasing power is diminished.
The union effort is an attempt to make a general national effort to raise wages that sidesteps the individual employers. For the inflation to neutralize the debt, it must be general and that includes wages. Once the wage inflation resumes after a 25 or so year hiatus the general inflation can proceed upward smoothly.
It will happen. Wage inflation will begin in the midst of unacceptable unemployment. In spite of a populist president, the havenots will have less after the inflation
Bloomberg would have shut those junk food places down anyway.
I worked fast food for 6 months in my younger days. I HATED it. It was that hate that motivated me to find another job...as an assistant drug store manager. Several years later I was running an “area” of 5 stores.
Her condition is the result of the democrat/progessive brainwashing. Is she worth more than $7.75 per hour? Only she can determine and then find an employer that will pay her what she is worth. It is her choice to succeed or fail.
“In this economy? Where?”
Well, jobs *are* out there. It may not be the job she “wants” and it would probably be another entry-level type job, but they are there. She said she was in nursing school, too. It does sound like she’s motivated to better herself.
And yes, I do think that loyalty and hard work should be rewarded (which is why I found another job, myself) Maybe she’s had her own issues and KFC didn’t think she deserved the raise. Who knows? But if it’s not working out the way she wants it to, even in this economy, she should take it upon herself to go another direction.
No fast food employer would be giving her the raise she and the other protesters were wanting...from $8 an hr to $15. That’s absurd.
[Ebenezer Scrooge...]
Wasn’t Scrooge ALWAYS a stingy old ba$tard and if he was, why would Bob Cratchit bother to ask him for anything when he knew what the answer would be.
Seems to me, Bob was just as big of a loser as fast food workers...they have had years to find a better job.
The economic narcissists in this country just don’t get it. And they’ll only grow in number and continue to demand more stuff from producers.
“Union tools.”
Yeah - that’s what I thought.
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