Nobody is saying it’s not a job. You’re required to be there and commit your time for both industries. But the effort required to get a nursing job is magnitudes greater than the effort to get a McDonald’s job, and the pay should reflect that. $5 an hour more isn’t enough to justify all the hoops a nurse has to jump through to get the job, and the ridiculous shit (sometimes literally) they have to deal with. Some other commenters pointed out that the $25 is for anyone who works in a hospital, not necessarily for healthcare workers in the traditional sense, which makes more sense.
You’re latching onto the examples meant to illustrate a point, instead of understanding the overall message. And no, they wouldn’t necessarily be making more. EMTs are notoriously underpaid. Since it still hasn’t been clear to you, I’ll try to spell it out plainly: Working at a hospital in the healthcare industry is orders of magnitude harder than working at a fast food restaurant, and I don’t think $5 more per hour reflects that reality.
You’re hung up on individual positions, so let’s use the two I mentioned. I looked up EMT Salary Central California: Average annual salary is $39,152. Divided by 52 weeks, divided by 40 hours in a work week is $18.82 an hour.
Now these new laws will almost double the income for fast food workers, but give EMTs and Phlebotomists a far smaller increase for work that is more stressful, more dangerous, and requires more training. Why should their equivalent income go down proportionately?
I think you’re maybe reading what I’m saying as “fast food workers are getting too much”, but what I’m really saying is “healthcare workers aren’t getting enough”.
We’re already in a healthcare worker crisis. What do you think is going to happen when they can just quit their stressful, dangerous job, and go work at McDonald’s, making $2 more an hour than they were before? There’s going to be an even bigger shortage. Sure, you’re probably going to counter with “well then the market will demand their pay goes up!”. But that’s what this whole post is about. Right? The workers getting their fair value. I don’t think the healthcare workers are getting their fair value, and I think it has the potential to cause an even worse shortage of healthcare workers. Sure, it’ll probably be temporary, but how does that help anyone affected by it during the crisis?
Edited for a bunch of mobile phone typos and formatting.
I know what you’re saying. Maybe you just have a lot more faith in hospitals and the free market than I do. You’re making an assumption that the hospitals are going to voluntarily give them proportionate raises above the new minimums. I don’t think that’s what’s going to happen. They’re going to get bumped up to the new minimum until market factors force them to go higher, and the industry and employees will suffer until that all shakes down. Anyways, it’s sending a message that saving someone’s life in a crisis on a daily basis is only worth 25% more money than running a cash register. Perhaps you agree with that. I don’t. We’re both entitled to our individual perspectives on this subject.
It’s harder because you have people saying “well at least you’re doing what you love, caring for people” as if it justifies making their job more shitty.
How is making cafeteria food caring for people? Why do they deserve more than $25 an hour when people doing the same work in a fast food restaurant get $5 less?
This reminds me of the “heroes work here” signs as if the people washing the linens were heroes.
I have a kid who enjoys their school food because people there care. Fuck anyone actively denying that my kid actually receives a benefit from that service and from people actually caring about doing their job well.
Honestly at this point, I feel like $25 should be the minimum wage. Because let’s be honest, 7:25 might as well be slavery with how much it can buy you.
I feel like we need to get inflation under control and prices back to reasonable, rather than making sweeping pay changes across all industries, while prices soar, and our currency valuation falls. Changes that are too drastic and far-reaching can cause the entire economy to collapse and our currency to falter.
Nobody is saying it’s not a job. You’re required to be there and commit your time for both industries. But the effort required to get a nursing job is magnitudes greater than the effort to get a McDonald’s job, and the pay should reflect that. $5 an hour more isn’t enough to justify all the hoops a nurse has to jump through to get the job, and the ridiculous shit (sometimes literally) they have to deal with. Some other commenters pointed out that the $25 is for anyone who works in a hospital, not necessarily for healthcare workers in the traditional sense, which makes more sense.
Nurses aren’t being paid $25 an hour, that’s the minimum wage. Do you think doctors are being paid $25 an hour too?
I feel like I’ve made my point clear. Perhaps I should have said phlebotomists, or EMTs.
They also would get more than $25 an hour, so perhaps you shouldn’t have.
You’re latching onto the examples meant to illustrate a point, instead of understanding the overall message. And no, they wouldn’t necessarily be making more. EMTs are notoriously underpaid. Since it still hasn’t been clear to you, I’ll try to spell it out plainly: Working at a hospital in the healthcare industry is orders of magnitude harder than working at a fast food restaurant, and I don’t think $5 more per hour reflects that reality.
Why is emptying bedpans and making cafeteria food (those are who will be getting paid $25 an hour) so much harder than working fast food?
You’re hung up on individual positions, so let’s use the two I mentioned. I looked up EMT Salary Central California: Average annual salary is $39,152. Divided by 52 weeks, divided by 40 hours in a work week is $18.82 an hour.
Phlebotomist is $20.17.
An average fast food worker is earning $24,473 annually in the same city, or $11.77 per hour.
Now these new laws will almost double the income for fast food workers, but give EMTs and Phlebotomists a far smaller increase for work that is more stressful, more dangerous, and requires more training. Why should their equivalent income go down proportionately?
I think you’re maybe reading what I’m saying as “fast food workers are getting too much”, but what I’m really saying is “healthcare workers aren’t getting enough”.
We’re already in a healthcare worker crisis. What do you think is going to happen when they can just quit their stressful, dangerous job, and go work at McDonald’s, making $2 more an hour than they were before? There’s going to be an even bigger shortage. Sure, you’re probably going to counter with “well then the market will demand their pay goes up!”. But that’s what this whole post is about. Right? The workers getting their fair value. I don’t think the healthcare workers are getting their fair value, and I think it has the potential to cause an even worse shortage of healthcare workers. Sure, it’ll probably be temporary, but how does that help anyone affected by it during the crisis?
Edited for a bunch of mobile phone typos and formatting.
Yes, that’s before this new law. Now they will be paid a lot more. You still don’t seem to understand what ‘minimum wage’ means.
I know what you’re saying. Maybe you just have a lot more faith in hospitals and the free market than I do. You’re making an assumption that the hospitals are going to voluntarily give them proportionate raises above the new minimums. I don’t think that’s what’s going to happen. They’re going to get bumped up to the new minimum until market factors force them to go higher, and the industry and employees will suffer until that all shakes down. Anyways, it’s sending a message that saving someone’s life in a crisis on a daily basis is only worth 25% more money than running a cash register. Perhaps you agree with that. I don’t. We’re both entitled to our individual perspectives on this subject.
It’s harder because you have people saying “well at least you’re doing what you love, caring for people” as if it justifies making their job more shitty.
How is making cafeteria food caring for people? Why do they deserve more than $25 an hour when people doing the same work in a fast food restaurant get $5 less?
This reminds me of the “heroes work here” signs as if the people washing the linens were heroes.
I have a kid who enjoys their school food because people there care. Fuck anyone actively denying that my kid actually receives a benefit from that service and from people actually caring about doing their job well.
Honestly at this point, I feel like $25 should be the minimum wage. Because let’s be honest, 7:25 might as well be slavery with how much it can buy you.
I feel like we need to get inflation under control and prices back to reasonable, rather than making sweeping pay changes across all industries, while prices soar, and our currency valuation falls. Changes that are too drastic and far-reaching can cause the entire economy to collapse and our currency to falter.
What if we pegged minimum wages directly to prices? So it doesn’t matter how much prices rise - the wage is pegged to them, so it rises accordingly.