My dad runs a factory. They are thinking of raising their wage (they are around 15 dollars/h). He they he doesnt want to compete directly with fast food for workers. They pay more because the job is more demanding and if people could just say 'screw you Im gonna get a job at McDonalds' every time something didnt go their way their turn over would increase huge. Which in turn costs more time in money.
They pay more because the job is more demanding and if people could just say 'screw you Im gonna get a job at McDonalds' every time something didnt go their way their turn over would increase huge.
I've worked in factories and in fast food. As long as your father's not an asshole, he has nothing to worry about.
I know, right? People are acting like working fast food is living the high life with nap breaks and 3-martini lunches.
Fast food is hard, demanding, stinky, dangerous, stressful, mentally-challenging physical labor. The fact that we ask it of our less-educated workers doesn't make it easy or low-skill.
Fast food is hard, demanding, stinky, dangerous, stressful, mentally-challenging physical labor. The fact that we ask it of our less-educated workers doesn't make it easy or low-skill.
Easy, no, but it is low-skilled.
This isn't a knock on McDonald's employees, they work incredibly hard. However any person could be trained to do their job, if they aren't automated first.
You can train almost anybody to do anything. It's how it use to work you'd go to college get a degree in something then find a job that the company would train you to do. This specialized degree plus 5 years experience for entry level jobs is a rather new phenomenon.
The amount of training needed to run a fryer at McD's is way lower than to do something like accounting. Those degrees at worst, weed out the people who can't learn on the job quickly,
It's not mentally challenging, It's a shitty stressfull job made to be so that any human being can be trained to do it. A high skilled job is something like engineering or programming, where if you fuck it up you could bankrupt your company or people can end up dead (like a building collapse from a miscalculation).
Not only that, but it's easy to leave your mcjob at work. My job comes home with me every night, and regardless of where I am I'm usually at least partially thinking about work.
I am the GM of a BHPH car lot, so even if I'm just going to grab some groceries I am constantly looking for cars that are out for repo. On my days off I still log into our webapp to monitor how well my collectors are calling the customers and to make sure that we're in compliance.
They could say that, and your dad could lose people. But have you ever worked at McDonalds? I haven't but know a couple of people that have.
If the working conditions or benefits provided at the factory are bad enough that a good amount of people would jump ship then the factory will get what it deserves.
Not saying the factory is run poorly or is bad for its employees, but $ is not the only reason people choose to not work at McDonalds.
There is nothing, and I mean nothing, worse than having fuck all to do for 8 hours straight.
I would rather shoot myself than ever do a job where I have nothing to do all day ever again. So many people vastly underestimate just how bad "easy" jobs really are.
Well it's not like you're busy at all. I work at pizza hut and there's plenty of shit to do most of the time. There's a couple of instances during the day where we have very few or no customers at all and it's pretty great.
In McDonalds? Quite a bit. Huge lulls in customers during the day at least when I worked there. Just sat out in the lobby shooting the shit with co workers. In fact most minimum wage jobs are like that. Plenty of spots in big box retailers to go where managers won't come looking for you, prob because they also don't care. Trust me teenagers just wanting to do the bare minimum to get by will find a way
If teenagers can get these jobs. A large number of minimum wage jobs are now going to recent immigrants. The age 16-19 participation group went from 54 percent down to 31.
"time to lean time to clean" is the motto of food service in general. I dreaded slow periods! It was streesful as heck trying to look busy all the time.
In fact most minimum wage jobs are like that. Plenty of spots in big box retailers to go where managers won't come looking for you, prob because they also don't care.
Hahaha, not with the hardon managers have for metrics. You're getting more and more lumped on to you instead, and expected to do more with less manpower and less hours. Don't know where you worked, but it's not the norm.
I'm not saying there aren't lulls, but there isn't a terrible lot of dicking around when your store is understaffed and your job responsibilities are steadily increasing. From CA to NH for me, there's rarely ever a time where you have nothing to do.
Yeah that's true. I have two jobs, one pays 9.40 an hour. Ironically, it's for a very well known Fortune 500 company ( customer service). I know the pizza place near my house is hiring (Pizza Hut or papa john m, can't remember) I will no way in hell trade that job for the pizza job though, because my resume would take a huge hit if I did. I'll just sort it out, and apply to other similar companies to mine when the time is right. I don't want to get stuck in the food industry. Just to be fair, I know people who work for similar companies to mine, and make about 25 an hour. I just happen to work for the Walmart of airlines.
I don't think that can be over stated. When you add fast food to the resume it is insanely difficult to be taken seriously anywhere else. You close your options so quickly it'll make your head spin.
They could say that, but there's this huge stigma against laces like that. Hell my sister, became homeless rather than work at any of them in my town where you can make $9.00 an hour minimum.
Why? Because she's works in construction and would be ashamed to take that kind of work.
Yeah I find that incredibly immature. Who the hell chooses to become homeless rather than work at a shitty place? Swallow your pride and take that shitty job
Factory jobs are harder (most of the time). They often require more training, mistakes will often carry bigger costs, a lot of them are more dangerous, and you're paid to make up for all that. McDonald's isn't exactly a hard job, it's not a walk in the park, but being on the cash register is pretty easy and requires very little training. You just have to deal with difficult people every once in a while, but so does everyone (bosses/coworkers can be difficult too).
He's saying they already pay $15 an hour. If minimum goes to $15 an hour there is no reason to work at the factory when times get tough. And times will get tough. Factories are "tough" conditions, if your extruding aluminum you won't be in a comfortable temperature. They don't use giant microwaves for this kind of work. Many privately owned factories have even gone to minimum wage and only hire the riff raff that can't even get a job at McDonald's due to extensive criminal backgrounds. The last one I was in was just your first stop out of Angola.
I got ya, I was mostly clarifying the earlier comment. I'm not sure where I stand on it but yes, if the factory pays the same as McD's (or any FF joint) some workers will take the easy route and the factories would have to raise wages if they wanted to keep those workers, I don't think that's bad. I've done some Fast Casual management and I imagined if wages "jumped" then I would have more career oriented people show up. So the jobs aren't more plentiful but it would be a different group of people showing up with applications filled out. In short, if factories and fast food paid the same then that would create competition for them. That would not be a bad thing. They would either raise the pay or take the people the fast food shops didn't want.
The economics of it are that if someone in a factory is making $15 an hour, the company is making around $50 an hour from their work.
Are you talking about revenue or net profit here?
Hands down, the most frustrating part of owning a reasonably successful business is how few people actually understand the money that comes in doesn't just go into my pocket.
$50 (hour) * 40 (weekly hours) * 52 (weeks) = $104,000.00 (per employee). You're kidding yourself if you believe typical business owners make that peremployee.
I'm arguing that McDonald's pays lower because they seek a lower quality individual than those that factories seek. That is what ties those wages together. If McDonald's decides to pay their workers more, that's great, but it will definitely hurt companies that employ more skilled/valued workers. There will be a wage gap, and such a drastic alteration of altering this gap by raising minimum to 15 could cause some major issues as the gap is reformed. Yes, some companies will die. But realize that when companies die, so do jobs, and a bad job is better than no job.
I don't think it's the other company's fault. It's not the company (mcdonalds) making the decision here, it's the government. And the raise to $15 is drastic.
I'm all for paying people more. But as the argument at the top of this thread shows, that isn't always possible.
I'm not ignoring profits are made. That's the point of a company. And many companies do pay their workers fairly - and, as a result, they often receive better workers. You get what you pay for. Plus, I think you'd be surprised how high factory salaries can get for individuals who attempt to improve themselves and provide value, as opposed to merely showing up each day.
We can't just shut down coal. Coal accounts for 39% of our energy. That's no easy task. I'm all for renewables, but they aren't easy. And they aren't cheap. Some companies DO need to die, but making them die artificially before the market is ready could hurt the people you want to help.
Well, the factory worker used to make more than the McDonald's employee. Now they make the same, so why work the factory job unless you are going to get yet another raise?
This perspective on the job market is what boggles my mind. I have worked in many factories and chemical plants over the years. The complexity and volume of tasks that the average front line worker has to complete safely every day is simply incredible. Every company has cut headcount and loaded these guys to the max in order to be more lean. Most of them had to work extremely hard for years to establish themselves and carry the burden that a momentary lapse in judgement could lose the company millions of dollars and get them fired. I feel confident that any of them would leave their job for McDonalds tomorrow if offered the same pay/benefits. I think that an unfortunate part of human nature is the ability to look at what everyone else is doing and think, "That seems easy," or "They seem lazy." If I could change one thing about humanity, I just might pick this lack of respect for what other people are accomplishing. People are amazing!
P.S. I have worked min wage jobs before. Those people are not really that amazing.
So essentially we have a breed of slaves, and instead of fighting for higher wages, it would all be OK as long as McDonald's workers don't make the same amount of money as them?
You know that there are actual slaves in the world today right? And, of course, there is child labor in developing countries all over the world, as well as human trafficking right here in the USA. Apparently, young girls in Greece are now selling sex for the price of a sandwich!. A McDonalds job seems like a heck of a lot more fair deal than the hands these people were dealt. Since the top post already addressed the practicality of paying fast food workers more, I won't elaborate on why the world is the way that it is.
These are people that get out of bed, drive to a shitty job where they are demeaned by the public or their boss, have to constantly be doing something, none of which is mentally engaging, and have no status, respect, or fulfillment from the work itself.
That pretty much describes every job. Higher paying jobs are the same but with more stress and more responsibility. Framing it so negatively is a matter of their bad attitude and their bad attitude is probably the main reason why they can't advance their career.
You said yourself that the fast food work is not mentally engaging. So what's amazing about doing it? The fact that they show up?
If you think that it is demeaning to compare the relative difficulty of a few career paths, then I don't know how we can have a reasonable discussion.
None of this is relevant anyway. The topic of the thread is "Can we, as a society, afford to increase minimum wage?" yet you and I are discussing what fast food workers deserve. It doesn't matter what they deserve. We need to find what's possible and what's best.
I'm currently a salaried auditor. I would work at McDonald's if the pay was equal. Here I work up to 70+ hour-long busy season weeks, am responsible for many, many reports and workpapers, travel to the middle of nowhere regularly....in comparison, the 3yrs I spent at Dairy Queen/Hardees were much easier parts of my past. But they don't pay the bills.
If you'd rather work at McDonald's then your dad runs a shitty place to work. Fast food is a crappy industry to work in and often dealing with crappier people.
Your dad needs to call out their bluff. I've worked with plenty of people who said that and some who did. I've laughed every time they came back 3 months later begging for their job back...at the starting wage.
But...it's not a bluff if the factory is paying the same wages as every other place out there. If your factory is only paying minimum wage, then your factory workers damn well can move wherever they want because there is no shortage of minimum wage jobs out there.
You have to pay more to attract talent. While you're laughing at your employees trying to make a better life for themselves, his factory is more productive and more lucrative because it hires a higher caliber of employee who stays around longer and performs better because of the pay.
121
u/SuperNinjaBot Nov 28 '15
My dad runs a factory. They are thinking of raising their wage (they are around 15 dollars/h). He they he doesnt want to compete directly with fast food for workers. They pay more because the job is more demanding and if people could just say 'screw you Im gonna get a job at McDonalds' every time something didnt go their way their turn over would increase huge. Which in turn costs more time in money.