The latest friendly advice from McDonald’s to their low-wage workers includes tips on how to better handle stress—as well as how to fill yourself up better with dinner. The fast-food corporation instructs workers that breaking food “into pieces” will keep you full. The advice was published on the “McResource” website, meant to give tips to fast-food workers. While you need to be a McDonald’s worker to log-in to the website, details of the advice have been publicized by the group Low Pay Is Not OK, a union-backed group seeking to organize low-wage workers at McDonald’s…. A video published by Low Pay Is Not OK shows the website’s advice to workers. One piece of advice given is for workers to take two vacations a year—an impossible task given that many employees work two low-wage jobs. It tells workers to “sing away stress” because it “can lower your blood pressure.” And it tells McDonald’s employees to break “food into pieces,” which “results in eating less and still feeling full.”
I’ve refused to eat at McDonald’s for years, largely as a matter of personal preference. The food (if it can be called that) is mass-produced, over-processed, and unhealthy crap. That seems reason enough to boycott the Golden Arches. Now it seems there’s an even better reason to go elsewhere: the insulting and demeaning manner in which they treat their employees.
It’s not bad enough that the average McDonald’s “team member” earns on average $7.75/hour, just barely above the federal minimum wage of $7.25/hour. (The undeniable absurdity of trying to survive on $7.25 or even $7.75 an hour is another story for another time.) McDonald’s management has decided to “help” their employees get by. Instead of paying a living wage, McDonald’s is offering their employees tips on how to stretch their money and make their lives better.
Until recently, the McDonald’s website feature a section called “Digging Out From Holiday Debt.” Seems innocent and well-meaning enough, right? Among some of their helpful hints were nuggets of thrift and wisdom like this:
Selling some of your unwanted possessions on eBay or Craigslist could bring in some quick cash.
Elsewhere, the company encourages workers to break apart food when they eat, because
breaking food into pieces often results in eating less and still feeling full.
Of course, for those struggling to be afford to afford food at all, there’s also helpful advice for applying for food stamps. How benevolent, eh? Anyone can pay their employees more money; McDonald’s shows how much it cares by offering useful advice.
A reasonable person might ask why McDonald’s refuses to pay front line employees a living wage. The company’s argument is that higher wages means higher prices for consumers…which would make sense if it was actually true. In Europe, where the minimum wage is $12/hour, customers pay a few cents more for their meals. The company still makes money, customers keep coming back, and employees can at least feed their families.
Here’s something to think about: If you’re eating at McDonald’s, you’re supporting a fabulously profitable multinational corporation whose success was built on the backs of its severely underpaid workers. The person taking your order doesn’t make enough money to live on, and they may even be on food stamps. For a company whose senior management’s compensation packages measures in the millions, this state of affairs in unconscionable.
Of course, if things get to be really tough for workers, the company’s website suggests that workers can forego things like paying for heating bills. I know; how frivolous, eh? Who needs electricity, anyway?
McDonalds has shown little willingness to negotiate higher salaries for their poorest workers even as labor rights groups up the pressure. Instead, their website has another piece of advice for people who are stressed about their meager paychecks: “Quit complaining,” the site suggests. “Stress hormones levels rise by 15% after 10 minutes of complaining.”
I wonder how much stress hormones rise when you can’t feed your family, keep the lights on, or put gas in your car?
The next time you think about stopping at McDonald’s, you might want to consider what you’re supporting. It’s bad enough that the food is horrible and unhealthy. Even worse is the offhand, dismissive manner in which the company treats its employees. McDonald’s every right to make a healthy profit, but with every right comes a corresponding responsibility. The company has a responsibility to do the right thing by it’s employees, without whom their success would be impossible.
Or do you really want to be mentioned in the same sentence as Walmart as an exploiter?
