On what planet do burger flippers get paid $6 an hour more than school cafeteria staff? Planet California . . .!
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[i][b]Photo above [/b]- This is Edna, high school cafeteria worker. For extra credit, name which TV show she appeared on . . .[/i]
That darned $20 fast food minimum wage in California. The gift that keeps on giving. Originally intended to hoover up Mc-votes on election day, it was already controversial because some sneaky reporter found out that Gavin Newsom exempted restaurants which are big contributors to his campaign. Wait for it - now the second shoe is dropping! Today we learned that school cafeteria workers in California are averaging only $14.39 an hour. See links below.
How could this happen? Even accounting for legal weed in California, and the general mendacity and ignorance of politicians, you would have thought at least ONE PERSON on Newsom's staff would have been astute enough to raise their hand and ask[i] “wait a sec . . . what about Doris the school lunchroom lady?”[/i]
Of course, this is only going to be a problem if thousands of school cafeteria workers quit their jobs for an immediate $6 an hour raise, right? Could that really happen? It already is, apparently. The simple solution would be to make $20 the new minimum wage for all cafeteria workers, right? Well, it turns out there are two MORE problems with this.
First – Some cafeteria workers already earn over $20. These are the ladies (predominately women in this career path) who have Safe Serve certificates, and 5 other cafeteria training credentials pinned to their aprons. If that new girl who can't stop picking her nose while ladling out Mac and Cheese is getting $20, then every GS7 level cook with X years' of experience is going to want $30. This doesn't seem unreasonable . . . until you remember that California has been giving away free cafeteria meals to EVERY student since the start of the pandemic. Regardless of need or income level. Tens of millions of free meals. That's why the Mac and Cheese lady is getting only $14 bucks an hour. There's apparently not enough money in the California school budget to pay all workers the same as a burger flipper AND hand out free meals to kids whose parents are likely voters.
Second problem: I'm going to make a guess here, but I think it'll be true: If the state politicians didn't know how much Doris the lunch lady was paid, do you think they paid any attention to . . .
1 - School bus drivers
2 - School janitors
3 - Call center clerks
4 - attendants at government parking lots
5 - Dog catchers (er . . . animal control officers)
6 - official state of California government lawn mowing crews . . .
On and on. I can't name all the jobs this might affect. And these folks will ALL insist on being paid equal to, or better than, Doris the lunch lady. Who is quitting to work at McDonalds because it's $6 an hour more, and the managers there look the other way there when you walk off after your shift with a 40-pound case of bacon.
All of those wages should be higher. If the minimum wage had kept up with productivity instead of stagnating starting in the Reagan years, it would be around $40 an hour now. The discrepancy you describe is what happens with a piecemeal approach where certain industries get more attention.
@SusanInFlorida Carter is a very intelligent man by all accounts. He just had the bad luck to be president during an economic downturn, so he got blamed for that. His biggest screwups were foreign policy, not that that's unusual. Carter didn't do 1/1000th the damage Bush did.
@LeopoldBloom on theory, a hybrid farmer/nuclear submarine commander/sucessful governor should have ticked all the boxes.
in practice carter is best known for:
1 - the failed iranian hostage rescue 2 - serving up a change in the daylight savings time schedule to save electricity 3 - Gas prices doubling. And both inflation and unemployment skyrocketed, leading his opponents to promote a newly invented “misery index,”
@SusanInFlorida The first two were Carter's fault. The second wasn't, unless you think the president has total control over the economy. In that case, Biden is a genius and Trump shouldn't be allowed anywhere near the White House.
In reality, the president has very little effect on the economy, despite taking the blame for a bad one and credit for a good one.
People in similar but different jobs all work hard. Unless the money is coming out of your pocket, which I seriously doubt, why would you let it bother so much as to copy and paste an overly long thing that few people will actually read? 🤷♂️
@jshm2 i'm not sure cafeteria workers have a pension. usually they have a "defined contribution plan", which is penurious, because their salary is low.
