Majority of U.S. fast-food workers need public assistance: study

[Eugene]

Source: Reuters

Majority of U.S. fast-food workers need public assistance: study

By Atossa Araxia Abrahamian
NEW YORK | Tue Oct 15, 2013 12:49pm EDT

(Reuters) - More than half of low-wage workers employed by the largest U.S. fast-food restaurants earn so little that they must rely on public assistance to get by, according to a study released on Tuesday.

This ends up costing U.S. taxpayers billions of dollars a year, the study said.

Data from the U.S. Census Bureau and public benefit programs show 52 percent of fast-food cooks, cashiers and other "front-line" staff had relied on at least one form of public assistance, such as Medicaid, food stamps and the Earned Income Tax Credit program, between 2007 and 2011, researchers at the University of California-Berkeley and the University of Illinois said.

In a concurrent report, the pro-labor National Employment Law Project found that the 10 largest fast-food companies in the United States cost taxpayers more than $3.8 billion each year in public assistance because the workers do not make enough to pay for basic necessities themselves.

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Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/10/15/us-usa-fastfood-wages-idUSBRE99E0N920131015

[dem in texas]

1. I wrote a paper about the fast workers back in the 1970's

Back in the 70's when I was in college, I wrote a paper for Economics stating that the fast companies could only get by because they used high students for workers and were able to pay them the minimum wage. I remember my teacher wrote that my comments were "thought provoking".

Time goes by, but the fast food industries still depend on poorly paid workers to make a profit. But now the worker base has shifted from teenagers to young adults and seniors. So instead of Mom and Dad giving support to the workers, it is the US taxpayer who is helping these underpaid people. One thing has not changed, the big companies are still making their profits off low wage employees.