At 6:30 am on 29 November 2012, about 100 workers from McDonald’s, Burger King, Domino’s, KFC, Taco Bell, Wendy’s and Papa John’s restaurants in New York City walked off the job. Along with a few allies, they marched down Madison Avenue, chanting, ‘Hey, hey, what do you say? We demand fair pay!’ Others engaged in sit-ins at fast-food restaurants or (safely) blockaded the entrances. The intention of the one-day ‘flash strike’ was not to shut down the restaurants for any length of time, but to draw the public’s attention to the low pay and lack of union representation in fast-food restaurants. The strike was also intended to embarrass the fast-food industry, whose employees are among America’s worst paid.
Similar one-day actions followed throughout the country, with thousands demonstrating outside fast-food chains in 200 American cities. Demonstrators carried signs proclaiming, ‘No Justice, No Peace’, ‘Sí, Se Puede’ (Yes We Can), ‘Low Pay is Not OK’, ‘McDonald’s Won’t Listen’, ‘On Strike to Lift My Family Up’, and ‘Stick Together for $15 and Union Rights’. In one strike protesters blocked traffic on New York City’s busiest streets. The police told them to leave; when 56 of the demonstrators refused to move, they were arrested. In other cities where such actions were held an estimated 500 people were arrested.
These strikes were organized by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), one of America’s largest unions, representing 1.9 million workers in healthcare, janitorial and other occupations. It started organizing fast-food chains in 2009. Since then, SEIU has spent an estimated $10 million on these efforts. Rather than trying to incite traditional long-term strikes, the SEIU decided on a different strategy – one-day wildcat strikes to publicize the plight of fast-food workers. The SEIU helped to organize groups in cities to organize and spearhead local strikes. This was a media-centric plan intended to gain high visibility for fast-food workers and embarrass their employers.
In addition to national strikes, labour organizers took their campaign to McDonald’s corporate headquarters in Oak Brook, Illinois. In May 2014, during McDonald’s annual shareholder meeting, fast-food workers and their allies picketed roads leading into the McDonald’s complex. McDonald’s directed most of its 3,200 headquarters employees to stay at home during the strike. More than 100 protesters, including Mary Kay Henry, the SEIU president, were arrested. The fast-food worker strikes have picked up steam. Scores of strikes and other labour actions have been held in cities around the world. On 15 April 2015 fast-food and other workers demonstrated in 236 American cities. Henry declared that ‘It showed that if we come together things can change. There’s momentum behind working people joining together to improve their lives – that’s what this movement is about.’1
The fast-food industry is global, and workers in countries throughout the world face many of the same problems that challenge U.S. workers. American union organizers visited other countries to help organize workers and form a global fast-food employees’ union. This groundwork paid off in May 2014, when fast-food workers engaged in strikes in 33 countries, including India, Brazil, the UK, Japan and the Philippines.
In the UK, where the current national minimum wage for workers over the age of 21 is £6.50 (about U.S.$10), rallies have been held outside fast-food outlets, and Labour MPS led a protest outside Parliament in 2014. The Bakers, Food and Allied Workers’ Union (BFAWU) sought to increase the fast-food workers’ hourly wage to £10. In 2014 it launched a campaign called ‘Fast Food Rights’, using the slogan ‘Hungry for Justice’.
The low wages paid to restaurant staff are one major reason for fast food’s financial success. Most workers are part-timers who receive hourly wages without medical or other benefits. At most chains wages are set by area managers according to local laws and conditions. Managers are encouraged to keep labour costs down, and are rewarded with bonuses when they cut wages or eliminate employees. This sometimes leads to abuse, as understaffed operations force workers to increase their pace; sometimes they are required to work ‘off the clock’ if they want to keep their jobs (which saves on overtime). Fired employees have been informally blacklisted to prevent their being hired by other fast-food entities. These practices are against the law, but many employees, especially undocumented immigrants or others desperate for income, are too timid to challenge illegal practices; they’re simply too fearful of being fired or deported.
Fast-food chains have been charged with violating pay and hour rules, but Subway, the fast-food chain with the largest number of outlets worldwide (more than 42,000), has the largest number of violations in America. According to the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division, more than 1,100 violations of pay and hour rules have been found in Subway franchises spanning the period from 2000 to 2013.2
While restaurants have always paid low salaries (and in some cases no salaries – just tips), the current fast-food model dates to decisions made by Dick and Mac McDonald, who, in 1940, opened the ‘McDonald Brothers Burger Bar Drive-in’. It boasted twenty female carhops who took orders, delivered them to customers sitting in cars parked at the front, and then collected payment. After the Second World War the brothers had a hard time finding competent employees: the American economy was booming, and many men who had been in the services were attending college. The limited labour pool left the McDonalds desperate: they complained of their fry cooks and dishwashers drinking on the job, and were dissatisfied with the carhops, who were more interested in socializing with teenage boys than in selling burgers.
The McDonald brothers decided to tighten things up: they would reduce expenses and increase profits through improved efficiency. They developed an assembly-line system that divided the work into simple tasks that could be performed with a minimum of training. This meant that employees were essentially interchangeable and could easily be shifted from one task to another. The customer got a fast, reliable, cheap meal; in return for that service, the McDonald brothers expected them to stand in line, pick up their orders, eat quickly, clean up their own litter and then hit the road, making room for the next paying customer.
This model created a semi-militarized production system based on a workforce of teenage boys, who were responsible for simple, easily taught tasks: flipping burgers, wrapping them, pouring beverages, frying french fries or bagging orders. It was a first job for many of these youngsters, and they were willing to work for the minimum wage (managers could pay ‘apprentices’ under the age of eighteen even less than that). The workers received virtually no benefits – no paid holiday, healthcare or job protection. With no paid sick days, many went to work even when they were feeling ill. Still, the job taught them basic work skills, such as promptness, teamwork, obedience to supervisors and personal hygiene. The average employee worked for only a few months before quitting or being fired. High turnover has remained a consistent pattern. Employee turnover today averages about 75 per cent per year. These days, with a large pool of willing (not to say desperate) applicants for a minimum-wage job with no benefits, rapid employee turnover does not create hardship for restaurant managers.
The postwar growth of the American fast-food industry coincided with the coming of age of the baby boomers. It was enhanced when the industry broadened employment opportunities for women and minorities in the 1970s. Today the American fast-food industry employs a disproportionate number of women and minorities in high-speed, high-pressure, low-wage, dead-end jobs. Ironically the industry has benefited greatly from the women’s movement: since housewives traditionally did the family’s shopping and cooking, women’s entry into the workforce increased demand for fast food as a cheap alternative to home cooking.3
For 60 years the fast-food industry has thrived by paying workers poorly and keeping unions at a distance. Trade unions have yet to succeed in organizing American fast-food workers. A major reason for this failure has been the industry’s strenuous anti-union efforts. As Eric Schlosser notes in Fast Food Nation (2001), it has been almost impossible for unions to gain a foothold in the fast-food industry. The high staff turnover, the part-time nature of the job, the low economic status of staff and the decentralized way in which the chains set wages have made it difficult to organize workers. Fast-food chains have gone to extraordinary lengths to keep trade unions out. During the early 1970s McDonald’s sent a so-called ‘flying squad’ of experienced managers and corporate executives to outlets where union activity was suspected. McDonald’s employees in the San Francisco Bay area claimed that they were forced to take lie-detector tests so the chain could identify union sympathizers. McDonald’s has reportedly squashed ‘hundreds’ of unionization drives.4
In the 1970s the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now (ACORN), a collection of organizations that advocated for low-income families, launched a drive to organize fast-food workers in Detroit. It published a weekly newsletter, Fast Food Worker, as a way to organize employees at local Burger King and McDonald’s outlets. On 29 February 1979 Burger King workers at one outlet voted by 25 to 23 for a union. The company challenged five ballots; a new election was held, and this time the proposed union was defeated. Organizing efforts at McDonald’s outlets in Detroit also failed. McDonald’s illegally fired employees believed to support the union and warned workers that they would lose benefits if they voted for union representation. In May 1980 McDonald’s workers voted the union down.5
It’s difficult to organize workers whose tasks are rote and interchangeable, making staff easily replaceable. If a strike were called, new workers could be slotted in within a short time. The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) launched a Starbucks Workers Union in 2004 that now has members at eight Starbucks locations in the United States. In July 2008 the IWW launched a ‘Global Day of Action’ in response to Starbucks anti-union practices, and similar actions have taken place in more than twenty countries. Subsequently the IWW tried to organize fast-food workers. They specifically targeted fast-food workers at Jimmy John’s, a small sandwich chain in Minneapolis. The IWW demands included free uniforms, paid sick days, extra pay for early morning hours, paid maternity and paternity leave, guaranteed hours, a short lunch break for shifts of six hours or more, health and dental insurance plans, and regular meetings with managers. In 2010 workers in the chain voted on whether to unionize. The vote was 87 in favour and 85 against, although the vote was declared invalid by the court. The organizers took the company to court, claiming that the owners engaged in unfair labour practices, retaliated against a number of workers for organizing activity, and promised pay rises and holiday pay to those who would undermine the union’s efforts. The court found in favour of the organizers. In 2011 the Jimmy John’s staff was given a second opportunity to vote for union representation; they turned it down with a larger majority.
From the beginning, fast-food chains have tried to automate their operations to reduce the need for skilled workers. Automated kitchens are equipped with buzzers and flashing lights that tell employees what to do and when to do it. Computerized cash registers issue their own instructions. Hence new employees require little training, and their departure is not a great loss. Chains are currently experimenting with new automated systems, such as machines that can cook hundreds of hamburgers per hour and smartphone or computer ordering systems that have food ready for pickup when the customer arrives.
In selected cities fast-food chains such as Domino’s, Papa John’s, Burger King and McDonald’s have turned to mobile devices for ordering delivery service. Other experimental systems permit customers to place their orders on a computer screen at the outlet and pay for them via credit card. At one McDonald’s in Oak Brook, Illinois, customers can build their own hamburger by choosing from more than twenty ingredients on a touch screen. They then sit down and a server brings their hamburgers to their table. This speeds up the ordering process, improves accuracy and reduces labour costs. Customers don’t have to wait in long queues and fast-food chains increase their profits. According to a report by NPD, a market research firm, online ordering has more than doubled from around $403 million in 2010 to $904 million by May 2015.
In the U.S. the federal minimum wage is currently $7.25 per hour (as of 2015). Although it has increased over the years, it has not kept pace with inflation. According to the Congressional Research Service, a non-partisan body of the U.S. Congress, the current minimum wage is worth less than three-quarters of its value in 1968. The decline in the value of the minimum wage relative to average wages is even greater, and this change illustrates the increasing financial inequality in America.
Some states and cities have a higher minimum wage, set by local government. Pay rates for specific employees are set by fast-food managers based on local labour conditions. Fast-food employees make a median wage of $8.69 per hour, which makes them the lowest-paid workers in America. Most employees are not allowed to work full-time, few have guaranteed working hours, and most cannot control their schedules owing to zero-hours contracts. Some suffer verbal abuse, racial or ethnic discrimination or sexual harassment. There is little chance of medical or other benefits and minimal opportunity for upward mobility.
Many workers claim that chains engage in ‘wage theft’. This includes a wide range of illegal actions such as paying workers less than minimum wage; requiring them to work, without compensation, before or after their shift; requiring them to work overtime without being paid time-and-a-half, as required by law; forcing them to work through their breaks; and failing to reimburse their expenses. Between busy times workers have been required to remain at the fast-food outlet, but not work, and hence are not paid for those downtime hours. A survey of New York City fast-food workers reported that 89 per cent claimed some form of wage theft.6 A 2008 study by the National Employment Law Project estimated that wage theft amounted to about 15 per cent of the fast-food workers’ salaries.
This doesn’t only happen in America. In Europe McDonald’s has been charged with giving incorrect pay and classifying workers in lower pay grades, for example by defining them as ‘apprentices’.7 In 2014 a Burger King franchisee in Germany was charged with wage theft, failure to pay promised bonuses for working on holidays, and failure to give sick pay.8 In 2007 Chinese labour officials in Guangdong Province charged KFC, McDonald’s and Pizza Hut franchises with paying part-time workers 4 to 5 yuan (52 to 65 U.S. cents) per hour, about 30–40 per cent under the legal minimum wage.9
Americans working in the lower echelons of the fast-food industry do not make enough to cover their expenses or support their families. About 20 per cent of fast-food workers’ families live below the poverty line. An estimated 52 per cent of fast-food workers receive public assistance, much of it in the form of food aid.10 About 87 per cent of fast-food workers do not receive health benefits from their employers. Other public assistance includes earned income tax credits, Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.11 As a result American taxpayers pay an estimated $7 billion per year to cover public assistance for fast-food workers.12 When all restaurant workers are included, American taxpayers pay a total of $152.8 billion per year to cover their public assistance.13
Fast-food chains hire new immigrants, particularly Hispanics and Asians, with limited literacy or English vocabulary. Undocumented immigrants are often willing to work off the books, and rarely complain to authorities of abuse. Recognizing the importance of their undocumented workers, chains and franchises have strongly supported national immigration reform efforts. Chains also hire disabled people, whose wages are frequently subsidized by government programmes.
The fast-food industry is one of the nation’s largest employers of minimum- and low-wage workers. It pays minimum wages to a higher percentage of workers than any other U.S. industry. It would take a full-time fast-food worker on $8.69 an hour about four months to earn what Don Thompson, the former CEO of McDonald’s, made in an hour: about $9,247 with benefits.14 Perhaps some could support this disparity if McDonald’s was generating vast profits for its shareholders, but in fact company sales have been declining while other chains have been surging ahead. Slumping sales were why Thompson was ousted as CEO in 2015.
Despite this wide disparity in salaries, the National Restaurant Association, which represents American restaurants including fast-food chains, has lobbied against increases in minimum wage at city, state and national levels. They insist that fast-food jobs are ideal first jobs, perfect for anyone who wants to work part-time. Historically many employees were teenagers living at home. Today the average age of workers has increased to 29.15 More than 25 per cent are parents, raising at least one child, and 68 per cent of the fast-food workforce are the main wage earners for their families: these are not people who can live on an entry-level wage.16
Fast-food chains reward managers who keep labour costs low. For example, they have paid their managers bonuses based on the reduction of labour costs. This has sometimes led to abuse, such as employees working off the books. Industry representatives claim that their jobs are largely for unskilled workers who can easily be replaced. They have also complained that if wages were increased, sales would decline and franchises would lose out on profits. As prices – and profits – have regularly increased over the decades, this is a hollow argument.
Where fast-food strikes have worked is in urging local and state governments to increase the minimum wage: Massachusetts increased its minimum wage to $11 an hour. In California, Oakland has raised its minimum wage to $12.25; Berkeley to $12.53. Seattle and San Francisco city councils have approved city minimum wages that will increase to $15 over the next few years. In 2015 the International Franchise Association, which represents the fast-food industry, challenged the $15 minimum wage in Seattle, claiming that it was unconstitutional, and promptly lost in court. Other cities and a few states are considering increasing minimum wages. In 2015 Los Angeles approved a raise to $15 by 2020 and New York State approved a graduated pay rise to $15 for all 200,000 fast-food workers in the state.
Nigel Travis, the chief executive of Dunkin’ Donuts, said that a $15 minimum wage for fast-food workers was ‘absolutely outrageous’. Travis made no such comment when his own pay was increased from $4.3 million in 2013 to $10.2 million in 2014.
At the federal level, President Obama has called on Congress to increase the minimum wage to $9 an hour and Congressional Democrats introduced the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2013, which had no chance of passing. In 2015 Obama upped his request, calling for the federal minimum wage to increase to $10.10 an hour and for future minimum wage hikes to be indexed to the cost of living. He also urged employers to offer sick leave and other benefits. In February 2015 Obama challenged Congressmen to try living on $15,000 a year, and again urged them to raise the minimum wage. To date, no Congressional action has been taken. Fast-food workers continue to eke out a living, while the fast-food industry continues to generate handsome profits for corporate leaders, stockholders and franchisers.
Most American fast-food outlets are owned and operated by local and regional franchisees, who hire, discipline and fire staff, set wages and create schedules for workers. Franchisees buy the rights to a fast-food corporation’s name, national advertising, products, equipment and systems of operation. For these and other services, franchisees send a share of their profits to the national corporation.
A major challenge to fast-food unionization has been an old ruling by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), an independent agency of the federal government that investigates and resolves unfair labour practices. During the 1980s, the NLRB ruled that franchisers were not liable for the employment practices of their franchisees, as the franchiser was not directly responsible for hiring and firing employees. This covered a very broad swathe of the industry, because national fast-food corporations, such as McDonald’s USA, Burger King and Yum! Brands, control most of the fast-food outlets in the United States. Workers could sue only their immediate employer, the franchisee – not the larger corporate entity. Labour organizers had to concentrate their efforts on thousands of individual franchises rather than on a single entity. In the unlikely event that such an organizing effort succeeded at a franchise, the national corporation could change franchisees, thus invalidating the existing union and forcing organizers to start all over again. The Service Employees International Union and the National Employment Law Project, a worker advocacy group, maintain that fast-food chains indirectly control their franchisees’ workers through rules, restrictions and equipment.
In 2014 the NLRB overturned the ruling that franchisers were not responsible for the welfare of franchise employees. In May 2014 the Fast Food Workers Committee in New York specifically charged that the local McDonald’s franchisee had fired nine workers because of their union organizing activities from November 2012 to April 2014. Other union organizers declared that McDonald’s had cut their hours, threatened to fire them or disciplined them in other ways. In December 2014 the NLRB brought 78 charges against McDonald’s franchisees and McDonald’s USA, as joint employers, for violating federal labour law relating to the fast-food strikes during the previous two years. The charges include ‘discriminatory discipline, reductions in hours, discharges, and other coercive conduct directed at employees in response to union and protected concerted activity, including threats, surveillance, interrogations, promises of benefit, and overboard restrictions on communicating with union representatives or with other employees about unions and the employees’ terms and conditions of employment’. The NLRB is considering bringing charges against other fast-food corporations for similar activities.17 If the 30-year-old NLRB ruling is reversed, making national chains accountable as joint employers, it will be a big win for labour organizers in the fast-food industry.
In a 2014 Labor Day speech, President Obama spoke in support of the fast-food strikes. He reminded his audience, ‘All across the country right now there’s a national movement going on made up of fast-food workers organizing to lift wages so they can provide for their families with pride and dignity.’18
American fast-food outlets are the endpoints of long food chains: their beef can be raised in Kansas or California; their iceberg lettuce in Arizona; their poultry in North Carolina; their potatoes in Idaho; and their tomatoes in Florida. While fast-food chains may be judged to have no direct authority over the wages or working conditions of their suppliers, they certainly have an indirect responsibility.
Until the 1960s America’s meatpacking industry was unionized and fairly safe, and it provided relatively highly paid jobs. When fast-food chains became major purchasers of meat, corporate headquarters negotiated contracts with potential suppliers. Large fast-food chains used their purchasing power to negotiate among suppliers for the lowest price. Lower prices resulted in a sharp drop in wages, less training for employees and slacker safety requirements. Employees were forced to speed up slaughtering and butchering. Eric Schlosser reported that ‘In the old Chicago packinghouses teams of workers disassembled about fifty cattle an hour and performed a variety of tasks throughout the day. In modern American slaughterhouses the line speeds can approach four hundred cattle an hour, and the new division of labor requires workers to perform the same task again and again.’19 In addition to the dangers for workers, the tremendous increase in the amount of product being handled caused meat and poultry to become more susceptible to the introduction of pathogens, such as Salmonella and E. coli O157:H7.
One place where unions have partly succeeded is in the tomato fields of Florida. In 1996 the migrant workers formed the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), which attempted to raise wages and improve working and living conditions for the tomato pickers. They were opposed by the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange, an industry lobby group whose members control 90 per cent of the winter tomato crop. To gain visibility for the plight of the workers, in 2001 the CIW called for a national boycott of Taco Bell, one of the largest buyers of winter tomatoes. College, high-school and religious groups, including the National Council of Churches, joined the boycott. In 2005 Taco Bell agreed to pay a penny more per pound for its tomatoes, provided that the money went to improving the working and living conditions of the workers.
During the next five years, other major fast-food companies, including Yum! Brands (owner of Pizza Hut, Taco Bell and KFC), McDonald’s, Burger King and Subway, agreed to pay one cent (or more) extra per pound, but the Florida tomato growers refused to participate. In November 2010 the growers finally agreed in principle to a ‘Fair Food Code of Conduct’. Funds generated by this agreement will go towards increasing workers’ annual pay to an estimated $17,000. Farm labourers will be educated about their rights and how to report violations, including sexual harassment of women workers, and there will be a third-party system to help resolve disputes. Despite some success, conditions for farm workers in the Florida tomato fields remain grim, as documented in Barry Estabrook’s book Tomatoland (2011) and Kanti Rawal’s film Food Chains (2015), produced by Eric Schlosser and Eva Longoria.
In addition to suffering poor working conditions, fast-food workers have been the victims of serious crimes. In the 1920s White Castle, the first fast-food chain, built its outlets in inner cities near transportation hubs; most of its customers were workers from nearby industries. To reach night-shift workers, outlets were generally open late at night. As inner cities deteriorated during the 1950s, crime, violence, racial tension and vagrancy increasingly became problems for inner-city fast-food chains. Chains invested heavily in security measures and instituted earlier closing times at vulnerable outlets, but problems persisted.
After the Second World War many chains set their sights on the suburbs in part to avoid these urban problems. When the suburbs became saturated with fast-food outlets, chains refocused on inner cities, and found these outlets highly profitable. Wherever they are found, fast-food outlets remain targets for crime, particularly robberies. They typically open early in the morning and stay open late (many chains feature ‘after-midnight’ menus), making them attractive to robbers. They do most of their business in cash, which means that by late evening many outlets have thousands of dollars on their premises. In addition, many fast-food restaurants are near off-ramps, and drive-through windows permit fast getaways. Employees who deliver fast food, such as pizza, to homes face their own perils. In the 1990s in the U.S. four to five fast-food workers were killed every month while at work, usually during the course of a robbery. In 1998 more restaurant workers than policemen were murdered on the job in America.
These appalling numbers have declined since then, but robberies have increased, largely because alternative targets, such as gas stations, now largely operate on credit cards, reducing the amount of cash on hand. But the U.S. Bureau of Labor reports that even when compared with full-service restaurants, the rate of assaults at ‘limited service’ restaurants outlets is twice as high.
Fast-food chains target specific demographics that generate high traffic and profits, and fail to properly prepare for the increased risk of crime that may accompany such choices. When the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the American federal agency responsible for workers’ safety, proposed guidelines for preventing violence at restaurants that do business at night, restaurateurs opposed those guidelines. They did not want the OSHA to impose fines or compel security measures, and companies were afraid that employees would use the guidelines to bring lawsuits against chains where violence occurred.
Faced with lawsuits and negative publicity, fast-food chains have reduced violence by installing new security measures, such as highly visible CCTV cameras inside and outside outlets, multiple panic buttons, drop and time-delay safes, burglar alarms and better lighting. Outlets now accept credit cards, which limits the amount of in-store cash. Other chains have limited their hours for indoor dining and installed bullet-resistant glazing on drive-through windows. Despite these changes, fast-food stores remain major targets for robberies, and workers on late-night shifts remain particularly vulnerable.
Fast-food chain employees are sometimes themselves responsible for crimes – especially inside theft. Managers often fail to screen potential employees adequately and may not conduct even basic criminal background checks. As a result, no other industry is robbed so frequently by its own employees. The combination of low pay, high turnover, no background checks and ample cash has made fast-food outlets ideal for employee theft. Disgruntled and discharged employees have also been known to target outlet employees with violent behaviour.
Crime is one cause of injury at fast-food outlets, but health and safety deficiencies hurt many more workers. An estimated 14,000 fast-food staffers end up in hospital emergency rooms every year owing to on-the-job injuries, according to a report by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. The most common causes are burns, lacerations and other injuries related to cooking, and sprains, strains and contusions from falls, often caused by wet or greasy floors. In a recent survey of fast-food workers, most claimed that they had suffered injuries while working at fast-food chains. In March 2015, 28 workers filed complaints against McDonald’s alleging that understaffing and pressure from managers to work faster led to on-the-job burns and falls.20
Workers in other countries have also tried to unionize with mixed results. In 1998 the McDonald’s Workers Resistance in Glasgow launched a campaign for wage increases and other work-related changes. More recently, the Scottish Trades Union Congress (STUC) organized a campaign in Scotland seeking an initial increase to £7.85 and eventually to £10 per hour.21 They are also arguing for an end to zero-hours contracts, a system where employers have the discretion to alter the employee’s weekly working hours from full-time to zero. Employees have no guaranteed work from week to week. Concerns with zero-hours contracts are present in other countries, such as New Zealand, where many workers are members of Unite Union. Thanks to union pressure, Burger King, Wendy’s and McDonald’s have all agreed to end zero-hours contracts in New Zealand.22 In Germany workers at McDonald’s outlets have been fired for showing sympathy towards unions, reported Siegfried Pater in Zum Beispiel McDonald’s (2000).23 Compared with North American and European fast-food operations, working conditions and wages are often much worse in the rapidly growing fast-food industry in low-income countries.
There are a few places where fast-food workers do not suffer from low pay, a lack of benefits and deplorable working conditions. In Denmark the United Federation of Danish Workers (‘3F’) negotiated contracts with fast-food chains in mid-2000. Today, Danish fast-food workers earn a minimum of 115 kroner ($19.35, £12.35) per hour – about two-and-a-half times what their American counterparts are paid. The Danish workers enjoy paid holiday, maternity and paternity leave, pension plans and paid overtime, and their schedules are set four weeks in advance. (Their medical expenses are covered by governmental programmes.) As the New York Times reported, ‘If McDonald’s can afford to pay that in Denmark they should be able to pay more everywhere. It is the same work, but a huge difference in pay.’24 Fast-food workers in the other Scandinavian countries have made similar progress. The Nordisk Union HRTC represents fast-food workers in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland and Iceland.
Fast-food companies also have contracts with unions in other European countries and Australia and New Zealand. Worker councils have been set up in many countries, although fast-food corporations have engaged in tactics to prevent them from so doing, according to Tony Royle, author of Working for McDonald’s in Europe: The Unequal Struggle? (2001). Where fast-food workers have collective bargaining agreements, workers’ pay has increased.25 Unionized fast-food operations have better benefits as well. Full-time workers at McDonald’s in the Netherlands and Germany who work for just three weeks are entitled to two days of paid holiday and other benefits.26 Fast-food franchises in countries with union representation still generate healthy profits for their owners – although not as substantial as in the U.S. In New Zealand, where a Big Mac costs about $4.49, full-time union workers make U.S. $12.35 per hour.27
Even in the U.S., higher wages are paid by some fast-food chains, such as In-N-Out Burger, a California-based regional chain, where the average hourly pay for a worker is $12. In Shake Shack, a New York-based chain, workers average $10.70 per hour – well above the fast-food industry’s median hourly wage of $8.69. For full-time employees, Shake Shack also covers 70 per cent of healthcare premiums (including dental and vision), matches employee contributions to 401(k) pension funds and offers paid leave.
On 1 April 2015 McDonald’s announced a 10 per cent pay rise in all corporate-owned stores in the United States. This did not include franchises, which make up 90 per cent of McDonald’s restaurants. Many franchisees were not happy with this public relations move as they were now under public pressure to raise their salaries. Mary Kay Henry, president of the Service Employees International Union, wasn’t happy either: ‘McDonald’s was forced to pay up, but it’s not nearly enough.’28 McDonald’s sweetened the pot with an offer to cover a portion of college tuition costs for employees who work at least twenty hours per week and for managers in all U.S. outlets, including franchises. Starbucks followed McDonald’s’ lead and offered its employees similar tuition assistance.29
Paying partial college tuition is a nice perk for a few workers and a nice public relations ploy for fast-food companies, but it doesn’t buy food for the industry’s underpaid workers or their families. The fast-food industry has a long way to go before it meets its responsibilities to its employees.