How Much Should Flipping A Burger Pay?

The fast food industry is finally get its feet held to the fire a bit!  A national day of protests for higher wages and the right to unionize kicked off this morning and these protestors aren't just targeting one particular chain, they're going after the whole damn industry!  (Per the LA Times, Chicago walkouts are going to cover Wendy's, Subway and McDonald's while in New York, they're going to be at Wendy's, McDonald's and Burger King.) The somewhat controversial demand the protestors are making?  They want a pay raise from the typical $7.25 an hour to what they call a living wage of $15 an hour which a lot of people think is sort of insane.

All of which begs a question:  how much should flipping a burger pay?  As the LA Times article in the link notes, the fast food industry has undergone a shift of late- instead of relatively dispensible, short-time teenaged and college-aged employees that are looking to make extra money to pay for school an other stuff, more and more people, especially in this economy are relying on these relatively low-skilled, low-paying jobs to feed their families.  And the protestors are quite right to point out that it's damn near impossible to raise a family on $7.25 an hour. 

But an increase all the way to $15 dollars an hour?  I'm unconvinced.  Don't get me wrong:  it's been a long standing irritant of mine that pro-Labor, pro-Union lefties will spend acres of ink taking a dump all over Wal-Mart while completely ignoring the fact that the fast food industry treats their workers like shit, promotes horrible and potentially unsafe working conditions and generally does shit that makes Wal-Mart look like the very model of progressive corporate responsibility and not nearly enough attention has been paid to their misdeeds- so I'm all for this protest.   (And don't get me wrong, Wal-Mart is far from the greatest corporation on the face of the planet and they can and should treat their employees far better than they do- but that's another blogpost.)

Do I think they should have the right to unionize?  I do.   I think there's work to be done on getting them better wages and safer and more sanitary working conditions and as these corporations seem to be intent on doing jack squat about it, someone should pressure them to do something.  If these protests don't bring change, then why not unionize? (And I know the standard corporatist/free market response is:  'well go work somewhere else then' but seriously?  In this economy?  What are people supposed to do?  And I think good capitalism means that you don't treat your employees like shit.  I mean, you depend on these people to make your business work.  You should value them.)  $15 bucks an hour though might be out of reach though.