On what planet do burger flippers get paid $6 an hour more than school cafeteria staff? Planet California . . .!

Photo above - This is Edna, high school cafeteria worker. For extra credit, name which TV show she appeared on . . .

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 “wait a sec . . . what about Doris the school lunchroom lady?”

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.

I'm just sayin' . . .

~https://www.ziprecruiter.com/Salaries/Cafeteria-Worker-Salary--in-California#:~:text=As%20of%20Apr%2015%2C%202024,(75th%20percentile)%20in%20California~

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/careersandeducation/california-schools-face-a-crisis-as-cafeteria-workers-leave-after-20-minimum-wage-hike/ss-AA1nrE4c?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=ec789d4f218847fbf5ce56688bdaa65e&ei=102

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LeopoldBloom · M

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 · 31-35, F

@LeopoldBloom i doubt you have a link which calculates this. please share if you do. i have a link in my top post, of course.

independentone · M

@LeopoldBloom People who lack all ambition and think burger flipper is a career, they deserve to be paid less.

LeopoldBloom · M

@SusanInFlorida It would be $21.50 per hour if it kept up with productivity alone.

https://cepr.net/this-is-what-minimum-wage-would-be-if-it-kept-pace-with-productivity/

It would be slightly higher if it kept up with inflation. I couldn't find anything that calculated what it would be if it kept up with both, but I must have seen something that had the $40 figure.

LeopoldBloom · M

@independentone It's hilarious how you people tell low wage workers "just get a better job," but they're on their own if they need help paying for education, or child care, or survival if they have to work part-time while they go to school.

In-N-Out Burger is a very successful California burger chain that takes the position that working there can be a career if someone wants. So they pay their employees well and provide generous benefits. The company is also owned by devout Christians. Same for the owner of Bob's Red Mill in Oregon, who instead of cashing out and selling to some conglomerate, turned the company over to his employees because he felt his religion required this.

independentone · M

@LeopoldBloom In-N-Out is an excellent chain, and provides good training for students just starting out or going to school and working part time. As a career, unless you are a manager or a regional manager, tough to make a great living.

Burger flippers at most fast food restaurants aren't looking to make a career out of it. Most people I run into at fast food restaurants are high school or college kids looking to earn money to help with school.

I went to Chick-fil-a last week and two club meals came to 35 bucks. That's an awful lot for a couple chicken sandwiches and fries.

LeopoldBloom · M

@independentone Fast food has gotten expensive at a few places. Five Guys costs as much as some restaurants.

The idea that only kids work in fast food and therefore don't need or deserve a decent wage is belied by the number of adults working in that industry. I don't see why they shouldn't get a decent wage since they're living on it. That being said, even where I am, you can't find a fast food place that starts people off at less than $14 per hour because any lower than that, they can't find workers. So the minimum wage issue seems to have been taken care of by the "free market." That's not the case in other industries like board and care, where no one seems to have an issue with the people taking care of grandma getting slave wages.

SusanInFlorida · 31-35, F

@LeopoldBloom in my town (in florida) its mostly hispanic "undocumented workers" at fast food places.

i'm in favor of requiring E-verify to be used when hiring any worker, at any company.

LeopoldBloom · M

@SusanInFlorida How do you know they're undocumented? Maybe at a small family-owned place, but places like McDonalds and Burger King will be hiring legal workers, or at least, people with very convincing papers.

SusanInFlorida · 31-35, F

@LeopoldBloom here's a link which proves you wrong (at bottom).

this is too easy, when you post something absurd. please try harder. Do a little reading before you make stuff up?

https://www.eater.com/2017/2/28/14749392/undocumented-workers-restaurant-illegal

LeopoldBloom · M

@SusanInFlorida That's why I said "with very convincing papers." I used to inspect I-9 forms. They're just a piece of paper where the employee's documents are listed, with a signature at the bottom. Employers are not required to keep copies of driver's licenses and Social Security cards (the most common documents used), so all they have to say if they're caught is "gosh, it looked like a valid license to me."

It's the smaller family-owned places that don't even bother to check anything, at least in my experience.

independentone · M

@LeopoldBloom Wouldn't e-verify and not giving undocumented any benefits, no schools, no welfare, no food stamps, no health care, solve the illegal immigrant problem?

If they can't work or get any benefits, wouldn't they just find somewhere else to go?

LeopoldBloom · M

@independentone Good luck getting employers to use e-verify. Or convincing the Republicans to fund ICE so they can hire enough federal workers to deal with that many people.

Besides, undocumented workers are doing a lot of jobs and it would take time to replace them all. We already have record low unemployment, so it's not like there's a pool of US workers ready to step in.

What I'd like to see is a streamlining of the H-2B visa program so more people could come in legally to work and we would know who they are, where they are, and what they're doing.

independentone · M

@LeopoldBloom A law forcing employers to use e-verify, and if caught hiring an illegal without verifying them could be heavily fined for a first offense and loss of business license for a second offense. That would solve that problem overnight.

The H-2b visa will always be around, and is a good program. The country has a huge immigration problem at the moment, and it needs to be handled one way or the other. I really don't know why Biden doesn't just close the border altogether and then sort it out.

LeopoldBloom · M

@independentone The Republicans would never support a nationwide e-verify requirement for hiring all employees, as their Chamber of Commerce donors would never go for that, being dependent as they are on undocumented workers. If you really wanted to have an effect, you could apply the law up the line to anyone who hires a contractor with undocumented workers. It doesn't matter if some third-tier drywall contractor has undocumented workers; what needs to happen is for the fines to go up the line to the general contractor and property owner, like Halliburton, KBR, or the Trump Organization. Locking up the CEOs of those companies when undocumented workers were found on their job sites would definitely get everyone's attention.

Biden can't close the border without plunging the country into a recession. It's why Trump didn't close the border either.

SusanInFlorida · 31-35, F

@LeopoldBloom you've nailed it. there are SO many businesses which rely on illegal alien labor, paid at less than minimum wage.

However, this is why we let PEOPLE vote in elections, not corporations. Let's start asking candidates if they have a reason for not making E-Verify apply equally to everyone.

Like the federal minimum wage.

LeopoldBloom · M

@SusanInFlorida There ain't no one more conservative than a Georgia farmer, and they overwhelmingly supported E-Verify. So now, instead of undocumented workers, most of them are H-2A visa holders. We are now third in H-2A workers, after Florida and California. The only undocumented farm workers here are day laborers who are picked up from various gathering places, and most of these are permanent local residents.

I'm actually not in favor of raising the minimum wage across the board. $15 an hour is great in rural Alabama, but not NYC or the Bay Area. Instead, I support universal unionization. Collective bargaining allows workers to negotiate the wages and benefits appropriate to their industry and where they live. Unionization was at its highest in the 1950s and it's no coincidence that we had the strongest middle class and a reasonable wealth gap in that period.

SusanInFlorida · 31-35, F

@LeopoldBloom the last georgia farmer i read about grew peanuts on his spread. he was also a nuclear submarine commander. i suppose he would be conservative by today's standards. but from an economic point of view, he wasn't that bright.

LeopoldBloom · M

@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.

SusanInFlorida · 31-35, F

@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,”

LeopoldBloom · M

@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.