When it comes to fast food restaurants, they allow many
people to work for them. The typical types of workers usually are teenagers,
immigrants, low class women, and people who do not have a higher education. However,
even though these industries rake in billions and billions of dollars, people
across the whole country still only earn minimum wage or just above it. There is no doubt that there are also college
students who also work at fast food industries. However, they are also getting paid
at least $15 an hour like the rest of the employees. According to Goldstein,
“if one-tenth of these workers “have the education and connectivity” to compete
in the upper-level job market, “that is still 150 million people, roughly the
size of the entire U.S. workforce”.
This has become a big issue in recent years and is
definitely an issue of race, gender, and class. The Fight for Fifteen is a
campaign started by low wage workers who are employed by companies such as
McDonalds, Jack in the Box, and many other low income fast food restaurants.
These workers have gone on strike to increase the minimum wage to 15 dollars. It
is no wonder that these people are trying to increase their pay. They want more
money so they can get out of their low social status. These jobs really don’t
require any education or experience and it seems as if these workers are just
trying to keep their same jobs with an increase in pay. Instead of working
harder and trying to find something better, they are choosing to just stay in the
job that they have which really doesn’t require much work. These types of jobs
should be going to people in high school or college so that they can get a
start in the workforce and probably don’t need much pay to begin with. However,
I also can understand why cashiers are fighting for their jobs because there is
a chance that they could soon be replaced with automatic kiosks that can take
people’s orders .People will be losing their jobs because of technology
replacing them, even though it is cheaper to train somebody to take orders. If they
were replaced with kiosks, it could end up being more expensive to have
somebody repair the equipment should anything happen to it.
Since I’m about to graduate from college, there is no doubt
that looking for a job will be difficult. However, from what I learned from
this is that if the employees are looking for more money, they should just look
for a job that pays more instead of arguing about it. Also, if they aren’t able
to look for other jobs, they have to understand that getting a minimum wage is
better than getting no wage at all. They shouldn’t blame the industries for the
minimum wages they receive. After all, when employing to places like McDonalds,
they agree that the wage that they will receive will not be as high as they
think it will be. Also, if the minimum wage goes up, wouldn’t all of the prices
have to increase as well? Overall, we shouldn’t pay more just because they want
higher wages. This is a problem that they have to deal with on their own. As will I as I look for jobs out there.
