It’s pretty wild to me that healthcare workers would only earn $5 more per hour than McDonald’s workers.
It’s also wild that the $30,000,000,000.00 that the UPS drivers are splitting, would have only gone to a few incredibly wealthy people, had the workers not made a stand.
They unfortunately didn’t fight to end the two tier system for part time workers, which is why your math is off. The part time employees aren’t very engaged with the union and there was/is little attempt from the union the reach out to that section of their members to educate and involve them.
The union leadership has a vested interest in selling that they got an amazing deal, but this was a huge failure to fight over. Two teir pay is used by the owners to ensure their employees aren’t a united front.
Let’s not get too caught up on comparisons, everyone deserves a living wage. McDonald’s is a job just as much as healthcare work is, an hour of your life takes just as much of your time no matter where you work. The big question to me is why this minimum wage isn’t being applied across all industries
Nobody is saying it’s not a job. You’re required to be there and commit your time for both industries. But the effort required to get a nursing job is magnitudes greater than the effort to get a McDonald’s job, and the pay should reflect that. $5 an hour more isn’t enough to justify all the hoops a nurse has to jump through to get the job, and the ridiculous shit (sometimes literally) they have to deal with. Some other commenters pointed out that the $25 is for anyone who works in a hospital, not necessarily for healthcare workers in the traditional sense, which makes more sense.
You’re latching onto the examples meant to illustrate a point, instead of understanding the overall message. And no, they wouldn’t necessarily be making more. EMTs are notoriously underpaid. Since it still hasn’t been clear to you, I’ll try to spell it out plainly: Working at a hospital in the healthcare industry is orders of magnitude harder than working at a fast food restaurant, and I don’t think $5 more per hour reflects that reality.
It’s harder because you have people saying “well at least you’re doing what you love, caring for people” as if it justifies making their job more shitty.
How is making cafeteria food caring for people? Why do they deserve more than $25 an hour when people doing the same work in a fast food restaurant get $5 less?
This reminds me of the “heroes work here” signs as if the people washing the linens were heroes.
I have a kid who enjoys their school food because people there care. Fuck anyone actively denying that my kid actually receives a benefit from that service and from people actually caring about doing their job well.
You’re hung up on individual positions, so let’s use the two I mentioned. I looked up EMT Salary Central California: Average annual salary is $39,152. Divided by 52 weeks, divided by 40 hours in a work week is $18.82 an hour.
Now these new laws will almost double the income for fast food workers, but give EMTs and Phlebotomists a far smaller increase for work that is more stressful, more dangerous, and requires more training. Why should their equivalent income go down proportionately?
I think you’re maybe reading what I’m saying as “fast food workers are getting too much”, but what I’m really saying is “healthcare workers aren’t getting enough”.
We’re already in a healthcare worker crisis. What do you think is going to happen when they can just quit their stressful, dangerous job, and go work at McDonald’s, making $2 more an hour than they were before? There’s going to be an even bigger shortage. Sure, you’re probably going to counter with “well then the market will demand their pay goes up!”. But that’s what this whole post is about. Right? The workers getting their fair value. I don’t think the healthcare workers are getting their fair value, and I think it has the potential to cause an even worse shortage of healthcare workers. Sure, it’ll probably be temporary, but how does that help anyone affected by it during the crisis?
Edited for a bunch of mobile phone typos and formatting.
I know what you’re saying. Maybe you just have a lot more faith in hospitals and the free market than I do. You’re making an assumption that the hospitals are going to voluntarily give them proportionate raises above the new minimums. I don’t think that’s what’s going to happen. They’re going to get bumped up to the new minimum until market factors force them to go higher, and the industry and employees will suffer until that all shakes down. Anyways, it’s sending a message that saving someone’s life in a crisis on a daily basis is only worth 25% more money than running a cash register. Perhaps you agree with that. I don’t. We’re both entitled to our individual perspectives on this subject.
Honestly at this point, I feel like $25 should be the minimum wage. Because let’s be honest, 7:25 might as well be slavery with how much it can buy you.
I feel like we need to get inflation under control and prices back to reasonable, rather than making sweeping pay changes across all industries, while prices soar, and our currency valuation falls. Changes that are too drastic and far-reaching can cause the entire economy to collapse and our currency to falter.
I’ve worked food service, retail, office work, and currently I’m a janitor. Of these office work was the least demanding. The most demanding, definitely retail.
At this point a worker Bill of Rights for retail workers needs to at bare minimum not only include pay being triple, but workers absolutely need the right to self-defense from an unruly customer. Main reason don’t work retail is because a drunk asshole got me fired by calling up corporate because I ask him multiple times to leave the store instead of hearing out his crazy rant about how flat the Earth was. To make matters worse it was closing time, so if I hadn’t had let him out, I would have been fired for not escorting him out of the store. Making it a true damned if you do damned if you don’t.
Personally all the office work was easier, I prefer being a janitor because I don’t have to sit and stay in one place, I am autistic and I have attention deficit disorder, I can’t sit in one place for too long it drives me crazy both physically and mentally.
I remember back when the fight for 15 first started, I had plenty of people on Facebook that were quick to point out that EMT workers only made 15 an hour, and that how Ludacris it was that fast food workers would want to be paid that much and claimed you wouldn’t have EMTs anymore because they would all go flip burgers.
Missing the point that if 15 is so low it is what fast food workers would need to cover their expenses and nothing more, and maybe EMTs need a raise of Their Own.
I quickly learned a slogan that I would give these people that, just absolutely, I am a big fan of, and that slogan is. We all do better, when we all do better
I elaborated on this and even specifically included EMTs much further down in the comment chain. To summarize it, I don’t think this is doing enough for healthcare workers, especially those doing actual healthcare work, like phlebotomists and EMTs.
It’s pretty wild to me that healthcare workers would only earn $5 more per hour than McDonald’s workers.
A lot of people would look at that statement and think that fast food workers are going to be overpaid here in CA, but in reality, both groups were being severely underpaid and to a degree healthcare workers still are way behind what they should be earning considering the massive windfalls that for-profit healthcare providers are raking in. Billions to the top, peanuts for the rest.
I feel like part of this needs to address the common claim that the businesses in question will go bankrupt as a result of the increases in pay for labor.
It’s great that unions increase pay. But that hasn’t been the argument I’ve heard against unions. It’s that increasing the pay will tank the company and everyone would shortly be out of work. Which I don’t believe at all, but that’s the common argument against unions
I can’t think of a quick indisputable rebuttal to that claim, like I could say the companies have paid higher wages in the past relative to the value of the dollar and stayed in business, but there are a lot of factors involved that would need examining. But like another comment said risk is inherent in any business, if your business can’t succeed with these wages another company will fill your place. If no company can succeed with pay rates and benefits that are bare minimum for living then there is a root aspect of this setup that needs to change.
One thing we could do is look at companies that have unionized or increased wages and benefits for workers and were successful as a business afterwards. I don’t know any specific companies off-hand that are good examples, but there are probably some that could be mentioned if people doubt the possibility.
I am asking once again for your support of unionization and strikes. While the WGA strike is over, the UAW, Kaiser employees (soon-ish) , and of course, SAG-AFTRA, still need your support.
There is a tech union :) Unions and pro-union movements have been growing a lot in major tech companies in recent years and they have already had significant achievements in improving workers’ conditions. If you would like to join don’t hesitate to check out CODE-CWA and remember the most important thing is to start building support for unions among your coworkers!
It’s not evenly distributed, but it’s pretty well distributed. Average UPS drivers will make 49$/h (roughly 100k a year), and up to 170k a year on the higher end.
I’m not sure how to overcome those hurtles. But check out the SEIU website. That’s the union that organized the justice for janitors movement. I know that they’re currently working on unionizing other marginalized employees across the country (like adjunct faculty). I’m sure there are resources on their website.
Thanks, because I am in North Carolina and the labor situation down here is terrible.
That said my supervisor in coworkers are pretty cool, I’m pretty sure that if we lived in a different state we would already be in a union. I’m on a first name basis with my supervisor, and you know I’ve rubbed out those with her and her people enough times to know that basically everything that goes tits up around here is the fault of corporation, heck, my boss is boss is pretty much admitted during one meeting that the only reason he doesn’t have it bigger budget or a company card is because he’s pretty sure he’s not the right color to get it.
Basically almost every job I have worked in this state, which is the only state I’ve ever worked in, with the exception of the job I have now. Had this whole seminar about how we should never trust Union people and even threaten penalizing employees who speak of such things. Which I’m sure is not legal.
I have been asked this several times, I need time I have asked why people seem to think that moving is free.
It isn’t that I’ve just never considered the possibility that I could get up and move to a different state, it’s the fact that I have the support network here in my home state that I would not have anywhere else, and that support network is the only reason I’m not on the streets.
Crothal took over the housekeeping department in the hospital that I work at. The difference in how clean the place was before and after they took over is night and day, and not in a good way.
Crothal is all about theater. As long as it looks like someone is cleaning, that’s good enough for them
love the UPS and healthcare workers stuff…but…fast food? I’d like to see every fast food place go out of business. Celebrating a bit higher wages from mega-corp fast food places seems a bit…odd, considering fast food is a cancer on society. although i guess if paying the higher wages squeezes them more, i’m all for it. But seriously…who in their right mind even goes to fast food places these days? it’s basically setting fire to your own money and health.
The workers are the union and the union only works if the workers participate. You should encourage your partner to get with her coworkers and put some pressure on whoever is in leadership to get contract negotiations started. It all starts with a conversation with her coworkers.
In reality won’t these costs just be passed on to the consumer because there is absolutely no chance corps are going to stop worrying about shareholders and profits above all? I’m all for unions and people making more but it all seems like a waste if the cost of these changes just translates to more expensive everything.
You think corpos could sell you a burger for $8 but are only charging $6 out of the goodness of their hearts?
Companies always have charged and always will charge as much as consumers are willing to pay. If consumers won’t pay enough to keep them profitable, they go out of business.
The whole concept of “passing on costs to consumers” is just a psychological ploy tricking you into accepting higher prices. If we don’t accept higher prices, they won’t charge higher prices.
If enough people believe that higher wages = higher prices, then it will become so. In fact it likely already has become so.
But higher wages COULD = lower profits/exec salaries/stock buybacks etc. If we refuse to pay higher prices. Or if there’s nowhere else to make up the costs, they go out of business. Capitalism baby!
“Here’s proof that his year’s organized labor uprising is working:”
The next few paragraphs are in yellow:
"340,000 UPS workers won $30 BILLION in raises, more time off. and more full-time jobs after threatening to strike.
"Writers beat the greedy Hollywood CEO’s replacing them with AI and won increased residuals, healthcare, and pension contributions.
"Half a million Fast Food Workers in CA won a $20 minimum wage and a seat at the table determining future wages, benefits and working conditions.
“Half a million California Health Care Workers won a $25 an hour minimum wage.”
The final paragraph is in white again:
“Unions work. You can bank on it.”
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Where I work now, Big Lots, is the greatest example of a company that needs a union I have ever seen. However in the less than 6 months I’ve been there the staff has almost entirely changed and we’ve gone from about 15 employees to about 8. It’s the worst corporate nonsense, the worst pay, the worst hours, the worst benefits, the worst recognition, and the worst job in general I’ve ever fucking had by a MASSIVE margin, so naturally it forces employees to watch the strongest anti union video I’ve ever bore witness to in my life. I would love to start a union here, but by the time I even talked to everyone half of them will have quit already.
Bro I’m barely hanging on. I can’t pay my bills anymore, I can barely afford to eat, I have zero energy and I’m depressed constantly. I have easily put out hundreds of applications on Indeed in the past few months and had no luck finding anything close to decent at all, I get a few calls here and there but the jobs are always wild as fuck, like the Amazon company that called me yesterday that wanted me to only work Saturday and Sunday for 12 hours each day. I have honestly considered pan handling as I know I would legitimately make ten fold what I’m making for 1% of the effort, but primarily these days I just think about ending it all.
I used to make good money and threw it all away due to stress. Big fucking idiot I am had no idea what small stress I was trading in was going to be replaced by the biggest stress and the lowest points of my life.
