You might ask yourself, how is it that a person who works full-time for a multi-billion dollar company has difficulty rising out of poverty? Employees at McDonald’s continue to exchange their efforts for minimal pay while the CEO sits comfortably.
To work at a McDonald’s is to sign up for a less-than-glamorous job with minimal pay and guaranteed grease stains. But what many people don’t know, is that those who are employed by the double arch company full-time are basically required to get a second job or claim welfare in order to make ends meets.
That’s right. Working minimum wage, this is what a full-time employee can expect to take home in one year:
The image above was shared by Fight for $15, a campaign that aims to raise support for a $15 minimum wage in the United States – where the federal minimum wage still remains a measly $7.25 per hour. The accompanying text reads:“In case anyone was wondering what full-time wage at McDonald’s are like for a full year, this is it. It’s worth adding that the average cost of a 1-bedroom apartment in the U.S. is $8,993.64 – $11,410.92, or up to 82% of this entire year of work.”
As cost of living continues to increase, those who are pressured to take minimum pay as their main form of income are forced to stretch the dollar pretty thin.
How can it be right that a person who works full-time for a multi-billion dollar company has difficulty rising out of poverty? While employees who work for franchises like McDonald’s exchange their efforts for peanuts, millions of dollars are thrown at the CEO. This is the same CEO who oversaw a 30% nosedive in profits last year – yet his efforts are worth that extra cash.But wait – it gets even more interesting. After McDonald’s fired previous CEO Don Thompson, they then gifted him $3 million dollars to consult for one year. For an average fry cook employed by the same company, it would take him/her 6,631 hours to make what Thompson will be paid for one week of consulting.
The company’s longstanding practice of using franchise agreements to limit corporate liability for labor violations at specific stores appears to be crumbling in the face of multiple lawsuits in America. Unions are asking the European Commission to investigate the company’s use of a tax haven in Luxembourg to allegedly deprive various European governments of a billion euros’ worth of tax payments in recent years. And in Brazil, the company may face massive fines stemming from a union lawsuit against the company’s largest franchisee over serious alleged violations of the country’s strong legal protections for workers.
Thankfully the effort to raise minimum wage is rallying more support on a city-by-city, state-by-state basis, if not at a federal level.
- San Francisco has agreed to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2018
Oakland backed a measure to raise it to $12.25.
Seattle approved a minimum wage hike to $15 by 2021.
Alaska, Arkansas, Nebraska and South Dakota have all approved proposals to raise the minimum wage in November
The states listed above, Washington, D.C., and 12 others all have moved to raise the minimum wage in November. Therefore it seems optimistic – and accurate – to state that a shift has begun in limiting exploitative employment.
What it comes down to, is that if a corporation is raking in healthy profits, the entire team who is helping to produce them should receive a fair portion as well.
http://www.nationofchange.org/2015/03/12/12441/
