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"Official Restaurant" of the Olympics pays $6.35 per hour in Vancouver
February 20, 2010 - 4:21pm
This is disgusting. McDonald's is taking advantage of B.C.'s "training wage" for new workers and immigrants (note: wtf, BC? you let employers legally discriminate against immigrants?) and paying their workers $6.35 per hour instead of the regular minimum wage of $8 per hour. One of the richest corporations on the planet.
Just for comparison purposes:
When I left high school in 1990, I get a full time, minimum wage job at a bakery for $6.00 per hour. Two decades ago. By 1994, when I left that job, minimum wage had gone up, and I was making $6.50 per hour at minimum wage.
So, 16 years ago, my minimum wage job paid MORE than those fuckers at McDonald's are paying immigrants and "new workers" NOW.
SHAME.
Of course, can't forget the $1.2 billion in profits that McDonald's made last year...a corporate empire built on cheap labour. In fact it was because of them that the word "McJob" entered the Oxford English dictionary. Wonder if they're proud of that?
Oh, probably. They're shameless. They probably figure they're doing people a favour by giving them some shit job to put on their resume so they can get enough experience to climb to some other shit job.
Apparently, the Olympic motto is "Obey Big Clown!"
(the greatest irony is, of course, that it would be almost impossible to be in any condition to participate in the Winter Games if you ate at McDonald's on anything like a regular basis. You'd have pot-bellied speed skaters doubling over at the starting line with chest pains.)
Why $6.35 an hour? Here's one reason:
Where Is The Union Movement In The Olympic Resistance?
http://mostlywater.org/canada_where_are_unions_antiolympics_protests
"It's time for someone to mention the elephant that's not in the room.
The room would be today's British Columbia, where local and imported rich folks are enjoying an 8-billion-dollar, taxpayer funded party...
Where the hell is labour in the anti-Olympic protests in Vancouver? The utter absence, not only of the movement's formal leadership, but also of any visible sector of its hundreds of thousands of members has to be a source of elation to the greed-heads who have pillaged this province for the past ten years...
A few of us have decided to protest, hopefully disrupt, the circus. Many, getting accustomed to the other side winning, just throw up their hands in resignation..
No overt opposition to the bid seven years ago amounted, in practice, to tacit support for the entirely predictable looting of the public treasury and related attacks on many British Columbians, including many union members.
No overt union opposition now, no alliance with Native people and anti-poverty activists, equals support for the obscene circus. And it bodes ill for the unions' abilities to defend their members (or anyone else).."
and here's another:
'how to ruthlessly exploit a global spectacle'
http://thetyee.ca/News/2010/02/05/OlympicsWellWorthIt/
it is disgusting when will bigger company start paying people what there worth.......
So the real issue is McDonalds, for not choosing to altruistically pay employees more than they have to? Because I would think it's the province, for setting a legal minimum wage so low, and for targetting young employees and immigrants.
If I see a car driving 60km/h down my street, and I think that's too fast, I'm not going to blame the driver if the posted speed limit is, in fact, 60km/h.
Nonsense analogy example snert, Gordo changed the labour laws as payment for CoC and corporate support in getting elected.
It is shameful people have not fought it more than they have....
It is even more shameful for MacDonald's, but given who and what they are little else would be expected....
Hehe. It's nice how, even as you admit you expect nothing more of them, you still manage to sneak in that tiny little bit of surprise anyway.
Ya, I'm shocked any time a corporation doesn't voluntarily choose to pay more for labour (or anything else) than they have to. Where's the love?
I doubt that McDonalds has much inclination to evaluate what would be a fair wage in each area that it operates in. You could probably consider the inadequate wages as a symptom of the disfunctional nature of how McDonalds manages itself. I'm inclined to side closer to Snert on this one. It seems to be more reasonable to expect the regional goverment to establish fair labour laws than to expect a large corporation like McDonalds to be sufficiently engaged with its employees to pay them appropriately.
You also have 7048467 Canada, which is the legal name of the broadcast consortium, that file last September for an Excess Hours Permit so they could evade Section 176 of the Canada Labour Code. If deemed vital for Olympic coverage, a worker would expect to be available for 7 days a week with 10-12 hours per day.
...Surely McDonalds and other corporations that need unfavourable labour conditions are willing to stay out of governmental affairs all together, and are just neutrally accepting and applying the rules...
Are you suggesting that perhaps they sent The Clown to lobby the government for a low minimum wage? Maybe they did. That's what corporations do sometimes; they look out for their own interests.
But the government is supposed to be accountable to the electorate. If they weren't, the blame still lies with them.
In my experience, socialists and other left wing types usually look for broader, social solutions to problems (like, say, raising the minimum wage and abolishing a 'training wage') but in this case the focus seems to be on McDonald's, and why they won't, out of the goodness of the heart nobody believes they have, voluntarily pay more. I find this fascinating. Why change the laws to benefit all young and immigrant workers, when we can just drop a guilt trip on McDonald's instead. Excellent solution!
Sometimes? And the rest of the time they're hand-wringing about how to make labour better off? Being altruistic by drilling wells in Africa?
If you really believe that "left wing types and socialists" think only about McDonalds you are truly mistaken. They are one of the most visible companies and notorious for their labour practices and something people can rally around as they are ubiquitious. This isn't just about McDonalds.
As for nobody believing McDonald's has a heart, what do you think an institution is - a human being? Can you reason with an institution on matters of social justice when its main goal is to reproduce itself?
Well, really, not at all. But everyone seemed to want to hold on to the belief that corporations are motivated by altruism, and I didn't want to just step on that with both feet.
But you're right of course; corporations look out for their own interests. Government is supposed to look out for the interests of the rest of us.
Nope, I guess you can't. So the best bet would be to look to the government to change that minimum wage, ya?
Nonsense snert, my parents owned businesses while I was growing up, and they by no means paid their seasonal employees minimum even, they paid far far above it, and even now 40+ years after 1967's cross Canada migration to Expo 67, they even paid their employees above what "training employees" are being paid today in BC.
You see what it takes, and what you fail to get, is *heart* that is lacking the essences of greed and sociopathic privilege.
That's the most reactive idea ever. But if government is to serve the people - as you claim is their job - why don't we go a little further and punish corporations for exploiting labour?
That's nice of them, but that's altruism. They chose to do so. McDonald's has chosen not to. I'm suggesting that a higher minimum wage might do a better job of motivating McDonalds (and any other employer paying the training wage) to pay more than a guilt trip would. They're paying employees exactly what the government says they can.
Well that would be rich. The government should punish them for paying exactly what the government says they can pay them??
I'll return to my speed limit analogy. That would be like a cop pulling me over for doing 100km/h in a 100km/h zone, on the grounds that I'm speeding!!
As I see it, it's the government that sets these standards, whether it's minimum wage or the speed limit. If these standards aren't satisfactory, it's up to the government to change them. It makes no sense for the government to set a speed limit of 100km/h, and then say "Oh, well, we really expected you to only drive 80, so if you drive 100 we'll punish you". That just doesn't make sense.
The government imposed the training wage as to what was exactly was demanded of them to do, by the corporations who put them in power...your complete ignorant ignoring of corporate controlled government and calm acceptance and support of that sociopathic behaviour indicates again why you are a piece of .....work in digression.
Always wondered what it felt like to be in Germany in the lead up to Hitlers full out control, and have found one should be careful about what one wonders for...
Look at how
manyfew people voted in the provincial election here, it's Apathy Central/Devil Take The Hindmost City.people just can't be bothered with dealing with the likes of snert types, so they ignore and they will continue to ignore until they can no longer do so.....
It is really not their fault I have come to believe, it is like blamming the victim, and ignoring the perps.
Some people just do not have the constitution to tell it like it is and so avoid at all costs.
Riiight. Of course.
It wasn't that they won the most ridings or anything like that. It was Ronald McDonald, issuing orders to the puppet government like some kind of Godfather.
The final vote tally was, of course, rigged at the order of Ronald, wasn't it, Remind? LOL!! I shouldn't laugh at your paranoias, but I can't help it.
Congrats on the Godwin, though. I bet this is just EXACTLY like Nazi Germany!
The government is to blame for sure, but McDonalds isn't blameless either. When I was a wee lad, I earned $5.25/hour washing dishes at the Sheraton Hotel in Halifax, two dollars higher than the minimum wage at the time. The Sheraton didn't have to pay me that much (god knows there was no union fighting for me) but they chose to anyway. McDonalds could also. BCers will correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe many companies ignore the 'training wage.' And with or without the training wage, they still set their own wage rates. McDonalds had to pay higher than minimum in many Alberta locations last year due to the boom, and their inability to attract staff at the Alberta minimum wage. Strangely, paying higher wages didn't break them.
On a different note, and this is second hand info, so don't take it to the bank - but someone I know told me she was good friends with the chef at the Aboriginal Pavillion at the Olympics. He got his hand slapped for serving a buffalo 'burger' because McDonalds had the rights to serve the official 'burger' at the Olympics. The chef had to change the name of the dish to a sandwich or something. It's amazing to me that such a big company can be so petty.
Well chime me in as surprised that the law governing a so-called "training wage" allows McDonalds to consider their staff to be in training for much more than a shift or two. Even with the most charitable interpretation I can muster (and I can't muster a lot), I can't conceive of such a law applying after the basic skills required for the job are mastered.
On a drifty note, and thinking about the ongoing debate about tactics elsewhere on the board, if "smashy smashy" had been directed towards McDonalds, and information about the abhorrent wage practices was wide-spread, I wonder if the tactic might be viewed in a more kindly light?
I for one am tired of this corporate regime, this is another example of continuing tyrannical rule by the Burger king. MacDonalds is a mere pawn in his terrible war against socialism.
Snert and the others are both right. It's not a mutually exclusive thing. People can try to change the law AND shame the company. Why set up a false dichotomy?
I believe the following:
1. Corporations do not have hearts or souls.
2. Corporations have a responsibility to their shareholders to maximize profits.
3. Corporations have a responsibility to their employees and the public to follow government laws and regulations.
4. Governments have a responsibility to make laws to protect the people.
5. Government intervention to create laws is necessary because of points 1 and 2. Corporations will not necessarily "do the right thing" if they do not have to.
6. Corporations can increase revenue through branding, advertising, gestures of good will and otherwise increasing their corporate profile.
7. Corporations can lose revenue through negative publicity, including for example, claims that they exploit workers or have low quality products or services.
8. Corporations may choose to pay their employees more than minimum wage because of, inter alia, supply and demand or recognition that minimum wage is not a living wage.
9. If there is a ready stream of workers willing to work for minimum wage/training wage, a corporation will generally not be inclined to pay more than that.
10. The more far removed a corporation's principals are from its workers, the less likely that a corporation will decide to increase salary/improve conditions for altruistic reasons.
Focussing on a large well-known corporation like McDonalds can help get McDonalds' employees raises. (Although, it's unlikely in this circumstance - I think a cost-benefit analysis would show that it will cost more to raise wage than McDonalds is likely to lose from bad publicity.) It can also prompt the government to look into its minimum wage laws so that all minimum wage employees get a raise.