Word: waged
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...long ago, it even earned a name: burger bashing. All sorts of experts wanted to attack Big Mac as a symbol of all that was wrong with America's eating habits, its mass culture and its economic development. Walter Mondale, among other politicians, criticized the hamburger chain's minimum-wage jobs as grim substitutes for well-paying blue-collar work. Nutritionists despaired over the high fat and sodium content of McDonald's fare, while food snobs ridiculed creations like Big Mac's "special sauce" as gooey and gross. Even investors, who had been smitten with McDonald's stock...
...McDonald's outlets multiply, the company is taking an increasingly important role as an employer. The company currently carries more than 560,000 workers on its payroll, up from 233,500 ten years ago. Yet most McDonald's employees start at the minimum wage of $3.35, which for a full-time worker amounts to only $6,968 a year. For that reason, McDonald's has been singled out as evidence of the booming service economy's inability to create dignified and meaningful new work. Says Robert Reich, a lecturer at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government: "Compared...
While McDonald's employees generally praise their working conditions and the respect accorded them by their bosses, they find the wages inadequate to support one person, much less a family. Rick Laviak, 16, who has worked at a suburban San Diego outlet for more than a year, enjoys his job but thinks his $3.60-an-hour wage is meager considering that he gets no food discount and is expected to act as a teacher for new employees. Says he: "They want me to be a crew trainer without the pay." Partly for that reason, turnover among hourly workers at McDonald...
Last week congressional Democrats, led by Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts and Representative Augustus Hawkins of California, unveiled a formula for keeping minimum-wage earners from falling farther and farther behind the rest of the work force. They introduced legislation that would hike the minimum by nearly 40%, to $4.65 an hour, by 1990. After that, the rate would be tied to half the average hourly U.S. wage. Kennedy says it is "unacceptable" that the current minimum wage "does not permit full-time workers to provide the bare necessities for their families...
...plan is already meeting strong resistance from the Administration, many Republican legislators and business lobbyists. Opponents contend that the Kennedy-Hawkins measure would reduce the number of low-wage jobs available, especially part-time work for teenagers. Says Labor Secretary William Brock: "We need to concentrate on how to get our kids into the work force rather than on a new way to keep them...