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Tag: fast food
How Tacky Can The Golden Arches Get?

How Tacky Can The Golden Arches Get?

McDonald’s is scrambling, and I’m not talking about eggs. You know your business has what image consultants call “quality perception issues” when you have to launch a PR initiative that publicly addresses such questions as: “Does McDonald’s beef contain worms?”

Thornier yet for the world’s largest burger machine is its boneheaded response to the remarkable, ongoing rebellion by fast-food workers, who’re demanding a $15-an-hour wage and the freedom to unionize without corporate retaliation. The overpaid and clueless executives at McDonald’s responded by — guess what? — retaliating against hundreds of the employees who joined the protests. Big Mac managers illegally reduced the hours (and therefore the pay) of those who joined the “Fight For 15” campaign, spied on them, interrogated and threatened them, and imposed restrictions on their freedom to even talk about unions or working conditions.

The corporation now faces federal charges on hundreds of labor law violations — as well as rising customer anger over its ham-handed tactics. Naturally, McDonald’s responded by apologizing and raising workers’ wages.

Ha! Just kidding. Instead, it’s running a new series of TV ads that, astonishingly, tries to tap into people’s emotions about such tragic events as 9/11 and the Boston Marathon bombing, as well as linking its logo to people’s positive feelings about veterans, birthdays, and even “love.” McD’s corporate marketing director explains that the ads are all about the Golden Arches shining bright in every community, being with us through the good and the bad. As she puts it, “Who better to stand up for lovin’ than McDonald’s?”

What a joke. For over a decade the burger behemoth has pushed its product with an advertising slogan that exuberantly proclaims, “I’m Lovin’ It.”

But it turns out that putting words of praise in customers’ mouths doesn’t sell more burgers — in fact, customers have been putting fewer Big Macs, Chicken McNuggets, and other McEdibles in their mouths, causing sales to sag. This decline in affection has to do with the corporation’s boring burger, unappetizing news reports that some of its suppliers have been repackaging expired meat, its corporate-wide policy of paying poverty wages, its ruthless anti-union tactics and its cynical strategy of having taxpayers subsidize its labor costs by directing employees to go on food stamps and Medicaid.

Not to worry, though, for new CEO Don Thompson (the second replacement in the top slot in only two years) is all over these boo-boos. Is he offering real improvements in quality, wages and benefits, and corporate attitude?

Come on — get serious! This is McDonald’s, and its investors and bankers don’t fritter away profit taking on real solutions. Instead, Don is doubling down on that McLovin’ feeling. The new ad campaign is specifically designed to link the corporate brand to the healing power of love. The ads show Batman and the Joker breaking bread together over a Happy Meal, a mailman and a dog finding peace under the Golden Arches, and — how’s this for seriously clever? — a blue donkey and a red elephant sharing common ground at a McDonald’s formica table. Each ad closes with the lovely thought that you, I and everyone everywhere should “Choose Lovin’.”

Get it? Choose McDonald’s, for it’s the source of love, and you’ll truly be “Lovin’ It.” Not for nothing is CEO Thompson, who is paid $9.5 million a year, plus full health coverage, a platinum pension and private use of the corporate jet. Where else but America can you be so enriched for preaching Lovin’, while directing your corporate lobbyists to kill any increase in the poverty wages of your employees?

Just ask protesting workers about the “love” they’re getting from McDonald’s. Oh, to be fair, the bosses did make one change for workers — new uniforms, supposedly to buff up the corporation’s public image. That’s not just boneheaded, it’s pathetic! I forgot to mention that most of these low-wage employees were forced to buy the uniforms themselves. How’s that for McLove?

To find out more about Jim Hightower, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Web page at www.creators.com.

Photo: JKCarl via Wikimedia Commons

Fast-Food Workers’ Minimum-Wage Protests Go Global

Fast-Food Workers’ Minimum-Wage Protests Go Global

By Tiffany Hsu, Los Angeles Times

Fast-food workers around the world rallied for a higher minimum wage Thursday in what organizers called the largest such protest of its kind.

The movement, which began as a single walkout in New York in 2012 before sprawling across the U.S. last year, will spark gatherings Thursday in 150 U.S. cities as well as 33 countries on six continents, according to planners.

Protesters are calling for a $15-an-hour minimum wage and the right to form unions without retaliation from bosses.

In the U.S., where union ranks are thinning, the fast-food strikes have been called an attempt by labor leaders to boost membership.

On Thursday, the libertarian Cato Institute said that paying fast-food workers $15 an hour could raise labor costs so much that companies will decide to slash headcount and boost menu prices. The right-leaning Employment Policies Institute said that nearly half a million workers nationwide could lose their jobs.

But protest participants say they want to emphasize that the demographic working the drive-throughs isn’t just teenagers looking for spending money. Instead, supporters say, employees are often heads of households, many of whom must resort to public assistance to supplement their salaries.

Some cities, counties and states are proposing or pushing through minimum-wage increases. In September, Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill into law raising the minimum wage in California to $10 an hour by 2016. Earlier this month, Seattle Mayor Ed Murray unveiled his plan for a $15 minimum wage in the city.

On Thursday, social media filled with photos of crowds of protesters outside McDonald’s restaurants, Burger Kings and KFC outlets in New York, Ireland, India, Japan and elsewhere.

In Los Angeles, the Rev. Al Sharpton is expected to join demonstrators outside a Crenshaw Boulevard restaurant in the afternoon.

In a regulatory filing earlier this year, McDonald’s noted that “the impact of events such as boycotts or protests, labor strikes and supply chain interruptions” could “adversely affect” the company and its supply network.

In the same document, McDonald’s listed key factors that could affect its operations, plans and results.

On the list, the company placed “the impact on our margins of labor costs that we cannot offset through price increases, and the long-term trend toward higher wages and social expenses in both mature and developing markets, which may intensify with increasing public focus on matters of income inequality.”

In March, McDonald’s workers filed a spate of lawsuits against the company, accusing the burger giant of systematically stealing their wages and committing other labor violations.

steve rhodes via flickr