Imagine a world where fast food workers can pay their rent and utility bills, plus buy their children food and clothes. Well, you don’t have to imagine it because such a place exists. It’s called Denmark.
A New York Times article on Tuesday chronicled the life of a Danish fast food worker named Hampus Elofsson, who works 40 hours a week at a Burger King in Copenhagen, and makes enough not only to pay his bills, but to save some money and enjoy a night out with friends. His wage: $20 per hour. Yep, you read that right. The base wage in Denmark is close to two and a half times what American fast food workers make.
Elofsson’s pay is the kind of wage that Anthony Moore, a shift manager in Tampa, Florida can only dream about. He earns $9 an hour for his low-level management job, or about $300 per week, and like half of America’s fast food workers, he relies on some form of public assistance to make up the difference between that wage and barely eking out a living.
“It’s very inadequate,” Moore, a single father of two young daughters, told the Times. He gets $164 in food stamps for his daughters. “Sometimes I ask, ‘Do I buy food or do I buy them clothes? . . . If I made $20 an hour, I could actually live, instead of dreaming about living.”
Of course, in America, fast food workers and their advocates aren’t even dreaming about $20 per hour. They are asking for $15 per hour, and the fast food industry, as well as conservative economists and politicians are scoffing at that, and fighting any pay increase tooth and nail.
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STORY: http://www.alternet.org/labor/burger-king-and-mcdonalds-pay-fast-food-workers-20-hour-denmark