McDonald’s long ago went global. Lately, the anti-McDonald’s campaign has started following it around the world.þþThe union-led effort to raise wages and organize workers at fast-food chains in the United States is expanding its focus beyond organized protests at home — its key point of leverage for almost three years — to highlighting McDonald’s actions abroad in hopes that foreign regulators will bring further pressure to bear on the company.þþThe efforts are intended to build on the success of the anti-McDonald’s campaign in raising wages for fast-food workers in the United States, particularly in New York State. þþFast-food workers and supporters gathered on Wednesday in Manhattan to watch a live video of the wage board’s decision. The governor hailed it as an example of New York’s progressiveness.þþNew York Plans $15-an-Hour Minimum Wage for Fast Food WorkersJULY 22, 2015 þþþþþWorkers demonstrated for better pay outside a McDonald’s in Midtown Manhattan last week. Similar rallies are planned in 200 cities on April 15.þþThe Working Life: McDonald’s Workers, Vowing a Fight, Say Raises Are Too Little for Too FewAPRIL 5, 2015 þ þþ þBut it is also a tacit acknowledgment that the campaign’s second major goal, a union for workers at McDonald’s and other fast-food restaurants, remains elusive. The activists plan to turn their attention to McDonald’s in the overseas markets where its operations have been more lucrative recently as a way of drawing the company to the bargaining table in this country.þþScott Courtney, the Service Employees International Union official who is the architect of the so-called Fight for 15 campaign, laid out the new approach in his first on-the-record interview since he started working on the effort in 2012.þþ“I see this conversation as a departure point from a campaign that publicly has been seen as strikes and demands around $15 and the union,” Mr. Courtney said. “We intend to lay out what we can, what we know at this point, then embark on taking our case to other forums over the fall, into next year as we need to.”þþTo that end, dozens of legislators, union leaders and McDonald’s workers from around the world have converged this week in Brasília, the capital of Brazil — most of them at the S.E.I.U.’s expense — to draw attention to their accusations against McDonald’s.þþThe events will reach their climax on Thursday, when Mr. Courtney and several legislators and workers will testify before a committee of the Brazilian Senate. The witnesses are expected to describe what the campaign says are abusive labor practices at McDonald’s restaurants around the world, the corporation’s efforts to evade taxes in Brazil, and tax evasion and anti-competitive practices across Europe.þþþþþþþþ“In Europe, we have austerity policies,” said Jutta Steinruck, a member of the European Parliament from Germany who will also be testifying on Thursday. “If we don’t take in taxes, it’s an issue of social policy. We will not be able to pay subsidies for poor people, for their health care.”þþThe escalation of the international side of the campaign comes at a time when the financial performance of McDonald’s has flagged, particularly in the United States, where the company acknowledges that business has been in decline for nearly three years. By contrast, growth in many European countries, particularly Britain, has been stronger.þþThe poor performance recently prompted a leadership change at the company, whose new chief executive, Steve Easterbrook, has begun what he has called a turnaround plan that would “return critical markets to sustainable growth by regaining customers’ trust and loyalty.”þþMr. Easterbrook has also vowed to transform McDonald’s into “a modern progressive burger company.” One of his first major acts as chief executive was to raise the minimum wage the company pays employees at all of its corporate-owned stores to one dollar over the locally-mandated minimum wage.þþDespite the financial strains and more conciliatory posture from Mr. Easterbrook, however, most analysts say the odds of a successful unionization effort at McDonald’s remain daunting. There is little evidence that investors take the threat seriously: There was not a single question about the possibility during the company’s second-quarter conference call with analysts in July, or even about the various regulatory actions unions have helped initiate abroad.þþMeanwhile, the company’s on-the-ground defenses against unionization appear next to impregnable.þþ“Unions have been trying to organize McDonald’s for decades,” said Richard Adams, who worked for McDonald’s for more than 15 years, most recently as director of franchising in the Western United States, and now works as a franchise consultant. “This is nothing new to McDonald’s.”þþMr. Adams explained that even if the company decided to adopt policies that would help workers organize at corporate-owned stores, franchisees would probably simply ignore the efforts. “The company has no authority or power to make those agreements with unions on behalf of franchisees,” he said. “If I was a franchisee, I wouldn’t even read the memos.”þþStill, McDonald’s faces some additional challenges on the labor front.þþLast week, the National Labor Relations Board rejected an appeal by McDonald’s in a case that will decide whether the company is a joint employer of workers at its franchises. A joint employer determination would make it easier to apply any concession workers wrested from the McDonald’s Corporation to workers at McDonald’s franchises, including, for example, a card-check provision that could bring a union into existence at a store once a majority of workers signed union cards.þþ“The S.E.I.U. is hoping that if the decision comes out the way they want it to, the overseas efforts will be one more pressure point on McDonald’s to grant some kind of organizing concession,” said Glenn Spencer of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.þþThe wage increase at McDonald’s may also do little to appease its employees. A worker at a McDonald’s in Chichester, Pa., said that she and her colleagues had their hours cut sharply after the wage increase went into effect on July 1, with the store’s manager routinely depriving them of two or three hours of work on an eight-hour shift.þþThe worker, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of being fired, said she had typically worked 65 hours in each two-week pay period before the wage increase. “The last pay period it was 46 hours,” she said. “This pay period it was 43. Per week, that’s 21-22 hours.” (A second person who examined the worker’s recent pay stubs corroborated her account.)þþ“Like any place of business, employee shifts and hours vary depending on the guest traffic,” said Heidi Barker Sa Shekhem, a McDonald’s spokeswoman. “Our sales information for this location shows traffic was slower in July than in June, which may have impacted some employee shifts and hours.”þþWhile McDonald’s defenses at home remain strong, the labor campaign abroad hopes to weaken the company on other fronts.þþThe European Commission recently began looking into accusations leveled by a coalition of European and American unions and anti-poverty activists that McDonald’s avoided over 1 billion euros in taxes in Europe between 2009 and 2013 by funneling royalties to a Luxembourg-based subsidiary.þþEarlier this week, a Brazilian union filed a complaint with authorities in that country asserting that McDonald’s has gone to elaborate lengths to avoid paying taxes there as well.þþAt the hearing in Brasília on Thursday, the anti-McDonald’s campaign will unveil what it says is evidence that the company is engaged in anti-competitive behavior in Europe, where the unions say that McDonald’s uses its market power to compel franchisees to pay far more in rent as a percentage of their sales than its corporate-owned stores pay.þþMs. Barker Sa Shekhem disputed the unions’ calculations. “In all of the markets mentioned — the U.K., France, Spain — our company-owned restaurants actually pay higher rents than franchisees” as a percentage of sales, she said. “We are quite confident in not only the legality, but in the appropriateness of the process.”þþBut the merit of each complaint may be less important than the overall labor effort to paint McDonald’s as an outlaw corporate citizen. “The approach is to throw everything out there and see what sticks,” said Ruth Milkman, a sociologist who studies labor at the City University of New York Graduate Center.þþProfessor Milkman pointed to a campaign in Southern California in the early 1990s by immigrant construction workers, with the support of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. and the United Brotherhood of Carpenters. “They collected thousands and thousands of documents about overtime laws that had been violated, then basically dropped all those cases in exchange for the union,” she said.þþIn the interview, Mr. Courtney implicitly acknowledged a similar strategy. “McDonald’s could either go down this road of having issue after issue raised and public light shined on it, and they’re not going to look good,” he said. “Or they can say, ‘We’re going to lead, we’re going to turn our reputation around by turning our company’s basic business model around.’ ”þ
Source: NY Times
