To begin, on a related note Amazon recently announced that they will increase the pay for the staff in their Seattle warehouses. It's not fast food but it is "low pay, bottom rung" perceived jobs and does relate to the end of my little ramble.
In Brixton, London there is a strike occurring today with staff of some similar companies and McDonald's is one of them. They're looking for £10/hour which is US$12.97, C$16.71, AUS$18.35 and €11.29 for international members who read this. I'm just going to paste what I wrote on Twitter. As an ex-McDonald's employee I had a few thoughts on this:
As someone who used to work in McDonald's for four years, I was, on the whole, treated fairly well. There were some things I didn't agree with but I am led to believe that that was down to the franchising practice rather than the parent company.
The grievances I did have were down to decisions made by either the owner of my franchise or the store manager of the outlet I worked in. e.g. We did not get paid more on Sunday and instead received more holiday days, which they were always reluctant to allow us to take. Again, I was led to believe that this was a local decision made by a franchiser who technically does not work for McDonald's, he just pays them a percentage for licence. I technically worked for S & V E Williams Ltd.; Mr S Williams was an accountant by trade who simply bought into the McDonald's business model. But I could be wrong, all of those decisions like holidays, Sunday pay and basic pay could indeed have been made by HQ.
I happened to work in a small, well-oiled tidy outlet. When people ask me what my "best job I've had" is, they're surprised when I say that my favourite is still Maccy D's. However, I appreciate some outlets are run like 🤬 and the staff are treated like 🤬. One thing has struck me reading about the strike. Workers in Brixton want £10 an hour. Fine, they're entitled to pursue that. I worked in Flintshire though; I just remember a manager saying how great £7 odd/hour was (US$9.08, C$11.70, AUS$12.85, €7.91), this was just under 10 years ago, and someone pointed out to her that "the cleaners in London ones get paid your shift manager's wage". When talking about minimum wages, there is always a huge disparage in purchasing power across the country. £10/hour in North Wales is eyewateringly astronomical.
For what it's worth, at the time a manager was making £7 something an hour in my particular outlet, I was making £4.25 (US$5.51, C$7.10, AUS$7.80, €4.80)
My only fear is that like the recent Amazon wage win, this is simply the first straw on the camel's back. They'll cave in and pay the staff more but then cut back on staff numbers and increase automated workers like the touchscreen ordering tills.
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Like I've said in one of the threads about the future of humanity, we are at the awkward valley on the line graph where low-paid jobs are increasingly becoming automated but life is not yet comfortable or seamless enough for everything to be done by robots or automatons. You still need a job and starting at the bottom of the ladder, many people are finding that their types of job are simply ceasing to exist.
