The Magical World Where McDonald's Pays $15 an Hour? It's Australia

[xchrom]

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/08/the-magical-world-where-mcdonalds-pays-15-an-hour-its-australia/278313/



Last week, fast-food workers around the United States yet again walked off the job to protest their low pay and demand a wage hike to $15 an hour, about double what many of them earn today. In doing so, they added another symbolic chapter to an eight-month-old campaign of one-day strikes that, so far, has yielded lots of news coverage, but not much in terms of tangible results.

So there's a certain irony that in Australia, where the minimum wage for full-time adult workers already comes out to about $14.50 an hour, McDonald's staffers were busy scoring an actual raise. On July 24, the country's Fair Work Commission approved a new labor agreement between the company and its employees guaranteeing them up to a up to a 15 percent pay increase by 2017.

And here's the kicker: Many Australian McDonald's workers were already making more than the minimum to begin with.

The land down under is, of course, not the only high-wage country in the world where McDonald's does lucrative business. The company actually earns more revenue out of Europe than than it does from the United States. France, with its roughly $12.00 hourly minimum, has more than 1,200 locations. (Australia has about 900).

[B Calm]

1. They could do that here and still make huge profits without

raising prices.

[frazzled]

2. Remember, though, that Australia has among the highest cost of living

In the Economist Intelligence Unit's bi-annual survey, both Sydney and Brisbane were in the top range of the top 10 of the world's most expensive cities (New York City, by contrast, doesn't even make it into the top ten).

The most recent survey was published in February 2013 containing data from December 2012 . Tokyo Became the most expensive city that year, while Zurich, the top city in the survey the previous year dropped down 5 places. Sydney and Melbourne both got up in the index from previous years, with Sydney becoming the 3rd most expensive city (from the 7th spot), and Melbourne becoming the 4th (from the 8th spot).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_living

See also:

http://money.cnn.com/gallery/pf/2013/02/06/most-expensive-cities/index.html

This is not an argument against significantly raising wages for US fast-food workers: that should definitely happen. But it is an explanation for why these wages are higher in Australia.