Man 'Panhandles' for Employees on Street Corner

[Hum]

Lance Forsee was having trouble finding employees for his Central Washington landscaping company so he decided to think outside the box.

Forsee, who runs Colonial Lawn and Garden in Yakima, said traditional recruitment methods had failed. He's in peak season now and needs quality employees.

"In our community there's been several panhandlers working the area for quite some time with their cardboard signs - you know the typical 'will work for food, a dollar, everything helps,' he said in a Thursday interview with ABC News. "So we thought 'hmm, why don't we play off that?"

Forsee, 53, decided to break out his own cardboard sign.

"Desperate business owner will give $ and benefits to outstanding workers!" his message read. "Every employee helps. God bless!"

While some people were "conditioned" to stare right past his sign and so missed the message, many others read and appreciated it.

"Several people would pull over. Some would have resumes in hand," he said.

Standing at a busy intersection - the corner of 40th and Summitview avenues - he displayed his sign three times. On his third outing on Wednesday, KIMA-TV featured a story about his efforts. The response was startling.

"We're overwhelmed now with applicants," Forsee said. "We're swamped. I mean people are coming in. We've got hundreds, probably more than 200, since 11 o'clock (Wednesday)."

 

The starting salary for someone without experience is $10 an hour, Forsee said. That's higher than the state minimum of $9.32, and far above the federal minimum of $7.25.

Forsee said the hourly pay goes up to at least $12 for someone with experience. The average $12 per hour worker who'd been employed for a year or more received more than $5.50 per hour in benefits, including health insurance, paid holidays and paid vacation, Forsee said.

 

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[Torolol]

and McDonald's employees want $15/hours

[Hum]

I'm betting that none that applied are from McDonald's.

[SierraSonic]

and McDonald's employees want $15/hours

Fast food workers want the minimum wage to be realigned with the proper value of the cost of living, They are asking the proper amounts in certain states, just not all of them, we need to bring the minimum wage up to proper federal value, then let each state set it to their state cost of living.

 

I'm betting that none that applied are from McDonald's.

I don't understand the point of your comment? Isn't that what you are against, people staying at mcdonalds? How can you look at people like they are such trash? There was most definitely were people who currently are working at fast food places who applied. I know a lot of people use fast food as a stopgap to employment and I know many get stuck in these positions until they can find better work, but your comments about it are getting sickening. Way to belittle people who are working for a living, no matter what the job. You act as if fast food workers are all morons who have no drive. Get a clue.

 

 

As for the article, great on the guy for going about finding a solution to his employee problem, I wish more companies would try to reach out to the people who may not have had success with traditional means of looking for work.

[Hum]

Fast food workers want the minimum wage to be realigned with the proper value of the cost of living.

 

I don't understand the point of your comment? Isn't that what you are against, people staying at mcdonalds? How can you look at people like they are such trash? There was most definitely were people who currently are working at fast food places who applied. I know a lot of people use fast food as a stopgap to employment and I know many get stuck in these positions until they can find better work, but your comments about it are getting sickening. Way to belittle people who are working for a living, no matter what the job. You act as if fast food workers are all morons who have no drive. Get a clue.

I was thinking of the local McDee employees that I know.

Most of them just want a paycheck and would never think of getting their hands dirty, doing landscaping.

And many grumbling min. Wage workers wrongly expect to support entire families on their pay.

They need to wake up.

[SierraSonic]

I was thinking of the local McDee employees that I know.

Most of them just want a paycheck and would never think of getting their hands dirty, doing landscaping.

And many grumbling min. Wage workers wrongly expect to support entire families on their pay.

They need to wake up.

The problem with that is that minimum wage was designed in mind for a single parent of 2. If we set the bar as so low as to barely support a single adult living on their own, there is no room for error or bad luck in a persons life. There needs to be a cushion for all people who have to work for a living, no matter what the job, and they should be rewarded with a pay with what the cost of living should be.

 

If they aren't supporting children, imagine supporting their parents during their retirement if their retirement plan fails.

 

http://www.epi.org/publication/wage-workers-older-88-percent-workers-benefit/

• The average age of affected workers is 35 years old;
• 88 percent of all affected workers are at least 20 years old;
• 35.5 percent are at least 40 years old;
• 56 percent are women;
• 28 percent have children;
• 55 percent work full-time (35 hours per week or more);
• 44 percent have at least some college experience.

These numbers paint a picture of a majority of people on minimum wage as adults, struggling to keep up with payments to keep their children. A third of them are over 40, an age where learning a new field is extremely difficult, especially if you have a family to care for. A majority of which are women, who are unfairly treated with wages and are more prone to be taking care of dependants.

 

If you are on minimum wage, you should have every expectation to be able to support half of a marriage, the average being consummated with 2 1/2 children. So a single person should technically support 1 and 3/4 people, or about twice what they are making now.

 

The people you seem to be more concerned with are leeches, those with no drive for work, which is understandable, but we need to find a different way to go after the leeches, and trying to not harm individuals or families who need help.

 

We are not willing to let people prevent births due to people complaining, can't teach people to use proper safety due to people complaining, and yet we can't take care of them after a mistake happened, as people will complain. We can't even offer the easy way out, as people will complain. So what do we do? We aren't in a country that believes through the law of of darwinism, we try to help people who need it, at the cost of some of them abusing the system, but I could honestly care less as that is .0001% (insignificant to our economy) of the population. Abusers eventually get caught, and even if they don't, abusers aren't a good enough reason to screw over legitimate users.

[Hum]

Minimum wage has always been to support that one, individual employee -- not a wife, three kids, your ailing mother.

You need two jobs, or better skills if you want to support families.

And I have all kinds of repect for those with the gumption to work.

But the general public is not going to pay ever increasing prices, to support worker's dependents.

[SierraSonic]

Minimum wage has always been to support that one, individual employee -- not a wife, three kids, your ailing mother.

You need two jobs, or better skills if you want to support families.

And I have all kinds of repect for those with the gumption to work.

But the general public is not going to pay ever increasing prices, to support worker's dependents.

http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R42973.pdf

 

http://www.epi.org/publication/bp357-federal-minimum-wage-increase/

 

12 years since it was enacted, the minimum wage increased to reach our value, after that it hit a value of thats 20-30% more valuable than it is now and stayed that way for 30 years til the early 90s. From where it seems we haven't been able to recover the economy at all. Again, for the majority of it's life, it was more valuable than it is now, and it seems that only during times of hardships it was worth this little, such as the great depression, and the current recession thats "over".

 

So since the majority of it's life it supported families, I think you are in the wrong, and leaving it at levels where only one person is supported seems to cause issues in the economy. Such as the great depression before hand, and it's current value now.

 

This economy is based on people paying for products that support the cost of living of the employees at the establishment. Their benefits, and the products and services they offer. They are a total cost. The economy handled it before, why do you act like this is different from how it should work. Right now we are support profits over people, and I believe that's wrong. Other minimum wage people pay these establishment's too, I'm sure for them to get an increase in pay THEY are willing to pay more for that to happen, and their money is just as important as anybodies.

 

Prices would not have to double, to double minimum wage increases, if we go with $10.10, and then a slow gradual increase, the prices would go up 3-5% average.

[Shiranui]

Perhaps it is the last vestiges of the American dream that accounts for the lack of support for raising minimum wage?