(CNSNews.com) - Rep. Ilhan Omar (D.-Minn.) said in a Thursday morning hearing of the House Education and Labor Committee that the Chief Executive Officer of McDonald’s gets paid $21.8 million a year while the median earnings for workers at the restaurant chain “who put in 40 hours a day” is $7000 per year.
The hearing was examining the possibility of lifting the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour.
On Thursday evening, Omar tweeted out a video clip of her talking at the hearing about McDonald's workers who put in “40 hours a day.” Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D.-Mich.) then retweeted Omar’s tweet.
Omar made the remark—which she then Tweeted in the video clip--in an exchange with Terrence Wise, a McDonald's worker from Missouri, who was testifying at the hearing.
Here is a transcript of that tweeted clip:
Rep. Omar: “So, the CEO of McDonald's gets paid $21.8 million. Can you share with us what someone in your position at McDonalds gets paid annually?
Wise: “Not that much. Not even a fraction of that. But I make $11 an hour at my job.”
Omar: “So the median pay for a McDonald's worker was $7,000 in 2017. And that is the pay gap between the CEO who is making $21.8 to the $7,000 that a worker who has put in 40 hours a day gets paid. And to me that just morally does not sit well.”
In her Tweet that included the video of this exchange, Omar said: “In 2017, the CEO of McDonalds got paid $21.8 million. The median pay for a McDonald’s worker that year was $7,000. This is a moral outrage. We need a $15 minimum wage so that no one is paid a poverty wage.”
Rep. Rashida Tlaib retweeted Omar’s tweet without commenting on it.
