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Protests highlight fast-food economics

Customers want a deal when they order burgers and fries. But those cheap eats squeeze franchise store owners who say they already survive on slim margins. And the fast-food corporations have to grow profits to keep shareholders happy.

By Candice Choi, Jonathan Fahey | Updated on September 02, 2013
Becky Rafter, left, Courtney Hanson and Emilia Kaiser with Georgia WAND (Georgia Women's Action for New Directions) protest in front of a McDonald’s in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Atlanta Journal-Constitution, John Spink, File)

NEW YORK — American fast-food workers often earn about $7.25 an hour to make the $3 chicken sandwiches and 99-cent tacos that generate billions of dollars in profit each year for McDonald’s and other chains.

Thousands of the nation’s many millions of fast-food workers and their supporters have been staging protests across the country in the past year to call attention to the struggles of living on or close to the federal minimum wage. The push raises the question of whether the economics of the fast-food industry allow room for a boost in pay for its workers.

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