RT NewsA Chicago woman was arrested late last week after confronting the president of her long-time employer McDonald’s over the low wages she earns as she struggles to raise two young children.
Nancy Salgado, 26, interrupted a speech by McDonald’s Corporation President Jeff Stratton at the Union League Club of Chicago on Friday, saying her wages weren’t enough for her to supply her kids with basic necessities like shoes.
“Do you think this is fair, that I have to be making $8.25 [per hour] when I’ve worked for McDonald’s for 10 years?” Salgado, who claimed never to have received a raise in that time, said at the gathering as Stratton stood at a podium.
“I’ve been there 40 years,” Stratton replied, the extent of his response to Salgado.
“The thing is that I need a raise. But you’re not helping your employees. How is this possible?” Salgado continued at Stratton. “To your employees you haven’t done anything.”
She and six other protesters were arrested and given tickets for trespassing.
The group was part of dozens of McDonald’s workers, supported by members of the Workers Organizing Committee of Chicago, that attended the Union League Club event as part of the Fight for 15, a campaign that seeks a $15-an-hour wage for fast-food workers.
Salgado, single mother of children aged two and seven, is a cashier at a McDonald’s working 30 to 40 hours a week, she told The Real News. She has worked at her current McDonald’s position for 10 months, though says she’s worked at various McDonald’s restaurants since age 16.
“[Stratton] needs to know we are what all the employees at McDonald’s are going through,” she said Wednesday. “We’re struggling day-to-day to provide our needs in our houses, things for our kids. And it’s just–it gets harder and harder with just the poverty wage.”
Salgado said she was quickly approached by authorities at the event and told she would be arrested.
“I remember just telling them … because I have to speak out my mind and I had to tell the president the poverty wage I’m living in, that’s just against the law?” she told The Real News.
She said she expects her employer to take some kind of retaliatory action against her soon.
“There’s nothing going around [yet] that I know of. Would there be? I had some hours cut off,” she said.“Do I feel they’re going to do something against me? I do. You know. They haven’t done anything yet.”
A fair wage to Salgado would be around $15 an hour, she said.
“I love my job. I love interacting with customers. I love talking with them, even though, like, it means I’m harder, I’m broken, you know, because sometimes I can’t provide a gallon of milk in the fridge,” she said.
“It’s like the CEOs make billions and billions a year. Then why can’t they provide enough for their employees?”
Maybe the problem is her trying to raise a Family on a mcdonalds wage! Let’s take a look at her past and see where she was and what she was doing while she should have been working on her future goals! I bet almost anything she was partying and living like there was no tomorrow with her legs in the air like she just don’t care! Now six kids four baby daddy’s later she’s interrupting the mans meetings getting herself locked up in the pokie for what because he spent his life building a business to secure his existence in his golden years and she did nothing and is now looking for someone other than herself to blame so she can get something for nothing.
Sounds to me like you have never been stuck in a low paying, dead end job Nobodiesname. You should maybe check out one of those deadend jobs and try living on min. wage for a few years with no finances or freinds or people to fall back on.
nobodysname,
How much do you make as a shill?
When I started at a utility after 4 years in the USN I made like $70 a week. But there was a ladder. Today there are few ladders. The chance of working at the same company 40 years, 30 years, even 20 years is slim. The ladders have closed.
“Salgado, single mother of children aged two and seven, is a cashier at a McDonald’s working 30 to 40 hours a week, she told The Real News.”
Mexican name. She can thank all her compadres flooding this country from south of the border for driving wages low and keeping them that way. No sympathy.
“A fair wage to Salgado would be around $15 an hour, she said.”
I’ve been at my job for 11 1/2 years and I don’t even make that much.I bust my @ss every day lifting anywhere from 40 to 100 pounds of materials, while she punches buttons on a cashier’s machine?
I don’t think so.
We’re ALL underpaid, but some of us more than others when it comes to REAL work involving actual physical exertion.
You’re right digger I’ve never made min wage I was taught when I was a kid not to work for someone else if I wanted to have anything I have to get it myself. I never worked for anyone before I make my own way I never have received help from my friends or family. I saved ash for my house and I buy everything outright if I don’t have the cash or can’t trade for it I don’t need it yet till I do. I buy cars with cash as well. I don’t live in a mansion I don’t have a new car but what I have is mine and I didn’t get it by means of someone else. I work for myself an I do it for cash or trade and that’s it. Now I didn’t spent my youth hanging out and running the streets partying and getting hopped up on dope like the other kids were I instead was learning my trade and it has been good to me with the grace of God. So when I see people who should have been doing what they needed to do to set themselves up when they were old complaining why someone else isn’t giving them something for free or more then they deserve I call it like I see it and too bad. If I don’t have or I don’t eat it’s my fault not yours cause you worked harder than me. You can say what you want it’s a free country still well somewhat anyway but when I look out in a field and I see something that looks like a horse it acts like a horse and it smells like a horse I pretty sure it’s a f#@kin horse!
And as for you Michael im not even got to respond to your shill remark. Other than this here. There is no need for infighting not now it’s too close .
Yes, better choices could have been made, ASSUMING that she had choices. The simple fact is that CEO is making what? 5, 10 million a year. Anyone…ANYONE who spenda 8 hours a day at a job, no matter WHAT it is, deserves more than 8 f#%&1n dollars an hour. I heard 16% of their cost was labor and the cost of a Big Mac would only rise 60 cents if they were given that raise.It would also stimulate the economy, but of course, we all know that is not the goal.