The True Cost of Paying McDonald’s Workers a Livable Wage

An eyebrow raising new study from University of Kansas researcher Arnobio Morelix reveals that if McDonald’s raised the price of its Big Mac by 68 cents and its Dollar Menu items by 17 cents, the company could afford to double the salaries and benefits of everyone working there, from the CEO down to employees earning the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour.

Of course, that would still give its low-income earners only $14.50 an hour, 50 cents shy of the $15 figure that McDonald’s basically acknowledged it takes to get by in America as part of its recently released “handy” budgeting tool.

The Huffington Post:

Morelix’s research comes as fast-food workers across the country strike for a $15 per hour minimum wage. Workers are also protesting for the right to unionize without fear of retaliation. Protesters are holding strikes in seven cities over a four-day period, according to Salon.

Morelix looked at McDonald’s 2012 annual report and discovered that only 17.1 percent of the fast-food giant’s revenue goes toward salaries and benefits. In other words, for every dollar McDonald’s earns, a little more than 17 cents goes toward the income and benefits of its more than 500,000 U.S. employees.

Thus, if McDonald’s executives wanted to double the salaries of all of its employees and keep profits and other expenses the same, it would need to increase prices by just 17 cents per dollar, according to Morelix.

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It’s also worth remembering that Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., noted on a Senate panel back in March that McDonald’s could afford to pay its workers $10.10 an hour if all it did was raise the cost of its meals by a paltry 4 cents.

— Posted by Tracy Bloom.