Talking Numbers

OH, TO'VE BEEN a fly on the wall, or a human being in a seat, in the room where the mickey deez worker, a black lady, stood up, interrupted the CEO, Jeff Stratton, and gave her own little speech about corporate health. This is just a guess, but presumably, the speech that Jeff Stratton was giving, the comments he was making to the assembled members of the McDonald's "family" when rudely interrupted, were pure polyanna. We love and appreciate our hard workers, this corporation is heading into the future with a solid game plan for success, you all can and will be part of said success, all is well with the world, god is great. Mr Positive. Hand out the extasy pills, smile, give thanks to the Board of Directors and shareholders for your good working class fortune and get right back to work, for eight eighty eight an hour. The lady couldn't take it anymore. In a room filled with stunned, silent types, forgotton American black lady rose, introduced herself, and informed the assembled multitude of loyalists that she is making eight eighty an hour, has never had a raise, and has been working at McDonalds for ten years, since she was a teenager. Her concern is how to feed her children, of which she has two, if memory serves. Jeff's response? A smug and dismissive: "I've been here forty years". How brilliant! How compassionate and understanding! Hang in there kid, you gotta stick with this awhile before you move up. Just look at me.A walking embodiment of the goodness of corporate culture, in an industry in which it is estimated that an entry worker's chances of advancement are, essentially, non existant. The thought crossed my mind that this CEO is my age, and that he and I both worked in restaurants when we were teenagers in the early nineteen seventies. He made a dollar sixty an hour at McDonalds back then, and ended up at the top. I made one dollar an hour at a local restaurant, and retired early, way early. The great thing about this story is that is it going viral, as they say, amidst an atmosphere of rising dissatisfaction among the working masses. An economist at M.I.T., dude with about ten PhDs, a milllion book, and Nobel prizes sticking our of his file cabinet, did a little figuring. He has what he has a "living wage calculator", a system if finding out how mucn moneh, the minimum amount, that any given worker needs to be paid,givene the worker's individual circumstances, regarding marriage, kids, and such. Give him the raw numbers, he plugs 'em in, andthrows down the four one one. (information). For this particular lady at McDonalds, he calculated that an hourly wage of just over twenty six dollars was necessary, to meet her reasonable requirements. She is asking for fifteen. All over America, folks are asking for twelve or fifteen an hour, working in the restaurant industry, just to survive. Twenty five percent of teh people in poverty in American are employed, the "working poor". Can you imagine what might happen if they all started behaving like the McDonalds lady, if they all realized that they are in the same situation, have a lot in common, and should communicate, and organize to improve their lives? Go argue with the economist at M.I.T., and see how well you do.