This Thursday fast food workers are going to walk off the job in their quest for a $15.00 minumum wage.
Currently, the median pay for fast-food workers is just over $9 an hour, or about $18,500 a year. That's roughly $4,500 lower than the Census Bureau's poverty threshold level of $23,000 for a family of four.
Thursday's action would come more than a month after the National Labor Relations Board's general counsel ruled that McDonald's is a joint employer that exerts substantial power over working conditions at its franchisees.
The ruling, if upheld, means McDonald's could be held liable for labor violations at its more than 12,000 franchisee-owned restaurants.
McDonald's has contended that franchisees operate as independent businesses and that, therefore, it's not liable.
In March, McDonald's workers filed seven class-action lawsuits in New York, California and Michigan over wage theft violations.
The suits allege that McDonald's has forced employees to work off the clock, not paid them overtime and struck hours off their time cards.
McDonald's did not respond to a request for comment on the status of the class action suits or the preliminary ruling by the National Labor Relations Board.
See in the old days, when Corporate America hired Americans, the people who worked at Mcdonalds were high school kids.
Once corporations made millions of American professionals unemployed, suddenly Mcdonalds could upgrade their workers for the same crappy wages.
The problem is older professionals are a lot more likely to punch back, than bright eyed high school kids. Now Mcdonalds (and the others) have a fight on their hands.
the face of today's fast food workers -- 70% of whom are over the age of 20, nearly 40% have children and a third of them have spent some time in college, according to U.S. census data.
In 1979, teenagers held 26% of all low-wage jobs, while adults aged 25-64 made up less than half of such workers, according to the Center for Economic and Policy Research,
Today, only 12% of low paying jobs are held by teenagers, while adults make up 60% of them. Also, only 20% of such workers had attended some college in 1979. Today, it's 33%.
In essence, people working at a McDonald's (MCD), Burger King (BKW) or Wendy's (WEN) are older and more educated, but earning some of the lowest wages in the economy.
"Some customers think you're stupid because you're behind the counter, but I have an education,"
Finley is not alone in not being able to convert his degree to a better-paying job. Job choices have become limited -- 44% of American jobs created in the past four years have been in low wage industries like fast food, even with an education," said Finley.
A key argument behind the latest wave of strikes to raise wages to $15 an hour is that fast food workers these days are no longer just teenagers looking for pocket change. They are mothers and fathers struggling to raise children on wages that are too low, in most cases below poverty level.
fast food companies haven't shared their profits equally among their workers. While the lowest paid have not seen a raise in a long time, the industry's top management are not only being paid handsomely but have given themselves hefty raises.
CEO compensation in the industry just since 2000 quadrupled to $24 million, while average fast food worker's wage only increased 0.3%.
Fast food CEOs also make 1,000 times more than the average worker in the industry.
"The idea that you can work hard and play by the rules and get ahead is disappearing for a large number of American workers," said Catherine Ruetschlin, an analyst at Demos.
"As for the American Dream, it's not as easy as people think to leverage into upward mobility from low wage jobs."
Tanika Smith, a 25-year-old with a college degree, says her $8.75 hourly wage has barely budged since she started seven years ago at a McDonald's in Chicago.
"I never imagined working at a fast food place with a B.A. I imagined I'd be working downtown at a law firm making major bucks," says Smith, who hopes to earn a master's degree and aspires to be a judge.
"The people I work with now are not comfortable doing what they are doing. It's not what they want - but that's where the jobs are,"
