Should Fast Food Workers Earn A Living Wage Essay

Many Americans work solely to pay for food, electricity, and housing. In response to this “nearly 30 states have raised their minimum wage to combat job loss, poverty, and economic inflation.” (http://www.pewresearch.org). This just goes to show that more than two thirds of the country are willing to raise their wages, because the local government thinks that it is absolutely necessary in order to allow people to live sustainably. States such as California have raised their wages up to as high as $15.00! Raising the minimum wage has helped many people begin to start to live healthy lives, and it provides a way for families to expend for necessities if they work at or near minimum wage,

The fast-food workers are expressed as a pond in a bigger game. They have to deal with their low pay in order to ensure low prices by these franchises. Jencunas concerns go on to represent the beginning of a bigger chain effect. Briefly, he states that, “The average fast food store would go from profitable to unprofitable overnight. Some would close immediately, leaving their workers worse off than they were when working for $7.50 an hour, while others would raise prices and try and remain in business, hurting consumers” (“Don't Deserve Any More, or Less”). Evaluating his reasoning we see that if fast-food workers ask for a higher minimum wage, they will in return influence the profit margin and actually increase unemployment rate in this industry. The researchers go on to inform us that if their minimum wage increases the industry won’t be able to afford the change in their profit margin and result in bankruptcy. However, Mary Kay Henry, president of the Service Employees International Union, which supports the fast-food strike states a different claim:

Living wage is a level of income that enable workers to afford basic necessity of life like shelter, food, health care and education. This is to afford any one that work full-time to live above poverty line, avoid homelessness and hunger; it’s meant to just meet basic necessities and provide buffer against emergencies or improve quality of life. It’s however disheartening to note that this basic wage has continue to be a dream for most workers in this country today; even as the companies or entities they work for makes record profits. Opponent of national living wage had cited possible job loss, capital flight in this era of globalization of capitalism, and natural forces of market as reason why implementing national living wage is a bad policy that would make the

"It is but equity...that they who feed, clothe and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labor as to be themselves tolerably well fed, clothed and lodged."

The employment practices of the fast food chains also leave a lot to be desired. They are a great part of the reason that people need more than one job to survive. Because they have so many minimum wage jobs – even managers only make about $10 to $15 an hour. That had become a norm in the US, where people don 't even make a livable wage.

A 2015 Purdue University study found that raising the wage of fast food restaurant employees to $15 or $22 per hour would result in a price increase of 4.3% and 25% respectively, or a reduction in product size between 12% and 70%.

Have you ever thought about feeding a family and paying the necessary bills on $7.25 per hour? If you answer “no,” then think about this. With this type of salary you could not cover your rent in most parts of the United States, much less feed your family. In this day and time this feat cannot be achieved without raising the minimum wage. If our current government does not raise the minimum wage than a person earning minimum wage would need to work two or three jobs just to keep up with inflation.

As most of you know, life is hard, actually extremely hard. As people of America each and every one of us has some sort of image of what we view “the American dream” as. One of which, is the amount of minimum wage that a person at McDonalds or even Kroger is making. This is a subject that has most Americans have been on edge about. Currently, our minimum wage is 7.25$. In the eyes of a newly employed sixteen year old having the opportunity to make his or her own money is greater than making no money at all. The sixteen year old is a newly worker, any money that is handed to

McDonalds, Wal-Mart, and cleaning services: all of these have one thing in common-they are all minimum wage jobs. Their pay is low and work load high, and because of this living as a low wageworker is never easy. One must handle many hardships in order to make a few meager dollars, with which most cannot sufficiently live. 'The 'living wage' in the United States is between $9-10.18; sounds great to a college student, but in the real world this kind of money just isn't going to cut it,' (Ramisch). Minimum wage standards for American workers rest at $5.15 per hour, and in such slighted fields, very few make much more than that, perhaps $6-7, but even that is a rarity. The material life of a low-income employee includes bare necessities

This forcing them to spend less on food, health care, and transportation. They reported, “Low-income families with children and severe housing cost burden spend 75 percent less on health care than their peers without housing affordability challenges.” and that, “Sixteen million renter households earn less than $25,000 a year, and the typical renter earned $37,900 in 2015.” These statistics show that the income to healthcare and rent ratio are clearly in disportion of affordability. According to National Law Employment Project the top companies in the fast food industry made a combined profit of 7.4 billion dollars in 2013, but over 50% of all their employees are getting some form of government subsidies, which comes from tax dollars that can be used in other much needed areas, if companies would substitute some of that gap with their massive

Is minimum wage enough to live on? Most people would assume that the minimum wage would be the minimum amount people need to survive in today’s world, but that just is not the case. People are not able to survive on $7.50 an hour alone, but the price they are demanding would also impact fast food companies greatly. Noah Glass, founder and CEO of Olo and co-founder or Twitter, believes that he has the answer to the problem. His solution to the problem would benefit most of the fast food workers who are receiving minimum wage. Glass believes that implementing more technology into the fast food restaurant setting would not only help the company, but also result in increased pay for employees. Noah Glass uses his credibility, knowledge on the subject, and statistics to effectively convince fast food companies that introducing a digital ordering system will increase the efficiency of the company as well as provide their employees with an increased minimum wage.

The article I located discusses a major reason why fast food industry haven’t yet unionized and why they some workers would like too. Overall, a major reason why the fast food industry hasn’t seen any unionization is because major of the workers see their time as short time, just a way to fulfill a fast need. But as stated in the article, things don’t go exactly as planned for a lot of workers, and they find themselves in a poverty type situation, needing additional support for example by government assistants. So now workers realize they won’t be able to live on the wage they receive, and would like to be promoted to a wage of $15 an hour to meet living standards.

The fast food workers are being exploited and underpaid. They work long hours with very little pay and are treated horribly. As a matter of fact, “the industry’s wages are so low that even those front line employees who work 40 hours per week are often forced to rely on public assistance, and only 13 percent have access

The living wage movement is an economic reform movement that has become one of the most important public policy issues that has come up within the last 10 years. Although there is no single definition, it is often defined as an hourly salary that allows working families of four to have an income that is above the federal poverty line. This means that the livable wage laws often stipulate that hourly wages should be two to three times above the federal Mininum wage. However, unlike the Mininum wage, the living wage has so far only been enacted on the county and city level. Cities and counties enforce the living wage for companies that have contracts with their respective cities and counties, receive subsidies

Working in a fast food restaurant can be the worst job you ever had. First, the entire job is fairly way too easy . For 8 to 10 hours a night, I place orders in the drive-thru, assist customers in the dining area, and wash up majority of the dishes. Every time the head set beeps, a car has pulled up in the drive-thru to place an order. As soon as the cooks are finished with the dishes they set them at the sink to be washed. I am making the minimum wage, at this time, its $7.25 an hour. I normally work anywhere from 30-35 hours a week just to take a decent pay home.