1y ago

California schools forced to compete with fast food industry for workers after minimum wage hike

apnews.com

Uplifting News @lemmy.world

return2ozma @lemmy.world

1y ago

California schools forced to compete with fast food industry for workers after minimum wage hike

apnews.com /article/california-fast-food-minimum-wage-school-workers-eecf616b677c3bac087b3a6940137817

14 comments

They really, really don’t like paying support staff. Minimum wage for some of the hardest work I ever did. This includes special education services.
- Huh thats wild. Some of my coworkers are support staff and here they have some pretty decent wages, above cali minimum in a lower COL state. I have heard even here it's highly volatile and the wage they get is determined by negotiations between the people hiring the staff and the fiscal intermediary as well as the depth of the IEPs and ISPs. If the person coordinating goes to bat for their support staff typically the wage can be good where I'm at.
  
  In my old district in CT they negotiated a raise from the state minimum to $18.00 with a 32 hour maximum per week, but subsequently removed all the classroom behavioral specialists and therapists to compensate. It’s not a living wage here.
Forced? Free market, no bitching
- I think this is good, still this isn't free market exactly - a law was just passed mandating a pay floor in an adjacent industry. It's a regulated market, which is good because it's lifting the floor for others as well.
This is good. After people have had enough the school will have to raise wages!
- And increase taxes to do it...
Good
I know the costs of living in California are so far out of control it's barely livable but considering the job opportunities in my area I kind of want to move there just to get a fast food job. I even have a degree in IT yet I have to compete with people more qualified and experienced than me just for a $15/hr job.
Schools don't 'compete' with industries. School is a service that parents and their children participate in, in order to better society. And the priority for children should always be education before entering the workforce. If more people decide to work in fast food now that they feel their value is compensated fairly, then the responsibility rests in their parents to help them make an informed decision based on their economic brackground. A fairly compensated job is NOT the problem. I feel this article is biased in its title in order to generate more rage/engagement or maybe to push a political agenda.
Edit: someone brought to my attention that I read that wrong, so I apologise. But the point still stands in that case: the title makes it seem that the fast food workers having a fair wage is the problem, when the problem is that teachers are underpaid.
- They are talking about employee retention not students dropping out to work at fast food. Schools absolutely "compete" for workers just like every other industry.
  
  I'm sorry, I read that wrong! In that case I still think the problem in this situation is NOT fast food workers being compensated fairly, but that teachers are not. The point about being a clickbaity title still stands. One could also argue if the possible shared workforce pool overlaps between those two markets, but that's a discussion for another day
- Edit: someone brought to my attention that I read that wrong, so I apologise. But the point still stands in that case: the title makes it seem that the fast food workers having a fair wage is the problem, when the problem is that teachers are underpaid.
  See, this is why it's good to at least skim the article. Even when you corrected yourself, you're still wrong.
  I also took the headline to mean teachers might make better pay doing fast food work. But this is about the cafeteria workers who make even less. It's about people with an opportunity to move laterally (food) to make more money, not people giving up something they went into because of some passion (the reason teachers put up with the shit pay) for more money.
  I just went back and searched the article. "Teacher" does not appear on the page.

14 comments