A handful of fast food workers are paid regular salaries. A fast food restaurant that employs fifty crew members has four or five managers and assistant managers. They earn about $23,000 a year and usually receive medical benefits, as well as some form of bonus or profit sharing. They have an opportunity to rise up the corporate ladder. But they also work long hours without overtime — fifty, sixty, seventy hours a week. The turnover rate among assistant managers is extremely high. The job offers little opportunity for independent decision-making. Computer programs, training manuals, and the machines in the kitchen determine how just about everything must be done.
Fast food managers do have the power to hire, fire, and schedule workers. Much of their time is spent motivating their crew members. In the absence of good wages and secure employment, the chains try to inculcate “team spirit” in their young crews. Workers who fail to work hard, who arrive late, or who are reluctant to stay extra hours are made to feel that they’re making life harder for everyone else, letting their friends and coworkers down. For years the McDonald’s Corporation has provided its managers with training in “transactional analysis,” a set of psychological techniques popularized in the book I’m OK — You’re OK (1969). One of these techniques is called “stroking” — a form of positive reinforcement, deliberate praise, and recognition that many teenagers don’t get at home. Stroking can make a worker feel that his or her contribution is sincerely valued. And it’s much less expensive than raising wages or paying overtime.
The fast food chains often reward managers who keep their labor costs low, a practice that often leads to abuses. In 1997 a jury in Washington State found that Taco Bell had systematically coerced its crew members into working off the clock in order to avoid paying them overtime. The bonuses of Taco Bell restaurant managers were tied to their success at cutting labor costs. The managers had devised a number of creative ways to do so. Workers were forced to wait until things got busy at a restaurant before officially starting their shifts. They were forced to work without pay after their shifts ended. They were forced to clean restaurants on their own time. And they were sometimes compensated with food, not wages. Many of the workers involved were minors and recent immigrants. Before the penalty phase of the Washington lawsuit, the two sides reached a settlement; Taco Bell agreed to pay millions of dollars in back wages, but admitted no wrongdoing. As many as 16,000 current and former employees were owed money by the company. One employee, a high school dropout named Regina Jones, regularly worked seventy to eighty hours a week but was paid for only forty. Lawsuits involving similar charges against Taco Bell are now pending in Oregon and California.
detecting lies
AFTER WORKING AT Burger King restaurants for about a year, the sociologist Ester Reiter concluded that the trait most valued in fast food workers is “obedience.” In other mass production industries ruled by the assembly line, labor unions have gained workers higher wages, formal grievance procedures, and a voice in how the work is performed. The high turnover rates at fast food restaurants, the part-time nature of the jobs, and the marginal social status of the crew members have made it difficult to organize their workers. And the fast food chains have fought against unions with the same zeal they’ve displayed fighting hikes in the minimum wage.
The McDonald’s Corporation insists that its franchise operators follow directives on food preparation, purchasing, store design, and countless other minute details. Company specifications cover everything from the size of the pickle slices to the circumference of the paper cups. When it comes to wage rates, however, the company is remarkably silent and laissez-faire. This policy allows operators to set their wages according to local labor markets — and it absolves the McDonald’s Corporation of any formal responsibility for roughly three-quarters of the company’s workforce. McDonald’s decentralized hiring practices have helped thwart efforts to organize the company’s workers. But whenever a union gains support at a particular restaurant, the McDonald’s Corporation suddenly shows tremendous interest in the emotional and financial well-being of the workers there.
During the late 1960s and early 1970s, McDonald’s workers across the country attempted to join unions. In response the company developed sophisticated methods for keeping unions out of its restaurants. A “flying squad” of experienced managers and corporate executives was sent to a restaurant the moment union activity was suspected. Seemingly informal “rap sessions” were held with disgruntled employees. The workers were encouraged to share their feelings. They were flattered and stroked. And more importantly, they were encouraged to share information about the union’s plans and the names of union sympathizers. If the rap sessions failed to provide adequate information, the stroking was abandoned for a more direct approach.
In 1973, amid a bitter organizing drive in San Francisco, a group of young McDonald’s employees claimed that managers had forced them to take lie detector tests, interrogated them about union activities, and threatened them with dismissal if they refused to answer. Spokesmen for McDonald’s admitted that polygraph tests had been administered, but denied that any coercion was involved. Bryan Seale, San Francisco’s labor commissioner, closely studied some of McDonald’s old job applications and found a revealing paragraph in small print near the bottom. It said that employees who wouldn’t submit to lie detector tests could face dismissal. The labor commissioner ordered McDonald’s to halt the practice, which was a violation of state law. He also ordered the company to stop accepting tips at its restaurants, since customers were being misled: the tips being left for crew members were actually being kept by the company.
The San Francisco union drive failed, as did every other McDonald’s union drive — with one exception. Workers at a McDonald’s in Mason City, Iowa, voted to join the United Food and Commercial Workers union in 1971. The union lasted just four years. The McDonald’s Corporation no longer asks crew members to take lie detector tests and advises its franchisees to obey local labor laws. Nevertheless, top McDonald’s executives still travel from Oak Brook, Illinois, to the site of a suspected union drive, even when the restaurant is overseas. Rap sessions and high-priced attorneys have proved to be effective tools for ending labor disputes. The company’s guidance has helped McDonald’s franchisees defeat literally hundreds of efforts to unionize.
Despite more than three decades of failure, every now and then another group of teenagers tries to unionize a McDonald’s. In February of 1997 workers at a McDonald’s restaurant in St. Hubert, a suburb of Montreal, applied to join the Teamsters union. More than three-quarters of the crew members signed union cards, hoping to create the only unionized McDonald’s in North America. Tom and Mike Cappelli, the operators of the restaurant, employed fifteen attorneys — roughly one lawyer for every four crew members — and filed a series of legal motions to stall the union certification process. Union leaders argued that any delay would serve McDonald’s interests, because turnover in the restaurant’s workforce would allow the Cappellis to hire anti-union employees. After a year of litigation, a majority of the McDonald’s workers still supported the Teamsters. The Quebec labor commissioner scheduled a final certification hearing for the union on March 10, 1998.
Tom and Mike Cappelli closed the St. Hubert McDonald’s on February 12, just weeks before the union was certified. Workers were given notice on a Thursday; the McDonald’s shut down for good the following day, Friday the thirteenth. Local union officials were outraged. Clement Godbout, head of the Quebec Federation of Labour, accused the McDonald’s Corporation of shutting down the restaurant in order to send an unmistakable warning to its other workers in Canada. Godbout called McDonald’s “one of the most anti-union companies on the planet.” The McDonald’s Corporation denied that it had anything to do with the decision. Tom and Mike Cappelli claimed that the St. Hubert restaurant was a money-loser, though it had operated continuously at the same location for seventeen years.