MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency
Protesting McDonald's workers arrested in Chicago; labor pay debate beginning to brew in US
More than 100 demonstrators seeking better pay for McDonald's workers were arrested on Thursday as protesters swarmed the fast-food chain's corporate campus near Chicago demanding a minimum wage of 15 dollars an hour and the right to unionize. Read full article
Comments
Disclaimer & comment rulesI must admit that I'm glad that I live in a country with a good minimum wage.
May 23rd, 2014 - 11:32 am - Link - Report abuse 0It would be better for everyone if there was no “minimum” on wages. It is a silly concept that increases unemployment.
May 23rd, 2014 - 11:34 am - Link - Report abuse 0I wholeheartedly disagree. Unfettered market forces should not always prevail over societal obligations.
May 23rd, 2014 - 12:26 pm - Link - Report abuse 0As Australia's unemployment is currently lower than the US', your claim doesn't ring true.
All McDonald's has to do is close the Ronald McDonald clone factory and they could easily increase their wages. It's not like the world really needs any more Creepy Clowns.
May 23rd, 2014 - 12:28 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Either that, or Don Thompson should be strongly encouraged to do an episode of Undercover Boss.
@ 3 Anglotino
May 23rd, 2014 - 09:20 pm - Link - Report abuse 0In a really free market with low unemployment the minimum wage should not even be considered, or are you telling me that Australians are so poorly paid and the markets so weak that the minimum wage is a must?
I was last in South Australia 6 years ago and everything was racing ahead. The price of housing was going through the stratosphere and the new build couldn’t keep pace. There were plenty of job vacancies and businesses in general were understaffed. Are you saying all that has changed for the worst?
In a country like the UK the minimum wage has been a disaster in my opinion. Yes, a few thousands got marginally more money but they were the deadbeats who took no part in working at school and improving their mind. I think they were overpaid.
The minimum wage is now the prop to many long hour low pay jobs that uni students need to make ends meet and of course experience Labour’s social experiment with closing Grammar Schools in favour of “comprehensives” which tend to be the entropy level of education.
Unless the UK get back to encouraging better individual student performance irrespective of leaving the underperforming to muddle on as they want and getting away from the “everybody must have a prize in school day races (and that happens) in favour of telling them to stop lounging about and start working the country is fucked.
And the minimum wage is the first thing that should go.
Life IS unfair and molly-coddling people does them no good in preparing them for it.
@5 Chris
May 24th, 2014 - 05:46 am - Link - Report abuse 0The reason why there were so many available jobs when you were here was because the mining boom, with it's higher paying jobs, sucked up so much of the employee market. There was considerable pressure, which the govt. partially yielded to, to allow temporary visas for overseas workers to work here. Considerable exploitation then ensued. Those vacancies, accompanied by a gradual slowdown in the mining boom, no longer exist.
Housing prices in this country are dependent on more than just economic conditions. Australians have always preferred to invest their savings in bricks and mortar, even when there are good reasons not to. High levels of migration, and the sheer size, and the low population density, of our sprawling metropolises, makes the infrastructure necessary for new housing very expensive. And we don't have enough skilled tradesmen/women, which also adds to the price of real estate.
Australia is now one of the most expensive places on the planet to live. If our minimum wages were as low as the U.S. ( we pay our lowest-paid workers approximately twice the American equivalent ) fully employed workers would not be able to feed and shelter themselves, let alone raise a family.
Our high levels of income equality, our low rates of homelessness, are all partly to do with that minimum wage IMO. If that means paying an extra 50c for a cup of coffee I can live with that. I agree with you - life is indeed unfair. So why make it anyMORE unfair if we don't have to?
@ 6 Heisenbergcontext
May 24th, 2014 - 12:03 pm - Link - Report abuse 0“So why make it any MORE unfair if we don't have to?”
Thanks for the run down on what has happened since I was last there.
How I wish it was just 50c on a cup of coffee to cover the Social Inclusion package that “No Money Pepe” and his gang of illiterate and innumerate commie twats introduced to “help the poor2: far from it. There has always been an element of “poor” in Uruguay, only now they have LED TV to watch while they are smoking their head off. I have never seen so many people smoking since I was 20.
Two of my friends are teachers in the local senior school. If they did the same job in the UK (one has a management role) they would be at least TEN TIMES better off. Nor are they only on one tenth of the UK salary they have to pay 40% in personal tax (the highest ever) since the programme was started. This programme, which does nothing but give the idle bastards money instead of jobs so that they could have a measure of self-worth to go with it, has been the principal reason why Pepe cannot pay the judiciary their agreed rise from 18 months ago but he is also holding back the final agreed element from the teachers as well because “there is no money in the government coffers”. Hence the tag.
I am all for supporting those people who are disabled, have a long term illness or are retraining for another job, but that is not what is happening in Uruguay and the SIP is causing real hardship to very many people who are in work and paying for those who never worked in school, left when they were 15 (legal minimum age) and have never worked since school.
“So why make it unfair if we don't have to?”
@7 Chris
May 24th, 2014 - 12:19 pm - Link - Report abuse 0So THAT'S why you always call him “no money”. I always wondered. Sorry about your friends. No-one on that income should be paying that much tax.
Chris, at least we don't depend on the WB and IMF in order to get our budget to meet ends.
May 24th, 2014 - 12:41 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Also, we don't export wars in order to import victims of the same only to marginalize them in ghettos, covered in concrete just to call it decent...
If you came to Uruguay to impose your fascist world view, don't bother. You'll only get more and more upset.
If he could not have ended slavery.
May 24th, 2014 - 01:29 pm - Link - Report abuse 0https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cc2fYoJGrr4&list=FLmXPTu1f8AdGlizWNiASx2A&feature=mh_lolz
@ 9
May 24th, 2014 - 08:28 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Despite my better judgement:
1) The budget doesn't balance you twat, why do you think I call the murdering commie bastard “No Money Pepe”. If you LIVED here you would know all of this;
2) Stop with the drivel, it makes you look even more of a looney;
3) I don’t have a fascist world view. I think about the honest workers of Uruguay who are trying their best to raise their families honestly not the deadbeats who were “poor” according to what (your standard?), but are now in the same hovel watching an LED TV and laughing at the same people who are providing the money.
Just when are you going to get real and stop viewing the world through commie values that have not even lasted more than 70 years?
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