Fast Food Strike

I was watching the news today covering the nation-wide walkout of fast food employees. They are demanding wage increases from $7.50 per hour to $15.00 hour and secondly they want Obamacare. While I am personally 100% behind offering higher pay to these people, I am not sure if they understand the full impact of their demands. There are many young single people working part time at these places and I am not talking about them. I am interested in the full time employee who may be a single mom with two children. Right now as a full time employee she gets forty hours a week and benefits. The benefits vary in different parts of the country but include such standard things as health, disability and life insurance, pension plan, vacation, holidays and sick leave. Her situation is $15,000 per year in wages, plus $5,300 per year in federal earned income credit, $1,900 in Minnesota family income credit. In addition she receives a $2,000 federal income tax credit so her gross income is $24,200. These extra funds are not counted when determining her eligibility for addition benefits such as child care assistance, food support, medical assistance and single mother grants. When her salary is doubled to $30,000 many of these extras will be phased out some completely. I offer one example. The earned income credit from the federal program would be reduced from $5,300 to $3,800. One thing in her favor is that she will still not have to pay any federal or state income tax although her payroll tax withholding will increase from $1,150 to $2,700. If the company then decided to move employees to Obamacare her cost for that will increase from $57 per month to $193 per month. There are likely other items that I have overlooked but she should understand that her take home pay will not increase as much as doubling her salary might lead her to believe. F