Post #16, áre you in the wrong thread. No I never said a single employee, that’s would be too much to even implement. Doesn’t make sense.
So I had some time to do some google and the minimum wage in California is $8 since 2008.
And it’s $9 starting 2014. So not to quibbling about post #18 but my memory is correct from my point of view, California that is.
http://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/faq_minimumwage.htm
And thanks to this thread I digged in a little bit further and the UK minimum wage is 6.5 pound per hour which is translated roughly to about $10 an hour.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/national-minimum-wage-offenders-named-and-shamed
It seems this nonsensical minimum wage increase only applies to fast-food companies with 30+ locations. There will be many ways to bypass wage increase, including having franchises with 29 locations, lay off all workers and rehire them as contractors employed by a third-party company, etc. For companies with over 30 locations automation will become profitable.
Supposedly if the customer is not paying before the meal you are not a fast-food any more. Not difficult to introduce this minor change.
You want to increase minimum wage? So increase it for everyone. Make it higher in NYC than in the rest of the state.
“I’m still scratching my head over the laser-narrow focus solely on fast food workers, as if they’re some sort of special class”
I agree with you GMTplus7. Did some states raise their minimum wages a few years ago partly due to the fast food industry? I know of fast food workers in NY who were told by their bosses they would get no pay raises until the new minimum wage kicked in back in 2013 and 2014.
A lot can happen over the next six years. Automation, price increases, cost cutbacks, and not replacing workers who quit are some options. In 2021, if Burger King employees are making $15.00 per hour then what will day care, Wal Mart, waitresses, and retail employees be making? What about private sector jobs?
Why not put that extra minimum wage money money towards a free education for its workers?
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if Burger King employees are making $15.00 per hour then what will day care, Wal Mart, waitresses, and retail employees be making?
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and, the music goes 'round and 'round…
"Really? Name another country that has a $15/hr (or around it) minimum wage with consumer prices similar to the US. (I can save you some time, it doesn’t exist.) "
Compare a fast food worker making only $8.75 an hour in NYC with NO benefits and working 28 hours per week with these two other workers:
Denmark fast food worker making $20.00 per hour WITH benefits and working at least 28 hours per week.
Australian fast food worker making $16.38 per hour WITH benefits and working at least 28 hours per week.
Our chump in New York City is grossing only $980 per month, with no health benefits, hardly any vacation days, and working irregular hours at the whim of his GM. You say he is better off than these two other workers. I say he is lucky if his kids can afford Happy Meals more than once every six months.
Labor is already increased in California. Two years ago I ordered construction material to be delivered to my house, the delivery fee is $85. I just ordered from the same company to near the same location and the fee is now $150. It’s almost double. One person drive the truck and then he went to get the bobcat to move the palate. To specific location like in front of the garage. Not physical labor, just driving the bobcat.
Note that in the UK and the rest of the EU, people don’t have to pay for healthcare and education in most of Europe is cheap or free.
You quoted me but you didn’t seem to actually address anything I said. Could you please clarify your point?
Purple, it’s free here for people who are low income. Same with healthcare. It’s the middle class people that are getting squeezed.
The guy that was the leader on the $15 minimum wage movement was on welfare too. I think he was either on Tv or radio taking about this, from what I can remember.
@DrGoogle: Health care in the US only recently became free (or close to it) for the working poor under Obamacare (and it still isn’t in the states that rejected the Medicaid expansion). It certainly wasn’t free before. Most did without.
Higher education in the US these days is only free for the poor who can get in to the schools that have generous fin aid policies for poor students (or else can get great merit aid) or live in states that have generous fin aid policies for poor students. Say you are poor in AL and don’t have stellar stats. Where could you afford to go to college?
CA isn’t the whole country, I hope you understand.
Purple, my husband was in the hospital with a guy that had no health insurance. He told us that. While my husband had health insurance. It was free for poor people, there’s law forbidding hospital for turning down people who are there for emergency care. Obamacare enables hospital to have a mean to charge the poor people who normally didn’t have insurance.
I disagree about the financial aid part. For example, at my daughters school 60% are on financial aid, two of my kids roommates are receiving money to attend school. The same reasoning can be said about UK schools, you have to be accepted to those schools. My husband has a cousin whose sons didn’t go to college. Not everyone in UK goes to or get accepted to college.
While I don’t claim to speak for the whole country, but this is my experience from California. I too hope you understand.
Did the person delivering stuff own the business? If not, then the delivery labor charge does NOT reflect the increase in salaries it pays to workers. It only means that the company can and does charge its customers what the market will pay - you sighed bud did pay, right? The salary of the worker performing the delivery did not double - maybe it did not increase at all in these two years.
@DrGoogle, agree that you can not speak for the whole country. So how could you disagree about fin aid? We’re talking about kids who can get in to college; just not the super-elites.
Again, how do you propose that a poor kid in AL who can get in to any AL public but doesn’t have the super-high stats to qualify for the big 'Bama merit awards or to get in to a super-selective private pay for college?
Also, loans count as fin aid, but that doesn’t make the education free.
I’m a poor kid from AZ who didn’t have high stats for any merit scholarships but will still attend my state school. I’ll have to take out loans, but that’s just a part of life and it’s something average poor kids have to accept if they want to go to college.
My guess is that this whole thing started when it bubbled up in the media a couple of years ago that McDonalds HR had a helpline for its employees covering such topics as how to apply for food stamps. A lot of people found that a bit shocking, especially when they realized an uber-rich corporation was expecting the American taxpayer to foot the bill for its cheapness on wages.
^^^
Was that helpline only for full time employees?
Or was it all all employees?..even ones who might only work 10 hours per week?
If the helpline was for all employees, then is a company being cheap when someone who only works part-time qualifies for food stamps? Not everyone can or wants to work full or near full time. Students, single moms with young children, disabled folks who can work a few hours per week, etc.
I was recently told by a disabled person that she is allowed to work and earn up to a certain amount per year and still qualify for her disability and food stamps. If that is typical nationwide, then I wouldn’t be the least surprised if McD’s and similar have disabled employees that purposely only work up to the amount of that threshold. And, it would be reasonable for a very large corp to have a HR helpline to answer Q’s about maintaining their qualifications for food stamps and what have you.
If that’s what is going on, why should a company be disparaged for that?