Support the Fast Food Workers Strike!

Socrtease said:
She's not more skilled than the position, especially for a dirt poor city in a dirt poor state in the southwest. She can do simple motions and orders. She cannot write a motion to suppress, or a Rule 60 b motion, our senior paralegal can do that, but not our LA/R. She is paid twice the per capita income for our county with barely a 10th grade education. All your great liberal friends in NYC would not pay her what we do, Especially once they saw her gang banger tattoos and rough grasp of professional, let alone legal english. But she is loyal, and a hard worker, and when I told HER today that McDonald's employees were on strike because they thought they should make just two dollars less than her, her response was BULLSHIT! That's because she worked fast food once upon a time. And that is why I used her as an example for this thread.
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I agree with your employee. The nonsense of someone at Mc D's, Burger King, Walmart, or Costco making $15+ is insane. One might justifiably argue that they should do more to supplement benefits for part-timers, since the new rules ensure there will be many more of them, and one might lose said argument.

How likely? The Trib wishes to blame the workers, not Obama:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/...dit-parttime-0728-jm-20130728,0,2990367.story

Editorial: The part-timing of America
Obamacare will push workers — not just employers — to cut hours[



The Affordable Care Act will give companies — and, surprisingly, their workers — a big incentive to embrace more part-time employment. That isn't necessarily a problem, except when it comes to paying the health-insurance bills for all those part-timers. Looks like that job will fall to you, taxpayers.

Some of the motives at play here will strike you as familiar; others are fresh insights on the part-timing of America.

Opponents of Obamacare have long predicted that the 2010 law would lead to reduced working hours for many Americans. We all know from high-profile announcements that some employers, notably restaurants, plan to avoid hiring full-time workers because of the new health care rules:

Under Obamacare, employers with 50 or more full-time workers will be required to offer health insurance to those putting in at least 30 hours a week, or pay a penalty. That's a big incentive to keep the staff at 49 full-timers or, if the business demands more bodies, a big incentive to have as many employees as possible working a maximum of 29 hours.

Turns out the incentives to go part time will be even greater than we suspected: Several million employees could work fewer hours for as much take-home pay by shifting to part-time labor. University of Chicago economist Casey Mulligan has his finger on how that will work. As the law kicks in, the incentive for some workers will be so strong that free-market champion Mulligan says only "chumps" would resist it.

Mulligan has laid out his finding in a column on The New York Times' Economix blog. He notes that a key advantage of most full-time jobs is access to company-provided health benefits. He estimates that a middle-income, full-time worker pays $4,667 a year, and his or her employer pays $9,333, for family medical insurance.

Under Obamacare, that advantage will be reversed for some workers. The law subsidizes health costs for families that earn up to 400 percent of the federal poverty line, which is about half of all U.S. households (excluding the elderly, who have Medicare and Medicaid). But the government subsidies only will go to workers whose employers don't offer insurance. That is, most people who work full time will be ineligible for subsidies. Those workers and their employers will be expected to keep paying a bundle for coverage.

Not so for the part-timer. The law limits premiums he or she will pay to $2,149 a year. His or her employer need pay nothing at all. The Affordable Care Act also subsidizes part-timers' deductibles, co-payments and other out-of-pocket expenses, that exceed $2,193. By Mulligan's estimate, Washington could pay some $12,658 in premiums, and $2,907 in out-of-pocket costs, for a part-timer earning $42,000.

Hence Mulligan's revelation: This deal is so generous that several million workers will be able to earn as much take-home pay in part-time positions with lower pay as they would in higher-paying full-time jobs that don't get the federal health subsidies. The government — that is, taxpayers — will cover most of the part-timer's costs.

The law's potential economic distortions are so damaging, he says, that he never thought it would go into effect: "I guess I would have been (one of) those people in 1916 who said that communism would never happen."

We have yet to see Obamacare's full impact. The mandate requiring individuals to have coverage starts in January 2014; the mandate requiring employers to offer coverage has been postponed for at least another year. But if nothing changes, America will have a reason to go increasingly part time.

Many commentators have lamented the surge in part-time work since the recession. We don't see it as a problem for this country — yet. About two-thirds of Americans working part time say they do so by choice, as opposed to being unable to find full-time work or having their hours cut involuntarily. As the workforce ages and lifestyles change, it's a plus when employers can adapt their employees' schedules accordingly. America's adaptable labor market has helped it limp back from the recession.

It's troubling, though, that as the abutting graphic suggests, too many part-timers who would rather have full-time jobs just aren't finding them. The question going forward is whether those workers ever will attain what they want — or whether they and their potential employers will decide that full-time jobs are too costly for both of them.

Part-time work does become a problem when Washington tilts the balance of incentives against full-time work. Not only will Obamacare raise costs for the government, it stands to make one of the most competitive features of the U.S. economy — a flexible labor market — less efficient.

One more reason to rewrite, or halt, Obamacare.

Copyright © 2013 Chicago Tribune Company, LLC
/QUOTE]
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Darla said:
Well that is what I mean when I ask, who is to say what is unskilled? And my post was in response to Soc's about a legal secretary, who is more skilled than the positon I am describing SF, so you are making a false comparison.

As for fast food workers, they do more than flip burgers, that is a way of dismissing and devaluing them. For me personally, I would like to live in a world where food workers were appreciated and treated well. Perhaps you don't care what you put in your mouth, I couldn't comment. But I think it pays for all of us in the long run.
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Trust me...you get what you pay for....which is why I don't go to fast food joints. I know what goes on there with alienated low wage workers. Guess where that special sauce came from?
 
Darla said:
What is your deal with this Desh thing, you act like someone jilted you for her.

Damo should start an advice forum, Dear Damo. This way you can write to him. I have no idea what you are so upset about, but obviously something because every post you make to me mentions Desh. No I don't think she's prettier than you! And you don't look fat in that outfit!

Does that help?
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ROTFLMAO!! Oh No you didn't go there! LOL LOL LOL
 
Howey said:
Are you so ignorant you don't realize once the minimum wage goes up, everyone whose wage is close to it will get a raise too?
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And you say this based on what?? Because when I was the GM of a hotel in Atlanta, and they raised minimum wage, the only housekeepers who got a raise were the ones making less than the new minimum wage. The rest just had a choice to live with it or quit. And I know every motel in the south side of Atlanta did the same thing.
 
Socrtease said:
I think I have a very good idea of what overpaid is. $15/hour for an excellent shade tree mechanic is underpaid. $15/hour for an 18 year old senior in high school flipping burgers is overpaid. Last year 28.3% of all billable hours were purposely pro bono, that means going in we knew they were free, but we also discounted or wrote off $180,000 in fees because people could not pay them. For a firm with two lawyers that's 90k each, FREE. On top of the pro bono work. I'm not some fucking anti-worker college educated snob. I have given back. I was a public defender, before you talk about a fry guy being worth more than a public defender, watch Gideon's Army on HBO about the public defender system. Only someone complete stupid could think that those lawyers aren't worth every dime they are paid and then multiply it times 5. To say that a McDonald's employee is worth more than a PD 1 at ANY public defender office in America is to show how fucking stupid your really are.
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Hey look...no body is owed anything...not Brain Surgeons, Lawyers or Fry Cooks. You have to produce to earn and those who work hard and produce should earn and they should have a right to negotiate, indepentently or collectively for their conditions of employment. People who think otherwise either suffer from delusions of grandeur or narcissism.
 
Darla said:
No, I've no doubt she does feel that way. Just like there are immigrants who get furious at the idea of amnesty. They did i the hard way, why should you have it any easier.

I always say there are two kinds of people in this world, and I noticed this from posting on a political message board in the first year. There are two guys who struggle in their 20's, have no health care, can't afford college, and somehow make it.

One of them says, I suffered, who are YOU to have it any easier? And their face twists up just at the thought of that.

The second guy says, you know, that was really fucked up, I don't want anyone else to have to go through what I did.

The first guy is a conservative. The second a liberal.

Two different world views.
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Why is working hard suffering? Why is working your way up the ladder suffering? To listen to liberals, we should all be middle management, or higher and all make 6 figures. I don't people to have to work in a sweat shop, hell I haven't bought a name brand pair of athletic shoes in over a decade, because they are ALL made in sweat shops. But saying that people should start out making $30k+ a year is to demean experience, and hard work and even some sacrifice.
 
USFREEDOM911 said:
For some reason you seem to have the idea that McD's and such are under some kind of obligation to do what the strikers want.
They can join any union they want; but that doesn't mean that McD's have to be a Union employer.
McD's can just hire someone else.
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No I'm not under the idea that McD's in under any sort of obligation and you are right. That's how the market works. If they have the power of their position and numbers and the support and can swing that with McD's, more power to them. If not, tough shit. That's life. I'm saying that they should have the same rights in the market place as anyone else. Others here seem to think that only a special few should have access to the market place.
 
Superfreak said:
Lmao... You just said it should be what the market will bear, even if below minimum wage.
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No I didn't. I was talking about negotiating for wages and conditions of employment. You brought up minimum wage. I opined that an increase to historical levels when adjusted for inflation would probably do more good than harm.
 
Socrtease said:
To say that a McDonald's employee is worth more than a PD 1 at ANY public defender office in America is to show how fucking stupid your really are.
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Um, really? McDonald's employees can't fall asleep on the job. They can't plead out their clients because they are too lazy to look into the case.

Don't get me wrong -I'm sure there are many fine PDs across the country. There are also PDs (from what I've read) who really screw up cases, don't do any work, and ruin people's lives.

I'll take a hardworking McD employee who gets a burger done properly, thank you!
 
Superfreak said:
In this market if you force minimum wage to $15, those unskilled jobs will be filled by semi skilled workers currently unemployed. You will crush the unskilled workers.
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I don't neccesarily disagree....but I didn't advocate that. Darla did. I advocated adjusting it up to it's historical level when adjusted for inflation.
 
Mott the Hoople said:
No I didn't. I was talking about negotiating for wages and conditions of employment. You brought up minimum wage. I opined that an increase to historical levels when adjusted for inflation would probably do more good than harm.
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post 117 mutt

You stated if the market would only bear $5, then tough shit for them
 
tekkychick said:
Um, really? McDonald's employees can't fall asleep on the job. They can't plead out their clients because they are too lazy to look into the case.

Don't get me wrong -I'm sure there are many fine PDs across the country. There are also PDs (from what I've read) who really screw up cases, don't do any work, and ruin people's lives.

I'll take a hardworking McD employee who gets a burger done properly, thank you!
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I wouldn't. McDonalds sucks.
 
Mott the Hoople said:
Hey look...no body is owed anything...not Brain Surgeons, Lawyers or Fry Cooks. You have to produce to earn and those who work hard and produce should earn and they should have a right to negotiate, indepentently or collectively for their conditions of employment. People who think otherwise either suffer from delusions of grandeur or narcissism.
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Which proves my point, you know NOTHING about being a public defender. My first day on the job I got to review the case file for the two JURY trials I had in the next two days. Both domestic violence. I had no senior attorney go with me, because they all had trials for the next two days as well. I was trained to try cases in law school. I tried cases as clinic student and I argued motions while working for the death penalty defense unit. No one shadowed me for my first week, like they would at a restaurant or Walmart. No one got me up to speed on my cases, or sat with me while I met my clients. I met my client for my first trial on my second day 2 hours before he went on trial. I met my client for the next trial at lunch that same day. From day 2 through day 6 I had one jury trial a day. I was making 16.72 an hour as a licensed attorney. Everyday I went to work those 5 days, someone's liberty was on the line. Granted, that probably isn't as earth shaking as making sure the fries were done but when that week was over, no one was convicted, not a single defendant went to jail. Every day in the US thousands of New public defenders go to work and do the same thing I did, I they are worth a fuck load more than the fry guy.
 
Mott the Hoople said:
No I'm not under the idea that McD's in under any sort of obligation and you are right. That's how the market works. If they have the power of their position and numbers and the support and can swing that with McD's, more power to them. If not, tough shit. That's life. I'm saying that they should have the same rights in the market place as anyone else. Others here seem to think that only a special few should have access to the market place.
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Please explain how they don't have the same rights in the market place; because as far as I know, they aren't under any kind of contract obligation and can move to another job as soon as they want to.
 
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