The fight for higher fast-food wages is coming to Los Angeles.
Just a few days before Labor Day, restaurant workers plan to walk off the job at big-name chains around Southern California to demand $15-an-hour pay, according to organizers.
The protests, part of a nationwide day of strikes called for Aug. 29, would be the latest in a series of one-day, rolling walkouts that have occurred in major cities in recent weeks. Workers have picketed McDonald’s, KFC and Taco Bell and other restaurants during peak mealtimes to demand better pay and the right to organize.
Our response? Walk right past the picket lines and make it business as usual!
There are people who educate themselves or work their asses off to make it up through the ranks so they can earn 15 dollars an hour or more. I don’t see how it makes sense to pay people who decided to make a profession out of a high schooler’s summer job the same amount.
I really hope these ridiculously over the top white, privileged and elitist comments you’re making about the working class people on whose backs this country continues to be built are just to provoke the lowest common denominators in your audience. I get that its part of your schtick to be a contrarian, but surely you can’t believe that McDonald’s with its billions served can’t afford to pay people a living wage without raising the price on your McDouble? Or that the people who work there are lazy? Lazy people don’t get on the bus at 5am to get to work.
Are you advocating they quit their minimum wage jobs and go get on the county to obtain this education to better their earning power? And who’s paying for this education? Oh I forgot they’re supposed to find time in their 50+ hour a week schedule to attend community college for an hour a week…what for the next 20 years?! And what big raise are you getting with an AA? Education doesn’t guarantee you a payday, there are new lawyers coming into practice making 40K a year if they can find work.
How about you just stay your unconscionably condescending, contrarian ass out of any fast food place before they wipe the floor with your burger? You’re far too rich, powerful and famous to patronize them anyway. And I’m sure your Tesla feels cheapened in a restaurant with a drive through.
Btw I’m a single mother, I grew up in one of the most affluent beach suburbs in SoCal, I have a doctorate, own my home, have rental properties and investments, and I make a very comfortable 6 figure salary in addition to my income from my family trust. I’m not one of the people you’re sneering down your nose at, I just don’t think I’m so far above them that I can sit that comfortably on that high horse with you.
Tom, Your point about your Dad made my point about profit sharing. If the Daily News newspaper is losing $30M a year of course a worker should not expect any more money.
However if the company you work for just earned $5.5 BILLION in 2012 (McDonalds) maybe it’s time to for them to open the wallet and share a few pennies with the folks that got them there. At least enough to get the workers off public assistance.
This may repost as there is no confirmation that it posted. Apologies if it does.
Tom,
I’ve always been impressed by the Right’s ability to get their followers to cut their own throats. This thing with the wages is no different.
While would-be conservatives are denouncing higher wages for a group of people working an unglamorous and lowly job in a very profitable industry that same industry is lobbying the Obama Administration to increase the Earned Income Credit and even expand it to supplement the wages of low income workers.
In essence, these fast food companies have convinced you that they shouldn’t have to pay their workers wages commensurate with the profits they generate while simultaneously working to get YOU and ME to pay those higher wages through higher taxes.
I don’t know about the rest of you but I don’t think it’s fair that I have to pay higher taxes to have it redistributed to other people.
Finally, these people may be the bottom of society but at least they are working. I’d rather see that people who work hard jobs get paid well and thus teach them the value of working than to discourage them from working and make welfare more attractive.
These people aren’t the scum of society. They work and they make their companies profitable.
One way or the other these people must be fed, clothed, and housed. They will consume health care and education resources. I’d rather they pay for that themselves rather than getting the government to give those things to them in welfare and tax credits.