- Multinationals -

Young Worker Exploitation

Posted by: minus pickles ( Hungry Jacks , Australia ) on October 26, 1999 at 16:55:44:

I find it amusing to see how many disgruntled ex and current Hungry Jacks employees have posted a message in this "debating room" in comparison to BK. Is this testament to HJs being a less desirable employer or do more young people have access to the internet in Australia than other countries?

To further highlight fastfood companies exploitation of young workers i wish to explain a commonly used labour gague known as the crew rate. This simply means you add up your total weeks labour cost and divide it by the total crew hours. The goal is to keep this rate as low as possible. For the company i worked for it was set at $6.50(.) Now because labour rates for young people in Australia are determined by age not skill, one can dirrectly relate crew rate to crew age. A crew rate of $6.50 meant you had an average crew age of under 16. The crew rate that you acheived would determine the number of person hours the store could use. Hence the lower the crew rate the more person hours the store could use and hence the more 14,15 and 16 year olds you could have working, suposedly providing an illusion of better service for the customers. This meant as the the more experienced workers got older (therefore paid at a higher hourly rate) they would receive less hours so that the crew rate could be kept down.

To display the hipocracy of the crew rate - if your store could spend $10000 on labour, and you only spent $9000 at a crew rate above $6.50 by using fewer, but more skilled older workers (providing better service to the customer) the roster manager would be grilled (excuse the pun!) If on the other hand if you could spend $10000 on labour and you spent all of it at a crew rate of $6.50 by using lots of less skilled younger employees - your rosters would be in order, despite spending less money than the first example.




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