Fast Food Workers Stage Strike, Demand Higher Minimal Wage.

[Greed and Death]

Look this is not hard to grasp not every job is designed to be a career, if you choose to attempt to make it a career you bear the risk of crappy wages.
It is a lower tier service industry gig, you use it to get experience and apply to better service industry jobs.

If you do not have the initiative to apply for better work or to get better work it is time to look for work in a different field.

Which of course leads to high staff turnover, and isn't that financially problematic?

That is for the employer to weigh and balance the issue now isn't it. I have no intention to second guess the profit maximization of this industry, if you feel you can profit maximize better feel free to run your own fast food restaurant.

[Alien Space Bats]

Look this is not hard to grasp not every job is designed to be a career, if you choose to attempt to make it a career you bear the risk of crappy wages.
It is a lower tier service industry gig, you use it to get experience and apply to better service industry jobs.

So your answer is to dodge the question.

Prove to me that fast food jobs are "designed" to be like this. Hell, prove to me that there's any real "design" to the system at all. You're the one who made the claim that there's some kind of "intelligent design" within the system, so the burden is on you to show that it exists, because — as someone with a degree in economics — I'm fully prepared to argue the opposite: That the past reliance of fast food on youthful labor (and, as the workforce age statistics show, it is a past reliance) is pretty much the result of evolutionary forces — IOW, a response to market conditons, and thus something that is subject to change.

It's like nursing being "women's work": It wasn't "intended" to be that way by some higher power (or by universal societal acclimation); it simply became that way due to market conditions, and can just as easily evolve into something else.

If you do not have the initiative to apply for better work or to get better work it is time to look for work in a different field.

Right. People who work at McDonald's should learn Chinese, so they can emigrate to Guangdong and get a real job.

Tell me, where in the fuck is this "better work" you speak of? Walmarts?

The whole problem we face is that there is no better work: Old jobs that paid well are disappearing, and the jobs that are replacing them don't pay shit.

[Greed and Death]

Look this is not hard to grasp not every job is designed to be a career, if you choose to attempt to make it a career you bear the risk of crappy wages.
It is a lower tier service industry gig, you use it to get experience and apply to better service industry jobs.

So your answer is to dodge the question.

Prove to me that fast food jobs are "designed" to be like this. Hell, prove to me that there's any real "design" to the system at all. You're the one who made the claim that there's some kind of "intelligent design" within the system, so the burden is on you to show that it exists, because — as someone with a degree in economics — I'm fully prepared to argue the opposite: That the past reliance of fast food on youthful labor (and, as the workforce age statistics show, it is a past reliance) is pretty much the result of evolutionary forces — IOW, a response to market conditons, and thus something that is subject to change.

It's like nursing being "women's work": It wasn't "intended" to be that way by some higher power (or by universal societal acclimation); it simply became that way due to market conditions, and can just as easily evolve into something else.

It need not be some social acclimation, the employer gets to decide the offer he makes. Now, in a perfect world employers who were not offering career employment would only offer jobs to people not seeking career employment, however since these judgement often depend on things that raise illegal discrimination issues most employers use other means.

If you do not have the initiative to apply for better work or to get better work it is time to look for work in a different field.

Right. People who work at McDonald's should learn Chinese, so they can emigrate to Guangdong and get a real job.

Tell me, where in the fuck is this "better work" you speak of? Walmarts?

The whole problem we face is that there is no better work: Old jobs that paid well are disappearing, and the jobs that are replacing them don't pay shit.

Or learn Japanese and work at the Toyota plant in Tennessee. For within the service industry Waiting tables is better yeah bureau of labor shows them making minimum wage but anyone who has waited tables knows that is full of crap. Waiters under report their tips, I was so mad when minimum wage rose and I had to report more of my tips. You can also do agricultural work and make a median 10/hr in a lower cost of living area.

[Alien Space Bats]

Or learn Japanese and work at the Toyota plant in Tennessee.

Evidence that foreign transplants are hiring, please.

For within the service industry Waiting tables is better yeah bureau of labor shows them making minimum wage but anyone who has waited tables knows that is full of crap. Waiters under report their tips, I was so mad when minimum wage rose and I had to report more of my tips.

The same forces that have driven people into fast food for jobs have prevented the sit-down dining industry from "clearing" its usual amount of labor into other sectors; if you check, you'll find that waiters and waitresses aren't leaving their jobs for better ones, which is usually what happense in sit-down food service. Just as the mean and median age of fast food workers are rising, so too is are the mean and median age of sit-down dining workers.

IOW, there aren't any jobs there, either.

You can also do agricultural work and make a median 10/hr in a lower cost of living area.

If you knew anything at all about migrant agricultural labor, you would realize that it is "unskilled" only in the very loosest sense of the term. Migrant laborers are tremendously productive — and that's not because they're "willing to work" or "hard working".

People have tried to make the transition into migrant agricultural labor; believe me, in this economy, everything has been tried. They've failed because they quickly discover that the nature of migrant pay (which is on a "piecework" basis, not by the hour) means that you have to be very, very fast — which means that you have to be very, very efficient. You don't get to be that fast by simply trying; you get to be that fast through years of practice and through the development of muscle memory, and until you reach the necessary speed to hit the proper pace, you cannot effectively feed yourself.

So how do migrant workers manage? Simple: They work as families. They bring their kids with them into the fields (where the usual child labor laws don't apply [or aren't enforced]), and their kids learn how to pick crops quickly over several seasons in which they are supported by their parents. If you throw someone who didn't grow up in that environment into the fields and tell them to start picking, they will inevitably fail; indeed, almost everyone who has tried to break into migrant labor in the course of this recession has failed — and it's not for want of trying. Hell, even the farmers themselves will tell you this.

So no, agricultural work is not an answer, either.

[New Chalcedon]

So your answer is to dodge the question.

Prove to me that fast food jobs are "designed" to be like this. Hell, prove to me that there's any real "design" to the system at all. You're the one who made the claim that there's some kind of "intelligent design" within the system, so the burden is on you to show that it exists, because — as someone with a degree in economics — I'm fully prepared to argue the opposite: That the past reliance of fast food on youthful labor (and, as the workforce age statistics show, it is a past reliance) is pretty much the result of evolutionary forces — IOW, a response to market conditons, and thus something that is subject to change.

It's like nursing being "women's work": It wasn't "intended" to be that way by some higher power (or by universal societal acclimation); it simply became that way due to market conditions, and can just as easily evolve into something else.

It need not be some social acclimation, the employer gets to decide the offer he makes.

Wrong - or at best misleading. The employee also gets to decide if that offer's worth their time. Or had you forgotten that half of labour market theory?

It's a disease common to the Right: remember only those parts of economic theory that glorify the "job creators", forget the rest.

Now, in a perfect world employers who were not offering career employment would only offer jobs to people not seeking career employment, however since these judgement often depend on things that raise illegal discrimination issues most employers use other means.

What are you even trying to say here? I don't get it.

Or learn Japanese and work at the Toyota plant in Tennessee.

Mmm-hmm. I had a philosophical answer prepared for this, but found upon review that it was both off-topic and rather wordy. So I'll leave my response at this:

If people in New York would be willing to work for $18.00/hour (the starting wage at Toyota's Tennessee plant) as you claim, then why hasn't Toyota built a plant in New York? Could the rabidly anti-union government there have something to do with it? Possibly - but the vastly generous subsidies (paid for by Joe and Jane Citizen) that the Government of Tennesse routinely offers might have something to do with it, too.

For within the service industry Waiting tables is better yeah bureau of labor shows them making minimum wage but anyone who has waited tables knows that is full of crap. Waiters under report their tips, I was so mad when minimum wage rose and I had to report more of my tips. You can also do agricultural work and make a median 10/hr in a lower cost of living area.

So all you have to counter sources (in this case, the Bureau of Labor) is anecdotal crap? As a side note, wage theft in hospitality - whereby "official" wages and hours are reported to the authorities, but employers make a variety of deductions to wages ranging from the shady to the downright illegal, or require employees to work unpaid overtime - ranges from 46 percent to 48 percent, depending upon the survey you choose.

If anything, the Bureau of Labor's stats show a rosier picture for hospitality workers than actually exists, not a bleaker one. Thanks for playing.

[Imperializt Russia]

Or learn Japanese and work at the Toyota plant in Tennessee.

Mmm-hmm. I had a philosophical answer prepared for this, but found upon review that it was both off-topic and rather wordy. So I'll leave my response at this:

If people in New York would be willing to work for $18.00/hour (the starting wage at Toyota's Tennessee plant) as you claim, then why hasn't Toyota built a plant in New York? Could the rabidly anti-union government there have something to do with it? Possibly - but the vastly generous subsidies (paid for by Joe and Jane Citizen) that the Government of Tennesse routinely offers might have something to do with it, too.

Unsurprisingly, like there are thousands of factors behind what supports an economy other than wage, there are thousands of factors behind the placement of a vehicle factory. One of them is wage.

One of thousands.

[Mike the Progressive]

Fire them and hire Hispanics. They work harder anyway.

[Imperializt Russia]

Fire them and hire Hispanics. They work harder anyway.

As ASB has just posited, there's probably more than mere work ethic at play.

[Genivaria]

Fire them and hire Hispanics. They work harder anyway.

I knew it!
Republicans use Hispanics to replace Union Workers so the Republicans can then use the Hispanics as scapegoats and go 'Dey turk our jerbs!'
It's brilliant!

[Imperializt Russia]

Fire them and hire Hispanics. They work harder anyway.

I knew it!
Republicans use Hispanics to replace Union Workers so the Republicans can then use the Hispanics as scapegoats and go 'Dey turk our jerbs!'
It's brilliant!

I would not be at all surprised.

[Mike the Progressive]

Fire them and hire Hispanics. They work harder anyway.

I knew it!
Republicans use Hispanics to replace Union Workers so the Republicans can then use the Hispanics as scapegoats and go 'Dey turk our jerbs!'
It's brilliant!

But I'm not a Republican...

[Mike the Progressive]

Fire them and hire Hispanics. They work harder anyway.

As ASB has just posited, there's probably more than mere work ethic at play.

That's fine. But you can still fire the guys striking, replacing them with Hispanics, who probably won't strike and will work harder.

[Imperializt Russia]

As ASB has just posited, there's probably more than mere work ethic at play.

That's fine. But you can still fire the guys striking, replacing them with Hispanics, who probably won't strike and will work harder.

I wonder how many times you'll get re-elected as a politician who supports these practices, or doesn't try to act against them?

[Mike the Progressive]

That's fine. But you can still fire the guys striking, replacing them with Hispanics, who probably won't strike and will work harder.

I wonder how many times you'll get re-elected as a politician who supports these practices, or doesn't try to act against them?

Well look I have a great deal of respect for these people. They come to a country to earn money to make their lives better and to make their kid's lives better. And I say they should be able to stay here as long as they want, and be citizens if they want. Because that's the entrepreneurial spirit that makes America great.

(Hopefully many, many times).

[Genivaria]

I knew it!
Republicans use Hispanics to replace Union Workers so the Republicans can then use the Hispanics as scapegoats and go 'Dey turk our jerbs!'
It's brilliant!

But I'm not a Republican...

Really? Not even the rare breed of Sane Republican?
Well there goes my mental image of you being Will Mcavoy.

[New Chalcedon]

But I'm not a Republican...

Really? Not even the rare breed of Sane Republican?
Well there goes my mental image of you being Will Mcavoy.

That sub-species of Homo Politicanus Republicanus was declared extinct not long after the 2012 election cycle ended.

[Mike the Progressive]

But I'm not a Republican...

Really? Not even the rare breed of Sane Republican?
Well there goes my mental image of you being Will Mcavoy.

I was one, but I have to say that I lost faith in the GOP when during a primary debate in 2012, a gay soldier asked a question about the DADT repeal, the audience booed, and not one Republican candidate up there said "hey, we may not like this guy's sexuality, but we should respect the fact that he is in Iraq and willing to die for our freedoms."

[Genivaria]

Really? Not even the rare breed of Sane Republican?
Well there goes my mental image of you being Will Mcavoy.

I was one, but I have to say that I lost faith in the GOP when during a primary debate in 2012, a gay soldier asked a question about the DADT repeal, the audience booed, and not one Republican candidate up there said "hey, we may not like this guy's sexuality, but we should respect the fact that he is in Iraq and willing to die for our freedoms."

Yeaaah I can see how that would break someone's support.
I'm not the most patriotic person myself and that pissed me off beyond belief.

[Mike the Progressive]

I was one, but I have to say that I lost faith in the GOP when during a primary debate in 2012, a gay soldier asked a question about the DADT repeal, the audience booed, and not one Republican candidate up there said "hey, we may not like this guy's sexuality, but we should respect the fact that he is in Iraq and willing to die for our freedoms."

Yeaaah I can see how that would break someone's support.
I'm not the most patriotic person myself and that pissed me off beyond belief.

I just returned back to the Democrats. Not quite as liberal as I once was. But a Democrat nonetheless.

[Ceannairceach]

Yeaaah I can see how that would break someone's support.
I'm not the most patriotic person myself and that pissed me off beyond belief.

I just returned back to the Democrats. Not quite as liberal as I once was. But a Democrat nonetheless.

A good choice, considering many Democrats are barely as liberal as some Democrats.

[Gideus]

While $15 is too high, this is a great start.

I completely support this.

[Yes Im Biop]

7.35? That's not much at all It should be 8 or 9 bucks.

[Ertae]

$15 an hour would be a good start.

[Yes Im Biop]

You need to think like a negotiator. Your employer is far more likely to accept a slightly higher wage if you demand a far higher one at first. It's a very common tactic in negotiations.

Very common, yes. However, it can turn public opinion against you if you go too high.

Public opinion matters how exactly?

[Mike the Progressive]

Very common, yes. However, it can turn public opinion against you if you go too high.

Public opinion matters how exactly?

Sadly, it always matters.