Advocates bank on restaurant strikes to revive $15 a day minimum wage talks

Yahoo News reported that a slew of fast food worker strikes across the US might revive talks on getting employees in the fast food industry in the US to get paid higher than the current federal minimum wage in the country, or so the sympathizers thought.

Organizing director Kendall Fells of Fast Food Forward told Aaron Task of the Daily Ticker that workers in the said industry are living in poverty. Yahoo News said that the average wage of fast food workers in the US is a little above $9 per hour at $19,000 annually. The official poverty line in the US is at $19,790 for a family of three.

Although the clamor for wage increase is a noble cause, the news outlet said it is unlikely that legislators would pay attention to it. Detractors have said that approving a higher than the current minimum wage could destroy businesses financially through increases in labor costs that might translate to higher menu prices. Moreover, the problem is said to be a localized problem, as states with high cost of living along with liberally-minded population centers like New York and San Francisco could be open to such proposal. On the other hand, it is unlikely that fas tfood chains can afford, or at least be open to increasing the wages on workers who are readily expendable considering the fact that the jobs they hold does not require a lot of skills to do.

But minimum wage activists have such hope on a several prominent Republicans like Mitt Romney, who earlier has been vocal about supporting an increase of the minimum wage in the US. Moreover, a concerted effort could also convince some restaurants. Yahoo News noted that a Michigan-based burger and chicken shop owner had started paying $15 a hour to its employees last fall to keep employee satisfaction up and staff turnover down.

Tags

Fast Food Forward, McDonalds minimum wages, Mitt Romney

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