Comments

101
@99, Not a food service worker here. Just care about people. Compassion. It's not a weakness.
102
@100, internships are not equivalent to employment. They are temporary positions that a person takes in order to gain knowledge and experience to move into their chosen field as a career. And I don't know about the Stranger internships, but most of them are not full time.

Fast food is not along the path to a greater career, it is the only option for the worker at the time. And people don't take internships because they need to. One is wage slavery, one of them isn't.
103
the Stranger should pay its interns but even if they don´t I still want them (or someone else who publishes where I can read) to write about these events

Maybe I overestimate the margins of urban fast food and grocery but it seems, to me, that employer demand wouldn´t collapse with a few bucks´ improvement in the minimum wage. Most employment at minimum wage is by huge companies, who can often tolerate low margins (often model themselves around em) and who already staff pretty sparingly

the end of what we think of as fast food will be a good thing. right now it´s a vehicle for big, fat waste of peeps´ work and agro land. people get ugly and unhealthy eating it, especially kids. even if a high min wage just made them go robo with all of the jobs it would still be a victory, imo, as it would present an opportunity for less heinous redeployment of humans, who are often good at doing cool stuff if there´s a good plan

I agree with the med pro these good people are not going to win much, this way. gotta go via local politics, city min wage
104
@102 how do you think people end up in fast food. Its from lack of opportunities. Unpaid internships are just a another opportunity people without financial support lack. If you don't have financial support how can you afford to work for free while living in Seattle?

plus more and more companies are using unpaid interns to replace paying jobs. Look at companies who pay interns, most of them hire their interns as they look at the internship as an investment in the company. Most companies that use unpaid interns don't hire them, because they see the internship as a revolving door of free labor.

if the stranger really cared about to people making a living wage they'd stop using unpaid interns because unpaid internships are part of the problem.
105
@100 also unpaid internships are wage slavery, as you put it. What about the journalist student who used all his financial resources going to school and is broke and in debt when he graduated. Say he maxed out his credit. What is he going to do if he can't afford to live in Seattle and work for free to get "experience" which may or may not get him a job? Probably he's going to work in fast food or other min wage job. That's a huge part of with the 20-30 old age group. There's a ton of underemployed university grads in the work force working min.wage jobs because they can't get the experience needed for their chosen profession. Unpaid internships contribute to this problem.
106
Bah I meant. @102 in my above post.
107
internships are not equivalent to employment.


YES THEY ARE. This fallacy has to be destroyed.

Interns are used as revolving door labor. There is only one ethical choice and that is to pay them.

The Stranger is being totally hypocritical on issues of wages and they damn well know it. There is simply no excuse to not pay interns excepting for one: Greed. The Stranger uses the same idiotic unethical rationalizations to not pay thier interns that McD's and every other greedy scum bag out there uses to rip off employees. Sorry there is no difference.

Not only that having unpaid internships guarantees that you will have an all white all upper-middle class professional class of people - the ones that can cruise on Mommy and Daddies money - that locks out minorities and poor people from social mobility.

I pay my interns the pittance of minimum wage. And if I can The Stranger sure as fuck can.
108
@104 is totally correct.
109
Okay, I agree with you guys. Internships are a privilege only someone with other income can have, and I do agree that that isn't right.

You have successfully changed my view; I hope all people start paying their temporary laborers.
110
knowledge is power . read: The Cancer Stage of Capitalism by Prof. John McMurtry . google this ISBN: 0745313477 .
111
People need to understand that this sounds like a great idea. Then you need to wake up and realize that if this is done who will pay for it? The company? Wrong. The consumer and the employee will.
Prepare for price hikes for everything and the $1 menu replaced with the new $4 menu.
It will all be blamed on inflation and the greedy companies all over again and things will be exactly as it was before.
112
People need to understand that this sounds like a great idea. Then you need to wake up and realize that if this is done who will pay for it? The company? Wrong. The consumer and the employee will.
Prepare for price hikes for everything and the $1 menu replaced with the new $4 menu.
It will all be blamed on inflation and the greedy companies all over again and things will be exactly as it was before.

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