Showing posts with label Earnings/Wages. Show all posts

Thursday, October 29, 2015

England : Malnutrition and Cases of Victorian-era diseases including scurvy, scarlet fever, cholera and whooping cough have increased since 2010

Malnutrition and 'Victorian' diseases soaring in England 'due to food poverty and cuts'

Dean Kirby
Tuesday 27 October 2015

While cases of malnutrition doubled in the four years to 2014, there has been a rise in diseases that were rife in the Victorian era such as scurvy, scarlet fever, cholera and whooping cough Corbis

Read More Here

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Malnutrition cases in English hospitals almost double in five years

Admissions to hospitals have soared as poorer families struggle to afford food

Charlie Cooper, Kunal Dutta
@charliecooper8
Sunday 17 November 2013

The shocking impact of recession and austerity on England’s poorest people has come to light again in figures showing the number of malnutrition cases treated at NHS hospitals has nearly doubled since the economic downturn Rex

Read More Here

Friday, October 23, 2015

How Rising Rents Are About to Crush American Spending Power

Alex Lozupone

Rent Is Too Damn High Party car

Wikipedia.org

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We just learned America’s rental affordability crisis is as bad as it’s ever been. Unfortunately, it’s about to get a whole lot worse.

The American Community Survey for 2014, released a few weeks ago, found that the number of renters paying 30 percent or more of their income on housing – the standard benchmark for what’s considered affordable – reached a new record high of 20.7 million households, up nearly a half-million from the year before. Despite the improving economy, the increase was nearly five times bigger than last year’s gain.

That means about half of all renters live in housing considered unaffordable. And the latest increase comes on top of substantial growth since 2000 that has seen this number climb by roughly six million households over the period, an increase of about 41 percent.

Related: More Americans Struggling to Pay the Rent

Read More Here

Wednesday, October 21, 2015

Rent is so high in San Francisco that I’m a software engineer and I live in a van

QUARTZ

Written by

Katharine Patterson

October 17, 2015

About a year ago, I was having lunch with a friend when I made a throwaway comment: “Have you seen the rent in San Francisco? If I get a job in the Bay Area, I’ll totally live in a van.”

As I sit in darkness writing this, I’m trying to keep my typing quiet, lest a real inhabitant of the neighborhood I’m parked in should walk by and wonder about the sounds coming from the rusty bus loitering on their block. Yes, you understood that correctly: Today, I work in a multi-million dollar office complex, and I live in a van.

This summer, after receiving a job offer in Silicon Valley, I went on Craigslist and began sifting through housing listings: “verrrrrryyy cheap bedroom ;),” “great deal on rent!” A single room with a shared bathroom? Two thousand per month on the low-end. A small studio apartment, you ask? If your startup wasn’t recently bought for seven figures, forget about it.

I perked up after finding a listing for $1,000 per month. Now this could work. Clicking through to the details section however revealed the offer was for a single bunk in a room with eight people, a set-up referred to as a “hacker house” by an (evil) marketing genius.

Even if I was to spend the huge majority of my salary on rent, I knew I would likely still be in a grim living situation, resenting every penny I handed over that could have gone towards paying back my student loans. And as a software engineer, I’m one of the lucky ones! Imagine those who aren’t lucky enough to be on the tech payroll.

Anyway, three weeks ago I took the equivalent of three months’ rent and bought an old red bus. It’s a 1969 VW camper van with a hole in the floor and a family of spiders that has more of a right to be here than I do (sleeping in your car on public land in California is illegal).

(Katharine Patterson/blog.thinkkappi.com)

But with the help of Ikea and an army of cleaning supplies I was able to get the bus into livable condition.

Read More Here

Monday, October 19, 2015

Many Low-Income Workers Say ‘No’ to Health Insurance

MSN News

Many Low-Income Workers Say ‘No’ to Health Insurance

The New York Times

By STACY COWLEY 6 hrs ago

An employee at Golden Corral taking clean cups from the kitchen. Some Golden Corral restaurants began offering health insurance to employees, but few have opted in.

JACKSONVILLE, N.C. — When Billy Sewell began offering health insurance this year to 600 service workers at the Golden Corral restaurants that he owns, he wondered nervously how many would buy it. Adding hundreds of employees to his plan would cost him more than $1 million — a hit he wasn’t sure his low-margin business could afford.
His actual costs, though, turned out to be far smaller than he had feared. So far, only two people have signed up.

“We offered, and they didn’t take it,” he said.

Evidence is growing that his experience is not unusual. The Affordable Care Act’s employer mandate, which requires employers with more than 50 full-time workers to offer most of their employees insurance or face financial penalties, was one of the law’s most controversial provisions. Business owners and industry groups fiercely protested the change, and some companies cut workers’ hours to reduce the number of employees who would be eligible.

But 10 months after the first phase of the mandate took effect, covering companies with 100 or more workers, many business owners say they are finding very few employees willing to buy the health insurance that they are now compelled to offer. The trend is especially pronounced among smaller and midsize businesses in fields filled with low-wage hourly workers, like restaurants, retailing and hospitality. (Companies with 50 to 99 workers are not required to comply with the mandate until next year.)

Read More Here

Friday, October 9, 2015

Hundreds of outraged Air France staff stormed a meeting where Company plans to cut 2,900 jobs were being discussed. Execs had shirts torn from their backs as they escaped the angry mob

No need to get shirty! Air France executive is forced to climb a fence after staff attack him and rip off his shirt when he announces 2,900 job losses

Air France executives attacked after staff stormed company headquarters
Company plans to cut 2,900 jobs and 14 aircraft from its long-haul fleet
HR vice president and long-haul flights deputy had their shirts torn off

Published: 08:46 EST, 5 October 2015 | Updated: 13:17 EST, 5 October 2015

Air France managers have been forced to flee the company's headquarters after being attacked by a baying mob of workers that tore their clothes off.

Hundreds of angry staff stormed the Air France building at the Charles de Gaulle International Airport in Roissy, near Paris, after the company announced plans to cut 2,900 jobs on Monday.

Two senior executives, Xavier Broseta, Vice President for Human Resources, and Pierre Plissonnier, deputy of Air France long-haul flights, both had their shirts ripped off their backs as they were evacuated through the crowds.

Under attack: A shirtless Xavier Broseta, Executive Vice President for Human Resources at Air France, is evacuated by security after employees interrupted a meeting with representatives staff at the Air France headquarters building at the Charles de Gaulle International Airport in Roissy, near Paris

Shortly before the attack, Mr Broseta and Air France Chief Executive Frederic Gagey had outlined a drastic cost cutting plan, which would see 2,900 jobs cut by 2017.

The cuts include 1,700 ground staff, 900 cabin crew and 300 pilots, as part of efforts to lower costs, two union sources said.

Air France also confirmed in the meeting that it plans to shed 14 aircraft from its long-haul fleet, reducing the business by ten per cent, and that it wants to cancel its order for Boeing 787 Dreamliner aircraft.

This outraged staff, who are already at loggerheads with the company, and hundreds stormed the building, interrupting the meeting.

Mr Broseta and Mr Plissonnier were aided by security as they tried to escape the baying mob

Read More Here

Friday, September 25, 2015

Days of Rage Are Coming : We are fast approaching another moment in history that disabuses what's left of the middle class of their fantasy that they matter.

Time to Trade in Your Jag, Benz, BMW for a Dented Econobox: Days of Rage Are Coming

The resistance will take the form of subverting the signifiers of wealth that exemplify the few who have benefited so greatly while everyone else lost ground.

It's time to trade in your Jag, Mercedes, BMW (and maybe your Prius, Volvo, Lexus, etc.) before the Days of Rage start. As I've explained before ( As the "Prosperity" Tide Recedes, the Ugly Reality of Wealth Inequality Is Exposed), the rage of the masses who have been losing ground while the Financier Oligarchs, the New Nobility and the technocrat class reap immense gains for decades has been suppressed by the dream that they too could join the Upper Caste.

But once the realistic odds of that happening (low) sink in, the Days of Rage will begin. For those still who don't know the facts of rising inequality, here's what you need to know.

The top 1% skim 23% of all income:

While the top 5% has enjoyed substantial income gains over the past 45 years, adjusted for inflation, the bottom 90% have lost ground:

The last time there was mass unrest in America was the civil rights/Vietnam War era. The power of the civil rights movement arose from the core injustice of segregation (separate and unequal) and institutionalized racism/bias. This institutionalized injustice drew people from all classes and ethnicities into the streets, where they were promptly beaten by police.

Read More Here

Days Of Rage Are Coming..."Surprise, middle class America - the Power Elites could care less what you think."

Friday, February 21, 2014

Hmmmm Factor : Obama plan: Cut tax breaks for richest retirement savers. Wants to spur saving among low and middle-income earners.

The legitimate questions to ask at this point in time would be .......

Exactly what money would the low and middle-income earners be putting aside for savings?

Considering the unemployment rate and the rising number of the homeless how realistic or honest would this proposal be?

In a world where the working middle class are disappearing and the poor can barely feed themselves and their families , are retirement savings accounts truly an achievable reality?

~Desert Rose~

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New Geography . com

The U.S. Middle Class Is Turning Proletarian

by Joel Kotkin 02/16/2014

The biggest issue facing the American economy, and our political system, is the gradual descent of the middle class into proletarian status. This process, which has been going on intermittently since the 1970s, has worsened considerably over the past five years, and threatens to turn this century into one marked by downward mobility.
The decline has less to do with the power of the “one percent” per se than with the drying up of opportunity amid what is seen on Wall Street and in the White House as a sustained recovery. Despite President Obama’s rhetorical devotion to reducing inequality, it has widened significantly under his watch. Not only did the income of the middle 60% of households drop between 2010 and 2012 while that of the top 20% rose, the income of the middle 60% declined by a greater percentage than the poorest quintile. The middle 60% of earners’ share of the national pie has fallen from 53% in 1970 to 45% in 2012.
This group, what I call the yeoman class — the small business owners, the suburban homeowners , the family farmers or skilled construction tradespeople– is increasingly endangered. Once the dominant class in America, it is clearly shrinking: In the four decades since 1971 the percentage of Americans earning between two-thirds and twice the national median income has dropped from 61% to 51% of the population, according to Pew.
Roughly one in three people born into middle class-households , those between the 30th and 70th percentiles of income, now fall out of that status as adults.
Neither party has a reasonable program to halt the decline of the middle class. Previous generations of liberals — say Walter Reuther, Hubert Humphrey, Harry Truman, Pat Brown — recognized broad-based economic growth was a necessary precursor to upward mobility and social justice. However, many in the new wave of progressives engage in fantastical economics built around such things as “urban density” and “green jobs,” while adopting policies that restrict growth in manufacturing, energy and housing. When all else fails, some, like Oregon’s John Kitzhaber, try to change the topic by advocating shifting emphasis from measures of economic growth to “happiness.”

Read More Here

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Feb. 21, 2014, 5:00 a.m. EST

Obama plan: Cut tax breaks for richest retirement savers

Plan designed to spur saving by low-, middle-income earners

By Robert Powell, MarketWatch

President Barack Obama plans to ask Congress in early March, as part of his fiscal 2015 budget, to reduce some of the tax advantages for employer-sponsored retirement plans for higher-income earners, according to published reports.

Plus, the president wants to limit the value of all tax deductions, defined contribution exclusions and IRA deductions to 28% of income — and include an overall cap on all retirement accounts, including pensions, that could bring in $1 billion a year in new tax revenue, according to a Pensions & Investments report. Read Companies bracing for 1-2 retirement punch .

According to the report, the proposals are designed to direct more of the tax preference for retirement savings toward getting more low- and middle-income people into the habit of saving.

Based on current tax brackets, Pensions & Investments reported that the 28% limit would reduce the tax advantages of retirement savings for people earning more than $183,000 or couples earning more than $225,000. And the overall cap for all tax-preferred retirement accounts would limit them to providing an annual retirement income of $205,000, which would currently cap tax-preferred accounts at $3.4 million, but could go lower as interest rates rise.

So, who might feel the effects of this proposal? Largely, the top 5% of tax payers. According to the Tax Policy Center, a partnership between the Urban Institute and Brookings Institution, there are about 6.07 million Americans who earned above $200,000 in 2011 and they make up the top 4.2% of taxpayers, according to published reports. Read more about the president’s tax proposal here: Who makes more than $250k, and are they rich?

And what do experts have to say about what the president might propose? In the main, they say the rich need not worry that their tax breaks for saving for retirement will be cut.

“We’ve heard these kinds of proposals being discussed in policy circles for a couple of years now,” said Skip Schweiss, president of TD Ameritrade Trust Co. and managing director of TD Ameritrade Institutional. “It would not surprise me to see these ideas become more formalized through President Obama’s 2015 budget proposal.”

But even though experts expect the president to propose reductions to some of the tax advantages for employer-sponsored retirement plans for higher-income earners, few expect any congressional action. “Given the congressional divide, it’s hard to see something like this becoming law, but of course one never knows,” said Schweiss.

Read More Here

Monday, December 2, 2013

Walmart Workers, Community Supporters Join Nationwide Protests : Walmart collecting food donations to feed employees

Washington DC Area Walmart Workers, Community Supporters Join Nationwide Protests

Published on Nov 29, 2013

Walmart workers and community supporters in the Washington, D.C. area today protested against Walmart—the nation's largest retailer—joining 1,500 protests across the nation in one of the largest mobilizations of working families in American history. Workers in the Washington, D.C. area were joined by tens of thousands of Americans in Los Angeles, the Bay Area, Seattle, Sacramento, Miami, Minneapolis and other locations who called on Walmart to end illegal retaliation and publicly commit to improving labor standards, including providing workers with more full-time work and $25,000 a year. At a protest at the Walmart store located on Richmond Highway in Alexandria, Va., nine people, including one Walmart worker, were arrested in an act of civil disobedience calling for an end to the exploitation of Walmart workers by their company.

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Published on Monday, December 2, 2013 by Common Dreams

Fast Food Giants Starve Workers' Wages, Gorge on Taxpayers: Report

- Jacob Chamberlain, staff writer

Demonstration outside McDonald's in Times Square in support of employees on strike New York November 29, 2012. (Reuters/Andrew Kelly)As the nation's largest fast food giants continue to push back against the ongoing fight for better wages by fast food workers across the country, a report released Monday reveals a world in which those companies are "pocketing massive taxpayer subsidies" as they feed their CEOs' growing paychecks.
According to the report, Fast Food CEOs Rake in Taxpayer-Subsidized Pay, published by the Institute for Policy Studies, current tax code allows corporations such as Taco Bell, KFC, Pizza Hut, and McDonald's "to deduct unlimited amounts from their income taxes for the cost of stock options, certain stock grants, and other forms of so-called 'performance pay' for top executives," meaning that the more corporations pay their top earners, the less they pay in federal taxes.
As IPS reports, over the past two years, CEOs of the top six publicly held fast food chains brought home over $183 million in deductible "performance pay," which in turn reduced their companies' taxes by an estimated $64 million.
As Sarah Anderson from IPS points out in an op-ed Monday, $64 million is enough to cover the average cost of food stamps for 40,000 American families for a year.
Fast food profits, in this way, come at the taxpayer's expense from two sides: while CEOs' paychecks expand and corporations pay less in taxes, those companies have simultaneously worked "to keep low-level workers' wages so low that many must rely on public assistance."
As another report from UC Berkeley recently showed, low-wage fast-food jobs currently cost the American public nearly $7 billion a year, as 52% of fast food workers, including those who work full-time, are payed so little they must rely on safety net programs including Medicaid, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as food stamps, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, the Children's Health Insurance Program, as well as Earned Income Tax Credit payments.
"What makes all this even more galling is that these fast food giants are pocketing massive taxpayer subsidies for their CEO pay while fighting to keep their workers’ wages at rock bottom," writes Anderson.
"All of the big fast food corporations are members of the National Restaurant Association," Anderson writes, "which is aggressively working to block a raise in the federal minimum wage to a level that would let millions of fast food workers make ends meet without public support."
Meanwhile, across the country workers are fed up with low wages and have embarked on a series of local and national strikes against their fast food employers over the course of the past year.
On Thursday, fast food workers organized by groups Fast Food Forward and Fight for 15, with backing from unions such as the Service Employees International Union, will strike in one hundred cities across the U.S. at McDonald’s, Wendy’s and other fast-food restaurant locations, demanding a $15-an-hour wage.

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

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Respect WALMART Workers - San Diego Light Brigade 11-27-13

Published on Nov 28, 2013

Walmart is facing protests on Friday 11/29 at 1,500 locations across the country. Employees and activists will be pushing for higher wages, more full-time jobs and an end to employer retaliation. Please Stand With Walmart Workers and join a BLACK FRIDAY PROTEST near you!

To learn more please visit: http://forrespect.org/

71% of Wallmart Workers will be working on Thanksgiving! Don't you think they deserve a holiday too? And Christmas off too?
http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ss...

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A volunteer loads food at the Capital Area Food Bank, Nov. 14, 2013 in Washington, DC.

Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images

Walmart collecting food donations to feed employees

11/18/13 04:45 PM Updated 11/19/13 08:15 AM

By Ned Resnikoff

Organized labor, protesting workers and other activist groups have been saying for years that low-wage Walmart employees can’t afford to meet basic needs like food. Now, one Cleveland, Ohio, location is doing something about it: soliciting food donations from other workers.
In an employees-only section of the store, management has placed two bins underneath a sign reading, “Please donate food items here so Associates in Need can enjoy Thanksgiving Dinner,” local paperThe Plain Dealer reported on Monday. Walmart spokesperson Kory Lundberg told the newspaper that it is for employees “who have had some hardships come up.”
“This is part of the company’s culture to rally around associates and take care of them when they face extreme hardships,” said Lundberg.
The majority of Walmart employees reportedly make less than $25,000 annually, and many of them rely on food stamps. A case study compiled by the Democratic staff of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce found that employees in one Walmart location received between $96,007 and $219,528 in food stamps over the course of a single year.

Read More Here
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Saturday, November 30, 2013

American Made : That ‘Made in U.S.A.’ Premium

That ‘Made in U.S.A.’ Premium

Margaret Cheatham Williams/The New York Times

American Made: Nanette Lepore: Nanette Lepore, a fashion designer, is an advocate for clothing that is manufactured in the United States. Most of her contemporary label, sold by major retailers, is produced in New York City.

By STEPHANIE CLIFFORD

Published: November 30, 2013

The designer Nanette Lepore is a cheerleader for New York City’s garment district. Most of her contemporary women’s clothing line, which sells at stores like Saks Fifth Avenue and Bloomingdale’s, is made locally.

American Made

The Price Barrier

This series examines the challenges associated with manufacturing in the United States.

The Fessler USA factory in Pennsylvania was unable to keep running.

Her company occupies six floors in a building on West 35th Street and uses, among other businesses, six nearby sewing factories, a cutting room and even a maker of fabric flowers in the neighborhood. She organizes “Save the Fashion District” rallies, writes about the danger of losing local production and lobbies lawmakers in Washington to support the American fashion industry.

“If my only option as a young designer was to make my clothing overseas, I could not have started my business,” she said.

Yet Ms. Lepore says that when she signed a deal with J. C. Penney for a low-cost clothing line for teenagers — clothing that sells for about one-tenth the price of her higher-end lines — Penney could not afford production in New York.

Of the 150 or so items she now has featured on Penney’s website, none are made in this country. “That price point can’t be done here,” Ms. Lepore said of lower-end garments.

As textile and apparel companies begin shifting more production to the United States, taking advantage of automation and other cost savings, a hard economic truth is emerging: Production of cheaper goods, for which consumers are looking for low prices, is by and large staying overseas, where manufacturers can find less expensive manufacturing. Even when consumers are confronted with the human costs of cheap production, like the factory collapse in Bangladesh that killed more than 1,000 garment workers, garment makers say, they show little inclination to pay more for clothes.

Essentially, to buy American is to pay a premium — a reality that is acting as a drag on the nascent manufacturing resurgence in textiles and apparel, while also forcing United States companies to focus their American-made efforts on higher-quality goods that fetch higher prices.

Last year, Dillard’s, the midtier department store, wanted to promote American-made clothing, according to Fessler USA, an apparel maker in eastern Pennsylvania. It turned to Fessler to produce tops. Theirs was a brief relationship. “Almost overnight, they called and said, ‘Made in America just doesn’t sell better than made in Asia, and you can’t beat the price,’ ” said Walter Meck, Fessler’s chief executive and principal owner.

The pattern repeats across retailers. Brooks Brothers’ American-made cashmere sport coats sell for $1,395; comparable imported ones go for $1,098. At Lands’ End, American-made sweatshirts cost $59, while the ones made in Vietnam cost $25. The label on an Abercrombie & Fitch American-made sweater, which sells for $150, screams about its American origins. But most of the sweaters for sale at Abercrombie are the cheaper ones priced at $68 and up, and made abroad.

Eric Schiffer, known as Ricky, and his business partner, Leonard Keff, last year opened Keff NYC, a knitting operation in New York’s garment district. Business has been good, with contracts from higher-price retailers like Abercrombie, Anthropologie and Ralph Lauren. One afternoon earlier this year, Mr. Schiffer watched as a table full of women knotted loose threads on Ralph Lauren gloves destined for the American team in the Winter Olympics next year in Sochi, Russia. (Ralph Lauren chose American manufacturing only under pressure from consumers and government officials up in arms after it supplied Olympics uniforms made in China for the 2012 Summer Games.)

Though labor costs about 40 percent more than in China, and retail prices end up 20 percent higher, Mr. Schiffer says Keff’s clients — and, more important, their customers — can afford it.

“We can’t work with the Targets and the J. C. Penneys of the world,” he said. “It’s not for everyone. It’s really just for the higher-end companies.”

Paying for Quality, or Not

Americans spend more than $340 billion a year on clothes and shoes, more than double what they spend on new cars, according to the American Apparel and Footwear Association. And they say they want to buy American, even if it hits them harder in the pocketbook.

Two-thirds of Americans say they check labels when shopping to see if they are buying American goods, according to a New York Times poll taken early this year. Given the example of a $50 garment made overseas, almost half of respondents — 46 percent — said they would be willing to pay from $5 to $20 more for a similar garment made in the United States.

How the Public Views Purchases Made Overseas

Enlarge This Image

Matt Rourke/Associated Press

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Save the Garment Center

Uploaded on Nov 3, 2009

The Garment Industry used to be the number one employer in New York City. Today, a small core of businesses remains that are being pushed out by high rents and overseas competition. They have banded together to petition the city for policies that would Save the Garment Center.

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Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Photographing History: Activist Armed with a Camera

Think Tank

Published on Nov 18, 2013

Abby Martin talks to activist and photojournalist Jenna Pope, about her work documenting mass protests from Occupy Wall Street to Turkey.

LIKE Breaking the Set @ http://fb.me/BreakingTheSet
FOLLOW Abby Martin @ http://twitter.com/AbbyMartin

Thursday, October 24, 2013

The middle class in America is being systematically wiped out.

The American Dream

25 Stats That Prove That The American Dream Is Being Systematically Destroyed

By Michael Snyder, on October 24th, 2013

The Middle Class Is Being Systematically Wiped Out Of Existence In America

The 25 statistics that you are about to read are solid proof that the middle class in America is being systematically wiped out. Once upon a time, the United States had the largest and most prosperous middle class in the history of the world. It seemed like almost everyone owned a home, had a couple of nice vehicles and could provide a very comfortable lifestyle for their families. Sadly, that has all changed. In America today, prices are rising at a very brisk pace but incomes are not. There aren’t nearly enough jobs for everyone anymore, and most of the jobs that are being “created” are jobs that pay very little. The largest employer in America is Wal-Mart, and the second largest employer is actually a temp agency (Kelly Services). In a desperate attempt to make ends meet, millions of American families endlessly pile up more debt, and millions of other American families find themselves forced to turn to the government for help. At this point, more than 49 percent of all Americans receive benefits from the federal government each month. The percentage of Americans that cannot financially take care of themselves is rising every single year, and our independence is being whittled away as we become increasingly dependent on the government. Unfortunately, our politicians continue to stand aside and do nothing as our jobs are shipped overseas, inflation steals our purchasing power and the middle class continues to shrink. The following are 25 stats that prove that the American Dream is being systematically destroyed…
1. According to the most recent numbers from the U.S. Census Bureau, 49.2 percent of all Americans are receiving benefits from at least one government program.
2. The U.S. government has spent an astounding 3.7 trillion dollars on welfare programs over the past five years.
3. An increasing number of employers are encouraging their low wage employees to supplement their wages by going on government welfare programs. For example, McDonald’s workers that need help making ends meet are being instructed to go on food stamps…

McDonald’s workers who are unable to pay their bills or stay above the poverty line should find help from food pantries or enlist in government benefit programs instead of seeking higher wages, according to a company resource line meant to help employees.
Nancy Salgado has worked for the fast-food corporation for over 10 years yet still earns $8.25 an hour, barely more than the $7.25 federal minimum wage. With help from the worker’s rights group Low Pay Is Not Ok, she phoned the company’s employee hotline, known as McResource, attempting to find some answers on how to improve her situation.
A recording of the call was made available to CNN, which reported that Salgado asked the helpline operator multiple questions regarding how McDonalds would help her pay her heating bill, buy groceries, and whether she could afford to help pay for her sister’s medical treatment.
Despite never asking how much money Salgado earned per hour or asking how many hours a week she worked, the McDonalds representative said she “definitely should be able to qualify for both food stamps and heating assistance.”

4. Total consumer credit has risen by a whopping 22 percent over the past three years.
5. Student loans are up by an astounding 61 percent over the past three years.
6. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, median household income in the United States has fallen for five years in a row.
7. Right now the middle class is taking home a smaller share of the overall income pie than has ever been recorded before.
8. Ordinary Americans are being priced out of the housing market. Today, nearly half of all home purchases are all-cash deals.
9. The homeownership rate in the United States is now at the lowest level it has been in nearly 18 years.
10. The gap between the rich and the poor in the United States is at an all-time record high.
11. U.S. families that have a head of household that is under the age of 30 have a poverty rate of 37 percent.
12. Every single day, thousands of Americans are receiving letters in the mail informing them that their old health insurance policies have been canceled. According to a recent Kaiser Health News article, some companies have already sent out hundreds of thousands of cancellation notices…
Read More Here
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McDonald's Tells Worker She Should Sign Up For Food Stamps

McDonald's workers struggling to get by on poverty wages should apply for food stamps and Medicaid.
That's the advice one activist McDonald's worker received when she called the company's "McResource Line," a service provided to McDonald's workers who need help with issues like child and health care.
"You can ask about things like food pantries. Are you on SNAP? SNAP is Supplemental Nutritional Assistance [Program] -- food stamps ... You would most likely be eligible for SNAP benefits," a McResource representative told 27-year-old Nancy Salgado, who works at a Chicago McDonald's. "Did you try and get on Medicaid? Medicaid is a federal program. It's health coverage for low income or no income adults -- and children."
Salgado is one of many fast-food workers who have walked off the job in recent months to protest the industry's low wages, part of a nationwide movement aiming to raise pay to $15 an hour. She has worked at McDonald's for 10 years, and earns $8.25 an hour in her current job as a cashier. Earlier this month, Salgado was detained after pressing McDonald's President Jeff Stratton for higher wages.
"Do you think this is fair that I have to be making $8.25 when I've been working at McDonald's for 10 years?" Salgado said during the confrontation.
The audio of Salgado's call to the McResource Line was posted Thursday on YouTube by advocacy group Low Pay Is Not OK. In the call, the McResource representative points the worker towards government assistance when she explains she needs help.

Read More Here

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McOutrage: Poverty Wages For Workers, Corporate Jet for Execs

October 24, 2013

Isaiah J. Poole

McOutrage: Poverty Wages For Workers, Corporate Jet for Execs

Nancy Salgado has been working at McDonald’s in Chicago for 10 years, and for that whole time she has been working at Illinois’ minimum wage, now $8.25 an hour. As a mother with two young children, that puts her below the poverty line of $19,530.

McDonald’s says it can’t afford to pay her and the company’s more than 700,000 other American nonmanagement employees a wage that would lift them above the poverty line. What McDonald’s Corp. can afford to do, though, is buy itself a new corporate jet.

That’s right. Bloomberg News reported earlier this week that McDonald’s Corp. has purchased for the use of its executives a Bombardier Challenger 605, a 12-seat plane that goes for between $27 million and $35 million. (Fries and soft drink not included.)

Meanwhile, Salgado and other McDonald’s employees have been offered a “McResources” telephone help line to call that offers them helpful advice if they are having problems meeting their expenses on their minimum-wage McPaycheck. The advice: Sign up for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (“food stamp”) benefits and Medicaid. This video features the exchange between Salgado and an unidentified respondent on the McResources line.

Read More Here

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Thursday, October 29, 2015

Malnutrition and 'Victorian' diseases soaring in England 'due to food poverty and cuts'

Malnutrition cases in English hospitals almost double in five years

Admissions to hospitals have soared as poorer families struggle to afford food

Friday, October 23, 2015

Wednesday, October 21, 2015

Written by

Monday, October 19, 2015

Friday, October 9, 2015

No need to get shirty! Air France executive is forced to climb a fence after staff attack him and rip off his shirt when he announces 2,900 job losses

Friday, September 25, 2015

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Friday, February 21, 2014

The legitimate questions to ask at this point in time would be .......

Exactly what money would the low and middle-income earners be putting aside for savings?

Considering the unemployment rate and the rising number of the homeless how realistic or honest would this proposal be?

In a world where the working middle class are disappearing and the poor can barely feed themselves and their families , are retirement savings accounts truly an achievable reality?

........

The U.S. Middle Class Is Turning Proletarian

Obama plan: Cut tax breaks for richest retirement savers

Plan designed to spur saving by low-, middle-income earners

By Robert Powell, MarketWatch

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Monday, December 2, 2013

Washington DC Area Walmart Workers, Community Supporters Join Nationwide Protests

Fast Food Giants Starve Workers' Wages, Gorge on Taxpayers: Report

Respect WALMART Workers - San Diego Light Brigade 11-27-13

Walmart collecting food donations to feed employees

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Saturday, November 30, 2013

That ‘Made in U.S.A.’ Premium

By STEPHANIE CLIFFORD

Published: November 30, 2013

American Made

Matt Rourke/Associated Press

Save the Garment Center

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Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Think Tank

Thursday, October 24, 2013

25 Stats That Prove That The American Dream Is Being Systematically Destroyed

McDonald's Tells Worker She Should Sign Up For Food Stamps

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