Unions representing fast food workers are asking the state's new Fast Food Council to support a 70-cent-per-hour boost in the minimum wage at its next meeting on Sept. 11.

The minimum wage for fast food workers was recently raised to $20 an hour but it works out to just over $41,000 a year, which, in California, is significantly less than the average cost of living.

Linda Becker, director of regional partnerships in the Bay Area for the nonprofit Merit America, supports a higher minimum wage but said it is just a start.

"While raising the minimum wage offers an immediate paycheck boost for low-wage workers, it's just one piece of the puzzle," Becker explained. "We still really, firmly believe that a low-wage job should be a steppingstone and not a dead end."

Merit America offers intensive career counseling and online courses in IT support, data analytics, cybersecurity, project management and UX design. It costs nothing to start and a maximum of $5,700 total. According to Forbes magazine, it costs on average more than $53,000 a year to cover housing, medical care, food, transportation and taxes in California, the third-highest cost of living in the country.

Becker pointed out learners only start to pay Merit America back, at $95 a month, after they get a higher-paying job.

"The average wage gain that we see is about $24,000 a year," Becker reported. "Which is a significant, kind of life-changing increase of wages, post-program."

California's general minimum wage is $16 an hour. Over the next few years, the state is also phasing in a higher minimum wage, of $18 to $25 per hour, for certain health care positions.

Apprenticeship programs are getting more attention these days to help fill skilled labor shortages but accessibility is seen is a barrier and Minnesota could boost support for a program that opens its arms to disadvantaged populations.

A Minnesota House committee heard testimony this week on a bill that would provide $800,000 over the next two budget years to the Building Strong Communities program, a regional nonprofit spearheaded by construction union partners.

Natalie Pilrain, a recent graduate of the program, said as a single mom trying to finish high school, it gave her the chance at a promising career by overcoming up-front hurdles.

"At the time, I didn't have extra money lying around for work boots or hotel expenses for going up to the training center," Pilrain pointed out. "Building Strong Communities covered those costs for me."

She is now earning strong wages as an apprentice with the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 49. Bill sponsors said additional state funds could help the program further fulfill its mission to recruit women, minorities and veterans. The measure has bipartisan sponsors but like other proposals this spring, it faces an uncertain future with Minnesota's budget surplus getting smaller.

Dorlisa Squires, also a program graduate, said officials were very responsive when she asked about it. After working in the medical device field for many years, Squires told the committee she wound up homeless without a promising career outlook. She stressed her new journey through the trades has given her a fresh start.

"Now I have a career and now I have placement," Squires explained. "I have an apartment, a car."

Officials said the free training has led to 107 job placements over a two-year period.

A new study commissioned by the federal Department of Labor said registered apprenticeship programs dramatically increase the ability of participants to afford basic needs, especially initiatives led by unions. The movement comes as the industry still hears complaints about long-standing issues such as nepotism.


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The seven national parks in Arkansas have not been spared from job cuts by the federal government.

Nationwide, 1,700 park employees have been let go by the Trump administration.

Eboni Preston, southeast regional director and National Park Service diversity lead for the National Parks Conservation Association, said the cuts will impact park services and the Arkansas economy.

"By fewer people being able to come to the parks, enjoy the parks, hotels are suffering, restaurants are suffering," Preston pointed out. "Walking up and down the community, it's really taking a toll, and so places like Hot Springs National Park and Buffalo National River, unfortunately they won't get the visitation that they did before."

She noted park visitors will also experience reduced hours, longer lines and closed campgrounds and facilities. Anyone going to a national park is encouraged to check the park's website for schedule changes.

Last year a record 331 million people visited national parks. Preston stressed with 9% of the workforce gone, park visitors will have a different experience this year.

"The National Park Service is always going to prioritize safety," Preston explained. "The rangers are going to do everything that they can to manage that, but what that means is there may be fewer opportunities to experience some of those unique places, especially if they're difficult to get to. So, just be mindful of that and then offering grace to the people that are there."

Preston added although morale is down, park employees are dedicated to help you have a good experience.

"It's really, really hard, but they're a committed group of people," Preston observed. "They're still smiling, they're still prioritizing the visitors. They're still making sure that everything is safe, they still are committed to the work that they signed up to do. You talk to most rangers, if you talk to most staff, they really feel called to this work."


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By Anna Gustafson for the Pennsylvania Independent.
Broadcast version by Danielle Smith for Keystone State News Connection reporting for the Pennsylvania Independent-Public News Service Collaboration

John Kelly has seen it before: the massive influx of people turning to his food pantry in central Scranton for support. The hunger. The families struggling to put food on the table. The parents who have lost their jobs and don’t know how they’re going to make ends meet. 

That was just last year, when about 30,000 people received food from Bread Basket of NEPA’s seven food pantries in northeastern Pennsylvania, up from approximately 20,000 in 2023. Kelly said that the increase of 10,000 people came after the expiration of a federal program launched after the onset of COVID to boost food benefits, resulting in a decrease in the amount of financial assistance people received through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as SNAP. 

Now, as the Trump administration and Republican lawmakers look to cut SNAP, which provides financial assistance for buying food to about two million Pennsylvanians and approximately 42 million people nationwide, Kelly expects to see the number of people needing emergency food aid once again skyrocket. This time, however, his pantry is already helping as many people as it can.

If the people needing help from Bread Basket of NEPA jumps by 50% again, which Kelly says is entirely possible with the impending SNAP cuts, the pantries simply wouldn’t have the resources they’d need to continue giving everyone the amount of food they do now.

“What has been talked about in our pantry, and on the board, is decreasing the amount of help we give to people, which none of us want to do,” Kelly said. “Right now, our pantries, people can come twice a month. Our easiest way to solve our overcapacity is to cut that to once a month.” 

“We don’t want to do it, but there are stark realities facing us budgetwise,” he continued.

President Donald Trump has long criticized SNAP, which benefits older Americans living on fixed incomes, millions of children, and low-income individuals and families. During his first term, the administration tried to revoke SNAP eligibility for nearly 700,000 people. A federal court prevented that from happening.

Fast forward to now, and the Trump administration and congressional Republicans are looking to pay for Trump’s push for a mass deportation of immigrants and tax cuts for the wealthy by exploring cuts to SNAP benefits, as well as to other safety net programs. These include Medicaid, which provides health coverage for about three million Pennsylvanians, including children, pregnant people and individuals with disabilities; and Temporary Aid for Needy Families, or TANF, which provides financial assistance to low-income families for food, housing, and child care.

Specific details about the cuts have not been cemented, but House Republicans on Feb. 12 released a budget that calls for at least $1.5 trillion in federal spending reductions, which, if implemented, would result in significant cuts to Medicaid and SNAP.

“The proposals they put forward run from horrible to just unconscionable,” said Marc Stier, the executive director of the Pennsylvania Policy Center in Harrisburg, which studies the impact of government policies.

Cuts to public assistance — programs that two-thirds of Americans will use for at least one year during their lifetimes — will result in significant pain, and even death, because people across the state and country will not be able to meet basic needs for food, health care and shelter, Stier said.

“Some people are going to die,” Stier said. “Some people are going to become bankrupt because they have unreimbursed medical expenses. A lot of people are going to suffer.”

‘It’s helping seniors. It’s helping people with disabilities.’

When explaining to people the importance of Medicaid and the danger cuts to the program would pose for millions of people across the country, Kristin Volchansky often tells the story of her own life.

Volchansky, now the advocacy director of Action Together NEPA in northeastern Pennsylvania, was a 21-year-old college student when she was diagnosed with mononucleosis, which left her unable to work while battling years of demoralizing, exhausting and very expensive health problems.

“My particular bout of mono seemed to trigger an immune response after the initial infection, and I became really, really ill and unable to really eat anything that was substantial, to the point that a couple years into the illness, I was pretty much subsisting on Pedialyte, a little bit of baby food and dry toast while they were trying to figure out what is this, what’s going on,” said Volchansky, who grew up in central Pennsylvania and now lives in Hellertown in the Lehigh Valley.

After eight years of doctors attempting to figure out what was wrong with her, Volchansky finally received a diagnosis: She had a genetic immune deficiency that leaves her with too few antibodies to fight infections. To treat it, she has to head to the hospital for monthly infusions that cost $30,000 each.

To pay for that, she needed health insurance. Because Volchansky wasn’t able to work for much of her adult life, she couldn’t receive insurance through a job. She was able to get a health plan under the Affordable Care Act, but Volchansky’s parents were paying for that, and it ultimately was too expensive for them as their circumstances changed and they reached retirement. 

Then came the insurance that Volchansky credits with changing her life: Medicaid. 

Following Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf’s decision in 2015 to expand Medicaid to cover more lower-income Pennsylvanians, which was financially feasible because of the Affordable Care Act, Volchansky was able to enroll in Medicaid beginning in 2016. That allowed her to receive her monthly infusions without having to pay anything out of pocket. 

“I was, through the course of being on Medicaid, able to gain enough strength and regain my health to be able to do things like volunteer,” Volchansky said. 

That volunteer work led to Volchansky being able to hold her first full-time job. Since the fall of 2021, Volchansky, who’s now 41 years old, has worked for Action Together NEPA, where she has helped to organize community meetings about possible federal budget cuts.

“Medicaid allowed me the ability to become not just healthier, but healthier and financially independent and in a job that I love, which is something that we should be lifting up and celebrating, because there’s a lot of people like me who had a time in their life when they needed help, and programs like Medicaid were there for them, and it allowed them to rebound and get back on their feet,” said Volchansky, who no longer has Medicaid and instead has a plan from Pennsylvania’s Affordable Care Act marketplace.

Potential cuts to Medicaid would be disastrous for people who, as she did, rely on the program to stay alive, Volchansky said.

“It is a program that touches a lot of people,” she said. “It is not just what people commonly think of as a program just for people who are in financial need. That is true, and that is vitally important, and, at one time, I was one of those people. But it’s also a program that is helping kids. It’s helping seniors. It’s helping people with disabilities.”

According to an August 2024 analysis by KFF, a nonprofit focused on health policy, Medicaid covers three in eight children in Pennsylvania, five in eight nursing home residents, two in five people with disabilities, and one in six adults aged 19-64.

Hospital closures and local businesses

If the cuts to Medicaid and SNAP go through, Pennsylvania hospitals could close and local businesses, such as farms and grocery stores, could be financially harmed, experts warned. 

Should people lose their Medicaid benefits, they may be unable to afford preventive health care and instead be forced to go to the hospital after a health issue has become an emergency, Stier said. An influx of uninsured people could lead to hospital closures in a state already struggling with the shuttering of medical institutions.

“They still have to provide care for people who don’t have insurance in many cases, but, without being reimbursed, they would close,” Stier said. “We will see many more hospital closures if Medicaid is cut. So Medicaid is benefiting people who will never get Medicaid.”

Amanda Gordineer, the director of food equity at Food Dignity, said the commonwealth’s farms and grocery stores could also lose money if SNAP is cut because individuals will no longer be able to purchase food and instead will be accessing emergency aid through pantries and other organizations. Food Dignity is a Luzerne County nonprofit that distributes food from local farms to places that serve marginalized populations, such as health clinics, independent living centers for people with disabilities, and recovery support centers. 

“Budget cuts to SNAP are a very serious threat, not only to people in Pennsylvania who need food — and this really could be anyone at any time — but also to our small food retailers, because SNAP really helps to support our local economy,” Gordineer said. “SNAP money is spent very quickly after it is allocated, and that money goes to food businesses like farmers and local grocery stores.”

If people aren’t able to afford food because their SNAP benefits are cut, they may have to choose between paying for groceries or meeting other basic needs such as rent, Gordineer said. 

“When we are struggling with resources, we have to make decisions between, are we going to fill our prescription and take our prescription every day, or am I going to afford nutritious food this week?” she said. “Or am I going to fill my oil tank and heat my house this winter? Those basic-need choices are not something that we should ever expect anyone to have to struggle through in one of the richest countries in the world.”

For now, there remain food pantries that people who’ve lost SNAP benefits can turn to — but, as Kelly said, it’s not guaranteed that pantries will be able to meet a huge increase in demand in the wake of budget cuts. 

If the pantries are hurt, that would be devastating, said Dan Tomlinson, a retired 71-year-old Scranton resident who receives food at the pantry led by Kelly. Tomlinson started going to the Scranton pantry about six years ago in order to feed not only himself but his two young grandsons, who frequently stay with him.

“It helps, with the pasta and the various things that you get,” said Tomlinson, who worked as a line mechanic in a book distribution center before retiring. “They’re add-ons to a meal. I don’t have to buy a whole lot of canned goods because I get a lot there. Cereals and stuff like that, I get there. A lot of the things that you could stretch a meal out, I get there, and it just helps. And without them, I know there’s going to be a lot of hungry people around.” 

Without the pantry, Tomlinson said, he wouldn’t be able to afford items like cereal, fruits and vegetables, and milk.

“I can’t afford to go to the grocery store and get these things, like the cereal,” Tomlinson said. “They’re not giving out Lucky Charms; it’s your standard fiber foods, like Cheerios, Raisin Bran. They’re not brand names, but I couldn’t afford them even if I went to the retail stores, like the real cheap places, like Aldi’s and stuff like that. I can’t afford to go there and get this stuff. So we tune out a lot of things, but the food pantry gives us an opportunity not to give up too much things.”


Anna Gustafson wrote this article for the Pennsylvania Independent.


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