How do you feel about the fast food strike in the USA?

[mrstickball]

Egann said:
The real problem I have isn't the minimum wage, but the upcoming healthcare legislation. $7.25 an hour won't exactly buy you a $250,000 4-bedroom home, but what really determines how much money you earn is the hours you work. If you have a roommate or two you can do it, but I'm not gonna lie: you really need to work overtime, have good money skills, or get promoted ASAP.

The problem is the healthcare bill, which says any not-small-business employer has to give healthcare to any employee who works more than 30 hours a week. Predictably enough, fast food joints in particular are no longer hiring for positions with more than 29 hours. In my particular circumstance? this puts me at least about twelve hours a week short of where I need to be--fifteen if I get a second job because I'm no longer pulling overtime--it makes more sense for my employer to hire another hand than to let me do what I'm already trained for.

In so many words, healthcare's unintended consequence is that it RATIONS MINIMUM WAGE LABOR.

So yeah, the wage is not really the problem. The number of hours you're working is the problem.

Work that to the logical point:

Forcing arbitrary minimums cause people to lose hours and wages. This is why I hate minimum wage laws: It tells the business that an employee has to create a certain level of value to be useful. This leads to the company hiring less, and paying less to good workers.

Imagine a scenario where a company has to hire 5 people for a job, so it does so. But all 5 employees are not equally skilled or able at the job, and it is an arguably menial job. In an optimal scenario, the company can pay each employee based on work output. However, if the job's wages are close to minimum wage, this cannot be accomplished, since there is a mandatory floor. The end result is likely to be wage suppression for those with better skills, and potentially less hours overall, because the job cannot utilize the better workers more efficiently, and has to over-pay for the worse workers.