At $9.85 an hour, 25-year-old Terran Lyons supports herself and two kids as a crew trainer at a McDonald’s in Seattle’s university district. That’s a jump from the $9.19 an hour the high school dropout got when she started, and a step above the state’s $9.32 minimum wage. But it’s hardly enough to be self-sufficient. Lyons is on food stamps. She wouldn’t even be able to afford a Big Mac if it weren’t for the 50 percent employee discount.
Demos policy analyst Catherine Ruetschlin joins Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! to discuss global fast food strikes taking place, protesting the vast wage disparities between executi
WASHINGTON, DC – Citing a recent report which found an alarming 1000-to-1 pay disparity between fast food CEOs and their front line workers, Senator Menendez again called on Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Mary Jo White to finalize its rule requiring publicly traded companies to disclose the ratio between the compensation of their CEO and median worker, as directed by Section 953(b) of the Dodd-Frank “Wall Street Reform Act”.
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Fast-food workers and labor organizers are planning a strike of global proportions Thursday, based on the premise that low-wage occupations should still be “living wage” occupations. In the US, Thursday’s date – May 15 – carries numerical significance, as actions in as many as 150 cities aim to win a pay raise to at least $15-an-hour from restaurant chains in the industry, as they also push to unionize the companies.
This Mother's Day, Shanesha Taylor, a 25-year old homeless and unemployed mother, will be fighting for her freedom and to keep her family together just for the simple crime: trying to feed her children. Without childcare or family support, Shanesha left her children, ages two and six-months, in a parked car while she was in a job interview. In that 45-minute window, a passerby reported her unsupervised children to the Scottsdale, Arizona police who promptly arrested her on felony charges for child abuse.
You may think that if you spend wisely you’ll be able to avoid huge amounts of credit card debt. But those who have this debt not only spend more frugally than those without it, they actually got into the debt in the first place because of hardships out of their control, not due to unwise budgeting, according to a report from the think tank Demos.
Shareholder activists on Monday called for the board of McDonald’s to cut the wage of chief executive Donald Thomson, citing poor performance and the massive gap between his wages and the average fast-food worker. The fast-food giant holds its annual meeting on 22 May and will be targeted by protesters calling for a higher wages for workers as well as shareholders disappointed with the company’s financial performance and Thomson’s remuneration. Change to Win (CtW) Investment Group is organising a vote against Thomson, who took over as CEO in 2012.
On a crisp and sunny morning on the day after Thanksgiving, a group of protesters gathered in front of a large Walmart in Michigan’s Sterling Heights, calling for wage increases and better working conditions for the superstore's employees. Mary Johnson, a retiree and member of international activist group the Raging Grannies, stood next to Dan Lombardo, a plumber wearing old-fashioned overalls, who was carrying a sign stating “Walmart equals poverty.” Mothering Justice founder Danielle Atkinson, in a vibrant purple coat, turned up with her entire family.
A grand canyon of inequality exists between fast food CEOs and the workers who make their corporate and personal fortunes. In the past decade, fast-food CEOs’ wages have increased more than 400 percent, while workers wages increased 0.3 percent, according to a new report by Demos.
No less a capitalist than Henry Ford believed in paying his workforce enough so that the men who built his cars could buy his cars too. At McDonald’s, employees are encouraged to apply for food stamps if they aren’t making enough to eat.
If you want a glimpse of super-sized pay inequality, look no further than America’s fast-food industry.
Nowhere is company-level pay disparity more apparent than in fast food, where CEOs reportedly take home $1,000 for every $1 earned by their typical employee.
Domino’s Pizza boss J Patrick Doyle is getting too large a slice of the pie, shareholders will tell the company’s board at the fast food chain’s annual meeting on Tuesday.
The two largest shareholder advisory groups, ISS and Glass Lewis; CalSTRS, California’s $183bn teachers’ pension fund; and Change to Win investment group, which advises trade union-sponsored pension funds, have all voiced concerns about compensation at the pizza company ahead of Tuesday’s annual shareholder meeting in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
The American economy overall is ferociously unequal, but some sectors are more unequal than others. A new study from the left-leaning think tank Demos looked at CEO-to-worker compensation ratios across the labor force in an attempt to determine where inequality is most concentrated. The answer probably won’t surprise you.
Executive pay has risen dramatically—both in absolute terms and in relation to median wages—across the last generation. The spike in executive salaries is both a key driver of inequality at the top end of the income spectrum (about half of the “1 percent” are executives or managers at non-financial firms) and a symbolic marker of social norms in our “winner-take-all” economy. Conservative economists have tried to spin this as a triumph of market forces, manifesting the ability of superstar innovators to pull away from the pack in a global, wired economy.
David Novak is the chief executive of Yum! Brands, the parent company that runs Pizza Hut, Taco Bell and KFC. Last year, while Yum! Brands and other restaurant companies lobbied against raising the minimum wage, Novak made at least $22 million—more than 1,000 times what the average fast-food worker makes in a year. In return for paying him so much, Yum! got a tax break.
The news has not been kind to the fast food industry over the past few years. From labor strikes to claims of wage theft, companies like McDonald's and Burger King have taken increasing criticism for treatment of workers and their low wage jobs. Now a new report from New York-based think tank Demos has added fuel to the fire.
(New York, NY) – As shareholders prepare for annual meetings, Demos released a new study today that finds that the fast-food industry has the greatest CEO-to-worker pay disparity in our economy, with ratios exceeding 1,000-to-1. The study finds that the growing disparity within fast-food threatens economic growth and shareholder investment.
David Novak, the CEO of YUM! Brands, which owns Taco Bell and KFC, took home more than $22 million last year after exercising stock options, according to proxy statements. The average full-time fast-food worker, by comparison, would have made about $19,000 on the year. [...]
Fast food CEOs were paid more than 1,200 times the average fast food worker in 2012, according to a new study released Tuesday by Demos, a public policy group.
On a conference call to discuss the report New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer said such a wide income disparity could affect the city's pension fund, which holds millions of shares in several fast food companies. And it could trickle down to affect every day New Yorkers, he said. [...]
