McDonald's pay rise was a PR stunt, not a solution for workers
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Version 0 of 1. Don’t think that McDonald’s is a generous corporation because it’s raising wages for some employees. The company makes $5bn in profits each year, but it still won’t pay its workers enough to survive. I’m a single mother who has been working at fast-food restaurants for 10 years. Up until the announcement this week that my wage was going up, I was trying to raise my kids on $7.25 an hour. Now I’ll be trying to raise my kids on $8.25 on hour. That’s still impossible! Let me be clear: raising wages only a little – and only for a small fraction of your 1.7 million workers – isn’t change. It’s a PR stunt. Earning $8.25 is better than $7.25, but it is not nearly enough to lift my family out of poverty and give my children the chances they deserve. It is still not enough to cover basic necessities like food, clothing and rent. On this salary I won’t be able to buy my children sports equipment, or books, or Christmas presents. Also, the increase only covers workers at corporate stores – like the one where I work in Charlotte, North Carolina – so hundreds of thousands of other workers like me will get a raise of exactly $0. We are the ones who chop the potatoes, mix the salads and grill the burgers. We spend our lives preparing and serving the food that makes McDonald’s a profit. And in exchange, we get paid just above minimum wage. Fast-food workers are paid so little that many of us need food stamps or Medicaid to get by. In fact, McDonald’s encourages us to sign up for public assistance because it knows we can’t live on their wages. We don’t just need higher wages – though we do need them, and need them desperately. We also need the right to organize a union. Only with the protection of a union will we know that our wages, our jobs and our families are safe. Tens of thousands of fast-food workers around the country have stood up for higher wages and the freedom to join together in a union, and every day more of them join the fight. I’ve gone on strike and attended rallies and protests for change – some in my hometown of Charlotte, others long bus rides away. Our courage has even inspired workers across the economy, from home care to airports to academia to join in. And McDonald’s employees will continue to lead the way. It takes courage to go on strike and stand up to your employer. It’s scary to face police barricades, risk arrest and put our jobs on the line, as so many of us have done. But we’re doing it because our lives and our families depend on it. Make no mistake. McDonald’s is not raising our wages out of respect for our hard work, or because they want to see us smile or because they believe in lifting their employees out of poverty. The company is doing this because the workers at their stores have joined together and gone on strike after strike. McDonald’s probably thinks it can stop us with this weak announcement. No way. We have proven that we can win. A group of minimum-wage workers struggling to put food on the table for our families has forced a multi-billion dollar corporation to raise wages for a few of us. We will not stop until we get the $15 an hour we need to support our families and the right to form a union. |