I understand that there are consequences to the extra wages. I'm saying that I don't have a negative or positive view about those consequences either.

McD replaces burger-flippers with robots, people get hired to design, sell, make, ship, and service the robots - not an obviously bad thing. Fast food customers pay more for their Big Macs to support the $15 burger-flipper - not an obviously bad thing. McD franchises become less profitable with less $ flowing to capital and more $ flowing to labor - not an obviously bad thing. Some McD franchisees go out of business, the workers have to find other jobs, other businesses get that spending, they hire those or different workers - not an obviously bad thing. All the fast food franchises in the world go out of business, consumers have to buy their food from grocery stores leading to more hiring by the grocery and packaged food industry - not an obviously bad thing.

I simply don't consider either fast-food workers, or fast-food companies, to be particularly important to our society or in some way deserving enough for me to root for a particular outcome. Contrast with, to use some random examples, teachers or scientists or soldiers or doctors or other people with special skills who perform a vital function, or with technology or biotech or banks or other companies that create innovation or value or who rightly or wrongly could threaten the stability of our economy.

So some guy who makes $16 an hour is now going to be pissed off if some new worker with no skills is making his skilled wages. How do you fix it now?

as labor costs rise, less lipogunk fast food is consumed, so fewer cardiovascular surgeons will be employed

OTOH, people will live longer, increasing the need for geronotologists

For what it's worth, I DID work @ McDonalds at the ripe old age of 15 in the small Northern Va. town where I still live. I wanted to start my oh-so promising caeer in the auto industry with many of the local garages but because of my age the only job open was pumping gas for part time / minimum wage.

Believe it or not I viewed working at Mikky-D's for better money the best choice rather than pumping gas exactly at minimum wage. So that's what I did. Started out cleaning and working the worst shifts possible. After 30 days or so I 'graduated' to fry cook with a $0.50 / hr increase. Just about the 90 day mark I was offered 'Head cook" with some small additional increase. At that point I hated anything to do with the restuarant business and wanted more pay and reasonable hours doing what I wanted to do.

I found a job with the local Honda / Kawasaki dealer right down the street for @$1.00 more per hr than I was making at Mikky-D's with much better non-school hours so I took it. The manager wanted me to stay but I said thanks, but no thanks food service industry is not my cup of tea. In my short 3 month tenure I saw people come and go like you would not believe. Some people wouldn't even finish their shift before quitting.


I don't think much has changed with them, Burger King or others relating to providing an opportunity for unskilled workers to obtain gainful employment, then work hard to move up. I saw some people there that would really work hard and they would be rewarded. Also turnover is huge so retaining good people and rewarding them is a no brainer...........they just have to work for it.

I saw that comment and it made me think we have to start somewhere. We've demoralized this country into 3rd world status for just about all of the service industry and that's all we have left.

That, the government and the money changers.

I'm in the service business and I don't like it that low bidder seems to get all the work. A little OT for this thread, but my city just had to fire the company that maintains 3/4 of the city parks for miserable performance. In their place the city is hiring the company that did this before and still has the remaining 1/4. And it's going to cost a half a million more. You do get what you pay for.

If McD's stood up and said they'd pay more but they expect more, I'd approve. If they paid more they might get some better folks coming to work.

pigs at the trough.
you self centered greedy bastards.
never enough.
have fun choking down your protest burgers.

Yeah, that perfectly describes a typical college kid.

This comment epitomizes what I don't understand.

Why the hostility to working people trying to get more money? Why do you have such a big dog?

People are always trying to get more money. McD is, the McD franchisees are, you are, I am, now these McD workers are. Maybe they will succeed, probably not, but why do you care so much? Can't be because you love McD, or its franchisees, or the people stupid enough to eat there. You can't possibly think that if the McD workers get more money, it will have some negative effect on society as a whole.

I think it is because you look down on the people behind the counter. They are unskilled, lazy, stupid, whatever - don't DESERVE more than $7/hr or whatever the min wage is in their state. It is a moral thing - at least that is how many people here seem to see these "labor" issues.

Funny how Capital has managed to brainwash Labor into despising each other and rooting for Capital's victory in every Capital-Labor contest. Quite a feat. Madison Avenue, take a lesson.

Question for jyl (or anyone else with strong enough Google-fu): Someone on FB suggested cutting the CEO's pay, to help raise wages for the worker bees. I realize that it's not such a simple question, but humor me for a moment. If the CEO of McDonald's were to give up his entire salary for 2013, and that money were to be divided by the number of employees of McDonald's restaurants in America, how much would that be worth to each employee? My gut tells me it would be peanuts. The best data I could find in a 30-second Google search were $17 mil (salary + bonuses) and 500,000 employees. That would work out to be $34 per worker.

Lots of ways to restructure expenses. The CEO is literally the tip of the iceberg.

I've been told that if you own only one McD's franchise, you are not making a hell of a lot of money for the 100 hour weeks you put in. At about 4 locations you can get wealthy in time.

Without looking it up, Noah, I imagine you're right. The CEO makes a huge amount of money but relative to the total number of employees of all the McD's (most not owned by McD, but franchised), it wouldn't go far.

Understood. But that's not how the bubblehead on FB put it. Her knee jerk reaction was to trim the CEO's pay to allow the workers better wages. Because the CEO has to be a rich and undeserving jerk if he's making so much $.

One thing that potentially troubles me about this: Are employers deliberately limiting the hours of their employees to keep them part-time and disqualify them for job benefits?

In a couple of stories I've read, there will be mother of 3, living with an unemployed boyfriend. OK, I have little sympathy for the social situation. But at the same time, the featured employee then will complain that she can't get enough hours at work. Implying that she wants to work, but management is limiting her work hours, which in turn keeps her income far below poverty level. I do have a problem with that. As someone else posted, no one should work 40 hours and be below the poverty level. And no employer (from an ethics perspective) should make it a practice to hire multiple shifts of part-time employees to prevent having to pay for full-time benefits. That's not cool, either.

So, this is where we are as a nation. People settling for fast food "careers" to raise a family and to achieve the American dream instead of trying to reach the next rung on the ladder by getting an education or taking other steps. In the mean time, it seems I can't find enough engineers and the ones I can seem to be foreign born. Nothing wrong with that, but why have so many of our fellow Americans lost the will to achieve? I'm all for fair pay for an honest days work, but if someone feels they are not fairly payed.. move on to something else.

Why don't these folks at least get creative and put out a tip jar for example? Or, start up your own franchise and pay people what you think is fair and market it in that way.

Definitely. Restaurant managements are openly limiting employee hours to keep as many people as possible under full time status. I meet with managements and listen to their conference calls. This is not even a secret. Similar to holding IP assets overseas to lower corporate tax rates to far below the statutory rate that a domestic-only company pays. That also is a widespread and openly sought after practice. Investors like me will sell stocks if the management doesn't do those things.

M

So if McDonanlds turned in a ~$5.5B net profit last year, yet most franchises are running razor-thin margins (according to the experts on the net) - then where is all that money coming from? And where is it going?

Yet there are engineers - and others with advanced degrees - who are out of work. And employers are laying people out of one side of their mouth and clamoring for more H1's out of the other.

So it's not that you can't find engineers. You can't find enough cheap engineers. What you really want is Apu who will work 80-hour weeks for $30k and a tease of a green card.

I replied to a job ad that a local tech company has been running since March. I'm qualified beyond a shadow of a doubt. The HR drone told me "thanks, but no thanks - you're too senior"

Widebody - sorry about your situation, but no I'm not looking for cheap engineers. Just like there is no such thing as a cheap Porsche, I've found there is no such thing as a cheap engineer.

I'm surprised the union hasn't honed in..LOL. Anyone recall the days of the grocery store stockers, clerks and the great wages they once had? Thanks to the union and wages, big stores often went bust.

Other: I used to chuckle at the big tough kids just out of school and breaking into construction. Pay was minimum wage for simple but laborous task. Most couldn't get past a week and would end up working at a fast food eatery or a grocery shelf stocker. For me, starting out at crap wage never bothered me and I simply looked forward to feeling good at the end of a hard days work and seeing something accomplished.

We all get the choice to leave if you don't like the wages, job or want to move along in our short life. Do these fast food workers think their job is a life long career? Maybe thats the illusion created by the companies.

Zeke- It just doesn't work that way here. Sadly, most workers think a company OWES them.

Here's another thought on the low bidders getting the work. You might be surprised if the job or end result is shoddy, menial or worse you have the right to go back to a board and make a case. Make enough noise and the public might side with you.

Also, in the private sector and if you lose out on a bid, sometimes you might get the annoying but revenge recall - redo work. We once charged a client twice the labor rate after we lost the original bid. Client opted with a company known for crap work but fast production. He was in a rush to get his framing up of a 8K sq.ft. home. A total F.U. job framed by a non-english speaking crew (and not from south of the border). We were then busy on another project and made it difficult to re-schedule. Major straightening out was required and on a high-end home, shortcuts (pun) are never an option. But this guy was in a crunch time frame so he screwed himself and paid the consequences.