We have all, at some point, made fun of workers in McDonalds, Burger King and other Fast food chains saying that if you are lazy in high school or in university, you will become one of them. The truth is that they work all day, frying, attending, cooking, etc. and they receive a worthless salary (US$7.25/hour). How can this be possible when companies such as McDonalds gain thousands of dollars each day?

The worst part is that even when McDonalds faces strikes all over the country, they make the public believe that these are staged demonstrations and that it is not really their workers who are fighting against this injustice.  McDonalds should instead respond by hearing what their workers have to say because in an enterprise what gives you profit is the human component, machines and artifacts can facilitate the work but they don’t have any creativity or intelligence, they just do as they are told.

I know it might be difficult to increase the hourly salary to US$15 and that even when President Obama is trying to raise the minimum wage to US$10.10 people say that it would kill job creation, but I cannot understand how McDonalds’ (and other companies) employers win fairly great amounts of money and not even think about how poor some of their employees are; some not even being able to maintain their own family.  They are so desperate that they do not care about being arrested and you know that when someone is not afraid of confronting the police, they mean it.

References:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/04/fast-food-protests-dozens-arrested-low-wages

http://www.theguardian.com/money/2014/sep/08/fast-food-workers-protest-strike-paid-mcdonalds