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TODAY MARKS International Fast Food Workers’ Day of Solidarity. In over 33 countries across the world, actions will be taking place outside global fast food outlets to demand living wages, the right to unionise and an end to zero hour contracts for fast food workers.
The international event has been organised by the Fast Food Forward campaign in the United States, which has been campaigning for a minimum wage of $15 an hour and the right to a union for fast food workers since 2012. The campaign has gained huge traction in the States among workers and the general public alike.
It has also put the need for wage increases right back to the centre of US political debate. Last month, McDonald’s said in a document to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that their global brand could be threatened by “the impact of (wage) campaigns by labour organisations and activists, including through the use of social media and other communications and applications.”
In over 130 cities in the United States today, McDonald’s workers will be striking for fair pay and working conditions. McDonald’s made a staggering $5.5bn profit last year, yet the majority of its workforce is still paid statutory minimum wages. It is wrong that workers whose labour generates such huge levels of profit are not treated with the respect they deserve. In Denmark, trade unions negotiated with McDonald’s to successfully raise the wage to $20, end zero hour contracts and affirm trade union rights. Last year, McDonald’s was even voted the best Danish workplace for the third year in a row. This shows that McDonald’s can still operate as a highly profitable corporation while giving workers the respect they deserve.
The Young Workers’ Network in Ireland has linked up with the Fast Food Forward campaign to organise the International Fast Food Workers’ Day of Solidarity events in Ireland. We are supported by the Union of Students in Ireland, the Migrants Rights Centre Ireland, the National Women’s Council of Ireland, Spunout.ie, Labour Youth, Young Christian Workers, SIPTU, Unite, the Communications Workers Union, Unite, Belfast Trades Council, Cork Council of Trade Unions and Dublin Council of Trade Unions.
We want to see an increase in wages for fast food workers and we want to see their rights and working conditions respected. It is not only morally right that all workers should earn enough to sustain a decent standard of living, particularly when they’re working for such highly profitable corporations, it makes economic sense too. Ireland needs wage increases to inject consumer demand into the economy to stimulate growth. Wage increases benefit workers, employers and society.
That’s why the Conservative mayor of London Boris Johnson (no friend of the workers) has made attracting more business support for the living wage one of his key aims for 2014. Putting more money in workers’ pockets benefits shopkeepers because they see an increase of customers in their stores who are able to spend. Increasing wages will also save the government money as it will decrease the number of low paid workers in need of income support supplements from the Department of Social Welfare.
Ending zero hour contracts is also key to improving work conditions. Zero hour contracts are on the rise globally and particularly in Ireland. These contracts do not provide workers with guaranteed hours. It means that workers are permanently on-call to employers. It makes it extremely difficult for workers to have a decent standard of living as they do not know how many hours work and wages they will be getting each week, which makes it impossible to budget for paying rent and household bills. Zero hour contracts are a throwback to the ages when people used to line up outside docks and mills waiting for work and they must be ended so that workers have certainty over their work hours to plan their lives.
Never before has an international day of solidarity this large taken place. It is an historic day in the international labour movement and an important and powerful day also. Today sends a strong message to fast food employers that workers are fed up of being paid poverty wages, not getting enough hours and not having trade union rights. Today, fast food workers across the world demand the respect they deserve.
In Dublin at 5pm today there will be a rally in Wynn’s Hotel on Abbey Street with speeches from fast food workers and activists on the need for fair wages and working conditions in the fast food sector. The rally will be followed at 6pm by a march to and a protest outside a nearby global fast food outlet. In Cork an action will take place at 6pm in Daunt Square and in Belfast at 4.30pm in Castle Place.
Ciaran Garrett is the organiser of international fast food workers solidarity action in Dublin. Twitter @ciaran_garrett
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Minimum wage workers are worse off than most people who don’t work at all….
Yes but if they are paid more – how will i get my happy meal for €1?
Any employer whose full time employees require social assistance should be fined. Our social welfare system isn’t there to subsidise the profits of companies.
Wage inequality is the real problem. Enthusiastic workers should be able to prosper. Minimum wage needs to be higher than welfare bundle.
Or reduce welfare bundle?
O’Reilly welfare bundle. Says like a true capitalist knob. Reduce for the poor and increase for the rich.
Or implement Universal Basic Income, thereby removing at a stroke benefit traps, the possibility of exploitation of workers in marginal circumstances and swathes of bureaucracy.
What do you want to do, O’Reilly, shoot them? Starve them? Sterilize them? Transport them to Poland?
You’re right Seamus. Let’s starve, shoot and deport everyone else…
the welfare bundle has been cut to 2007 levels already, its enough to survive on. The argument of wages vs dole doesn’t wash, its the wages and the cost of living increases that are the problem, they need to stay in line. Cutting the dole in half in hope the slaves will accept even lower wages is the capitalist dream. That would happen and don’t say it wouldn’t. Wages would come further down and you’ll still be here complaining.
The recession bred wage cuts, cuts that are still in place for many business that have returned to profitability, through lower wages, less staff and scam bridge, all their profits are to be balanced out to make up for lack of customer spend. Its like the recession never happened and many people have profited off it. Also, since 2004, increase competition for jobs was allowed to come in here from whats now 8 Eastern European countries, but took 2-3 years for it to spread. We now have workers coming from countries where wages here are worth 1.5 – double to even triple times more to them. The employers have exploited that opportunity to the fullest so… is it any wonder your wages aren’t increasing? Why would it?
Yes welfare should be cut because we haven’t got the money to pay for it
and then wages will start to follow very quickly afterwards while your bills and expenses will remain and go up, albeit slower than before, but they will go up. You can see how other EU states are poor and why they’ve come here for a better life. They’ve poor wages AND very poor welfare. Would you like that? Unless of course you count for the 10% with zero understanding, i don’t believe in the 1% , i think its much higher. We haven’t got the money to pay for it is true, we could afford at one time, what happened? Bailout debt and population growth here is like a double blow to the head.
try surviving on 100 euro a week on your own and tell me it’s enough. I went hungry to pay bills at times during my 5 weeks out of work.
Unfortunately employers will go to no end to ensure profits are off the scale and wages and conditions are crap.
Heartbroken to hear McDonalds global brand could be threatened by workers looking to earn a decent wage. Maybe if they stopped producing their godawful ads they could pay the workers more.
I’m lovin it!
Every major brand has made the concious decision to produce their product for the smallest amount possible so that they can pump as much money as possible into marketing. It seems quite clear from the results that marketing is what matters to the public and not actually the product that they are making. In light of this I guess the companies are 100% right in what they are doing.
I work in fast food as a supervisor. Although in a management position with responsibility, I still earn less than I would get on the dole (married father of three). How can this be legal, let alone fair?
Well, Barry, the first thing you need to get sorted is that you’re not in a “management position”.
That’s just the title used by “management” to separate you from the people you’re transmitting orders to.
Managers shape the overall direction and policy in an organization. Is that what you’re doing? Do you have any say in how the company is run?
If you are in a “management position”, then you should feel comfortable taking the issue of your pay (and the pay of your co-workers) up to where the decisions are made.
Is it fair? No. Is it legal? Apparently yes. It amazes me that despite EU regulations and all the actors portraying Jim Larkin, the worker in Ireland still has no right to collective bargaining. That’s 101 years after the Dublin lockout. Just fecking pathetic.
Organize, Barry.
Unfortunately the fast food outlet I work in is a franchise operation, so no, I am not involved in corporate decisions or policy making. That doesn’t change the fact that I am first in and last out, and the one who gets grilled if anything goes wrong. Also, organising is only possible if everybody wants to.and like all modern irish companies, they keep enough people sweet to make sure that doesn’t happen.
At least they could grill you with onions.
A right to collective bargaining for all Irish workers is a long overdue right that is being denied to keep wages low and profits high.
Why is it that at a time when corporations are seeing record profits we are seeing less and less compensation for our part in earning those profits?
What does the CEO of your company get for his contirbution? What is the level of compensation?
I once requested a service truck from a company I worked for. Had to move a lot of tools around the downtown area of a city, and a service truck would certainly have been appropriate. I was told the company couldn’t afford to provide a service truck.
The CEO of that company was earning $14 million per year. Bet you can tell similar tales….
We’ll said Seamus.
http://www.thejournal.ie/collective-bargaining-1463108-May2014/
I’m just waiting for the first clown that says “They should be lucky to have a job”…
Harry, I don’t think reference to a clown was a good idea in this case.
Touche!!:)
This could get very nasty. If they don’t get more dough, someone could get battered
Profits and share price is all that matters to the 1%.
Just share price trending, actually. Computers are used to buy and sell vast lots of common stock, holding them for mere milliseconds before dumping them. That, in the casino business, is called “skimming”. You take 1 or 2 cents of a million shares at a time. Because they can.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithmic_trading
It provides no goods or services to a society. It is just grabbing what flows past in the financial stream.
When I was a kid and worked in McDs in 88, the starting rate was IE£1.75 per hour!
Then it went up to IE£2.08, woooo. At some point they had to give everyone back pay due to under payment…
Id love to know how paying higher wages benefits employers
Happy staff that are being valued work harder and are generally more productive resulting in a better ran business and more positive culture.
As well as more productive and loyal staff people also have more money to spend in the economy in shops and on services. This means that while businesses have a higher wage payout in turn they take in more money. People cannot spend what they do not have.
Plus more money in the domestic economy which will in turn improve their business.
thats really how it works – all of the above, but they don’t and can’t see it that way only their own short term gain, long term fail.
i mean, i can understand in some ways the min.wage for non-qualified/labour/inexperienced work, but theres far too many poor wages been handed out now for experienced staff WITH the 3rd level qualifications. They seem willing to take the chance on inexperienced, new graduates for experienced work types through poor wages or… the scam bridge.
wages are due triple increases now at this stage, they are far behind.
Staff on low wages leave the moment something with even marginally better wages comes along. Staff on good pay tend to stay longer. So you are not constantly spending time training new staff and getting them up to speed.
Ya let’s pay everyone lots more money, sure that’s the answer to all the economic ills of the country……..not. Jeez the level of rational on this thread is room temp IQ.
Growth over profit. Treat people with dignity, why is this an issue that needs to repeatedly brought up?, what happened to us??
Zero hour contracts are not just happening in the fast food industry, A well known UK discount store that opened new stores in Ireland also employ people on min wage plus zero hour contracts.
Also well known transport and distribution companies are employing staff on zero hour contracts, By using agency staff on a flat rate of pay regardless if the person works nights weekends bank holidays etc.
I had to do this type of work to keep a roof over my head, Every day waiting on a call to see if you had work the next day but the biggest killer was starting work at 5 am and finishing at 9 am.
The heads in the DSW would stop me €70 for working that day yet I didn’t even earn that much for the few hours worked.
When I asked about who makes the decisions and that I would be better off staying at home the person in the dole office agreed with me.
Thankfully I have moved on to a better job (although contract) with 40 hours work every week.
Why is it when workers rights are trampled on and the injustice of profits on the backs of miserable terms and conditions there are calls for collective bargaining, and when workers have been successful in collective bargaining there is an outcry when they try to hang on to the often hard earned terms ?
If you’re a human being, you deserve better than to work in McDonald’s but tragically nobody else is going to save you from it. You have to be pro-activework at getting yourself out of there and into another industry. Start planning your escape today,
Shut up you idiot.
It’s really very simple, if the job you do can be done well by any able bodied person after minimal training, the wage that job commands will also be minimal. That’s why people go to university!!
Not surprised Mc Donalds made billions. Their staff are great though but their food is…awful…pub grub is 100 per cent better…lot cheaper more nutricious….
Can I have fries with that!
have your say