Their anger has been stoked by what they see as a glaring disconnect: their wages have flatlined, while median pay for chief executives at the nation’s top corporations jumped 16 percent last year, averaging a princely $15.1 million, according to Equilar, an executive compensation analysis firm.
In recent weeks, workers from McDonald’s, Taco Bell and other fast-food restaurants — many of them part-time employees — have staged one-day walkouts in New York, Chicago, Detroit and Seattle to protest their earnings, typically just $150 to $350 a week, often too little to support themselves and their families. More walkouts are expected at fast-food restaurants in seven cities on Monday. Earlier this month hundreds of low-wage employees working for federal contractors in Washington walked out and picketed along Pennsylvania Avenue to urge President Obama to press their employers to raise wages. ...NYT
Anyone in the group in between the top management and their employees want to join in? It's not as though these workers are "moochers" or get subsidies from Congress.
The bottom 20 percent of American workers by income — 28 million workers — earn less than $9.89 an hour, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal research group. That translates to $20,570 a year for a full-time employee. Their income fell 5 percent between 2006 and 2012. Wages for workers at the 50th percentile — their median pay is $16.30 an hour — have also dipped, falling 3.4 percent, while pay for the top 10 percent rose 3 percent.
Lorraine Riley James makes $9.35 an hour at the Macy’s on North Michigan Avenue in Chicago and has received just $1.35 in raises since starting there six years ago. “I have so much experience that I don’t feel what they’re paying me is fair,” she said. “I generated a quarter of a million in sales for them last year.”...NYT
