According to a study released on Oct. 22 by the University of California’s Berkeley Labor Center and the University of Illinois, more than half the nation’s fast food workers rely on public aid because their wages are not sufficient to support them. Fifty-two percent of families of fast food workers receive assistance from public programs like Medicaid, food stamps, the Earned Income Tax Credit and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, the report said, at an estimated cost to taxpayers of $7 billion each year. A separate report criticized fast food giants McDonald’s, Yum! Brands, Subway, Burger King, Wendy’s, Dunkin’ Donuts, Dairy Queen, Little Caesar’s, Sonic and Domino’s for pushing their workers onto the public safety net. The National Employment Law Project said that these 10 largest fast food companies were responsible for more than half the total cost to taxpayers—about $3.8 billion a year. McDonald’s alone was responsible for $1.2 billion.
Cheap Fast Food?
Show Comments ()
1
Comments are automatically closed two weeks after an article's initial publication. See our comments policy for more.
Mike Evans
11 years 9 months ago
Now add virtually all your mall retailers and you have a snapshot of poverty stricken workers in America. They receive low minimum wages, less than full time hours, virtually no benefits and earn no pension rights. These workers can no longer claim to be in the middle class. Their employers rely upon food stamps, medicaid, unemployment insurance and housing vouchers to make up the difference while complaining bitterly about the ACA, minimum wage increases, and regulation of pension funds. This is class warfare in its ugly full presence.
The latest from america
Los Angeles Archbishop José H. Gomez was one of several community leaders who joined to open the Family Assistance Program, aiding those affected by recent ICE raids.
On Friday, Pope Leo XIV issued a statement on the theme "Migrants, missionaries of hope."
In Steven Spielberg’s “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” an ordinary electrician has a transcendent encounter—with U.F.O.s, not God.
Many of my acquaintances have given up “reading about something that didn't happen.” But fiction has long-term and concrete value, both mentally and socially.