Partnering with Visa, McDonalds’ Suggests a Budget for Employees which Ironically Shows in the End Just How Impossible It is to Get by on the Minimum Wage. The budget does not include gasoline, food, or heating expenses and incorporates $20/month for Healthcare Insurance.
Besides skipping certain expenses and skimping on others; to meet the income levels portrayed in the budget, McDonalds suggests associates to work not one but two jobs. A full time job at McDonalds and a part time job elsewhere totally 62 hours per week (if the worker resides in Illinois where the minimum wage is $8.25/hour). If perchance, the worker resides in one of the other 48 states; the total hours needed to hit the suggested income level jumps to 74 hours/week due to a lower minimum wage (the equivalent of a second full time job). The same as Wal-Mart employees, McDonalds associates will end up seeking public aid to get by because of low wages.
If you recall Spencer’s post of Labor’s Share; Spencer pointed out how Productivity Gains have been heavily skewed towards Capital and away from Labor (wages) since the seventies. The CEPR provides a graph with a another take on Productivity Gains when compared to Real Minimum Wage. When compared to Productivity Gains, Minimum Wage has trending downward.
In earlier posts, Edward Lambert addresses the loss of real wages and the potential impact on the economy. As we can see, the only real option to avert another collapse is to raise labor’s share of income. This is not likely as businesses are even now fighting an increase in just the minimum wage. Businesses are trying to maximize their profits and do not want to raise labor costs. Yet this objective of theirs is going to kill the economy. The time bomb is ticking.
If you remember in the PPACA Healthcare Debate:
McDonalds was one of the restaurant employers (Papa Johns, Olive Garden, Applebys, etc.) stating the excessive cost of the PPACA would force them to cut workers hours to <30 hours to avoid providing healthcare insurance (doing so would not alleviate restaurants from penalties as the PPACA looks at total hours worked and not just employees working >30 hours). To my point, McDonalds is advocating >30 hours at its restaurants in its budget and also providing healthcare insurance(?) which by law has to be minimally equivalent to the least costly PPACA Bronze Plan. It would be interesting to see if McDonalds could provide healthcare insurance similar to the Bronze Plan at $20/month. If the plan is not the equivalent, a McDonalds associate could go on the State Exchanges and get a Bronze Plan with all of the free preventative care for ~$97/month (215% FPL – single 21 yr. old Adult) after subsidy. McDonalds would pay a penalty if full time workers sought insurance outside of McDonalds and onn the exchanges. Workers, however, under 30 years and those unable to find affordable insurance are exempt from the mandate and could purchase substitute catastrophic coverage (ACA – Standardizing Health Plans). Perhaps too, this is McDonalds strategy for providing healthcare insurance (catastrophic) to much of its workforce who are <30 years old and working within the PPACA.