LABOR organizers dissatisfied with McDonald’s Corp’s announcement on Wednesday, April 1, to boost the minimum hourly wage for about 90,000 employees to $10 by July 1, conducted nationwide demonstrations Thursday, April 2, in protest of the new policy.
The move applies only to workers at company-operated restaurants, but the majority – about 90 percent of 14,000 McDonald’s locations in America – are operated by franchisees who set wages and benefits at their discretion. The pay hike will affect workers at approximately 1,500 company-owned restaurants in the United States.
By the end of 2016, McDonald’s CEO Steve Easterbrook said the company expects that the average hourly wage of workers at company-operated locations will exceed $10.
In addition to increasing pay, McDonald’s said it will allow full- and part-time employees who have been with the company for at least one year accrual of paid personal leave; those who opt not to take leave will receive a check worth the value of that time, Easterbrook said.
“We know that a motivated workforce leads to better customer service, so we believe this initial step not only benefits our employees, it will improve the McDonald’s restaurant experience,” Easterbrook, who became CEO of McDonald’s on March 1, said in a statement.
Despite the announcement, many were quick to criticize the company’s move.
“This is too little to make a real difference, and covers only a fraction of workers,” Kwanza Brooks, a McDonald’s employee from Charlotte, North Carolina and earns $7.25 per hour, said in a statement.
Critics have called for larger increases and demand that McDonald’s take the reigns of pay and other policies at its franchisees.
“They say they’re raising wages, but this is nothing near a living wage – it’s just smoke and mirrors,” said Bleu Rainer, 26, an employee at a franchise-run McDonald’s in Tampa, Fla., according to The Wall Street Journal.
During a protest at a McDonald’s on Wilshire Boulevard, 22-year-old Jibri Range told Los Angeles Times his repeated requests to get paid more than $9 per hour at a franchise restaurant in South Central were all ignored or rejected. Range said he works four hours per week as a maintenance employee and relies on his mother, who works full time, to help support him. He added his daughter will turn 4 on April 15, when fellow workers protest again, the Times reported.
“By us flooding this McDonald’s, they know we mean business,” he told the newspaper. “This is going to give people a taste of what’s going to happen on the 15th.”
The protests are part of “Fight for $15,” a movement seeking to pressure companies into paying workers $15 per hour and permit employees to form unions without retaliation.
“This move happened for one reason – because workers joined together and went on strike,” Kendall Fells, organizing director of the advocacy group Fast Food Forward, said in a statement. “And workers will continue joining together and going on strike until McDonald’s responds with more than a publicity stunt.”
Easterbrook said in a statement that the move is an initial step for McDonald’s in the US.
“I understand that some may believe it doesn’t go far enough. These actions demonstrate meaningful progress, and it is what we can do right now in our company-owned stores,” he said.
“This is not a one-size-fits-all approach, and cannot be for a company like McDonald’s, which is based on a franchise model,” he added.
“The underlying motivation is a response to market conditions,” said Patrick O’Keefe, an economist at CohnReznick LLP and former Labor Department official, according to The Wall Street Journal. “The firms that have announced very publicly that they’re raising their entry wage are signaling that to attract the quality of labor they’re looking for, they have to be more competitive.”
The fast-food chain’s wage hike mirrors that of other national retailers amid rising concerns about income inequality and calls by President Barack Obama to increase the federal minimum hourly wage to $10.
In March, retail giant Target announced it would lift its minimum pay to $9 per hour in April. Prior to that, Walmart announced plans to boost its minimum hourly wage to $9 also in April and $10 by the close of 2016.
Worker advocates say the increases are due largely to demonstrations by employees in this industry throughout the past two years.
“Fast food workers are rightly demanding a greater share in the profits that McDonald’s and other fast-food corporations are earning off their labor,” said Christine Owens of the National Employment Law Project. “They are fighting for wages that can lift them out of poverty and support their families.” (With reports from Los Angeles Times, Reuters, The Wall Street Journal and USA Today)
(www.asianjournal.com)
(LA MIDWEEK April 8-10, 2015 Sec. B pg.1)
