This week, employees of McDonald’s UK have taken action and entered a strike to protest their poor wages and lack of a union. McDonald’s, a company notorious for hiring the people of the working classes of society have been shocked to find out that their employees actually would like to be treated as human beings and paid a proper wage. £10 an hour doesn’t seem like a lot of money, but for a student, or a young person who wants to save up, or for someone who’s trying to get their first job, £10 an hour compared to £6.50 actually makes quite a bit of difference. And, if that payslip from Maccy D’s is someone’s only source of income, surely it’s only fair that they are paid enough so that they can actually eat and live?
It’s not news that minimum wage workers are treated as subhuman, but the internet reached a whole new level of low when a quick search on the #McStrike hashtag showed multiple tweets requesting striker stop complaining; “McDonald’s workers on strike cause they want £10 an hour? Go and get an actual decent job & stop expecting handouts… #McStrike” says Suzy on Twitter. I wonder what Suzy would class as a decent job. Probably whatever she does. However, it is strange that she thinks a wage is a handout. I wonder if she’d consider a wage rise as a handout if she were on less than £10 an hour. Suzy, your privilege is showing.
“as if McDonald workers think they should earn a tenner an hour, like hurro? ur work is easy af and nearly any1 can get the job zzz #McStrike” says Dusty on Twitter. The irony of Dusty’s tweet was clearly lost on him, as he tries to imply that you don’t have to be very intelligent to work at McDonald’s whilst simultaneously proving he is not very intelligent by misspelling every other word in his critique of fast food workers.
There’s a prevailing attitude in the criticisms of this strike that McDonald’s workers have little to complain about and should be grateful for whatever wage they do have. It seems that whenever there is any kind of protest, the protesters are told that they are being ungrateful. You could have it worse. But here’s the thing: McDonald’s is a multi-billion dollar company that can definitely afford to pay their employees £10 an hour. They could probably afford to pay them £20 an hour! Lucky sods. There’s an overwhelming sense that workers should be grateful for what their employers pay them, rather than the employers being grateful for their employees, in McDonald’s case, doing the work that no one else wants to do. Nobody wants to flip burgers. It’s a thankless task. I have a friend who worked at a fast food joint (that shall remain nameless) for a bit and ended up accidentally exposing a cocaine dealing ring within the management. Working in a fast food joint is awful. Photographer Jordan Curtis Hughes posted a thread on twitter in aide of the #McStrike, revealing stories and photos he’d taken of some employees of McDonald’s, and he reveals horrors like the one of Tristan, a 17 year old who, after burning himself on a pan, was “told to put ice on it and keep working.”
The inhumanity with which fast food chain workers are treated is appalling, disgusting, and one could argue, downright evil. And a company always stands out when it acts inconvenienced by its employees want to unionize. The U.K. has a long history of workers standing up to their employers and demanding to be treated as human beings, with varying degrees of success (the ramifications of the miners’ strike are still rippling through British society today). Strikes are never easy, especially when you’re up against an enemy far much bigger, and greater than yourself. But as the old song goes, “Solidarity forever, for the union makes us strong.”
Slowly but surely, and hopefully, the employees of McDonald’s will step out of the shadow of the golden arches and into a new light where they will be treated with dignity and respect. Multi-billion dollar companies have continued to take advantage of and disenfranchise their employees, stripping away their rights and voices in the process, with no one stopping them or keeping them in line. To say it has to end now would be polite. So we strike. And we strike until we win. And if we’re not the ones striking, we can support the strike and offer solidarity till it ends. We can build a new world from the ashes of the old, for the union makes us strong.
