McDonald's worker resistance:
shaking the golden arches
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Wealth gap in US rapidly increasing

By Gary Younge

Jan. 24-- The disparity in wealth between rich and poor, as well as between whites and minorities, has rocketed, according to a report by the United States Federal Reserve.

The difference in median net wealth between the top 10 percent income group and the bottom 20 percent leapt 70 percent between 1998 and 2001, the Fed announced in its consumer finances report. Meanwhile the gap between white and minority ethnic group Americans grew by 21 percent.

The figures will be an embarrassment to President George Bush’s administration, coming the same week that Bush set off around the country to try to sell his economic stimulus package.

The centerpiece of the plan is a cut in taxes paid on stock dividends, a move heavily criticized by Democrats for disproportionately benefiting the wealthy.

A poll in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal showed that 49 percent of Americans disapprove of Bush’s handling of the economy and 61 percent believe his proposals will not aid the recovery from recession. Other recent surveys show the country regards the economy as a greater priority than going to war with Iraq.

These new figures will exacerbate concerns about the degree to which disparate income levels are becoming entrenched. Last year, the number of Americans living below the poverty line increased by more than a million for the first time in eight years.

A recent study which compared the incomes and occupations of 2,749 fathers and sons between the 1970s and the 1990s concluded that social mobility was decreasing.

“What has happened in the last 25 years is that a large segment of American society has become more vulnerable,” said Professor Robert Perrucci, who co-authored The New Class Society with Professor Earl Wysong. “Twenty years ago, going to college was enough. Now it has to be an elite school. The American dream is being sorely tested.”

The Fed’s figures describe net worth -- the value of stocks, retirement funds, homes, and other assets minus outstanding debts including mortgages.

The study showed that while the lowest income group saw their net worth grow by a quarter, the top 10 percent saw theirs rise by almost three times as much. Meanwhile net worth for white Americans rose 17 percent while it fell by 4.5 percent for those from the minorities.

The gulf between rich and poor had shrunk slightly between 1995 and 1998, when the economy was booming. The most recent study, which is published every three years, spanned the height of the boom in 1998 to the recession of 2001.

Alongside the widening gap there was evidence of a growing culture of share ownership. Almost 52 percent of families held stocks either directly or through mutual funds and retirement plans. This is the highest number since records began.

Source: Guardian (UK)

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McDonald's worker resistance:
shaking the golden arches

By William MacDougall

McDonald’s Golden Arches, if not crumbling, are beginning to look distinctly shaky. Chairman and chief executive, Jack Greenberg, walked away from the burger giant after 21 years of service at the end of last year -- this despite an earlier company request to remain at the helm until 2005. McDonald’s stock had fallen to one third of its value since Greenberg was appointed CEO in 1998, with shares plunging to a seven-year low last autumn.

In December, an explosion injured at least 17 people in Bombay -- six of whom were customers and two Bombay McDonald’s members of staff. Faulty air conditioning was reported as being the cause of the explosion. McDonald’s Japan has cut its profit forecast by 91 percent due to the discovery of mad cow disease in Japan and tough competition from Starbucks and low-priced family restaurants offering typical Japanese fare. McDonald’s announced in November that plans to shut 175 stores in 10 countries (pulling out of three countries altogether), reversing its 20-year policy of expansion.

Attempts at sacking French employees on trumped up charges of theft were overthrown in the courts, while a documentary (On n’est pas des steaks haches -- “We're not minced steak”) was premiered last Oct. 16 on the same day as an international anti-McDonald’s protest which reached from Milan to Mexico City. In Bonn and Munster, members of the Freie Arbeiterinnen Union (FAU-IAA) leafleted customers and workers under banners bearing the legends “Join the Resistance” and “McJob? No Thanks!” A demonstration in Mexico resulted in 94 arrests on dubious charges of damage to federal property and carrying explosives (fireworks).

The female McDonald’s workers of Liverpool wore make-up as a small act of defiance (normally prohibited), whilst other disgruntled McDonald’s people resorted to more radical, “guerilla” type tactics to throw a spanner in the works: altering food storage microwave settings, resetting grill timers, working strictly to rule, and, of course, strike action.

In October of last year, McDonald’s France took the unusual step of placing a full page advertorial in Femme Actuelle (“McDonald's: Is It Causing Obesity In Children?”) in response to rising French child obesity rates. One of the nutritionists commissioned to tackle the question concluded that children should visit McDonald’s no more than once a week. Not unsurprisingly, the stateside McDonald’s countered, arguing that “this is the opinion of one consultant in France. We do not share this view at all.” An under-construction McDonald's restaurant in Grenoble was burned to the ground in a suspected arson attack in November. Just don't mention Jose Bove whatever you do.

That McDonald’s is currently feeling the heat is beyond question: the fall-out from restaurant bombings and anti-corporate globalization protesters remain only the tip of the iceberg. An increasingly mobilized and politically aware staff can only add to the troubled fast food conglomerate’s current predicament.

Describing itself as “a loose network of McDonald's employees, always flexible, dynamic and unpredictable, we work together to strengthen the position of workers in relation to our employer,” McDonald’s Workers Resistance (MWR) emerged in 2000 as a “determined response to the idiocy of [our] working lives. It's an angry rebellion against boredom, exploitation, poverty and discipline...against the idiocy of McDonald’s and capitalism.”

MWR is an independent combination of a few small groups of workers that have united in an attempt to create serious opposition to the company and its alleged dangerous exploitative practices and disciplinarian boot camp culture. Founded by a bunch of twenty-something Glaswegians sick of their McJob lot, MWR has quickly established links with fellow workers as far afield as Alaska and New Zealand. MWR is represented in America by chapters in Florida and Virginia. They also produce McSues, an occasional irreverent take on McDonald’s own McNews in-house publication. Although humorous in intent (“Everything you wanted to know about stealing from McDonald's!,” “Liberation begins when we put self-respect before burgers!”), McSues has a serious message:

“Working for McDonald's is dehumanizing. There is a ‘procedure’ for every tiny action to make our role almost completely robotic. The pay is infamously poor, management is frequently very autocratic. We are bombarded with company propaganda and expected to comply with company stipulated ‘appearance requirements.’ Theft of wages (clock card entries being altered by managers to save on labor expenses) is rife. Even when your shift finishes, incredibly, you are not free to go and are obliged to stay on should management demand it, which they almost inevitably will. You can’t even go to the toilet with out first obtaining permission. If a shift is unexpectedly quiet and staff are not totally rushed then some staff will be told to go home; if they insist on working their full shift they will often be assigned the most unpleasant cleaning tasks to encourage them to rethink. At other times every day off will be disrupted by a phone call from a stressed, sometimes even tearful, manager begging you to come in and work. The obsessive cost cutting and incessant prioritization of profit has enormous human costs.”

MWR do not need to be reminded that McDonald's famously closed a branch in Quebec in order to prevent the staff from unionizing. By writing and producing McSues anonymously, they are able to communicate with fellow workers without any of the obvious risks of normal workplace activism.

Eric Schlosser, author of the New York Times Bestseller Fast Food Nation, notes that one in eight Americans are employed by McDonald’s at some point in their life. More people now recognize the Golden Arches than they do the Christian Cross. American children are more likely to recognize Ronald McDonald than they are Santa Claus.

McDonald’s, like Disney, knows better than most that children are central to the continued success of its business. Hence, McDonald's World Children's Day™. United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan supported this “history-making fundraising initiative” to help disadvantaged children worldwide from money raised through Big Mac and Egg McMuffin sales paid to the company’s Ronald McDonald House Charity. “We’re not asking you to give money,” said spoon-faced Canadian singer Celine Dion, “we’re asking you to eat at McDonald's.”

Other money was raised on the day from McDonald’s employee donations. The irony of this was doubtless lost on McDonald’s top brass, who set the Nov. 20 date to coincide with the anniversary of the UN adoption of the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Schlosser, whose book has resulted in him being compared to Upton Sinclair -- author of The Jungle, a damning critique of the American meatpacking industry which spurred Roosevelt to pass the Pure Food and Drugs Act (1906) and the Meat Inspection Act (1906) -- argues that not only are children and teenagers McDonald’s client base, they are also their labor base -- providing an available pool of cheap labor. McDonald’s might provide employment to those who might otherwise not have a job, but as Schlosser argues, “the strict regimentation at fast food restaurants creates standardized products. It increases the throughput. And it gives fast food companies a vast amount of power over their employees.”

Employees are a major part of that throughput equation; being equally -- if not more -- disposable as the burgers and fries they churn out. The key to McDonald’s success is a marriage of Fordist assembly line techniques and uniformity. Former McDonald’s US Vice President Ronald Beavers admitted as much in 1995, when he observed that “they [McDonald's crew members] have no guaranteed employment rights. They do not have guaranteed employment or guaranteed conditions of employment.”

Upton Sinclair famously said that “I aimed for the public’s heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach.” Whether MWR enjoys the same level of success remains to be seen. The tide may not yet be turning, but the burger ain’t flipping: “We’ve found a voice for our frustrations, we’ve made lasting friendships and we are beginning to regain sovereignty over our lives. Maybe the resistance grows, maybe we can strike globally, maybe the same happens in other workplaces, maybe we occupy our workplaces and collectively take control over the wealth we produce. Maybe not. Either way we will have no regrets.”

Fries with that, sir?

Source: CounterPunch

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