Strikes in July in New York for higher pay for fast food workers. Credit: mtume_soul/ CC by 2.0

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Aug 29 2013 (IPS)

Workers at fast-food restaurants in 60 cities across the United States went on a one-day strike Thursday, the largest action yet in a strengthening year-long push for higher wages and the opportunity to form unions without retaliation.

The strike affected around 1,000 stores, organisers said, and also included workers in some national retail chains. The push for higher wages coincides with a broader movement to raise the U. S. minimum wage of 7.25 dollars per hour, one of the lowest among developed economies.

For those who took part in Thursday’s strike, median wages were estimated at less than nine dollars an hour, which both workers and labour rights activists say is impossible to live on in almost any part of the country. They are demanding “living wages” of 15 dollars an hour, more than twice the current federal minimum wage.

“Raising wages for low-wage workers is an economic necessity for communities all across the country,” Pastor W.J. Rideout III, with the Inter-Faith Coalition of Pastors in Detroit, said Thursday. “The only way to get our economy going again is to put more money in the hands of consumers. These striking workers are the best stimulus our economy could have.”

Fast-food workers’ low wages stand in startling contrast to the sector’s reported profits of about 200 billion dollars a year."When a parent is forced to work two jobs and still cannot support his or her family, it is clear that there is something very wrong."
-- Mary Lassen

Last year, for instance, McDonald’s alone reported nearly 5.5 billion dollars in profit. The parent company of several other large-scale chains, including Pizza Hut, KFC and Taco Bell, saw its profits grow by nearly 75 percent, to 458 million dollars.

“For too long, large corporations have been able to ignore the needs of their employees while continuing to rake in huge profits,” Mary Lassen, managing director of the Centre for Community Change, a Washington advocacy group, told IPS in a statement.

“When a parent is forced to work two jobs and still cannot support his or her family, it is clear that there is something very wrong. It is time that corporations address the problems facing low-wage fast-food workers.”

A central sector

The industry has responded by warning that higher wages would translate into fewer jobs. Critics also suggest that these entry-level jobs are mostly important only for teenagers and those starting out in the workforce.

“The story promoted by the individuals organising these events does not provide an accurate picture of what it means to work at McDonald’s,” a spokesperson for the restaurant chain told IPS. “Our history is full of examples of individuals who worked their first job with McDonald’s and went on to successful careers both within and outside of McDonald’s.”

Yet a recent study, released in July by the National Employment Law Project, found that little more than two percent of fast-food jobs are managerial, professional or technical, thus providing “significantly limited” opportunities for advancement.

Others note that low-wage jobs in the United States, including those at fast-food restaurants, play a central role for a broad cross-section of workers.

“It is a common myth that very low-wage workers – workers who would see a raise if the minimum wage were increased – are mostly teenagers,” write David Cooper and Dan Essrow, authors of a new briefing paper and researchers with the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington think tank.

“The reality is that raising the federal minimum wage to 10.10 dollars per hour would primarily benefit older workers. Eighty-eight percent of workers who would be affected by raising the minimum wage are at least 20 years old, and a third of them are at least 40 years old.”

As the United States has stumbled through the aftermath of the 2008-2009 economic downturn, fast-food and other low-wage jobs have become increasingly important, adding some 60 percent of post-recession jobs. That centrality looks set to continue, with government estimates projecting that fast-food jobs will post the sixth-highest growth of all jobs between 2010 and 2020.

For this reason, analysts are now suggesting that low-wage workers – long seen as particularly difficult to organise – will become an increasingly powerful voice in demanding higher compensation.

Falling short

Thursday’s strike came just a day after tens of thousands of people turned out to mark the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, one of the watershed events in the U.S. fight for civil rights.

At the commemoration, President Barack Obama reminded observers that the original marchers were demanding not only racial equality but also economic opportunity.

“It’s along this second dimension – of economic opportunity, the chance through honest toil to advance one’s station in life – where the goals of 50 years ago have fallen most short,” the president said Wednesday.

“[B]lack unemployment has remained almost twice as high as white unemployment, with Latino unemployment close behind. The gap in wealth between races has not lessened, it’s grown,” he stated. “The position of all working Americans, regardless of colour, has eroded.”

In the United States, upward mobility has become far more difficult over the past decade, the president noted, with labourers of all races seeing stagnating wages despite soaring corporate profits.

“The test was not, and never has been, whether the doors of opportunity are cracked a bit wider for a few,” he continued. “It was whether our economic system provides a fair shot for the many.”

One indicator of this lack of progress is that, during the 1963 march, protesters demanded a minimum wage that would translate to more than 13 dollars an hour at today’s rates. Even if the government had continued to update the minimum wage over the past half-century merely to keep up with inflation, this rate would today be around 10 dollars an hour.

Some legislative proposals have been made to set the minimum wage at this level, and in January Obama formally supported a modest rise to 9 dollars an hour. Yet all such proposals currently remain nonstarters in the Congress, evidently due to strong pushback from business groups.

Still, public support for an increase in the minimum wage is strong. According to polling carried out last month for the National Employment Law Project, 80 percent of U.S. adults support a 10.10 dollar minimum wage, with strong backing from all demographic and ideological categories.

In response to this public sentiment, U.S. states and cities alike have been stepping in and in just 2013, at least 13 states and several cities unilaterally raised their minimum wages.

Olympic torch arriving at Tretherras School, Newquayon. Credit: Bobchin1941/CC by 2.0

By Isabelle de Grave and Stephanie Parker
NEW YORK, Jul 21 2012 (IPS)

As the 2012 London Olympics gears up to open on Jul. 27, criticism of the longstanding partnership between the Games and sponsor McDonald’s has stolen a small portion of the limelight.

It’s not only civil society activists protesting the fast food giant this year, but local politicians.

“London won the right to host the 2012 Games with the promise to deliver a legacy of more active, healthier children across the world,” the Green Party’s Jenny Jones, who recently proposed a motion to exclude McDonald’s, Coca-Coca-Cola and others from the Games, told the 25-member Labour-dominated London Assembly.

”Yet the same International Olympic Committee that awarded the games to London persists in maintaining sponsorship deals with the purveyors of high-calorie junk that contributes to the threat of an obesity epidemic.”

The McDonald’s marketing strategy means that investment in sporting education goes hand in hand with the sale of low-priced, high-calorie fast food. In the UK, the company is offering up to 117,000 dollars to local football clubs.

“McDonald’s anticipated the criticism around its junk food 30 to 40 years ago. It spent those decades building a structure and good will to deflect criticism about the health impact of its products,” Sara Deon of Corporate Accountability International told IPS, highlighting McDonald’s sponsorship of the Games as a clear example of this.

McDonald’s has been an official sponsor of the Olympics since 1976. The company recently had its contract extended by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to 2020.

Coca-Cola has also been a partner of the games since 1926. According to Benjamin Seeley of the International Olympic Committee, the company “sponsors more than 250 physical activity and nutrition education programmes in more than 100 countries”.

The Olympics rely on such commercial partnerships for more than 40 percent of revenues, and McDonald’s and Coca-Cola are two of the leading contributors.

McDonald’s did not respond to repeated requests for comment on the quality of its food in relation to the dietary needs of adults and children, and criticism of its Olympics sponsorship.

However, physicians and nutrition advocates have also expressed concern over both companies as official sponsors, particularly in the context of rising obesity in the UK.

There have been plans to boycott McDonald’s sponsorship of the games by civil society campaigners who deem it unworthy of inheriting the prestige of the Olympics as a supplier of fat, sugar and manipulative marketing initiatives.

Ceci Charles-King, an advocate for food justice, told IPS, “I worry about the message (sponsorship) sends to children and adults. McDonald’s is hydrogen, salt and empty calories. Coca-Cola is sugar, fructose corn syrup and empty calories.”

The Academy of Royal Medical Colleges recently declared that sponsorship by the fast food giant sends the wrong message to people in the UK, which has the most overweight population in Europe with 22 percent of Britons now considered obese.

When a customer goes to the U.S. McDonald’s website to look at the nutritional value associated with “happy meals” for kids, it only shows the calorie, fat and protein intake. The webpage omits saturated fat, salt, vitamin and sugar content and the user must navigate to another section to find the information.

“The food continues to be high in sugar, fat and salt…the so-called healthier options do little for people that are seeking truly healthy options,” Deon told IPS.

Selecting an example from the menu, she said that, “The fruit and maple porridge contains more grammes of sugar than a snickers (candy bar).”

“They are little more than a vehicle to sell its bread and butter products: burgers, chips and fizzy drinks,” she added.

According to Deon, McDonald’s’ investment in programmes to promote physical activity “fall well short of the meaningful change that we need to address the epidemic of diet-related disease and McDonald’s needs to address the core issue of ending its marketing to kids.”

The McDonald’s Olympic restaurant, located in the Athlete’s Village, is the largest in the world, seating up to 1,500 people. It is expected to serve around 14,000 people a day during the Games, and will be offering free Olympic-themed happy meal toys to children.

Asked how children might avoid junk food buoyed by the positive image of the Olympics, Charles-King said it may be as simple as “(showing) the child how to cook so they can make better food choices”.

As far as athletes are concerned, Jill McDonald, UK chief executive of McDonald’s, has commented on the busy location of the restaurant in the Athlete Village, stating that athletes know more than anyone what they should be eating.

Benjamin Seeley told IPS that, “The IOC only enters into partnerships with organisations that work in accordance with the values of the Olympic movement.”

In June, the London Assembly has passed a motion calling for stricter criteria to assess suitable Olympic sponsors. New rules would exclude high-calorie food and beverage producers from sponsorship roles, ending the age-old relationship between McDonald’s and the Olympics.

This year is not the first time that Olympic sponsors have come under scrutiny. In 2008, human rights activists called for a boycott to end sponsorship of McDonald’s and other restaurants.

Food retailers are not the only sponsors to face opposition this year. Indian athletes and officials will be skipping the opening and closing ceremonies to protest Dow Chemical’s involvement with the Games. Dow is the owner of Union Carbide, whose 1984 gas leak in Bhopal, India killed more than 22,000 people and polluted soil and water sources for years to come.