Fifteen is Fair

The city of Seattle recently announced that it was taking a unilateral move in the rather slow-moving war against poverty in the US by raising the city's minimum wage to $15 an hour. This is quite an interesting move by itself, and will hopefully prove wrong all the legions of people who claim businesses will flee any country or city that institutes such a high wage. However, just as interesting is the chain reaction that the announcement has set off, with fast food workers across America now going on strike and increasingly agitating to be paid the same $15 an hour that their colleagues in Seattle will be getting.

Many on the right wing have criticized the striking workers, saying that flipping burgers and wiping down tables in McDonalds should only be an entry level job, a gateway to getting a 'real job' in the workforce and becoming increasingly well paid as you gain more and more experience. It's a job for teenagers and students, they say, people who don't need to be paid more than a few dollars an hour for pocket money. Anyone over a certain age, or with a family to support, who still finds themselves working in Burger King is there because of their own fault, they tell us – they need to work harder to better themselves and move up the economic food chain.

This is a very nice sentiment – it certainly would be wonderful if we could truly say that fast food work is the domain of teenagers only, who all move on to bigger and better things after a year or so. But this ignores the reality of contemporary American society. A number of barriers stand between many people and better employment – perhaps they can't speak English well enough, perhaps they are discriminated against for their ethnicity or gender, perhaps they are working illegally, perhaps they simply don't have the money to afford America's ridiculous university tuition fees. Whichever of those reasons might be true, there is an increasing segment of the workforce which has no immediate prospect of getting a better job outside of the fast food industry – these people have lives, children, and needs that should be catered for just as much as for anyone else, and this simply isn't happening on the exploitative wages they are currently being paid.

Strong minimum wage laws are not going to destroy America if passed – as Seattle will no doubt prove. The demand for fast food isn't going away any time soon, so McDonalds and Pizza Hut are not going to shut down if forced to pay their workers what they deserve. Equally, the fast food workers will now have more money to spend on food, clothing, and consumer items, putting more cash into the economy and leading to more jobs and higher wages for everyone else – so even if the price of a Big mac gets hiked by a dollar or two to pay for the minimum wage, we'll still be able to afford it. All a $15 minimum wage does is ensure that fast food workers are no longer exploited by companies that only truly care about profit, and makes sure that those workers can afford to feed themselves and their children. It might even help to break the cycle of poverty, by allowing fast food workers to save towards the university education of their own children – ensuring they don't have to spend their lives flipping burgers as well.

The $15 minimum wage campaign needs to extend beyond the fast food workers and become a national movement. It's time for the people of America to take notice that in the past decade wealth has been trickling upwards rather than downwards – with the rich getting richer, while everyone else loses out. It's time to reverse that trajectory and begin bringing some of those riches back down to the people who do the work.

[ war against poverty, nrglab, McDonalds, Burger King, American society, Pizza hut, national movement, tuition fees ]