The fast food giant McDonald’s is telling its employees to stop whining, for their own good of course. According to the company’s “McResource Line” website, stress hormones in the body are increased by 15 percent following any complaining—so naturally it would be in an employee’s best interest to shut up and accept their situation, no matter how bad it might be.
This advice is nothing short of sadistic, and it is hardly the worst the company has to offer. It also suggested that employees separate their food into more pieces to create the illusion of fullness after an insufficient meal (McDonald’s has the gall to label this as “dietary advice”). If that weren’t enough, the company advises people still hungry such a meal to just chew gum. McDonald’s employees are also advised to sing their cares away, or to attend church more regularly, in order to stave off depression. In the holiday season, employees are encouraged to return unopened gifts, or sell their possessions on Ebay or Craigslist in order to get a little extra money.
Perhaps most cruelly, the McResource website tells employees that “at least two vacations a year can cut heart attack risk by 50%”. Left unspoken is the fact that many minimum wage workers lack the job security to take multiple days off without being fired, or more to the point, the near nil likelihood that someone already enduring the company’s miserly wage policies could even afford to take one day off of work when they are already living paycheck to paycheck. One wonders what sorts of vacations the executives responsible for writing these programs thought their employees could take on a $7.25 an hour paycheck.
The labor organization Low Pay is Not Okay has also reported that employees at McDonald’s are encouraged by the company to apply for aid programs like SNAP—food stamps—and Medicaid. Plainly, the company knows it is not paying a living wage. It has decided that paying employees enough to live humanely is not its responsibility. Nor is McDonald’s alone in using this tactic. Wal-Mart, the largest single private employer in the U.S., advises its employees similarly.
This is an integral feature of capitalism—the public shoulders the risk engendered by the private sector, which then takes in massive profits from exploiting workers both in its home country and around the world. This holds true whether the organization in question is a fast food company like McDonald’s, a retailer like Wal-Mart, or an investment bank like Goldman Sachs. It is nothing short of theft on a grand scale.
However, there is a movement for a living wage. Around the country, fast food workers have staged walkouts and strikes demanding decent pay and treatment from their employers. This past week, truckers in the port of Los Angeles went on strike protesting low pay and anti-union attacks by their bosses. Presently we are witnessing an upsurge of worker organizing, a movement that could develop into a struggle for a more just and humane economic system: socialism.
