Posted on 12/03/2013 9:34:29 AM PST by Kaslin
On Friday, Salon reported Breaking: Massive Black Friday strike and arrests planned, as workers defy Wal-Mart.
Defying the nation’s top employer and a business model that defines the new U.S. economy, Wal-Mart employees and allies will try to oust shopping headlines with strike stories, and throw a retail giant off its heels on what should be its happiest day of the year. By day’s end, organizers expect 1,500 total protests in cities ranging from Los Angeles, Calif., to Wasilla, Alaska, including arrests in nine cities: Seacaucus, New Jersey; Alexandria, Virginia; Dallas; Minneapolis; Chicago; Seattle; and Ontario, San Leandro, and Sacramento, California.
On December 1, the New York Times reported Wage Strikes Planned at Fast-Food Outlets.
Seeking to increase pressure on McDonald’s, Wendy’s and other fast-food restaurants, organizers of a movement demanding a $15-an-hour wage for fast-food workers say they will sponsor one-day strikes in 100 cities on Thursday and protest activities in 100 additional cities.
The movement, which includes the groups Fast Food Forward and Fight for 15, is part of a growing union-backed effort by low-paid workers — including many Walmart workers and workers for federal contractors — that seeks to focus attention on what the groups say are inadequate wages.
The fast-food effort is backed by the Service Employees International Union and is also demanding that restaurants allow workers to unionize without the threat of retaliation.
Officials with the National Restaurant Association have said the one-day strikes are publicity stunts. They warn that increasing pay to $15 an hour when the federal minimum wage is $7.25 would cause restaurants to rely more on automation and hire fewer workers.
On Aug. 29, fast-food strikes took place in more than 50 cities. This week’s expanded protests will be joined by numerous community, faith and student groups, including USAction and United Students against Sweatshops.
Fight For 15
Inquiring minds are investigating the Fight for 15 website. Here is a snip.
Stand with striking Chicago fast food and retail workers!
We, hundreds of fast food and retail workers, went on strike at 30 stores in the Loop and the Magnificent Mile to demand $15 an hour and the right to form a union without retaliation. Employers like McDonalds, Whole Foods, and Sears are raking in enormous profits while workers like us, mostly adults with families, don’t get paid enough to cover basic needs like food, rent, health care and transportation.
We are risking our jobs as we continue to stand up and say ENOUGH. And we need everyone who supports us to join us. It’s time to give every worker a chance to survive and thrive – and strengthen Chicago’s economy.
Applicants a Mile Long
Whenever Wal-Mart opens up a store it gets tens of thousands of applicants for a couple hundred openings. People want the jobs.
Here's the deal. If you don't like the job, then don't take it.
It really is as simple as that.
Should Companies Pay Workers More?
The economic illiterates think companies should be forced to pay $15 per hour. Is it even possible?
Let's do the math.
Wikipedia reports Wal-Mart is the largest retailer in the world as well as the biggest private employer in the world with over two million employees.
In its last annual report, for the 12 months ending January 31, 2013, Wal-Mart had $16.999 billion in net income.
That sounds like a lot of money, and it is, but not as much as you might think. I do not have a breakdown in headcounts, pay scales, or number of part-time employees, but let's assume that half of the 2 million workers make $8 an hour (75 cents above above minimum wage) and work 30 hours a week.
$15 an hour would be an increase of $7 per hour. $7 multiplied by 30 hours per week, multiplied by 52 weeks a year, multiplied by 1 million workers is $10.92 billion, well over half Wal-Mart's profit.
There would also be a large number of full-time employees making above $10 per hour but less than $15 per hour.
Bump up those employees to $15 per hour and the company would not even be profitable at $15 per hour minimum. Moreover, sales would plunge at Wal-Mart, as would sales at McDonald's and Wendy's.
The pressure to automate would be great, and marginal stores would surely close. Yet, prices across the board would soar, and so would yields on US Treasuries (and of course interest on the national debt would skyrocket).
Then, how long would it take to discover that $15 was not a "living wage"? Less than a year?
Wal-Mart a Savior or a Pariah?
The idea that raising the minimum wage to $15 would fix anything is ridiculous.
I am not totally unsympathetic to the plight of those struggling, but I am totally unsympathetic about minimum wages because the problem is the Fed, not minimum wage laws.
Cheap money coupled with rising minimum wages encourages investment into automation as opposed to hiring of individuals. Cheap money also drives up costs of goods and services.
And given that cheap money primarily benefits those with first access to it (the banks and the already wealthy), it is not surprising that people are struggling.
Rather than protest Wal-Mart (a company that does the world a service by providing over 2 million direct jobs and millions more indirect ones), people ought to be protesting the Fed.
Post of the day
On the other hand these companies are getting a taste of socialist community organizing. These are exactly the same companies that are helping out the marxists by pushing amnesty. It couldnt happen to a nicer bunch of useful idiots. To bad they can’t see themselves for the suckers they are.
“Walmart and McD’s could double their employee salaries. Then raise prices. Then lose consumers. Then lose profits. Then close facilities. Then lay off employees.”
Not as bad idea then they woudln’t be pressuring congress to grant amnesty. Theya re proving Lenin’s dictum that the capitalist will sell the rope to his own hanging.
I say it would be more efficient to just to nationalize all these evil corporations and convert all Super Walmarts to public housing. Then we could have the government deliver the fodder directly and government workers make a hell of a lot more than minimum wage. All McDonalds should be razed and replaced with Michelle-approved school cafeterias. It’s time to cut out the middle man!
They should advocate for a $60 minimum wage so we can all be rich. Well at least until the price change that day.
HP contract jobs have generally been lower paying than most others.
There will be a domino effect and the idgits will be right where they were before. Why they can’t see it I don’t know...
> The minimum wage should be $1000 per hour.
Then let them live with it...................
I predict $800 Big Macs
Anyone who has been to a Buc-ee’s knows that food is ordered and paid for on a computer station. Fast and efficient.
I love my local Chase bank automatic teller that allows me to do transactions with very litle effort and never a line.
Want to buy anything from the hundred Dollar Menu?
Well, it would definitely cut down on the obesity rate...............
Most of these workers should be happy they are not paid what they are actually worth.
No.
Artificial price floors don’t improve conditions for anyone. They just end up pricing out marginal employers and you get a net increase in unemployment.
Econ 101.
Walmart also gives a billion or more to local and international charitable causes.
Why stop at $15 per hour?
Just make it $1,500 per hour.
Once you break the linkage between the value of an employee’s contribution to his employer and the amount of their reimbursement the sky is the limit.
In a free market, labor, like everything else, is subject to the law of supply and demand. Wages are subject to the same law. If there are a low number of workers, then wages will be higher.
Unfortunately, we are not in a free market. The crony corporations and the liberals seeking to create serfs have been bringing in millions of illegal aliens and legal aliens to flood the market with workers.
That has driven wages down, since there's an oversupply of workers.
So, that law of supply and demand says that wages probably aren't what they should be. Most reports I've seen have shown that wages are not keeping up.
I'm not saying "companies should pay more". I'm saying we have a distorted market. The real question is how to get the market back in balance.Get the market back in balance and the wage issue will straighten itself out.
Enforce existing immigration laws. Go after employers who hire illegals. Refuse to pass any immigration bill that even hints at letting more workers into this country. Reduce LEGAL immigration to zero until the U6 employment rate is at about 8%. Build the fence. Strongly support homemaker moms and breadwinner dads as the best family option. (Reduces female employment and increases education of children.)
Wages will then recover.
What percentage of the population makes less than $15 per hour?
I shop at our local hippie co-op. They have racks of liberal rags supporting this idea.
The co-op doesn’t pay their employees at all. #irony
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