McDonald’s workers are taking their activism to the company’s headquarters — and they are facing arrest to make their point that it’s time we start paying people who grill our burgers and take our orders a living wage.
As Reuters reported earlier today
<span class="articleLocation”>Fast-food workers from three dozen U.S. cities on Wednesday will protest at the headquarters of McDonald’s Corp (MCD.N), calling for a significant wage hike, as company shareholders also prepare to weigh in on the pay of the fast-food giant’s top executives.
The latest, and possibly largest, protest against the global chain comes a day ahead of a shareholders vote on executive pay at McDonald’s, where Chief Executive Don Thompson took home total compensation of $9.5 million in 2013.
Low-wage U.S. restaurant and retail workers are calling for a rough doubling of pay to $15 per hour and the right to unionize. Their frequent protests have helped fuel a national debate on income inequality at a time when many middle- to low-income Americans are struggling to make ends meet.
AP is reporting that about 100 McDonald’s workers are being arrested during protests, after workers breached a barricade “Down the street from Hamburger University” and were met by “dozens of police officers in riot gear (who) warned protesters to disperse.”
Pay is the issue. Most McDonald’s workers — most workers in the fast-food industry and in many other service-sector jobs — are working for minimum wage or not much more, usually working multiple jobs and still not making much more than poverty wages. Most are adults — according to a variety of studies — and many are forced to seek help from government agencies, which puts taxpayers in the position of subsidizing low-wage service work even as the company’s CEO took in $9.5 million in 2013.
McDonald’s is part of a larger problem with American capitalism, of course, one that reaches beyond the fast-food industry and raises questions about how much we really value service-sector work. These jobs are important and should pay a livable wage, but most do not and we don’t seem to care. As long as our Big Mac and fries are served hot and come cheaply, we can continue to look past the man at the grill or the woman at the window. And when we do consider them — usually when we need to complain that the Shamrock Shake just isn’t green enough — we view them as disposable and dismiss them as nothing more than low-wage workers. After all, anyone can do these jobs and, if they want better pay, they should find better work or go back to school, which is a lot easier said than done in an economy where one in six workers is unemployed or underemployed and the cost of going back to school is prohibitive.
No wonder the workers are finally starting to fight back.
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Hank Kalet 