Central Square protesters. Photo by Andrew Farnitano.
Workers and supporting clergy and residents blocked Mass. Ave. outside the Central Square McDonald's around 6 a.m. this morning. in a protest calling for a $15-an-hour minimum wage.
Police blocked Mass. Ave. before arresting people sitting on the road. Organizers at Raise Up Massachusetts and Fight for 15 say dozens of people were arrested as part of what is a national day of protests.
The Massachusetts minimum wage is scheduled to increase from $10 to $11 on Jan. 1.
At noon, striking non-union service workers who work for a JetBlue contractor will hold a rally at East Boston Memorial Park.
Central Square blocked off (photo by Sam Hammer):
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Comments
When are we going to start
By anon
Tue, 11/29/2016 - 10:33am
Billing SEIU for all of the overtime paid out due to their "protest" (attempt to build their base).
I'm so sorry
By anon
Tue, 11/29/2016 - 10:57am
Why do you hate the first amendment so much?
Or have you ever read it.
Your tory ass would have whined about OMG I COULDN'T GET MY CART UP STATE STREET WITH ALL THOSE DIRTY PEOPLE BLOCKING IT WITH THEIR ANTI-MONARCH PROTEST!!!!!!111!!!
When we start billing you for opining on the internet?
By anon
Tue, 11/29/2016 - 11:01am
I mean, freedom of speech and freedom of assembly are in the same AMENDMENT in the bill of rights.
Or did you just start and end reading with #2?
Bill of Rights
By Irma la Douce
Tue, 11/29/2016 - 4:16pm
A practice apparently embraced by our president-elect:
- NY Times
It's always good
By Stephen Bickerton sr
Tue, 11/29/2016 - 11:08am
To shut the profits of the very place your looking to get more money from. Surrounding businesses always suffer also. When will someone tell these people fast food is not a carrer. It's a stop off for your future.
What color is your unicorn?
By Jeff F
Tue, 11/29/2016 - 11:50am
n/t
When will someone tell these
By Scratchie
Tue, 11/29/2016 - 1:10pm
Tell that to the guy who's working two or three jobs and trying to support a family.
I'm all for wage increases,
By Heather
Tue, 11/29/2016 - 11:59am
I'm all for wage increases, but I don't know if it's really effective across the board. Industry specific collective bargaining seems to be a much better way to get fair wages for a given type of work, rather than trying to make all jobs pay more.
Since when is working at
By tcf098
Tue, 11/29/2016 - 1:02pm
Since when is working at McDonalds supposed to provide an individual with an living wage – high enough to make them financially independent? Outside of managers, the vast majority of part time McDonalds positions should be filled by high schoolers and college students who haven't yet earned an education to further themselves in life... you know, the country's endless and ever-renewing population of teenagers and grad students.
Part time employment at McDonalds should not be a career choice. $15/hour for part time employment should not be an incentive for the unskilled workforce.
The way I see it, most McDonalds employees should be attempting to better themselves, to do more with their lives, to move on and find an actual career.
Perhaps we should find a way to make education more affordable or more accessible to the people who really think working at McDonalds for the next 30 years of their life is the only option they have.
You're not supposed to be comfortable working at McDonalds. You're supposed to want more from your life. You're supposed to want to better yourself. Hell, if these folks got an education, yet liked working at McDonalds so much, perhaps you could use that education to get yourself a decent paying manager position! (Also, doesn't McDonalds help pay for employees educations in some cases?)
But, I guess we now live in a society where the more liberal of us think anyone with a job should be able to afford a nice comfy independent living, without having to actually earn that living.
Get a roommate, get an education, and further the expectations you have for yourself. $15/hr for part time employment doesn't solve anything, it'll only create complacency.
Outside of managers, the vast
By Scratchie
Tue, 11/29/2016 - 1:52pm
Thanks for explaining how the world SHOULD work. Now go find all the parents who DO work at McDonald's and explain to them how they're breaking your paradigm.
Come on
By bosguy22
Tue, 11/29/2016 - 3:18pm
Over 60% of those making minimum wage are under 25. That leaves about 1 million people who are over 25 and still make minimum wage. The majority of minimum wage jobs are still filled with those still in high school/college.
http://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum-wage/2015/...
You come on
By Scratchie
Tue, 11/29/2016 - 3:50pm
Almost half of minimum wage earners are over the age of 25? Are you arguing for or against an increase in the minimum wage?
Over 25
By Irma la Douce
Tue, 11/29/2016 - 4:00pm
I would say 35+% is a pretty significant statistic. And I am guessing that most of those older workers at minimum wage jobs are concentrated in areas where there are not many alternatives to retail or restaurant work for those without benefit of college education or specialized training.
and about half of them
By bosguy22
Tue, 11/29/2016 - 4:20pm
Only work part-time.
Using the '14 study, you're talking about 2.5% of those over 25 and getting paid hourly are making minimum wage. Less than 1% of those are actually making minimum wage, as 1million of the 1.5million are being paid below min wage (tip subsidized industries). So now we're down to 500,000 people out of 61,883,000 workers being paid minimum wage.
Now for some pesky facts
By anon
Tue, 11/29/2016 - 2:17pm
http://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum-wage/archi...
[img]http://www.chn.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/EPI-...
Hey look!
By tcf098
Tue, 11/29/2016 - 8:05pm
An anon found an infographic with broad statistics that partially relate to the topic at hand. And, not surprisingly, you've missed my point.
We need to make quality education more affordable and easier to achieve. We need to help these folks who don't have any useful skills acquire useful skills, whether its clerical, trades, etc.
Paying unskilled work more will not fix any problems, and $15/hr isn't going to make a non-skilled laborer any more skilled or hirable.
Nor will $15/hr cause a minimum wage worker want to better themselves. Minimum wage is SUPPOSED to be hard, hence the word "minimum". It's SUPPOSED to make you want more from your life.
Most liberal leaning folk have a hard time understanding that – even as great as America is – not everyone can live comfortably above the poverty line. Economics just don't function that way.
I visit the Central Square McDonalds
By anon
Tue, 11/29/2016 - 3:15pm
I work nearby, and swing in once every few months for a biscuit when I get to work super early.
The fact of the matter is that the people who work at the Central Square McDonalds are, by and large, the very same people who worked there 5 years ago, working the same (morning) shifts. My bet is that they're working 30+ hours a week, and that they've got families to help support.
Maybe McD's should be a place for pimply faced teens to make a few bucks to spend on their car, but the reality is far different.
The empire strikes back
By anon
Tue, 11/29/2016 - 1:18pm
McDonalds will respond with plans to put Mcrobots in their fast food restaurants so they won't have to pay their humans a living wage and health care.
They'll do that anyway if
By Scratchie
Tue, 11/29/2016 - 1:53pm
They'll do that anyway if they think they can get it to work right.
Grocery stores tried that,
By anon
Tue, 11/29/2016 - 2:19pm
Grocery stores tried that, remember. There was a whole chain that ONLY had self checkout. People hated it.
In theory, self checkout at stores
By roadman
Tue, 11/29/2016 - 2:43pm
can be effective when purchasing no more than half a dozen items. Unfortunately, most people I see using self checkout are buying a weeks worth of groceries for a family of six and think it will be faster because, of the eight-umpteen hundred checkout lanes, only two are actually staffed.
Oh, and they really need to improve the reliability of the scanners and equipment so you don't have to constantly summon somebody to "fix" the inevitable glitches and errors that occur. I gave up on self-checkout for this very reason.
Self-checkout
By Irma la Douce
Tue, 11/29/2016 - 4:04pm
I only use it if there is no line, even if there are lines of people with full carts at the registers. Experience has taught me that 99% of people doing self-checkout are much slower than the store clerks.
They do this in some places.
By erik g
Tue, 11/29/2016 - 2:28pm
I visited my sister in Switzerland last spring, and we walked past the McDonalds in Geneva to gawk. Minimum wage is around $22/hour in Switzerland. The Big Mac meal runs about $18, and the entire front of the restaurant is comprised of kiosks where you enter your order for the kitchen staff to make.
Want to know what the staff count looked like?
Right about where it would be for a comparably sized store in the US, because they needed people to help customers with their orders (the same people who can't use self-checkout at the grocery store are also incapable of ordering a burger from a kiosk), to supervise the kitchen staff, and to handle any customer service wrinkles that arise.
There's only so much you can automate, and that McDonald's sure was doing brisk business.
Can't wait to see it happen
By anon
Wed, 11/30/2016 - 6:05pm
Protesters calling for $15 minimum wage.Protesters calling for jobs to be replaced with robots.
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