Features
Aug 28, 2013 at 4:00 am
The Horror Stories, the National Walkout August 29, and the Movement to Include Corporate Baristas in the Fight
Fry Hand illustration by James Yamasaki
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800 Maynard Ave S, Suite 200, Seattle, WA 98134
800 Maynard Ave S, Suite 200, Seattle, WA 98134
What a well-researched article, not full of unverified anecdotes at all. And how does this track with small, independent coffee shops not offering their employees health insurance?
And yet no mention of the fact that Starbucks offers more benefits, or rather *any* benefits, while small coffee shops largely do not. This is a terrible article for a multitude of reasons; that's just the most egregious example. A little more honesty (or even just a smidgen of it) would help your cause more than you think.
That means we're ALL subsidizing Walmart, McDonald's, and other such companies because they're too damn greedy to share their huge corporate profits while they take full advantage of a soft labor market.
Greed. That's it. Greed for the money they should be paying their employees and greed for YOUR tax money in the form of food stamps and all other government subsidies.
I really do hope they get the $15.00 an hour but I also hope that this isn't the end of the discussion about how Seattle isn't affordable for a growing number of the population.
Don't eat at McDonald's.
Don't shop at Wal*Mart.
Profit-lusting CEOs can't crush out the 99% if we're not buying what they're pushing at our expense.
Why should Seattle be the only place somebody earns a livable wage? We're a city of just over 600,000 people, but live in a metro area of 4 million. It just doesn't make sense to be so limited in our scope.
Plus, Seattle has a lot more pressing issues to deal with like huge transportation projects that need funding, public safety improvements and neighborhoods that still lack basic amenities.
Also "extraordinarily successful"? How? Not one demand was met. Sure you got some people talking, but that makes it as successful as kony 2012. This is what I hate about the left, we defined a successful movement as one that just raises awareness, but does nothing. You know how the right defines "extraordinarily successful" as, packing the congress with representatives that votes the way they want.
I think to Keshmeshi's point, this is mostly, if not entirely, an OpEd rather than a well-balanced journalistic article. Which is fine. When you push and mold the facts to suit your opinion - own it!
And I'd bet Starbucks doesn't have any unpaid interns.
Or, we can all be paing $12 for a Whopper. I mean, if they served it out of a FOOD TRUCK, it would be gormet and well worth a Stranger review, right?
"We’re proud to offer competitive pay to all interns, plus housing assistance for students based outside of the Seattle area."
They're not trying to stir the pot for self-promoting outrage are they, Not at all like the Nicklesville article that quietly disappeared...
Dominic Holden and his crew have a hard-on to call other people to task, especially after bringing down the Big Bad Cop...
Couldn't they have added anything to this article about the working poor?
I'm guessing the "are you paying your interns yet?" meme in this comment section is from paid corporate posters.
By the way, Dom, when are YOU, yourself, going to call Darryl down at the Guild and organize this scab rag for your exploited colleagues and the exploited interns? When, Dom?
Hey you know what you should do? You should go to universities and tell them that they don't pay their students enough since they work there. That would be awesome.
Or you could go to carpenter firms and talk about the teaching spots many have. Oh oh oh! Could you do me a solid and sorta swing by every bank office, every large corporation, every single newspaper in the world and then rush on via any foreign ministry in the world or for that matter government branch and be all butt-hurt about interns...
Or is this just allot of you right-wing nutjobs who can't grasp simple politics when its not in the shape of knee-jerk reactions and grandstanding?
Then there's the issue that more and more companies are using unpaid internships to get around min-wage laws, replacing paid workers with unpaid labour.
Google unpaid interns and you'll find many good reasons why fighting to end unpaid internships are tied to fighting for rising the min-wage.
Here's just one I found:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/03/busine…
"many students and administrators complain that the growth in unpaid internships undercuts that effort by favoring well-to-do and well-connected students, speeding their climb up the career ladder.
Many less affluent students say they cannot afford to spend their summers at unpaid internships, and in any case, they often do not have an uncle or family golf buddy who can connect them to a prestigious internship. "
This is a very much a left wing issue.
The general m.o. of the Teabillies is to try, bludgeon tools of specious reasoning in hand, to portray all arguments of policy as ideologically failed as their own.
This is why their comments sound so consistently stupid: they are that stupid.
For the record I am entirely for raising the minimum wage to $15. I am as liberal and progressive as they come.
The only time unpaid internships are remotely justified art for non-profits or for school credit (though that is also highly abused).
I don't know what planet you live on but addressing the unethical and immoral practice of a for-profit business utilizing unpaid labor is NOT rightwing issue or knee jerk.
Unpaid labor in the form of internships is a contributing factor of suppressed wages and huge barrier for entry in to the professional classes for lower income people. Mostly upper-middle class usually white kids can afford to do unpaid internships.
Also. Government internships are not for profit and nearly always are for school credit. (And BTW some government departments - like various engineering related departments - DO pay their interns) And BTW apprentice labor is generally paid.
A for profit business labeling unpaid labor as an "internship" is a simple way to lower your overhead. That's all it is. No rationalization you can blithely list out can justify exploiting labor with out compensation.
How many interns does The Stranger use? 3? 4? 5? How many total full-time staff does the Stranger employ? 20?
That is an awfully high percentage of unpaid labor being used. If Starbucks did that (who pay their interns, BTW) you can bet Holden would be all over that shit.
If the The Stranger wants to have any moral authority on an OPINION piece about wage issues, it has to address it's own unethical practices first. Dominic is asking other people to take a stand for fair wages in this article but when taken to task to the same thing simply ignores the question. So we can ignore him. Even if he is right about the minimum wage itself.
I'm a small shop of six people. We pay our interns. If we can, so can the fucking Stranger.
When Mcdonalds workers are making as much (more if the min wage increased) than college educated social workers then the country needs to wake the fuck up.
By the way, yes, Brandon, I'll take a scone with my double-tall.
But as far as Fast Food Joints, if $15 an hour becomes law, they will have no choice.
Keep in mind that if Minimum Wage had kept up with inflation, it would already be $15 an hour.
One good result of a higher wage: Less SPIT on your burger.
-If Troy Dennison from Jimmy John's was hit by a car while working, he would have been completely covered by L&I (including getting paid for missed hours)
-Troy Dennison is a delivery driver, which means that with tips included (and you would be amazed at how consistent tips are) he regularly makes close to if not more than $15 an hour
-The company that Troy works for (note: Almost all Jimmy John's in the country are franchises, making them locally-owned small businesses) provides FREE life insurance to all employees working more than 20 hours a week (this means Troy), offers heavily discounted healthcare (dental, vision, and health) to all employees who average 25 hours a week (this also means Troy for most of his tenure at the company), and the management just so happens to be pretty flexible about when their employees request time off (as in the week before someone will say "I want to go to the Gorge for a concert next week", and they will get the response of "Ok, we'll get something figured out")
-Most of the people in this company, and specifically Troy's store, have the possibility to work more hours than they currently are. They decline to usually
-Finally, Troy was offered at one point to become a manager-in-training candidate. He declined. This definitely would have allowed him to make more money, and it would not have taken long.
Obviously I have personal knowledge of this company, and of this specific employee (as well as a few other employees interviewed by other media). There are several things to take from this: 1.)A majority of people who participated in the walkout from Seattle-area Jimmy John's were delivery drivers (again they usually make pretty good money), 2.) A majority of the people who DID NOT walkout were inshop workers who make less than delivery drivers, 3.) The reason these inshop workers did not leave is not, as Troy claimed in a different interview, because they were afraid of being fired (this is an asinine assertion because it was widely publicized by both media and the organizers of the walk out that the employees could not be fired for participating), but because they had no reason to (in essence they like working where they work), and 4.) If these people don't make enough money than how can they afford to miss an entire days worth of work which, especially for delivery drivers, is probably one of the busiest of the week (i.e. Troy would have made more money)
These are the reasons why this article is not only an inflated piece of self-righteous inanity, but could have been easily balanced if anyone cared to ask simple questions.
I can only comment about this company and therefore cannot speak to the possible plight of other "low-wage earners". However, hopefully this will encourage people to hear both sides of an argument/issue before they prematurely pass judgement.
What a sophisticated level of debate we have here. For those willing to face it, here are some possible outcomes that do not bode well for these workers:
1. McDonald's is ready to roll out touch-screen kiosks in their European stores - I give it one year before they start to appear here. That option will look mighty attractive against $15 an hour.
2. What is to stop FF companies from raising the requirements for applicants to reflect higher wages? It would be a simple matter to require 3 years of work experience, an associate's degree, or other type of requirement - shutting out many.
3. See the social worker's post above. There are many jobs out there that pay $15 or less where employers want a degree: admin assistant for a non-profit, daycare workers, special education aides...those folks will strike for $20 an hour.
Finally what, exactly, is the problem with low wage earners being subsidized by taxpayer dollars? Taking care of the poor, disabled, or elderly is an appropriate role for government. I'd rather see local governments addressing issues such as housing, food, ect...THAN THE PRIVATE SECTOR. I have no qualms about this in principle - its the impression that the government is wasteful and inefficient that makes me angry about how tax dollars are used, not the basic principle of taking from the better off to help the less fortunate.
I don't know about anybody else, but the last time I could get away with paying a mere $20 a month for healthcare in Washington State, it was for Basic Health, 10 years ago, on an extremely limited individual plan with no primary care physician and countless hours spent in crowded waiting rooms just for annual exams even THEN.
When I read about the growing number of highly educated people here in the United States (I have a BA myself, and am working on putting my degree to good use) who have master's degrees and doctorates, with spouses, and children to support, yet still have to work two, three, or more "jobs" like this just to get by makes me want to puke!
By the way, I'm a lot healthier, too, since I started boycotting fast food joints like McDonald's.
First you take every penny you have in the world and then barrow the other 80% of what you need to open the business.
Then you work 18 to 20 hours a day 7 days a week for the next 3 to 5 years.
If you lucky you can start paying yourself by the third year.
Of cores you have been paying the corporate entity you’re a franchisee of 10% to 20% of your gross sales from the day you opened the door, it doesn’t matter that you can’t pay yourself yet.
Every few weeks the products you use get more expensive but you can’t increase your prices because of the $5 foot long and let’s not forget the dollar menu.
Insurance always seems to go up 10% every year even when you don’t have any clams.
Don’t get me wrong owning a franchise can provide a comfortable life but you earn every penny of it.
By comfortable I mean 10 to 12 percent of gross sales are your pretax profit
Oh wait, all of you?
How utterly fucking pathetic.
But anyway, @54 (Tommy) - About the cost of a franchise, that's not my problem. That's YOUR problem for throwing your lot in with Subway or whoever. Open a real deli and pay your people a LIVING WAGE.
universal care for children and for the elderly: good, labor intensive, low eco-footprint relative to productive work, more dependent on common skills than impossible economic growth
if the stranger had 10 unpaid interns and contributed to improvement of hundreds or thousands of peoples' standards of living through augmentation of the minimum wage, wouldn't that be a pretty hot tradeoff? heck US beat Hirohito with a draft
the argument 12 makes re: priorities seems false. waiting for action by chronically booty legislatures higher up the ladder is not a good way to improve things. most people live in cities, nowadays. a lot of the most important governance will take place at that level. popular reforms should only build momentum for other ones, not distract from 'em