Fast Food wants $15 an hour?

[MWCGuy]

I believe everyone deserves to make a descent wage, while at the same time I believe that skill, experience and the duties of the job dictate how much you can make.

In my book wage is a supply and demand thing. The more people that exist in the marketplace that can do your job the less money your going to make. The fewer people that exist that can do your job the more money your going to make. Therefore, you should always seek employment that not everyone can do or at least look for a company that pays you a wage you feel comfortable making. If you don' t like the wage, you shouldn't except the job. If you have no choice because you need to eat, you should continue looking for something better in your free time outside of that job.

One thing I have noticed is that with every minimum wage increase the price of a fast food combo usually somewhere in the neighborhood of the current minimum wage. Ex: Burger, fries, coke usually cost about $6-$8 at most fast food outlets today. I am already limiting my fast food because I'll be hitting 40 in a year and a half. Let's face it the older you get the more problems you have if you don't eat healthy. If a combo goes to $15- $18 you can pretty much guarantee my fast food days will be history. I can buy a dinner for that at most casual dining restaurants for that price. If I'm paying $20 for food, I want table service. I'm not paying that much for something thrown together, thrown in a wrapper and put in a bag. Fast food service is not worth $15. The orders are consistently wrong, the food is not always fresh and the attitudes of many fast food workers are less than professional.

If the fast food industry is able to achieve $15 an hour you can guarantee it will come at a price. You will see more automation and few workers on duty. Many fast food places already use a self service ordering system and you might even see dining rooms go away or only open during peak hours.

[Teo9969]

No way would the price of a combo jump to $15 if the wage for fast-food workers were increased to $15/hour. $12 tops, and probably closer to the $8.50 to $10.50 range.

[Cocaine]

I think they are trying to solve our problem with obesity epidemic.

[tomokc]

Fast food & retail jobs typically require workers with minimal or no skills, for which they're paid minimum wage. When they learn more, they do more, and are paid more, or else they move to another employer who will pay them for their increased abilities. It isn't rocket science - it's an apprentice job paying apprentice wages.

Those who have risen above the minimum wage and entry level jobs have done so because of hard work, education, they learned the system and adopted to it, and personal sacrifice. The people who languish for years in these jobs fail to rise for a variety of reasons: Education, motivation, rejection of a superior-subordinate hierarchy, independence, not wanting to get on a "corporate track," and sometimes circumstances or bad luck.

Raising the minimum wage won't fix that.

[bombermwc]

tomokc - couldn't agree more.

Raising the minimum wage also means that prices of things go up as well. It's not as though a company is going to just absorb the extra cost. That just means that the raise gets wiped out by the new higher prices. If you earn minimum wage, you aren't going to live a very nice life....sorry.

I feel incredibly bad for the situations where a single mother earning minimum wage has trouble keeping up....even when state aid like WIC or child care subsidy is provided. There are situations where it just flat sucks and you can't really fix things. What would be more helpful in those situations is if someone could help place that person in a better job. I'm not going to pretend to have the answers, but a minimum skill job should get a minimum wage.

[ThomPaine]

Fast food & retail jobs typically require workers with minimal or no skills, for which they're paid minimum wage. When they learn more, they do more, and are paid more, or else they move to another employer who will pay them for their increased abilities. It isn't rocket science - it's an apprentice job paying apprentice wages.

Those who have risen above the minimum wage and entry level jobs have done so because of hard work, education, they learned the system and adopted to it, and personal sacrifice. The people who languish for years in these jobs fail to rise for a variety of reasons: Education, motivation, rejection of a superior-subordinate hierarchy, independence, not wanting to get on a "corporate track," and sometimes circumstances or bad luck.

Raising the minimum wage won't fix that.

Not necessarily advocating for a higher minimum wage, but where exactly do the fast food apprentices move on to hone their craft? Let's assume for the moment that they are not going to go to college or trade school...

[MustangGT]

Fast food & retail jobs typically require workers with minimal or no skills, for which they're paid minimum wage. When they learn more, they do more, and are paid more, or else they move to another employer who will pay them for their increased abilities. It isn't rocket science - it's an apprentice job paying apprentice wages.

Those who have risen above the minimum wage and entry level jobs have done so because of hard work, education, they learned the system and adopted to it, and personal sacrifice. The people who languish for years in these jobs fail to rise for a variety of reasons: Education, motivation, rejection of a superior-subordinate hierarchy, independence, not wanting to get on a "corporate track," and sometimes circumstances or bad luck.

Raising the minimum wage won't fix that.

Exactly. Raising the minimum wage will almost certainly result in man minimum wage workers loosing there jobs as they cost more than they produce.

[tomokc]

Not necessarily advocating for a higher minimum wage, but where exactly do the fast food apprentices move on to hone their craft? Let's assume for the moment that they are not going to go to college or trade school...

They go up or out. Restaurants only employ 10% of the US labor force (Jobs & Careers Powerhouse | National Restaurant Association), so they move up within the industry, or change industries.

I had a restaurant job one summer while in high school. I learned how to handle a knife, keep my work area clean, that not showing up on time could get you fired, and other lessons that apply to all organizations. I was rewarded with extra hours and the opportunity to learn other jobs (a bartender showed me the ropes which led to a bartending job in college). Entering college I had a budding interest in photography and so I became a TA in the photography lab, landed a job in a camera store, and met an AP photographer who let me hang with him and learn photojournalism. I don't recall what I was paid, but it wasn't much - probably close to the minimum wage. But the real compensation was learning to work within a variety of environments and organizations, and get along with others.

If you learn those things, there are opportunities everywhere. Is it really too much to expect people to learn and contribute in order to progress in the world?

[SoonerDave]

As an indirect but unfortunate consequence of our education system failing, we've all-but abandoned the notion of teaching young people that you aren't entitled to a $60K, $70K, $100K salary just for showing your shining face at the door of a business. We don't (apparently) teach that there has to be value in the work that is performed commensurate with what the employer can do with it. There's this peculiar notion in many circles that says "oh, its a business, therefore it has infinitely deep pockets." And the very notion that minimum wage jobs are those for which there is extensive labor supply is the raison d'etre for moving UP and OUT of those jobs by acquiring newer, better, less-available skills, and improving your value to the workforce. This notion of "I make hamburgers, thus I deserve $15/hour" borders on the economically perverted.

[ThomPaine]

I agree with you both, Tom and Dave. The problem I see is not so much in the fast food industry, but where do people go after that if they don't have higher education. My dad raised a family as a laborer with no more than a HS education, and i know that ability still exists today in certain regions of our country, but we've made it hard to survive for a growing segment of our population. Again, I don't know that raising the minimum wage would change anything, but I do think there is reason for concern about what to do with low skilled workers.

[venture]

Let me first off state I'm completely against the wage increases the fast food folks are asking for. I do want to hit on two other points thought for the sake of discussion.

1) Wages overall vs. Inflation. Should this be something that is expected? My first job I made $9.50/hr in the late 90s, that is equivalent to $12.62 today. However, you can go out and get the exact same job today and the starting pay will be between $8 and $10/hr. This could very well be the source of much of the pain simply because wages, for everyone, aren't keeping up with inflation and rising costs of living.

2) Lack of people wanting to pursue education. Typically someone making minimum wage, especially if they have a dependant and aren't supported by parents, is going to qualify for the maximum annual Pell Grant of $5600. That grant is available for 4 years of school and as all grants isn't paid back. There is no reason why many of these folks aren't enrolled in school to at least get an associates from a community college. You can go full time at OCCC and get the max Pell Grant amount and still have $2000+ left over per year in money you can save for when the funds run out (or don't cover enough). I'm not sure if this is just lack of people knowing about it or lack of ambition. Probably a mix a both.

[tomokc]

I am listening to the Diane Rehm show right now, and one of the panelists reported that the average restaurant worker is paid $9.00/hour, $1.75/hour above the $7.25 minimum wage. Another point: The $7.25 minimum wage equates approximately to $15,000 per year, or the poverty level for a family of two. Which brought this to mind:

Two people working at the minimum wage puts their "family of two" at two times the poverty level, and while not great, it isn't dire straits. They'll be fine while they continue to learn and grow, and earn higher wages. Unless they start having children and increasing their expenses without regard to the consequences.

When people complain that you can't raise a family if earning the minimum wage, they're absolutely correct. So don't have a family until you're earning more. Again - not rocket science.

[SoonerDave]

I agree with you both, Tom and Dave. The problem I see is not so much in the fast food industry, but where do people go after that if they don't have higher education. My dad raised a family as a laborer with no more than a HS education, and i know that ability still exists today in certain regions of our country, but we've made it hard to survive for a growing segment of our population. Again, I don't know that raising the minimum wage would change anything, but I do think there is reason for concern about what to do with low skilled workers.

I think raising the minimum wage is nothing more than a bandaid over that very problem.

Here's the flip side of that education issue: I used to do some consulting for a technical college, and in all frankness the college existed as (primarily, at least) a "second chance" location for people to get some good, marketable skills and afford them the opportunity to get into the workforce with some upside rather than at the perpetually minimum wage jobs. Some folks had dicey backgrounds, some had dropped out of high school, lots of varying circumstances. When talking with one of their instructors at length about how certain courses they were teaching needed to involve some certain kinds of commitment from the student, eg independent study, practice, explore critical thinking skills, the response from the instructors was "well, we realized that, but in most cases when the students found out they needed to study and do homework, even when we provided the lab resources, they just dropped out. And we discovered in our backup studies that this particular curriculum was often picked because there was a perception that it was easy to learn, when in reality it wasn't."

Bottom line - at least one substantial component of the "can't get out of the min wage job market" is the "I don't want to learn new skills..I just want more money" ethic. Not saying its the exclusive problem, but its a big one. And that just gets down to the old fashioned work ethic. In this era of entitlement, I don't quite know how we recapture that notion in some people.

[Just the facts]

Not to keep beating the same drum - but these kind of problems are what led to me to the New Urbanism. We have a large segment of our population that gets caught in a rut and there is no way out for them. When we concentrate poverty we remove the role models and social interaction between people of various incomes so when people have no other behavior to identify with they are missing out on the opportunity to progress. Couple that with the fact that good paying career type jobs aren't located where many of these people live, and their lack of transportation to get to them, and the literally have no where to go but to industries and businesses that serve the local community - and almost all of those are low wage service jobs.

To solve this negative feedback we need neighborhoods that are mixed income, that have the full range of housing options, and with high enough density to make mass transit cost effective so that people can get to jobs with out having to own and maintain an automobile. We have a neighborhood here in Jax that might be one of the best examples. It is called San Marco. The center of the neighborhood has a shopping district with a wide range of stores - from used books to high end decorators. Housing in the area goes from $500 apartments to $10,0000,000 homes - all within easy walking distance to each other. The area is served by multiple bus routes and is a 10 minute bike ride to downtown employers. It is also located along the river and lots of people fish for their meals.

[tomokc]

Dave & JTF: The problem is in trying to impose a society-wide "solution" rather than recognizing that each individual is responsible for his own future. Hard work, preparation and luck puts you in a $10 million home; something less puts you in a $500/month apartment, living with parents or under a bridge.

Wherever you are and whatever you do at any moment in time, there are options for improvement within your grasp.

[Just the facts]

I get it tom. People's current situation is the sum total of all their decisions, but that means nothing to people who are in the situation now. When Apollo 13 was floating around venting their oxygen into space do you think Houston Control said tough ****, that's what you get for going into space. It's your own fault. Not only do we have to fix the root problems so it doesn't happen again, we have to help people floating in space now. Also - this problem is getting bigger and trapping what were at one time middle class families. It is only going to get worse if we don't fix it.

I am going to guess you are smart person Tom, with a college education and well spoken. Get rid of your car and see how long you survive. You will be unemployed in 2 weeks when you can't get to your job and forget about taking a better paying job across town. That's the challenge these people are facing.

[tomokc]

JTF - There's a Nobel Peace Prize (and more) for the first person who can solve the problem of broken homes, child truancy, poverty, illegal drug use and all of the other causes people point to for their plight.

My path to a better job, car, house and all of it began with entry-level jobs and entry-level pay. If I did it once I can do it again, and so can anyone else.

Append: My wife and I were watching the national news a few weeks ago and a middle-aged couple in Chicago was describing their situation of being two years behind in mortgage payments and unemployed after working their way up to the middle class. Bottom line: They couldn't make it work in Chicago. Almost simultaneously my wife and I yelled "MOVE" at the screen. Move here, or any other part of the country that is hiring people like them. They are a road trip away from a fresh start.

[venture]

JTF - There's a Nobel Peace Prize (and more) for the first person who can solve the problem of broken homes, child truancy, poverty, illegal drug use and all of the other causes people point to for their plight.

My path to a better job, car, house and all of it began with entry-level jobs and entry-level pay. If I did it once I can do it again, and so can anyone else.

Append: My wife and I were watching the national news a few weeks ago and a middle-aged couple in Chicago was describing their situation of being two years behind in mortgage payments and unemployed after working their way up to the middle class. Bottom line: They couldn't make it work in Chicago. Almost simultaneously my wife and I yelled "MOVE" at the screen. Move here, or any other part of the country that is hiring people like them. They are a road trip away from a fresh start.

Moving costs money too though. If they can make their bills, how are they going to afford the $1000-2000 in moving costs?

[Dubya61]

1) Wages overall vs. Inflation. Should this be something that is expected? My first job I made $9.50/hr in the late 90s, that is equivalent to $12.62 today. However, you can go out and get the exact same job today and the starting pay will be between $8 and $10/hr. This could very well be the source of much of the pain simply because wages, for everyone, aren't keeping up with inflation and rising costs of living.

I wonder if they should consider tying minimum wage to the same thing they tie Social Security increases to.

[tomokc]

NOT moving is costing them more than $1-2,000 per month in unearned income from their next jobs.

[Bunty]

Moving costs money too though. If they can make their bills, how are they going to afford the $1000-2000 in moving costs?

Ask that question of Mexicans who come here for work.

But you can sell all your possessions, but your car and move on that.

[ThomPaine]

JTF - There's a Nobel Peace Prize (and more) for the first person who can solve the problem of broken homes, child truancy, poverty, illegal drug use and all of the other causes people point to for their plight.

My path to a better job, car, house and all of it began with entry-level jobs and entry-level pay. If I did it once I can do it again, and so can anyone else.

Append: My wife and I were watching the national news a few weeks ago and a middle-aged couple in Chicago was describing their situation of being two years behind in mortgage payments and unemployed after working their way up to the middle class. Bottom line: They couldn't make it work in Chicago. Almost simultaneously my wife and I yelled "MOVE" at the screen. Move here, or any other part of the country that is hiring people like them. They are a road trip away from a fresh start.

As did all of us except those born to wealth. Most of us had some sort of person in our life (regardless of whether or not we came from broken homes) whom we looked up to and taught us those values. Or maybe we joined the military and saw that there was another path to success, or maybe it's just something inherent that some people have. Or hell, maybe we just got lucky and had a good boss early on that showed us what our capabilities were.

But there's just no denying that many do not have the same options (or at least they don't think they do). So what about the millions born into poverty in this country whose parent's bad choices and bad decisions don't allow them to be proper role models.

And what about, God bless 'em, the folks that just aren't that bright? Some folks will never make more than minimum wage because they are not able to do the jobs that require more skills.

By the way, I agree with you and your wife. If I'm unemployed and prospects for work are slim where I live, I would move heaven and earth to provide for my family. North Dakota has full employment, Oklahoma is near that as well. We still have plenty of contract opportunities in Afghanistan and other locations overseas for people willing to work. If you've moved yourself into the middle class, you SHOULD be smart enough to understand this. These are the folks for which I have little sympathy.

[SoonerDave]

Not to keep beating the same drum - but these kind of problems are what led to me to the New Urbanism. We have a large segment of our population that gets caught in a rut and there is no way out for them. When we concentrate poverty we remove the role models and social interaction between people of various incomes so when people have no other behavior to identify with they are missing out on the opportunity to progress. Couple that with the fact that good paying career type jobs aren't located where many of these people live, and their lack of transportation to get to them, and the literally have no where to go but to industries and businesses that serve the local community - and almost all of those are low wage service jobs.

To solve this negative feedback we need neighborhoods that are mixed income, that have the full range of housing options, and with high enough density to make mass transit cost effective so that people can get to jobs with out having to own and maintain an automobile. We have a neighborhood here in Jax that might be one of the best examples. It is called San Marco. The center of the neighborhood has a shopping district with a wide range of stores - from used books to high end decorators. Housing in the area goes from $500 apartments to $10,0000,000 homes - all within easy walking distance to each other. The area is served by multiple bus routes and is a 10 minute bike ride to downtown employers. It is also located along the river and lots of people fish for their meals.

Herding everyone into the New Urban Utopia won't solve the lack-of-personal-motivation problem. Someone who refuses to learn will be just as unemployable standing outside a chic, trendy, highly moral Utopian Urban Skyscraper as they are walking down the street of an evil suburban neighborhood.

[catch22]

Herding everyone into the New Urban Utopia won't solve the lack-of-personal-motivation problem. Someone who refuses to learn will be just as unemployable standing outside a chic, trendy, highly moral Utopian Urban Skyscraper as they are walking down the street of an evil suburban neighborhood.

His point is the opportunity is available to everyone who wants to use it. I have no pity for those who do not wish to advance themselves in life, I have much sorrow for those with the motivation and drive to advance themselves, but do not find a way to get any traction or leverage due to the circumstances to get going. A guy who works for one of the contract handlers at WRWA...he lives 4 miles from the airport. He can not afford a car and his bike broke and doesn't have money to fix it. He works a 4am shift for $8.50 an hour....he walks 4 miles to work every morning (on dark streets with no sidewalks) to be there by 4am, works on his feet in the heat, rain, wind, snow for 8+ hours a day, then walks 4 miles home, wherever that is. That is dedication. Sucks that our transit system can't help him out.

[Just the facts]

JTF - There's a Nobel Peace Prize (and more) for the first person who can solve the problem of broken homes, child truancy, poverty, illegal drug use and all of the other causes people point to for their plight.

My path to a better job, car, house and all of it began with entry-level jobs and entry-level pay. If I did it once I can do it again, and so can anyone else.

Append: My wife and I were watching the national news a few weeks ago and a middle-aged couple in Chicago was describing their situation of being two years behind in mortgage payments and unemployed after working their way up to the middle class. Bottom line: They couldn't make it work in Chicago. Almost simultaneously my wife and I yelled "MOVE" at the screen. Move here, or any other part of the country that is hiring people like them. They are a road trip away from a fresh start.

I don't think you are fully grasping the complexity of the situation. So let's say this Chicago family packs up and moves to OKC. What do they do when they get here, sleep in their car until they can find a job? What about their house back in Chicago? Even if they weren't paying for it at least they had a bed, a mailing address, and the kids were in school. Then you have all their stuff? Do they just have a giant garage sell? And if they did what good does that do? In 2 months they would be right back in the same spot except without their stuff.