The most recent minimum wage for fast food workers in California is now up to at least $20 an hour while retail workers are still making $16 an hour. Retail workers deserve the same starting pay as fast food workers.

Those who are eligible for $20 an hour are employees of restaurant chains with more than 60 nationwide locations.

So why isn’t the same treatment given to retail workers who are employed by big companies?

Retail workers do just as much work and oftentimes do things off the sales floor that customers don’t get to see such as coming in early or staying after hours to clean the store and check inventory.

Not to mention dealing with rude customers who demand that a worker find an item in-store or try to haggle with prices the workers didn’t even set.

Making $16 an hour isn’t very reasonable in this day and age as prices for everything have skyrocketed.

Gas for example is around $5 if not more in California, meaning about one hour of work is worth around three gallons of gas. This isn’t even enough to fill up a gas tank halfway.

Another prime example is food, groceries are becoming more expensive every day and if you want to eat healthy be ready to break the bank every shopping trip.

Many high school and college students start off working retail to save up for college as tuition is hardly ever affordable and the minimum wage is barely enough to make ends meet for some.

It can be understandable if smaller shops such as mom-and-pop shops aren’t able to provide workers with a higher wage, but big corporations make more money so they should afford to pay their employees better.

One thing big companies can do is lower the cost of goods because in a lot of mall stores, jeans will be over $40 and shirts are around $25 if not more.

By lowering the cost of these items, it will attract more customers to shop which will bring in more cash flow to pay the employees.

An additional reason why some find it hard to make a living based on the minimum wage is because their hours are short.

During the holidays or summer time many workers find themselves making decent money because they get more hours due to places being busier, but anytime in between the stores are slow and there isn’t much to do.

During non peak shopping times, stores need to either not hire so many people so they can give a few people long hours or they can increase the starting pay rate for their employees.