Boycott McDonald's: Every Big Mac Eaten Attacks Workers
McDonald's really knows how to celebrate liberty and justice. On the eve of the international recognition Human Rights Day, McDonald's announced it will launch a massive campaign to defeat the Employee Free Choice Act. So, let's respond in kind: boycott McDonald's.
As a reminder, the right to form a union is an internationally guaranteed right, inscribed in the UN charter via the International Labor Organization's declarations:
All workers and all employers have the right freely to form and join groups for the promotion and defence of their occupational interests. This basic human right goes together with freedom of expression. It is the basis of democratic representation and governance. Those concerned need to be able to exercise their right to influence matters that directly concern them. In other words, their voice needs to be heard and taken into account.
Workers and employers can set up, join and run their own organisations without interference from the State or one another. Of course, they have to respect the law of the land - but the law of the land, in turn, must respect the principles of freedom of association. These principles cannot be set aside for any sector of activities or group of workers.The right freely to run their own activities means that workers' and employers' organisations can independently determine how they best wish to promote and defend their occupational interests. This covers both long-term strategies and action in specific circumstances, including recourse to strike and lock out. They can independently affiliate to international organisations and cooperate within them.
McDonald's now says it wants to spend millions of dollars to undercut that right. Here's the statement from John Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO:
Working men and women should be deeply concerned about McDonald's USA's announcement that it will throw its super-sized weight into defeating legislation to restore workers' freedom to bargain with their employers and improve their jobs through unions. Working people know that the bargaining power they gain through unions for fair wages, better health care, pensions and job security is our nation's single best tool for creating an economy that works for all - - 60 million say they'd join a union tomorrow if given the chance. In launching a campaign to defeat the Employee Free Choice Act, McDonald's has taken direct aim at the customers and communities it serves and is shooting down their best chance at realizing their aspirations for their families and futures.
Corporations like McDonald's and their CEOs hold all the cards in today's economy and working families are left to struggle with the economy they leave behind. McDonald's CEO James Skinner took home over $12.3 million in total compensation last year. If he were paid by the hour, he would make nearly 600 times the less than $10/hour pay of many of McDonald's 600,000 employees.McDonald's could not have picked a more telling moment to announce its decision to actively fight reform of our nation's broken labor laws. Tomorrow, human rights activists worldwide will commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, which declares that workers' freedom to form and join unions is a fundamental human right. Human Rights Watch warns that the U.S. labor law is so broken and its penalties so weak that U.S. workers have effectively lost their fundamental human right to freely associate and bargain in unions. McDonald's has now positioned itself squarely on the side of those opposing the protection of this basic human right.
McDonald's has the right to do this.
And we have the right to drain its coffers so that it doesn't have the resources to attack workers.
No working person should chomp on a Big Mac or another McDonald's product until the company stands down. You want cheap fast food? Fine--there are alternatives.
Full disclosure: this is easy for me to suggest because I haven't eaten one of those "burgers" in probably two decades. Just wanted to say that up front and apologize to those who are taking one for the greater good. And I'm sure many readers haven't eaten the stuff either.
But... a lot of people still do so spread the word.
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I eat at Mcdonalds all of the time. I can just as easily hit the burger king or others, the big mac certainly doesnt mean that much to me.
I do eat McD's every once in a while, but I'll stop now.
Well, I didn't eat at McD's before, but as of today I will start.
I am boycotting McDonalds since... 1996. The food is lousy.
It's unfortunate that the once noble Union, formed to protect those without the means to protect themselves or the champion to do so, have trodden down the path of class warfare, criminal activity and the selfish and shameful manipulation of those they were formed to protect.
Unions should protect the workers they serve from illegal and dangerous working conditions and negotiate a wage commensurate with a free marketplace. The wage should match each job for its own worth and NOT based on the relationship of the wage to another job with none of the same skill, education or aptitude requirements or job functions.
Far from protecting the workers in the United States, today Unions have caused more damage to them than anyone else helping to practically kill entire industries for this country and sending those jobs overseas.
These are broad statements. So I'll make some. In every organization there crops up now and again some corruption. But the fall of the unions is because of a full frontal assault by the Reagan administration. Todays workers are far more skilled than their predecessors, but the pay does not reflect this. Auto and steel workers today have far more college degrees than in Walter Reuther's day, but real earnings have fallen over a third in two decades.
And now for some details. The cable technician is highly computer literate. What's the difference between a Comcast non union cable guy and a Unionized Verizon guy?
The union guy makes six or seven dollars more. (Robert Kuttner's "The Squandering of America".
Unions aka associations for giving employees a voice and collective bargaining power work. That's why they have been assaulted by the corporatists.
It's not that Unions can't work. It's just that every shred of evidence available, even that in your post, suggest that they don't.
Auto and steel workers real wages had to fall otherwise there would no longer be any auto or steel industry in the United States. You can't have the union, for example, suddenly decide auto and steel workers should make $100 an hour without realizing that both industries would immediately be put out of business by foreign competitors and a crop of new domestic non-union competitors with much lower cost structures. Back in the 70s when US companies were in bad shape, unions were negotiating (and striking) for enormous wage increases despite often times the companies not being profitable and that the added money for wages was taking away from reinvestment, which in time made many of our old debilitated factories uncompetitive vs the new more efficient foreign ones. The Reagan administration was essentially anti-union because the unions had wreaked havoc on our economy, with lower growth and much higher inflation, for a long time.
Pity John Sweeney failed to mention that the Employee Free Choice Act also would deprive American workers of a secret ballot election, which is also a "basic human right " in a democracy.
All the unions really want are more members to help their underfunding pension plans and finance their on going political activism.
So you also demand that we should boycott all those foreign car companies who only build in right to work states?
Right?
Like Jonathan I haven't eaten a McDonald's in a long time, and I support the right to organize. I don't support the ability to intimidate during the voting process. Secret ballots are a cornerstone of democracy so now I may have to start eating Big Macs. Drat.
I am very pro-union but what is "free" or democratic about taking away the secret ballot for unionizing?
Mythbusting from the Maven: Nathan Newman at tpm.com:
"The secret ballot is a useful institution and workers will retain that right under EFCA, since 30% of workers in a worksite can always demand an election and as long as a majority of workers refuse to sign cards authorizing the union, they hold onto a right to have an election instead. But where a majority of workers recognize that they want a union and want to avoid the employer threats and coercion that accompany an NLRB election, the right to a card check option should clearly exist and is the best way to reflect the real democratic will of workers."
"Horrors, the business lobby cries, weeping for the lost democratic voice of their workers (as they threaten to fire anyone who supports the union during the election), but here's the thing-- an NLRB election recognizes the union if a majority of THOSE VOTING support the union, while the card check option requires support from a majority of ALL WORKERS IN THAT COMPANY OR VOTING UNIT. So the latter option is harder and actually is more guaranteed to reflect the will of the workers. Follow below the fold to imagine how this would play out in a federal Presidential election."
http://tpm
So how do you find out if the majority of workers that are voting support the union, smart guy?
Yeah, let's imagine how this would go in a pres election. "Since Obama has been polling ahead all year, there will be no secret ballot this year, just a "card-chec
Riiiight.
It's not "harder" to get the majority to vote for the union in a card-check if there's intimidati
McDonalds is not fighting to undercut the right to form a union. They are fighting against a law that would eliminate the secret ballot. And to many/most people, eliminating the secret ballot is un-American and leads to coercion. I even wonder what sense it makes to unionize McDonalds employees as the average length of time someone works there is so short, many wouldn't work there long enough to qualify for entry into the union.
Wrong. What it states is that it "would require the NLRB to certify a bargaining representative without directing an election if a majority of the bargaining unit employees signed cards, the card check process." No vote is eliminated if the petition is between 50% and 30%.
Now, Employers can reject card checks and force a secret ballot, even if the majority sign cards to petition for a union. If that happens, why do you need a secret vote? To even get a union started, there must still be some kind of open petition to GET to a secret ballot vote.
What the preliminary petition does now is let employers know who to target to weaken a union movement before a secret ballot, by rejecting the petition and going after union organizers.
The real issues with the Employee Free Choice Act are penalties and back pay allowances increasing on employers who coerce or retaliate against workers and allowing the union to demand the business begin bargaining within 10 days of union certification.
Do McDonalds employees need a union? It should be up to them, and not us, and not McDonalds management.
BUT, if McDees did not think that this law was a threat to employee control, then why move against it? If anyone says that McD or any company opposes this bill to help employees, I'll ask that person for another fairy tale.
"Do McDonalds employees need a union? It should be up to them, and not us, and not McDonalds management
Why would McDonalds employees even have an interest in unionizing the company when the average worker is only part-time and works there for only a short length of time. It seems clear to me that this is only a move to strengthen the unions themselves, not the McDonalds employees. What would a McDonald's employee have to gain by this besides a bump in pay? Does anyone really think that a bump in pay would only result in cost cutting and price increases and a probable short term cut in new store openings domestically? The result - inflation and higher unemployment.
But...but.
Dude, it's McDonald's. I had a friend get fired from there for being overqualified.
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