Yet another fast food worker strike

[brandonb]

http://money.cnn.com/2014/09/01/news/companies/fast-food-worker-strike/index.html?hpt=hp_t4

Again, the sob story about a 27 year old woman with 2 kids (one being 8 years old, so she was preggers at 18)... With no father in the picture for her two kids... Who thinks she should be paid twice what she currently is just to survive... Who hasn't skipped a meal in 15 years and is obese... Is going on strike in the next few days to attempt to fix this injustice.

Salgado, who didn't finish high school, said she'll do whatever she has to to win the fight for a $15 minimum wage and a union.

"My 8 year old daughter tells me 'Everything is OK mommy,' and I tell her, 'yes,'" said Salgado. "But when she goes to sleep I know it's not OK."

Why do I not have any sympathy? Is there something wrong with me? CBD?

 

[dmcowen674]

Yet another fast food worker strike


http://money.cnn.com/2014/09/01/news/companies/fast-food-worker-strike/index.html?hpt=hp_t4

Again, the sob story about a 27 year old woman with 2 kids (one being 8 years old, so she was preggers at 18)... With no father in the picture for her two kids... Who thinks she should be paid twice what she currently is just to survive... Who hasn't skipped a meal in 15 years and is obese... Is going on strike in the next few days to attempt to fix this injustice.



Why do I not have any sympathy? Is there something wrong with me? CBD?

Why do you hate the heart of America?

Bush declared that burger making is manufacturing.

This is the best the Republitard America has to offer.

 

[nehalem256]

Why do I not have any sympathy? Is there something wrong with me? CBD?

Because a contract requires obligations for both parties.

As this woman failed to uphold her end of the social contract she justly deserves everything she has received.

 

[Veliko]

Why do I not have any sympathy?

Because there is something wrong with you.

Is there something wrong with me?

Yes.

 

[Raizinman]

These low paid workers are unskilled, uneducated, and only worth the $8 or so McDonalds or Burger King is paying them. If they had better skills they would not be working in fast food. If they don't like the wages, let them leave. I hope McDonalds and Burger King keep track of which employees strike. Anyone who walks off the job should be docked a days pay.

 

[WackyDan]

http://money.cnn.com/2014/09/01/news/companies/fast-food-worker-strike/index.html?hpt=hp_t4

Again, the sob story about a 27 year old woman with 2 kids (one being 8 years old, so she was preggers at 18)... With no father in the picture for her two kids... Who thinks she should be paid twice what she currently is just to survive... Who hasn't skipped a meal in 15 years and is obese... Is going on strike in the next few days to attempt to fix this injustice.



Why do I not have any sympathy? Is there something wrong with me? CBD?

No sympathy here either. Evidence is she never did shit with her life. It isn't like she graduated high school and had a decent job or was married/widowed and fell on hard times... She has achieved nothing in her life.

While I think I want minimum wage jobs to pay more so we aren't subsidizing those employers via welfare proxy... The problem is the gov't will just redefine poverty and lower the standard so that they people will still get benefits from the taxpayer at the higher pay per hour.

This is also a case where I have no problem paying her a cash reward to have her tubes tied.

 

[fskimospy]

These low paid workers are unskilled, uneducated, and only worth the $8 or so McDonalds or Burger King is paying them. If they had better skills they would not be working in fast food. If they don't like the wages, let them leave. I hope McDonalds and Burger King keep track of which employees strike. Anyone who walks off the job should be docked a days pay.

How about they are worth whatever they can get someone to pay them, and striking is a legitimate bargaining tactic.

It never ceases to amaze me how America has changed. In the past strikers were thought of as heroic. Now you see people actively rooting for giant multinational corporations to crush their workers. Stockholm syndrome?

 

[dphantom]

finish high school, quit having kids when you cannot afford them and only have kids when the father is an integral part of the family. solves most problems.

 

[bshole]

She should have had an abortion when she had the chance. Now her life is in ruins.

 

[nehalem256]

How about they are worth whatever they can get someone to pay them, and striking is a legitimate bargaining tactic.

It never ceases to amaze me how America has changed. In the past strikers were thought of as heroic. Now you see people actively rooting for giant multinational corporations to crush their workers. Stockholm syndrome?

Perhaps because in the past the striking workers didn't previously do everything possible to screw their lives up and then cry about?

 

[brandonb]

How about they are worth whatever they can get someone to pay them, and striking is a legitimate bargaining tactic.

It never ceases to amaze me how America has changed. In the past strikers were thought of as heroic. Now you see people actively rooting for giant multinational corporations to crush their workers. Stockholm syndrome?

I'm not rooting for anything, and I still look at people who strike as heroic. As long as they have an honest claim to their strike.

Take for example:

Sit com actors/actresses who strike for their $1million+ per episode is not a noble cause. It's greed.

Fast food employment that requires no skills (other than just showing up for work) who strike for double minimum wage is not a noble cause. It's greed.

A manufacturing company who has back breaking work with fumes/dust in the air at 12h+ a day who is not offering any health coverage is a noble cause. The employees general health is at risk and the company should be liable for it. This is just the "right thing to do."

I support 1 out of 3.

 

[Raizinman]

How about they are worth whatever they can get someone to pay them, and striking is a legitimate bargaining tactic.

It never ceases to amaze me how America has changed. In the past strikers were thought of as heroic. Now you see people actively rooting for giant multinational corporations to crush their workers. Stockholm syndrome?

Striking only works when there is a demand for workers. We have been in a recession for many many years and there is still a surplus of workers. Supply and demand dictates that workers get low pay. Once the unemployment rate goes down and there is a shortage of workers, the pay will automatically go up. Again, supply and demand. Trying to artificially create a higher than normal wage will cause company prices to go up or businesses to close their doors. You can't have it both ways.

 

[nehalem256]

Striking only works when there is a demand for workers. We have been in a recession for many many years and there is still a surplus of workers. Supply and demand dictates that workers get low pay. Once the unemployment rate goes down and there is a shortage of workers, the pay will automatically go up. Again, supply and demand. Trying to artificially create a higher than normal wage will cause company prices to go up or businesses to close their doors. You can't have it both ways.

Except that Democrats are working to ensure there is a flood of low skill workers so this wont happen.

 

[fskimospy]

Striking only works when there is a demand for workers. We have been in a recession for many many years and there is still a surplus of workers. Supply and demand dictates that workers get low pay. Once the unemployment rate goes down and there is a shortage of workers, the pay will automatically go up. Again, supply and demand. Trying to artificially create a higher than normal wage will cause company prices to go up or businesses to close their doors. You can't have it both ways.

That's not how wages really work, as wage rigidity generally dampens the ability of high unemployment to reduce wages.

Also, I'm not sure if you're talking about the minimum wage or striking now. Wages gotten through striking are not "artificially high", they are the result of a business deal. If you want to talk about the effects of the minimum wage on prices and employment we've done that in many other threads. I think you would be surprised at how little prices would go up or the effects on overall employment.

 

[BoberFett]

How about they are worth whatever they can get someone to pay them, and striking is a legitimate bargaining tactic.

It never ceases to amaze me how America has changed. In the past strikers were thought of as heroic. Now you see people actively rooting for giant multinational corporations to crush their workers. Stockholm syndrome?

It sounds like she can get someone to pay her $8.25/hr.

This is a push to increase minimum wage, which is different than getting whatever they can get someone to pay them, but simply a government mandated price floor.

Minimum wage isn't the minimum amount a job is worth, it's an arbitrary number which makes it illegal to pay someone less than that amount. However some jobs are fact worth less than minimum wage.

 

[fskimospy]

I'm not rooting for anything, and I still look at people who strike as heroic. As long as they have an honest claim to their strike.

Take for example:

Sit com actors/actresses who strike for their $1million+ per episode is not a noble cause. It's greed.

Fast food employment that requires no skills (other than just showing up for work) who strike for double minimum wage is not a noble cause. It's greed.

A manufacturing company who has back breaking work with fumes/dust in the air at 12h+ a day who is not offering any health coverage is a noble cause. The employees general health is at risk and the company should be liable for it. This is just the "right thing to do."

I support 1 out of 3.

It sounds an awful lot like you support people that you identify with. I support the right of people to strike at any time for any reason or no reason at all. It's your life and your labor and I encourage everyone to get the best deal possible for it. I find the idea that strikers would need tower the standard of some morality play in order to negotiate when their employers face no such standard to be kind of Stockholm syndrome-y

 

[Retro Rob]

How about they are worth whatever they can get someone to pay them, and striking is a legitimate bargaining tactic.

It never ceases to amaze me how America has changed. In the past strikers were thought of as heroic. Now you see people actively rooting for giant multinational corporations to crush their workers. Stockholm syndrome?

I agree.

It seems as if people don't want to end up paying more for their burgers. Pay more to workers, we get the cost passed off to us. It's all about looking out for self with this anti-strike mentality.

 

[bshole]

Striking only works when there is a demand for workers. We have been in a recession for many many years and there is still a surplus of workers. Supply and demand dictates that workers get low pay. Once the unemployment rate goes down and there is a shortage of workers, the pay will automatically go up. Again, supply and demand. Trying to artificially create a higher than normal wage will cause company prices to go up or businesses to close their doors. You can't have it both ways.

Yea that is an outright falsehood. Note what happened in the 50's and 60's when unskilled factory worker compensation artificially skyrocked due to unionization. The american economy had explosive growth and prosperity. It has been the evisceration of highly paid unskilled labor by Republicans that has ruined America.

 

[nehalem256]

I think the more interesting question is why news organziations so often profile people so unworthy of sympathy.

Is it that:

(1) Supposedly liberal news organizations are secretly pushing a Republican agenda

(2) The authors are such hardcore leftists that the idea that only some people are deserving of sympathy is such a foreign concept to them

(3) They literally can't find any sympathetic people to profile

(4) They can find sympathetic people to profile, but those people are too ashamed to be profiled

 

[nehalem256]

Yea that is an outright falsehood. Note what happened in the 50's and 60's when unskilled factory worker compensation artificially skyrocked due to unionization. The american economy had explosive growth and prosperity. It has been the evisceration of highly paid unskilled labor by Republicans that has ruined America.

You mean the jobs that then got outsourced because the costs were so much higher in America?

 

[fskimospy]

It sounds like she can get someone to pay her $8.25/hr.

This is a push to increase minimum wage, which is different than getting whatever they can get someone to pay them, but simply a government mandated price floor.

Minimum wage isn't the minimum amount a job is worth, it's an arbitrary number which makes it illegal to pay someone less than that amount. However some jobs are fact worth less than minimum wage.

There are two separate issues here, the minimum wage and striking/unionization. Maybe she can get someone to pay her more than $8.25 an hour by striking with others. If she feels like that is a good idea for her, she should do it.

As for minimum wage, to me it seems like the conservative alternative to a national income. (which is where I think we should be going)

 

[bshole]

You mean the jobs that then got outsourced because the costs were so much higher in America?

No I mean when Republicans CHANGED the laws to allow the outsourcing of those jobs. Republicans HATE and LOATHE american workers.

 

[brandonb]

It sounds an awful lot like you support people that you identify with. I support the right of people to strike at any time for any reason or no reason at all. It's your life and your labor and I encourage everyone to get the best deal possible for it. I find the idea that strikers would need tower the standard of some morality play in order to negotiate when their employers face no such standard to be kind of Stockholm syndrome-y

Well, here is the problem.

She went in. She was interviewed. She was offered a job. This job has these requirements. It pays this amount. Do you accept it?

She said yes.

Once on the job, she plans to strike and says she should be paid double what was offered to her initially? That's just deceptive practices. If they offered her $8.25. She should have said "I want $15". They'd go back to her and say "No thanks we can find someone else who will do this work." I'd like to know how long this chick has been working for the company.

 

[nehalem256]

Nancy Salgado, a 27 year old single mother of a 3 year old boy and an 8 year old girl, plans to strike.
...
Currently, the median pay for fast-food workers is just over $9 an hour, or about $18,500 a year. That's roughly $4,500 lower than the Census Bureau's poverty threshold level of $23,000 for a family of four.

I only count 3 people in the family

 

[brandonb]

Oh she's been working there for along time:

Nancy Salgado, 26 years old, is a cashier at McDonalds. She is a single mother with two children. Nancy earns $8.25 an hour working thirty to forty hours a week. She has worked for McDonalds since she was 16 and has never had a raise. Salgado confronted the president of McDonalds, Jeff Stratton, about her wages during his speech at the Union League Club of Chicago.

I'd say she should be paid more based on tenure, but I don't think she can demand whatever wage she decides.

Apparently neither does the president of McDonalds.

http://www.alternet.org/activism/mc...ing-executive-i-cant-afford-shoes-my-children

“Do you think this is fair, that I have to be making $8.25 when I've worked for McDonalds for ten years?” said Salgado.

"I've been there forty years," replied Stratton.

She and six other protesters were given tickets for trespassing. Salgado thinks that $15 an hour would be a fair wage for her work.

Wage is an agreement between company and employee. She has the choice to leave and reapply and ask for $15. They will tell her to get lost. Is that fair? I'd say so.