Revolt at Big Mac's
Kotlowitz, Alex
Revolt at Big Mac's Fast food for everyone, peanuts for the workers Alex Kottewitz Hot grease from the french fry vats leaves blisters on your arms and hands. You rub on some salve, and go back...
...In 1977, during one of Congress's periodic reviews of the Fair Labor Standards Act, McDonald's lobbied vigorously for an amendment that would have exempted it and other fast-food chains from paying the minimum wage to employes under eighteen...
...You ask for a merit raise, hoping the supervisor likes you enough to pay a nickel an hour more...
...McDonald's, for instance, supplies its store managers with videotapes on such topics as "Silence is Not Golden," which encourages "rap sessions" between management and employes, and "Nine-Tenths of Your Business," which "shows how a breakdown of communications between manager and crew can cause the whole store situation to become counterproductive indeed...
...But established labor unions have shied away from organizing the young, transient work force, which is also the largest block of minimum-wage workers in the country...
...Advancement for these kids is finding another job down the line, not improving their working conditions...
...We feel a responsibility to youth employment...
...Again, management fought back...
...More than two-thirds of the 6,269 McDonald's stores worldwide and four-fifths of Burger King's 2,766 stores are franchises...
...A union victory in Detroit could also bring a turnabout in the way the industry treats its counter clerks and grill cooks...
...The young, independent Detroit Fastfood Workers' Union, an offshoot of the growing Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), has launched an organizing campaign with the help of its parent group, the United Labor Unions, which is organizing other low-wage workers in such cities as Boston, Philadelphia, and New Orleans...
...Such remarks characterize the mood of the small, determined core of fast-food workers who are tackling head-on the sophisticated anti-union tactics of an industry that spends millions each year to convey a clean, wholesome, all-American image to the public...
...A number of unions, including United Auto Workers, the state Building and Construction Trades, and locals from the United Food and Commercial Workers to the International Association of Machinists have supported the financially strapped Detroit Fastfood Workers' Union...
...The two chains, which have revolutionized American eating habits, have responded with the same zeal that has made them the fast-food giants they are today...
...The owner of all three stores held a plastic Easter egg hunt, offering french fries and chocolate Easter bunnies as prizes...
...The managers are all the time screaming at you...
...One young McDonald's employe noted that "since there's been talk of a union, we're getting some respect...
...You aren't asked to do something, you're told," says former inner-city McDonald's employe Wendell Jones...
...Almost every day of the year, a new McDonald's or a new Burger King opens its doors...
...The campaign's efforts bore fruit in the "McDonald's Amendment," which allows small businesses to employ up to six full-time students at 85 per cent of the minimum wage...
...Greyhound successfully challenged the election and is now fighting an order by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) requiring the company to negotiate with the union...
...With restaurants in more than twenty-seven countries and a tripling of sales over the past decade, they are leaders of an industry growing at a phenomenal pace...
...Five days before the elections, Earl Campbell, all-star running back for the Houston Oilers, appeared at crew meetings at all three stores to shake hands and sign autographs...
...Finally, on election day, each worker was handed an envelope with two checks...
...The smiling McDonald's workers of television commercials may dance their way through work, deftly weaving around one another and singing the familiar jingle, "We do it all for you----" But for now, in Detroit, and in restaurants worldwide where workers face hectic hours at low pay, the tune sung to close union meetings hits closer to home: "They do it all to you—at McDonald's...
...One was a paycheck— minus $20...
...Though the union won higher wages, health benefits, and paid holidays for the workers, it represents only those who work more than twenty hours a week—three to four workers at each store...
...You rub on some salve, and go back to the boards...
...We supported the youth exemption on the basis that it would encourage the employer to hire those with very little skills," explains McDonald's representative Doug Tim-berlake...
...After a nine-month strike, McDonald's pulled down the Golden Arches and left the island...
...Each franchise must be organized separately (some franchises include more than one store) which means that in Detroit the union estimates it must win twenty-five elections to represent the city's forty-eight McDonald's and Burger Kings...
...Since then there have been scattered attempts to organize fast-food workers in cities from Flint, Michigan, to Palm Springs, California, but little progress has been made...
...So instead of a well-financed, seasoned union, it has taken an independent, inexperienced union operating on a shoestring budget out of a Detroit YWCA basement to challenge the basic tenet that young, unskilled, part-time fast-food workers should be happy just to have a job...
...But in time, that may change for the more than 5,000 fast-food workers of Detroit...
...McDonald's franchise owners may be almost guaranteed financial success, but smaller fast-food chains often struggle along just to break even...
...Both New Detroit, Inc., a business/community organization set up to rebuild the city after the 1967 riots, and a local group called the Black McDonald's Operators Association, have joined McDonald's and Burger King in castigating the union for discouraging youth employment...
...And on election eve,the workers were treated to a full evening of disco dancing with Marvelous Marv, a Detroit disc jockey...
...But, reasons the union, if fast-food workers can be organized anywhere, they can be organized in Detroit, the heartland of American unionism...
...Harvard Business School professor Theodore Levitt says McDonald's has "created a highly sophisticated piece of technology...
...The high turnover requires a very substantial effort," explains Peter Allstrom, head of Research and Communications at the AFL-CIO's Food and Beverage Department...
...Its net income, or profits, topped $220 million, an increase of $32 million over the previous year...
...Our concern is not unionization, but the employment of the kids," agrees Paul Reinhard of Miami-based Burger King, which co-sponsored a conference on youth employment with the University of Florida in 1979...
...The anti-union campaigns by management, by the black franchise owners, and especially by the business-oriented New Detroit have helped solidify union support for the fast-food workers...
...they want you to do two jobs at once," says former Burger King employe Carolyn Halloway...
...Although the union is not counting on a full reimbursement, some say McDonald's may owe its workers as much as $43 million for 1980 alone...
...When the workers at a downtown Detroit Burger King franchise owned by Greyhound Food Management voted in the Detroit Fastfood Workers' Union by the narrow margin of twenty-five to twenty-three early last year, the victory was by no means complete...
...It's not an easy challenge...
...McDonald's, the General Motors of fast-food, achieved record sales of $6.2 billion in 1980, up 16 per cent from 1979...
...Maintaining this phenomenal growth and profit margin means keeping volume high and wages low...
...Life under the Golden Arches is not all that golden, as any of the million young Americans who work at a fast-food restaurant can tell you...
...You punch in for a six-hour shift, but the customers are sparse, so the boss clocks you out and sends you home early...
...Still another hurdle is the structure of the fast-food industry itself...
...And much of that active support will not be forthcoming as long as some of the more conservative unions continue to feel that their turf is threatened...
...Since the resulting work can be as dulling and impersonal as assembly-line production, the industry is well aware of the difficulty and importance of keeping workers loyal and contented...
...In a few isolated instances, fast-food workers have voted in a union and successfully negotiated a contract, but even these victories have been limited...
...And inner-city franchises, because of lower volume and higher insurance costs, tend to earn less than their suburban counterparts...
...For the present, the unskilled, teen-aged laborers are expendable, their jobs totally interchangeable...
...They say their ^workers are satisfied with the wages and the respect they receive on the job...
...With the song "We Are Family" playing in the background, an occasional "Vote No" flashed on the screen...
...Aware that it was, for the most part, dealing with an unsophisticated and easily swayed workforce, McDonald's introduced quick-cash games such as McBingo and Steak Your Claim...
...If the Detroit Fastfood Workers' Union is successful, it will be the first time that fast-food workers from different chains have been organized under the same roof— and it would certainly encourage similar attempts in other cities...
...He was subsequently reprimanded by the National Football League Players' Association...
...They were not told that the $20 would be dues for an entire year...
...force, and their working conditions and wages help set the standard for the rest of the industry...
...Fast-food workers make up one-fifth of the food service industry's work Alex Kotlowitz is a free-lance writer in Lansing, Michigan...
...If we have to pay $3.50 to $4 an hour, then we're not going to be attracting just teen-agers but also experienced adults...
...And the Michigan Chronicle, a black-oriented weekly, has carried vitriolic columns accusing the union of racist intentions for organizing inner-city black-owned stores rather than the wealthier suburban franchises...
...The union, which began its organizing campaign late in 1979, concentrated its initial efforts on the grand-daddies of the two-minute hamburger: Ray Kroc's twenty-five-year-old brainchild, McDonald's, and the Pillsbury-owned Burger King...
...Operating profits for Pillsbury's restaurant division, which also includes Steak and Ale and Pop-pin' Fresh Pies, rose 27 per cent from 1979, to $99 million...
...Labor now accounts for about one-fourth the industry's costs, and by 1985, Burger King expects it to be a greater expense than food and paper combined...
...Many thought that they were getting a $20 bonus...
...Grease burns, irregular hours, autocratic bosses, sexual harassment, and low wages all come with the quarter-pounder...
...Twenty dollars was what it would cost them to join the union, the workers were told...
...Despite the union's slow start, it has already given many of the teen-aged, part-time workers of Detroit a taste of what a few collective gripes and groans can do...
...Young, unskilled fast-food workers, most of them on their first jobs, traditionally receive the minimum wage— and if the industry had its way, they would be working for even less...
...Buoyed nonetheless by the election results and ensuing media coverage, the union filed for elections at three more Detroit McDonald's stores...
...Recognizing that some franchise owners may be financially squeezed between the demands of the company and the demands of the union, organizers say they would like to see a bargaining agreement forcing the company, not the franchise, to pay for benefits and wage increases...
...It was eleventh-hour company tactics, though, that proved the most powerful...
...Organizers are now returning to the fast-food effort, though, and the union's parent group, the United Labor Unions, has considered filing suit against several large chains for failure to reimburse employes for the cost of laundering their uniforms, as required by law...
...Neither McDonald's nor Burger King sees the need for a formal grievance procedure...
...After the union had negotiated two contracts and won paid vacations, sick leaves, a grievance procedure, and higher wages, a new owner bought the franchise and refused to recognize the union...
...You've made just enough to pay for car fare to and from work...
...You have to take all that talk from customers," says Bobbie Wilson, who until recently worked at a Detroit McDonald's to put herself through high school...
...the union lost by a margin of 104 to 46...
...Said one rueful organizer, "I don't think they'll ever surprise us again...
...Two days before the election, the company picked up the workers at the three stores and took them in buses to a rented hall to play McBingo and watch videotapes of themselves at work...
...A second barrier to the organizing efforts has been furious opposition from Detroit's black entrepreneurs, particularly the city's black franchise owners...
...by applying a manufacturing style of thinking to a people-intensive service situation...
...They think that fast-food workers are illiterates...
...We're getting talked to as if we're people...
...On May 2, the tactics paid off...
...One of the more extensive fast-food organizing efforts took place in Puerto Rico in the mid-1960s, when the Hotel and Restaurant Employes' Union was elected to represent workers at all McDonald's stores on the island...
...What the union needs most, however, besides cash, is aid from experienced union organizers and labor attorneys, and the willingness of labor to support eventual boycotts and "sit-ins" at fast-food restaurants...
...The argument hits home particularly in Detroit, where more than one out of three young people is unemployed...
...For Burger King, a distant second to McDonald's, sales in 1980 leaped 26 per cent from the previous year to $1.84 billion...
...While union organizers point out that only one of the four stores where union elections have been held is black-owned, they realize the black franchise owners' fears may not be totally unfounded...
...McDonald's was so proud of this observation that it was included in an annual report...
...McDonald's alone boasts that by 1985, one-fifth of all American youth will have at one time worked for the company...
...the other was a check for $20...
...Established labor unions have not made a concerted effort to organize fast-food workers primarily because of the high turnover in the industry, which is estimated at 100 to 300 per cent annually...
...If a union comes in and demands higher wages, both McDonald's and Burger King argue, they will be forced to hire fewer young people...
...Probably the most successful effort took place thirteen years ago when the Teamsters organized Kentucky Fried Chicken workers in New York City...
...But you're not the boss's favorite, so your pay will stay at minimum wage—$3.35 an hour...
...Fortune magazine has described McDonald's as one of the ten "business triumphs" of the 1970s...
...Since the McDonald's and Burger King elections, the union has concentrated for a time on organizing small, low-wage industrial plants, winning a 25 per cent increase in pay and medical insurance for workers at one firm...
...But many of Detroit's fast-food workers see things differently...
...It has yet to win an election, but the Detroit Fastfood Workers' Union is slowly making a name for itself in this city steeped in labor tradition...
Vol. 45 • April 1981 • No. 4
