Kicking and Treating Workers Like They're Disposable Is Bad Business

[appalachiablue]

- Workers and allies demanding a $15 an hour wage stage a protest outside a McDonald's restaurant.
________

- 'Fast food depends on low wages & high turnover. That’s not just wrong, new research says- it’s lousy for business.' Sam Pizzigati, OtherWords, May 26, '21. -Ed.

McDonald’s workers in 15 U.S. cities recently staged a weeklong strike demanding a $15 hourly wage for every McDonald’s worker. McDonald’s resisted, pledging only to raise average wages to $13 an hour. In the meantime, the profits keep rolling in. The fast-food giant registered $4.7 Bill in 2020 earnings. CEO Chris Kempczinski personally pocketed $10.8 million last year, 1,189 times more than the $9,124 that went to the company’s median worker. Executives at McDonald’s seem to think they can outlast the Fight for $15 campaign. More to the point, they think they know everything. Nothing happens at Mickey D’s without incredibly intensive market research: “Plan, test, feedback, tweak, repeat.”

More hours may go into planning the launch of a new McDonald’s menu item than Ike marshaled planning the D-Day invasion.

All this planning has McDonald’s executives supremely confident about their business know-how. But, in fact, these execs do not know their business inside-out. They don’t know their workers. Workers remain, for McDonald’s executive class, a disposable item. Why pay them decently? If some workers feel underpaid and overstressed, the McDonald’s corporate attitude has historically been “good riddance to them.” Turnover at McDonald’s was running at an annual rate of 150% before the pandemic. The entire fast-food industry rests on a low-wage, high-turnover foundation. And at those rare moments- like this spring- when new workers seem harder to find, the industry starts expecting its politician pals to cut away at jobless benefits and force workers to take positions that don’t pay a living wage.

But if leaders were really doing their research, they’d learn very quickly that this makes no sense. Instead of treating workers as disposable and replaceable, businesses ought to be treating them as partners.

Who says? The Harvard Business Review, hardly a haven for anti-corporate sloganeering. Employee ownership, the journal concluded recently, “can reduce inequality and improve productivity.” Thomas Dudley and Ethan Rouen reviewed a host of studies on enterprises where employees hold at least 30% of their company’s shares. These companies are more productive and grow faster than their counterparts, Dudley and Rouen found. Cooperatives are also less likely to go out of business.

Enterprises with at least a 30% employee ownership share currently employ about 1.5 Mill U.S. workers, just under 1% of the nation’s total workforce. If we raise that number to 30%, Dudley and Rouen calculate, the bottom half of Americans would see their share of national wealth more than quadruple. Elsewhere, enterprises with 100% employee ownership already exist. Spain’s Mondragon cooperatives, the NY Times noted earlier this year, have flourished since the 1950s. They aim “not to lavish dividends on shareholders or shower stock options on executives, but to preserve paychecks.”...
https://otherwords.org/treating-workers-like-theyre-disposable-is-bad-business/

[Bernardo de La Paz]

1. Spot on. Value employees. "Harvard Business Review, hardly a haven for anti-corporate sloganeering"

[jaxexpat]

5. Gosh, It just goes to show that even Harvard can get something right.

At this rate, by 2075, Harvard may illuminate the world about how concentrated wealth is not only bad for a nation's economy but lethal for representative government.

Now, that's progress! Except without any progressives.

[arlyellowdog]

7. They didn't get anything right

They just saw how everything Harvard taught made it all go wrong.

[arlyellowdog]

2. Screw the Harvard Business Review

They created this system. Hey, geniuses, just go to your local restaurant and ask why they are still “take out only.” It’s because they can’t get workers. Supply and demand. CEO candidates from Harvard outnumber line workers, drivers, stockers. And their rich trust fund babies aren’t taking part time or summer jobs. Why no lifeguards: because of Covid travel restrictions from Eastern Europe. No construction help, blame that “build the wall” former guy. The system is broken and the guys at Harvard who threw it to the ground are taking credit for looking at the pieces.

[bucolic_frolic]

3. I remember McDonald's drive-thru

and a sausage biscuit with no sausage.

And Wendy's drive-thru with a grilled chicken with no chicken.

They are told to keep the line moving. Even if there's no food in the bags.

[efhmc]

8. McD got my order wrong yesterday but spoke to the young AA manager and

he said to come back this AM and they would make it good. While I was in the drive through line ordering, I noticed a sign asking for help starting at $10 an hour. I am thinking that even in this small town that was not going to get many workers. Lots of openings around here. Competition is good but our government needs to help.

[Claire Oh Nette]

10. For part time, no benefits, and ever changing schedule?

I'm guessing these restaurants are not offering medical, dental, 401(k) benefits, are they? So it's $10/hr for maybe 30 hours a week. Good one. It's barely enough to buy a Big Mac Deal. When I worked for minimum wage, I could get two McDonalds's lunches for my $3.75

$10 an hour was fine, ten years ago.
Pay workers enough to live. Then the Govmint won't have to pay in medicaid, SNAP and WIC. year.

We need a maximum wage. CEOs making multi millions, and millions scraping by at $10K a

[efhmc]

11. It is being fought for by many Dems but of course, name a GQP member.

They always have excuses for not doing it and of course many if not most big companies do not want it to happen.

[Claire Oh Nette]

12. It's already happening

Federal wage on contracts, Corporate owned McDOnald's (not the franchisees), Coscto, even some of the big box stores.
Several states already have higher minimum wage already. One of the banks is raising pay to $25 by 25. Even Manchin's constituents in WV want increased minimum wage. It's coming, albeit under duress and with all the same lies about economic collapse.

Sorry. When the CEOs have a billion, then the employees should make a liveable wage.

[efhmc]

13. That is promising but I will hold my breathe here in ST Texas.

I did see a notice about a job fair here.

[pansypoo53219]

4. serfs. the right wants serfs.

[RicROC]

6. The slave mentality of the US is alive and thriving.

I've seen how badly people treat wait staff at restaurants. Even at professional health care offices, some people treat the staff as house slaves.

[Crowman2009]

9. And Sen. Sinema is OK with treating restaurant workers like garbage.

What a total embarrassment she is! She needs to be primaried out of office. Preferably someone who use to work in a low-wafe restaurant or fast food job.